First a quick throwback: So, Heinlein wrote a SciFi story about a fascist government and mass orgies. So? Are you saying Suzanne Collins suggests we should put our children in death matches against each other? Authors, especially SciFi authors explore certain types of fictional societies. It doesn't mean they say we must have them....
Regarding Mel Brooks...
I'm a big fan of most of his works. I'll admit Spaceballs isn't the best possible parody ever but it is a great movie anyway. Men in Tights and Young Frankenstein are amazing (I like MiT a bit better, though).
But... I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of Blazing Saddles. Yeah, it is quite old and I actually saw it for the first time not too long ago but still... Oh, it has some great jokes but the first thirty minutes or so are always a pain for me to sit through and the finale is way too... Yeah, he got better afterwards, in my opinion.
The Lets Plays Yahtzee has recently been uploading to youtube give a much better impression of him than the videos. I think it's worth noting that when someone called him a 'professional troll' he seemed quite taken with the whole idea
No, its that most of the jokes are UNRELATED to star wars.
Most of the stuff IS indeed funny, but most of the stuff isn't really related to star wars at all.
Well that's why I asked, because if you found the movie funny and didn't feel their was some great joke out there to be be had missing... why are you complaining?
Its still very very much a SW parody, the entire plot and character structure is dictated by Star Wars just to start, so I find the grounds that the jokes aren't all about SW to be frivolous. It doesn't have to be, and frankly would be much harder to make.
Parody is not about simply making jokes about the nominal subject matter, but making jokes in while in imitation of the subject matter. I'd cite Weird Al, many of his songs have next to nothing content wise with their source material, but remain musical parodies. Heck even ones were he's just doing say a polka remix.
I dare say that while lampooning the source material exclusively can be fine in a short format, but is increasing likely to weaken your comedy as the timeline goes up. Especially for people that might be seeing the parody first and not get what you are poking fun at. The well of material is just going to run dry sooner or later. One of the most well regarded parodies (Airplane!) works because in large part because it has a billion and three gags so even if you don't find one funny you will find another one funny, with the parody plot of the disaster movie being the framework to set a comedy around.
Which is really what a parody should be, a particular framework for a comedy. While it should of course still be a parody, they should still at least attempt working as a more general story/comedy.
Thats why I don't consider most of Wierd alls songs parodies at all.
Just a way to remove the original crap lyrics and add something funny/ much better to them.
That isn't satire.
The word parody gets thrown around way too often in my opinion.
Airplane is a satire of all the disaster movies around the time.
I disagree. If a movie is just making most of its jokes unrelated to the source material then its not a very good parody. You can't run an entire movie based only on satire jokes yes, but there is a limit to at which point its just unrelated.
Thats why I don't consider most of Wierd alls songs parodies at all.
Just a way to remove the original crap lyrics and add something funny/ much better to them.
That isn't satire.
The word parody gets thrown around way too often in my opinion.
Then I would characterize your standards of then as being so narrow as to make the art effective non-existent as a meaningful term. Because they largely won't exist. Its a standard too high to remain useful, and at the least well outside the more commonly accepted standards.
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Airplane is a satire of all the disaster movies around the time.
As Spaceballs to sci-fi, so Airplane! to disaster movies.
As Spaceballs to Star Wars so Airplane! to Zero Hour!
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I disagree. If a movie is just making most of its jokes unrelated to the source material then its not a very good parody. You can't run an entire movie based only on satire jokes yes, but there is a limit to at which point its just unrelated.
Surely you can't be serious
If you are, I think you are missing the deeper point, in that its almost irrelevant whether the jokes are actually about the source material. While there's certainly nothing wrong with it, but parody is also more structural then that.
Airplane! and its source material... well Airplane! pretty much plagarized the source (because Paramount owned both) and added jokes or made "straight" lines into ones nobody could ever take seriously again. But unless I've missed something (possible) there's nothing overly particular to disaster movies about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar leaning on the fourth wall to admit he is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in disguise when the kid disses his games.
Last edited by Soras Teva Gee : 11-09-2012 at 12:01 AM.
I suppose I should at least try to be relevant here. I agree with Soras. A parody is simply an imitation used for comedic effect. This imitation can be as blatant as taking all the music of the song and rewriting the words (Weird Al), to merely taking some themes and plot elements (Spaceballs). It does not have to have all of it tied in some way to the source material. However there does get to be a point where you spread too far that no one will ever think to compare it to the supposed subject it is parodying. However I do not think either of the two I have stated above reach that point. Everyone who watches Spaceballs knows it's parodying Star Wars, and everyone who listens to Weird Al generally knows he's parodying songs (though I'll admit I often don't know which ones he's parodying, 'cause I don't listen to a lot of modern music)
Thats why I don't consider most of Wierd alls songs parodies at all.
Just a way to remove the original crap lyrics and add something funny/ much better to them.
That's the definition of a song parody. I mean, that's literally what the term means. It's when you take an already-existing song and rewrite the lyrics. Trying to say it isn't a song parody is to go against what the term means. It's like trying to convince someone that ducks aren't birds; by definition they are.
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That isn't satire.
You're right. But it is a parody.
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The word parody gets thrown around way too often in my opinion.
Airplane is a satire of all the disaster movies around the time.
I don't know if I'd call it a satire. A satire involves actual criticism of something. Great examples of satire are 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World. That's satire.
Airplane, from what I could tell, wasn't trying to make any real point about the disaster film genre, it was just using the framework as an opportunity for jokes. That's a parody, but not satire.
To truly get the satire in Airplane you'd have had to have watched the movie Airport from '77. Which was really the beginning of blockbuster disaster movies. With all the stereotypical characters we've come to expect from such movies, and a particularly plodding and dully serious story. At that time it had an all-star cast and was nominated for an Academy Award.
It was to me, after watching it, quite lampoon-worthy.
Last edited by Kitten Champion : 11-09-2012 at 02:30 AM.
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Re: Terrible subversions/ Parodies.
