Something clicked in reading this, and I think I finally understand what you've been trying to tell me about parody as a container over the past few years.
Personally I prefer a blend—a parody which is a specific target, AND using it as a wide-ranging container. Audiences are sophisticated enough now you don’t have to choose.
I know little about hip hop, but I do know the conventional history is that it was created by a group of POC in the Bronx and Brooklyn from 1978-82, and that seedbed was deeply anti-authoritarian. Even the house parties themselves were often held in quasi-legal or DIY spaces, like disco in the late 60s and early 70s.
As to parody, the core transaction is a borrowing of authority from an original to subvert/recast that original, or in the case of "container" parodies like The Onion, to subvert/recast lots of things. And this transaction is a clue pointing to how modern parody is rooted in student magazines. The voiceless student finding their voice by pretending to be the professor, borrowing their authority--whether it's a printed parody or Robert Benchley giving a lecture at the Harvard Club in 1912.
Oh, for sure. My chin scratching is about how those origins impact what these arts look like today. Is rap essentially an insurgent art that needs some authority to bounce against? That's a really interesting perspective on hip hop, because (like parody?) its most public practitioners are world-conquering hedonists. Maybe that impacts where rap/hip hop is in 2023...but then where would those qualities show themselves? Lyrically? In presentation?
One story you might tell is that when you're at the top of the game, rap (parody) stops having good targets and needs to shift, somehow. But the vocabulary of rap (parody) seems to me as open as the vocabulary of words, so I'm not sure what its origins at Bronx house parties with stolen AV equipment means for us today. But I'm sure it's something. So, thinking!
I’m probably just saying something you said already, but with different words. For me the great thing about parodies like high school yearbook and airplane, and both python films mentioned, and young Frankenstein, is that the parody is not a restraint on places the comedy can go. In fact, it may be the weakest or least memorable aspect. It also provides dramatic structure, perhaps the toughest thing to nail with comedy storytelling. And it seems less contrived than grafting comedy onto a conventional Hollywood formula; it’s by definition mocking something, so it’s less open to mockery itself than a rom com or action film might be.
The thing is, if you use parody as simply a structure, you can be open to legal harassment. That's why the satirical angle has to saturate the project.
If Young Frankenstein had been attempted ten years later, or twenty years later, I suspect Universal would've kicked up a fuss (or demanded it be the only studio that made it, and have total control over Brooks' film).
I simply can't imagine Young Frankenstein being made today outside of Universal. Corporations are both hyper-aware of the value of IP, but also not all clued-in that freedom is what grows a property. I'll talk about that in the class.
Good stuff here. I love parody and many of the movies you mention from the 70's are the gold standard as far as I'm concerned. And then add the Marx Brothers. Despite that they were often seen wandering through high society, they were mocking it and were extremely anti-authoritarian.
Something clicked in reading this, and I think I finally understand what you've been trying to tell me about parody as a container over the past few years.
Personally I prefer a blend—a parody which is a specific target, AND using it as a wide-ranging container. Audiences are sophisticated enough now you don’t have to choose.
By the way -- the rise of sampling and hip hop relates in interesting ways with everything you're saying in this piece about parody.
Parody--like hip hop--is foundationally anti-authoritarian. It’s a bottom up art.
Now that's a claim I need to chew on for a minute.
Which part?
I know little about hip hop, but I do know the conventional history is that it was created by a group of POC in the Bronx and Brooklyn from 1978-82, and that seedbed was deeply anti-authoritarian. Even the house parties themselves were often held in quasi-legal or DIY spaces, like disco in the late 60s and early 70s.
As to parody, the core transaction is a borrowing of authority from an original to subvert/recast that original, or in the case of "container" parodies like The Onion, to subvert/recast lots of things. And this transaction is a clue pointing to how modern parody is rooted in student magazines. The voiceless student finding their voice by pretending to be the professor, borrowing their authority--whether it's a printed parody or Robert Benchley giving a lecture at the Harvard Club in 1912.
Oh, for sure. My chin scratching is about how those origins impact what these arts look like today. Is rap essentially an insurgent art that needs some authority to bounce against? That's a really interesting perspective on hip hop, because (like parody?) its most public practitioners are world-conquering hedonists. Maybe that impacts where rap/hip hop is in 2023...but then where would those qualities show themselves? Lyrically? In presentation?
One story you might tell is that when you're at the top of the game, rap (parody) stops having good targets and needs to shift, somehow. But the vocabulary of rap (parody) seems to me as open as the vocabulary of words, so I'm not sure what its origins at Bronx house parties with stolen AV equipment means for us today. But I'm sure it's something. So, thinking!
I’m probably just saying something you said already, but with different words. For me the great thing about parodies like high school yearbook and airplane, and both python films mentioned, and young Frankenstein, is that the parody is not a restraint on places the comedy can go. In fact, it may be the weakest or least memorable aspect. It also provides dramatic structure, perhaps the toughest thing to nail with comedy storytelling. And it seems less contrived than grafting comedy onto a conventional Hollywood formula; it’s by definition mocking something, so it’s less open to mockery itself than a rom com or action film might be.
The thing is, if you use parody as simply a structure, you can be open to legal harassment. That's why the satirical angle has to saturate the project.
If Young Frankenstein had been attempted ten years later, or twenty years later, I suspect Universal would've kicked up a fuss (or demanded it be the only studio that made it, and have total control over Brooks' film).
I figure we’re lucky some of those things exist.
I simply can't imagine Young Frankenstein being made today outside of Universal. Corporations are both hyper-aware of the value of IP, but also not all clued-in that freedom is what grows a property. I'll talk about that in the class.
Good stuff here. I love parody and many of the movies you mention from the 70's are the gold standard as far as I'm concerned. And then add the Marx Brothers. Despite that they were often seen wandering through high society, they were mocking it and were extremely anti-authoritarian.