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72-413: In common usage, "ridiculousness" is used as a synonym for absurdity or nonsense . From a historical and technical viewpoint, "absurdity" is associated with argumentation and reasoning, "nonsense" with semantics and meaning , while "ridiculous" is most associated with laughter, superiority, deformity, and incongruity. Reductio ad absurdum is a valid method of argument , while reductio ad ridiculum

144-662: A Star Wars spoof). The British comedy group Monty Python is also famous for its parodies, for example, the King Arthur spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974), and the Jesus satire Life of Brian (1979). In the 1980s the team of David Zucker , Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker parodied well-established genres such as disaster, war and police movies with the Airplane! , Hot Shots! and Naked Gun series respectively. There

216-605: A " dignified " state to its opposite, the optimistic Dr. Pangloss (representing Leibniz) finds cause to consider his undignified position to be the best of all possible worlds, noting his own particular current happiness, which he argues could not have been attained without experiencing the atrocities in the previous narrative; his optimistic attitude is extremely incongruous with his experiences and extremely inferior undignified ultimate condition. In Stanley Kubrick 's 2001: A Space Odyssey , apelike humans and their behavior are juxtaposed next to streamlined advanced technology with

288-474: A 200-mile-long creature generally interpreted as being a whale. This is a parody of Ctesias ' claims that India has a one-legged race of humans with a single foot so huge it can be used as an umbrella, Homer 's stories of one-eyed giants, and so on. Parody exists in the following related genres: satire , travesty, pastiche , skit , burlesque . Satires and parodies are both derivative works that exaggerate their source material(s) in humorous ways. However,

360-422: A 20th-century Irish context, and T. S. Eliot 's The Waste Land , which incorporates and recontextualizes elements of a vast range of prior texts, including Dante 's The Inferno . The work of Andy Warhol is another prominent example of the modern "recontextualizing" parody. According to French literary theorist Gérard Genette , the most rigorous and elegant form of parody is also the most economical, that

432-569: A chamber pot. We have 'Research on Why Men Have Beards and Women Don't,' 'A Telegram from the Thunder God to His Mother Resigning His Post,' and 'A Public Notice from the King of Whoring Prohibiting Playboys from Skipping Debts.'" Jorge Luis Borges 's (1939) short story " Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote ", is often regarded as predicting postmodernism and conceiving the ideal of the ultimate parody. In

504-463: A critique or commentary upon it. In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. , the Supreme Court ruled that a rap parody of " Oh, Pretty Woman " by 2 Live Crew was fair use, as the parody was a distinctive, transformative work designed to ridicule the original song, and that "even if 2 Live Crew's copying of the original's first line of lyrics and characteristic opening bass riff may be said to go to

576-530: A different, often incongruous, context. Musical parodies may imitate or refer to the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music. For example, "The Ritz Roll and Rock", a song and dance number performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Silk Stockings , parodies the rock and roll genre. Conversely, while the best-known work of "Weird Al" Yankovic is based on particular popular songs, it also often utilises wildly incongruous elements of pop culture for comedic effect. The first usage of

648-501: A famous example of which is the Silloi by Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius which parodied philosophers living and dead. The style was a rhetorical mainstay of the Cynics and was the most common tone of the works made by Menippus and Meleager of Gadara . In the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata created a parody of travel texts such as Indica and The Odyssey . He described

720-636: A glutton and the God of Drama Dionysus as cowardly and unintelligent. The traditional trip to the Underworld story is parodied as Dionysus dresses as Heracles to go to the Underworld, in an attempt to bring back a poet to save Athens. The Ancient Greeks created satyr plays which parodied tragic plays , often with performers dressed like satyrs . Parody was used in early Greek philosophical texts to make philosophical points. Such texts are known as spoudaiogeloion ,

792-490: A highly avant garde score by composer György Ligeti ; Ligeti also used ridiculous juxtaposition in his scores to create parody, and this tool was frequently used by composer Peter Maxwell Davies . Japanese Butoh uses both incongruity and deformity to create ridiculous dance performance and lifestyle; extreme movement methods that are highly incongruous with natural body movement in its dance and everyday lifestyle, as well as in its clothing, actions, costume and set design that

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864-416: A joy at being superior to them. Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterized by a display of self-ignorance. Deformity was considered by some to be essential to the ridiculous. Psychological theories of humor include the "incongruity theory" and the "superiority theory", the latter of which the philosopher Thomas Hobbes was an early proponent. Hobbes claimed that laughter

936-520: A lack of independence while embracing codependency . In Flann O'Brien 's novel At Swim-Two-Birds , for example, mad King Sweeney , Finn MacCool , a pookah , and an assortment of cowboys all assemble in an inn in Dublin : the mixture of mythic characters, characters from genre fiction, and a quotidian setting combine for a humor that is not directed at any of the characters or their authors. This combination of established and identifiable characters in

1008-466: A natural development in the life cycle of any genre ; this idea has proven especially fruitful for genre film theorists. Such theorists note that Western movies , for example, after the classic stage defined the conventions of the genre, underwent a parody stage, in which those same conventions were ridiculed and critiqued. Because audiences had seen these classic Westerns, they had expectations for any new Westerns, and when these expectations were inverted,

1080-412: A new setting is not the same as the post-modernist trope of using historical characters in fiction out of context to provide a metaphoric element. Sometimes the reputation of a parody outlasts the reputation of what is being parodied. For example, Don Quixote , which mocks the traditional knight errant tales, is much better known than the novel that inspired it, Amadis de Gaula (although Amadis

1152-445: A parody, pastiche is neither transformative of the original work, nor is it humorous. Literary critic Fredric Jameson has referred to the pastiche as a "blank parody", or "parody that has lost its sense of humor". Skits imitate works "in a satirical regime". But unlike travesties, skits do not transform the source material. The burlesque primarily targets heroic poems and theater to degrade popular heroes and gods, as well as mock

1224-420: A pre-existing, copyrighted work, some countries have ruled that parodies can fall under copyright limitations such as fair dealing , or otherwise have fair dealing laws that include parody in their scope. Parodies are protected under the fair use doctrine of United States copyright law , but the defense is more successful if the usage of an existing copyrighted work is transformative in nature, such as being

1296-409: A reworking of one kind of composition into another (for example, a motet into a keyboard work as Girolamo Cavazzoni , Antonio de Cabezón , and Alonso Mudarra all did to Josquin des Prez motets ). More commonly, a parody mass ( missa parodia ) or an oratorio used extensive quotation from other vocal works such as motets or cantatas ; Victoria , Palestrina , Lassus , and other composers of

1368-515: A satire is meant to make fun of the real world, whereas a parody is a derivative of a specific work ("specific parody") or a general genre ("general parody" or "spoof"). Furthermore, satires are provocative and critical as they point to a specific vice associated with an individual or a group of people to mock them into correction or as a form of punishment. In contrast, parodies are more focused on producing playful humor and do not always attack or criticize its targeted work and/or genre. Of course, it

1440-533: A satirical comedy about Adolf Hitler with the film The Great Dictator , following the first-ever Hollywood parody of the Nazis, the Three Stooges ' short subject You Nazty Spy! . About 20 years later Mel Brooks started his career with a Hitler parody as well. After his 1967 film The Producers won both an Academy Award and a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay, Brooks became one of

1512-430: A serious film, but decided that it would not be able to compete with the established series of Bond films. Hence, he decided to parody the series. Kenneth Baker considered poetic parody to take five main forms. A further, more constructive form of poetic parody is one that links the contemporary poet with past forms and past masters through affectionate parodying – thus sharing poetic codes while avoiding some of

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1584-597: A work for humorous or satirical effect. See also Fair dealing in United Kingdom law . Some countries do not like parodies and the parodies can be considered insulting. The person who makes the parody can be fined or even jailed. For instance in the UAE and North Korea, this is not allowed. Parody is a prominent genre in online culture, thanks in part to the ease with which digital texts may be altered, appropriated, and shared. Japanese kuso and Chinese e'gao are emblematic of

1656-411: Is a minimal parody , the one that literally reprises a known text and gives it a new meaning. Blank parody, in which an artist takes the skeletal form of an art work and places it in a new context without ridiculing it, is common. Pastiche is a closely related genre , and parody can also occur when characters or settings belonging to one work are used in a humorous or ironic way in another, such as

1728-621: Is a 1989 film parody from Spain of the TV series The A-Team called El equipo Aahhgg directed by José Truchado. More recently, parodies have taken on whole film genres at once. One of the first was Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood and the Scary Movie franchise. Other recent genre parodies include. Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th , Not Another Teen Movie , Date Movie , Epic Movie , Meet

1800-529: Is an original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can also be about a real-life person (e.g. a politician), event, or movement (e.g. the French Revolution or 1960s counterculture ). Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice". The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon said "parody ...

1872-419: Is clearly aimed at a popular (and usually lucrative) subject. The spy film craze of the 1960s, fuelled by the popularity of James Bond is such an example. In this genre a rare, and possibly unique, example of a parody film taking aim at a non-comedic subject over which it actually holds copyright is the 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale . In this case, producer Charles K. Feldman initially intended to make

1944-545: Is highly incongruous with societal norms, which often shock the audience or visitor, and are sometimes considered not only ridiculous, but incongruently "bizarre and beautiful " or " elegant and grotesque ". The Theatre of the Ridiculous is a genre of performance that uses highly incongruous stage settings and incongruous costumes such as cross dressing to disturb or create shock in the audience. It began in New York City in

2016-463: Is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature , music , theater , television and film , animation , and gaming . The writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies , that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche ("a composition in another artist's manner, without satirical intent") and burlesque (which "fools around with

2088-445: Is invalid. Argument by invective declaration of ridiculous is invalid, while arguments involving declarations of nonsense may summarize a cogent semantic problem with lack or meaning or ambiguity . Historically, the ridiculous was central to initial theories of humor and laughter as first put forth by philosopher Thomas Hobbes . It is currently used in the theory of humor to trigger laughter, shock, parody, or satire. Reactions to

2160-455: Is mentioned in the book). Another case is the novel Shamela by Henry Fielding (1742), which was a parody of the gloomy epistolary novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) by Samuel Richardson . Many of Lewis Carroll 's parodies of Victorian didactic verse for children, such as " You Are Old, Father William ", are much better known than the (largely forgotten) originals. Stella Gibbons 's comic novel Cold Comfort Farm has eclipsed

2232-405: Is not required under law to get permission to parody; as a personal rule, however, he does seek permission to parody a person's song before recording it. Several artists, such as rapper Chamillionaire and Seattle-based grunge band Nirvana stated that Yankovic's parodies of their respective songs were excellent, and many artists have considered being parodied by him to be a badge of honor. In

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2304-465: Is often manifest by doing things backwards or unconventionally—riding a horse backwards, wearing clothes inside-out, or speaking backwards. For example, if food were scarce, a Heyókȟa would sit around and complain about how full he was; during a baking hot heat wave, a Heyókȟa would shiver with cold and put on gloves and cover himself with a thick blanket. Similarly, when it is 40 degrees below freezing he will wander around naked for hours complaining that it

2376-408: Is often used to make a social or political statement. Examples include Swift 's " A Modest Proposal ", which satirized English neglect of Ireland by parodying emotionally disengaged political tracts; and, recently, The Daily Show , The Larry Sanders Show and The Colbert Report , which parody a news broadcast and a talk show to satirize political and social trends and events. On the other hand,

2448-471: Is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous ). Reduction to the ridiculous (Latin: "reductio ad ridiculum", also called "Appeal to ridicule", "appeal to mockery", or "the Horse Laugh") is a logical fallacy which presents the opponent's argument in a way that grossly misrepresents it and appears ridiculous next to it, often so misrepresentative as to create a straw man argument, rather than addressing

2520-424: Is possible for a parody to maintain satiric elements without crossing into satire itself, as long as its "light verse with modest aspirations" ultimately dominates the work. A travesty imitates and transforms a work, but focuses more on the satirization of it. Because satire is meant to attack someone or something, the harmless playfulness of parody is lost. A pastiche imitates a work as a parody does, but unlike

2592-564: Is protection for Fair Dealing , there is no explicit protection for parody and satire. In Canwest v. Horizon , the publisher of the Vancouver Sun launched a lawsuit against a group which had published a pro- Palestinian parody of the paper. Alan Donaldson, the judge in the case, ruled that parody is not a defence to a copyright claim. As of the implementation of the Copyright Modernization Act 2012, "Fair dealing for

2664-418: Is set against the original. The Oxford English Dictionary , for example, defines parody as imitation "turned as to produce a ridiculous effect". Because par- also has the non-antagonistic meaning of beside , "there is nothing in parodia to necessitate the inclusion of a concept of ridicule." In Greek Old Comedy even the gods could be made fun of. The Frogs portrays the hero-turned-god Heracles as

2736-426: Is too hot. The ridiculous can use uses both physical and conceptual inferiority and incongruity of juxtaposition to create parody and satire . In Candide , Voltaire parodies Leibniz 's argument for the existence of evil under a benign God using "ridiculous rationalizations of evil" . Leibniz claimed that God is constrained by logic, and created the best of all possible worlds . After being reduced from

2808-594: The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 , now provides an exception to infringement where there is fair dealing of the original work for the purpose of parody (or alternatively for the purpose of caricature or pastiche). The legislation does not define what is meant by "parody", but the UK IPO ;– the Intellectual Property Office (United Kingdom)  – suggests that a "parody" is something that imitates

2880-497: The Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon . Parody generators are computer programs which generate text that is syntactically correct , but usually meaningless , often in the style of a technical paper or a particular writer. They are also called travesty generators and random text generators. Their purpose is often satirical , intending to show that there is little difference between the generated text and real examples. Parody

2952-656: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a fair use defense in the Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. Penguin Books case. Citing the Campbell v. Acuff-Rose decision, they found that a satire of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and parody of The Cat in the Hat had infringed upon the children's book because it did not provide a commentary function upon that work. Under Canadian law , although there

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3024-472: The anxiety of influence . More aggressive in tone are playground poetry parodies, often attacking authority, values and culture itself in a carnivalesque rebellion: "Twinkle, Twinkle little star,/ Who the hell do you think you are?" A subset of parody is self-parody in which artists parody their own work (as in Ricky Gervais 's Extras ). Although a parody can be considered a derivative work of

3096-525: The 16th century used this technique. The term is also sometimes applied to procedures common in the Baroque period , such as when Bach reworks music from cantatas in his Christmas Oratorio . The musicological definition of the term parody has now generally been supplanted by a more general meaning of the word. In its more contemporary usage, musical parody usually has humorous, even satirical intent, in which familiar musical ideas or lyrics are lifted into

3168-550: The 1910s and 1920s, writers in China's entertainment market parodied anything and everything.... They parodied speeches, advertisements, confessions, petitions, orders, handbills, notices, policies, regulations, resolutions, discourses, explications, sutras, memorials to the throne, and conference minutes. We have an exchange of letters between the Queue and the Beard and Eyebrows. We have a eulogy for

3240-494: The 1960s. Psychologists have studied human response to the ridiculous and its effects on attention and memory. The ridiculous is used in advertising to manipulate attention and attitudes toward products. The ridiculous is sometimes contrasted to the sublime where something with one quality is thought of as approaching, or likely to change to, the other. Thomas Paine , writing in The Age of Reason in 1795, said The sublime and

3312-576: The Spartans , Superhero Movie , Disaster Movie , Vampires Suck , and The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It , all of which have been critically panned. Many parody films have as their target out-of-copyright or non-copyrighted subjects (such as Frankenstein or Robin Hood) whilst others settle for imitation which does not infringe copyright, but

3384-538: The US legal system the point that in most cases a parody of a work constitutes fair use was upheld in the case of Rick Dees , who decided to use 29 seconds of the music from the song When Sonny Gets Blue to parody Johnny Mathis ' singing style even after being refused permission. An appeals court upheld the trial court's decision that this type of parody represents fair use. Fisher v. Dees 794 F.2d 432 (9th Cir. 1986) Some genre theorists , following Bakhtin , see parody as

3456-485: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.132 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 386807533 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 05:30:43 GMT Parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satirical or ironic imitation . Often its subject

3528-736: The advantages of a new parody exception were sufficient to override the disadvantages to the creators and owners of the underlying work. There is therefore no proposal to change the current approach to parody, caricature and pastiche in the UK." However, following the Hargreaves Review in May 2011 (which made similar proposals to the Gowers Review) the Government broadly accepted these proposals. The current law (effective from 1 October 2014), namely Section 30A of

3600-691: The argument itself. For example, in arguing against idealism , with its sophisticated arguments that the world was not real but only existed in the mind , philosopher Dr. Johnson famously kicked a stone. Contrasting ridiculousness with absurdity in reasoning , Reductio ad ridiculum is an invalid method of argument, while reductio ad absurdum is a valid method. Arguments are often simply dismissed by calling them "ridiculous" as invective, without further argumentation. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche often dismissed philosophical positions by calling them "ridiculous" without further argument given. Absurdity Too Many Requests If you report this error to

3672-537: The audience laughed. An early parody film was the 1922 movie Mud and Sand , a Stan Laurel film that made fun of Rudolph Valentino 's film Blood and Sand . Laurel specialized in parodies in the mid-1920s, writing and acting in a number of them. Some were send-ups of popular films, such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde —parodied in the comic Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (1926). Others were spoofs of Broadway plays, such as No, No, Nanette (1925), parodied as Yes, Yes, Nanette (1925). In 1940 Charlie Chaplin created

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3744-516: The authors of such accounts as liars who had never traveled, nor ever talked to any credible person who had. In his ironically named book True History Lucian delivers a story which exaggerates the hyperbole and improbable claims of those stories. Sometimes described as the first science fiction , the characters travel to the Moon, engage in interplanetary war with the help of aliens they meet there, and then return to Earth to experience civilization inside

3816-537: The broader sense of Greek parodia , parody can occur when whole elements of one work are lifted out of their context and reused, not necessarily to be ridiculed. Traditional definitions of parody usually only discuss parody in the stricter sense of something intended to ridicule the text it parodies. There is also a broader, extended sense of parody that may not include ridicule, and may be based on many other uses and intentions. The broader sense of parody, parody done with intent other than ridicule, has become prevalent in

3888-481: The case of the moralistic melodramas in the 1910s, it retains value only as a parody, as demonstrated by the Buster Keaton shorts that mocked that genre. A parody may also be known as a spoof , a satire , a send-up , a take-off , a lampoon , a play on ( something ), or a caricature . According to Aristotle ( Poetics , ii. 5), Hegemon of Thasos was the inventor of a kind of parody; by slightly altering

3960-523: The central and most representative artistic device, the catalysing agent of artistic creation and innovation. This most prominently happened in the second half of the century with postmodernism , but earlier modernism and Russian formalism had anticipated this perspective. For the Russian formalists, parody was a way of liberation from the background text that enables to produce new and autonomous artistic forms. Historian Christopher Rea writes that "In

4032-416: The common tropes within the genre. Simon Dentith has described this type of parody as "parodic anti-heroic drama". A parody imitates and mocks a specific, recognizable work (e.g. a book, movie, etc.) or the characteristic style of a particular author. A spoof mocks an entire genre by exaggerating its conventions and cliches for humorous effect. In classical music , as a technical term, parody refers to

4104-540: The importance of parody in online cultures in Asia. Video mash-ups and other parodic memes , such as humorously altered Chinese characters, have been particularly popular as a tool for political protest in the People's Republic of China, the government of which maintains an extensive censorship apparatus. Chinese internet slang makes extensive use of puns and parodies on how Chinese characters are pronounced or written, as illustrated in

4176-452: The material of high literature and adapts it to low ends"). Meanwhile, the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot distinguishes between the parody and the burlesque, "A good parody is a fine amusement, capable of amusing and instructing the most sensible and polished minds; the burlesque is a miserable buffoonery which can only please the populace." Historically, when a formula grows tired, as in

4248-535: The modern parody of the 20th century. In the extended sense, the modern parody does not target the parodied text, but instead uses it as a weapon to target something else. The reason for the prevalence of the extended, recontextualizing type of parody in the 20th century is that artists have sought to connect with the past while registering differences brought by modernity . Major modernist examples of this recontextualizing parody include James Joyce 's Ulysses , which incorporates elements of Homer 's Odyssey in

4320-550: The most famous film parodists and created spoofs in multiple film genres. Blazing Saddles (1974) is a parody of western films, History of the World, Part I (1981) is a historical parody, Robin Hood Men in Tights (1993) is Brooks' take on the classic Robin Hood tale, and his spoofs in the horror, sci-fi and adventure genres include Young Frankenstein (1974), and Spaceballs (1987,

4392-621: The original's 'heart,' that heart is what most readily conjures up the song for parody, and it is the heart at which parody takes aim." In 2001, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals , in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin , upheld the right of Alice Randall to publish a parody of Gone with the Wind called The Wind Done Gone , which told the same story from the point of view of Scarlett O'Hara 's slaves, who were glad to be rid of her. In 2007,

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4464-409: The other. The ridiculous often has extreme incongruity (things that are not thought to belong next to each other) or inferiority, e.g., "when something that was dignified is reduced to a ridiculous position (here noting the element of the incongruous), so that laughter is most intense when we escape from a 'coerced solemnity'." For Aristotle , we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel

4536-436: The painfully ridiculous, and is believed to become closer to the gods by its primordiality . Native American clowns are ridiculous in their contrary and rule breaking antics. In the film Little Big Man , the sacred clown rides sitting backwards on his horse, "washes" himself with dirt and "dries" himself with water. Heyókȟa are thought of as being incongruously backwards-forwards, upside-down, or contrary in nature. This spirit

4608-445: The pastoral novels of Mary Webb which largely inspired it. In more recent times, the television sitcom 'Allo 'Allo! is perhaps better known than the drama Secret Army which it parodies. Some artists carve out careers by making parodies. One of the best-known examples is that of "Weird Al" Yankovic . His career of parodying other musical acts and their songs has outlasted many of the artists or bands he has parodied. Yankovic

4680-579: The purpose of research, private study, education, parody or satire does not infringe copyright." In 2006 the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property recommended that the UK should "create an exception to copyright for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche by 2008". Following the first stage of a two-part public consultation, the Intellectual Property Office reported that the information received "was not sufficient to persuade us that

4752-408: The ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime, makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous, makes the sublime again. Napoleon , reflecting on the state of his existence following his retreat from Moscow in 1812, famously remarked to Polish ambassador D. G. De Pradt : Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas ( There

4824-456: The ridiculous have been studied in psychology for its effects on memory, attention, and attitude in social hierarchies. These studies have been applied to the theory of advertisement regarding attention, memory, and alleviation of preexisting negative attitudes toward products. The ridiculous is often contrasted with the sublime , one of extreme inferiority, the other of extreme superiority, and often one can suddenly move from one extreme state to

4896-496: The ridiculous is a method in the theory of humor. Although common usage now considers "absurdity" to be synonymous with "ridiculousness", Hobbes discussed the two concepts as different, in that absurdity is viewed as having to do with invalid reasoning, as in Hobbes' Table of Absurdity , while ridiculousness has to do with laughter, superiority, ridicule, and deformity. The Ritual clown ( Heyókȟa ) in some Native American culture uses

4968-548: The transformation of minor characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Shakespeare 's drama Hamlet into the principal characters in a comedic perspective on the same events in the play (and film) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . Similarly, Mishu Hilmy 's Trapped in the Netflix uses parody to deconstruct contemporary Netflix shows like Mad Men providing commentary through popular characters. Don Draper mansplaining about mansplaining, Luke Danes monologizing about

5040-700: The word parody in English cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is in Ben Jonson , in Every Man in His Humour in 1598: "A Parodie, a parodie! to make it absurder than it was." The next citation comes from John Dryden in 1693, who also appended an explanation, suggesting that the word was in common use, meaning to make fun of or re-create what you are doing. Since the 20th century, parody has been heightened as

5112-516: The wording in well-known poems he transformed the sublime into the ridiculous. In ancient Greek literature , a parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of epics "but treating light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects". Indeed, the components of the Greek word are παρά para "beside, counter, against" and ᾠδή oide "song". Thus, the original Greek word παρῳδία parodia has sometimes been taken to mean "counter-song", an imitation that

5184-415: Was either caused spontaneously, or by seeing a deformed thing to which one compares themselves and laugh as a form of self applause; "a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison of the infirmities of others." The Right Reverend William Warburton , Lord Bishop of Gloucester said in the early 18th century that, "Nothing is ridiculous but what is deformed". Using

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