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A parody ( US
American English

PhonologyIn many ways, compared to English language in England, North American English is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States , partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties we...
, ['pa??di?] UK
British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
, also called send-up or spoof), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, or author, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon
Linda Hutcheon

Linda Hutcheon is a Canadian academic, literary theorist, and feminist. She is University Professor in the Department of English and of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where she has taught since 1988....
 (2000: 7) puts it, "parody … is imitation with a critical difference, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith (2000: 9), defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemic
Polemic

Polemics is the practice of disputing or controverting religion, philosophy, politics, or scientific matters. As such, a polemic text on a topic is often written specifically to dispute or refute a position or theory that is widely viewed to be beyond reproach....
al allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice."

Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature
Literature

Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" . In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and non-fiction....
, music
Parody music

Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or recycling existing musical ideas or lyrics - or copying the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music....
 (although "parody" in music has a rather wider meaning than for other art forms), and cinema
Film

Film encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the film industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects....
.






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A parody ( US
American English

PhonologyIn many ways, compared to English language in England, North American English is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States , partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties we...
, ['pa??di?] UK
British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
, also called send-up or spoof), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, or author, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon
Linda Hutcheon

Linda Hutcheon is a Canadian academic, literary theorist, and feminist. She is University Professor in the Department of English and of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where she has taught since 1988....
 (2000: 7) puts it, "parody … is imitation with a critical difference, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith (2000: 9), defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemic
Polemic

Polemics is the practice of disputing or controverting religion, philosophy, politics, or scientific matters. As such, a polemic text on a topic is often written specifically to dispute or refute a position or theory that is widely viewed to be beyond reproach....
al allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice."

Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature
Literature

Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" . In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and non-fiction....
, music
Parody music

Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or recycling existing musical ideas or lyrics - or copying the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music....
 (although "parody" in music has a rather wider meaning than for other art forms), and cinema
Film

Film encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the film industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects....
. Parodies are sometimes colloquially referred to as spoofs or lampoons.

Origins

According to Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
 (Poetics, ii. 5), Hegemon of Thasos
Hegemon of Thasos

Hegemon of Thasos was a Ancient Greece writer of the Old Comedy. Hardly anything is known of him, except that he flourished during the Peloponnesian War....
 was the inventor of a kind of parody; by slightly altering the wording in well-known poems he transformed the sublime into the ridiculous. In ancient Greek literature
Greek literature

Greek literature refers to those writings autochthonic to the areas of Greeks influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek language people have existed....
, a parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of epic
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
s "but treating light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects" (Denith, 10). Indeed, the apparent Greek roots of the word are par- (which can mean beside, counter, or against) and -ody (song, as in an ode). Thus, the original Greek word parodia has sometimes been taken to mean counter-song, an imitation that is set against the original. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, defines parody as imitation "turned as to produce a ridiculous effect" (quoted in Hutcheon, 32). Because par- also has the non-antagonistic meaning of beside, "there is nothing in parodia to necessitate the inclusion of a concept of ridicule" (Hutcheon, 32).

Roman
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
 writers explained parody as an imitation of one poet by another for humorous effect. In French
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 Neoclassical literature, parody was also a type of poem where one work imitates the style of another for humorous effect.

Music

In classical music
Classical music

Classical music is a broad term that usually refers to mainstream music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of Western art history Religious music and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times....
, parody means a reworking of one kind of composition into another (e.g., a motet
Motet

In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choir musical compositions.The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is "motectum", and the Italian mottetto was also used....
 into a keyboard work as Girolamo Cavazzoni
Girolamo Cavazzoni

Girolamo Cavazzoni was an Italian organist who wrote organ masses, hymns, and ricercari. He is credited with writing the earliest canzoni....
, Antonio de Cabezón
Antonio de Cabezón

Antonio de Cabez?n was a Spain composer and organist of the Renaissance music. He was blindness from early childhood.He traveled widely in Europe with the king in the years 1548-56 but settled in Madrid when it became the home of the Spanish royal court, remaining there until his death....
, and Alonso Mudarra
Alonso Mudarra

Alonso Mudarra was a Spain composer and vihuela of the Renaissance music. He was an innovative composer of instrumental music as well as songs, and was the composer of the earliest surviving music for the guitar....
 all did to Josquin des Prez
Josquin Des Prez

Josquin des Prez , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish School composer of the Renaissance music. He is also known as Josquin Desprez, a French rendering of Dutch language "Josken Van De Velde", diminutive of "Joseph Van De Velde" , and Latinized as Josquinus Pratensis, alternatively Jodocus Pratens...
 motet
Motet

In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choir musical compositions.The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is "motectum", and the Italian mottetto was also used....
s.) More commonly, a parody mass
Parody mass

A parody mass is a musical setting of the mass , typically from the 16th century, that uses multiple voices of another pre-existing piece of music, such as a fragment of a motet or a secular chanson, as part of its melodic material....
 (missa parodia) or an oratorio
Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and solo ists. The oratorio was somewhat modeled after the opera. Their similarities include the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable Fictional character, and arias....
 used extensive quotation from other vocal works such as motets or cantata
Cantata

A cantata is a vocal music music composition with an musical instrument accompaniment and often containing more than one movement ....
s; Victoria
Tomás Luis de Victoria

Tom?s Luis de Victoria, sometimes Italianised da Vittoria , was a Spain composer of the late Renaissance music. "The Spanish Palestrina", as he is known, was the most famous composer of the 16th century in Spain, and one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, along with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlando di...
, Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italy composer of the Renaissance music. He was the most famous sixteenth-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition....
, Lassus
Orlande de Lassus

Orlande de Lassus was a France-Flanders composer of late Renaissance music. Along with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina , he is today considered to be the chief representative of the mature polyphony style of the Franco-Flemish School, and he was the most famous and influential musician in Europe at the end of the 16th century....
, and other notable composers of the 16th century used this technique; Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organ whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque music period and brought it to its ultimate maturity....
 also used existing cantatas for his Christmas Oratorio
Christmas Oratorio

The Christmas Oratorio BWV 248, is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. It was written for the Christmas season of 1734 in music incorporating music from earlier compositions, including three secular cantatas written during 1733 and 1734 and a now lost church cantata, BWV 2...
. In fact, the musical use of the word parody is wider than its general use - and while much musical parody
Parody music

Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or recycling existing musical ideas or lyrics - or copying the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music....
 does have humorous, even satirical intent, some simply recycles musical ideas.

Song parodies can be filled with mishearings known as mondegreen
Mondegreen

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near Homophone, in a way that yields a new meaning to the phrase....
s.

Edward Guglielmino
Edward Guglielmino

Edward Guglielmino is a musician in Brisbane, Australia....
 recently sparked debated on ABC 612's website. In regards to whether his logo was a parody or a plagiarism.

Parody or plagiarism?
Image:
Image:

English term

The first usage of the word parody in English cited in the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language. Two fully-bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989; as of December 2008 the dictionary's current editors have completed a quarter of the third edition....
 is in Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an England English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satire plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist , and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his Lyric poetry poems....
, in Every Man in His Humour in 1598: "A Parodie, a parodie! to make it absurder than it was." The next notable citation comes from John Dryden
John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of English Restoration to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden....
 in 1693, who also appended an explanation, suggesting that the word was in common use.

Modernist and post-modernist parody

In 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. Hutcheon argues that this sense of parody has again become prevalent in the twentieth century, as artists have sought to connect with the past while registering differences brought by modernity
Modernity

Modernity is a term that refers to the modern era. It is distinct from modernism, and, in different contexts, refers to cultural and intellectual movements of the period c....
. Major modernist examples of this recontextualizing parody include James Joyce
James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Ireland expatriate author of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ....
's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris....
, which incorporates elements of Homer
Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
's Odyssey
Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Hellenic civilization epic poetrys attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer....
 in a twentieth-century Irish context, and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot

'Thomas Stearns Eliot', Order of Merit , was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J....
's The Waste Land
The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a revolutionary, highly influential 434-line Modernist poetry in English by T. S. Eliot. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem ? its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of Narrator, Setting , its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and li...
, which incorporates and recontextualizes elements of a vast range of prior texts, including Dante
DANTE

DANTE is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various National Research and Education Networks in Europe and surrounding regions....
's The Inferno.

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
Pastiche

The word pastiche describes a literary or other artistic genre. The word has two competing meanings, meaning either a "wikt:hodgepodge" or an imitation....
 is a closely related genre
Genre

A genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other Art#Art forms or utterance....
, 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 the transformation of minor characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are fictional characters, a pair of courtiers appearing in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. They are also major characters in Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and W....
 from Shakespeare's drama Hamlet
Hamlet

Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle King Claudius, who has murdered King Hamlet, the King, and then taken the throne and married Gertrude ....
 into the principal characters in a comedic perspective on the same events in the play (and film) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. In Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien

Brian O'Nolan was an Irish novelist and satirist, best known for his novels An B?al Bocht, At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman written under the pen name Flann O'Brien....
's novel At Swim-Two-Birds
At Swim-Two-Birds

At Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction....
, for example, mad King Sweeney, Finn MacCool
Fionn mac Cumhaill

Fionn mac Cumhaill was a mythical hunter-warrior of Irish mythology, occurring also in the mythologies of Scotland and the Isle of Man. The stories of Fionn and his followers, the Fianna, form the Fenian cycle or Fiannaidheacht,much of it supposedly narrated by Fionn's son, the poet Ois?n....
, a pookah, and an assortment of cowboy
Cowboy

A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks....
s all assemble in an inn in Dublin
Dublin

Dublin is both the largest city and capital of Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region....
: the mixture of mythic characters, characters from genre
Genre

A genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other Art#Art forms or utterance....
 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 a new setting is not the same as the post-modernist habit of using historical characters in fiction out of context to provide a metaphoric element.

Reputation

Sometimes the reputation of a parody outlasts the reputation of what is being parodied. For example, Don Quixote
Don Quixote

, fully titled is an early novel written by Spain author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story based upon a manuscript by the invented Moors historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli....
, which mocks the traditional knight errant tales, is much better known than the novel that inspired it, Amadis de Gaula
Amadis de Gaula

Amadis de Gaula is a landmark work among the knight-errantry fantasy which were in vogue in 16th century Iberian Peninsula, and formed the earliest reading of many Renaissance and Baroque writers....
 (although Amadis is mentioned in the book). Another notable case is the novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
 Shamela by Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding

File:Henry Fielding - Jonathan Wild.pngHenry Fielding was an England novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satire prowess, and as the author of the novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling....
 (1742), which was a parody of the gloomy epistolary novel
Epistolary novel

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is Letter s, although diary, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used....
 Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) by Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century England writer and Printer . He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela , Clarissa and The History of Sir Charles Grandison ....
. Many of Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll , was an England author, mathematics, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer....
's parodies of Victorian didactic verse for children, such as "You Are Old, Father William", are much better known than the (largely forgotten) originals. In more recent times, the television sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!
'Allo 'Allo!

'Allo 'Allo! was a long-running British sitcom broadcast on BBC1 from 1982 to 1992 comprising eighty-five episodes. It is a parody on Secret Army and was created by David Croft, who also wrote the theme music, and Jeremy Lloyd....
 is perhaps better known than the drama Secret Army
Secret Army (TV series)

Secret Army is a television drama series made by the BBC and the Belgian national broadcaster BRT created by Gerard Glaister. The series chronicled the history of a Belgium resistance movement during the World War II dedicated to returning Allied airmen, usually having been shot down by the Luftwaffe, back to their home country....
 of which it is a parody (although a full appreciation of the humour largely depends on a knowledge of the earlier work).

Some artists carve out careers by making parodies. One of the best-known examples is that of "Weird Al" Yankovic
"Weird Al" Yankovic

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an United Statesn singer-songwriter, music producer, actor, comedian and satire. Yankovic is known in particular for his humorous songs that make light of popular culture and that often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts....
. His career of parodying other musical acts and their songs has outlasted many of the artists or bands he has parodied. It is worth mentioning that while he 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.

The point that in most cases a parody of a work constitutes fair use was upheld in the case of Rick Dees
Rick Dees

Rick Dees is an American comedic performer, entertainer, and radio personality, best known for his #1 internationally syndicated radio show The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 Countdown and for the novelty song "Disco Duck." He is a People's Choice Award recipient, a Grammy nominated performing artist, and Broadcast Hall of Fame inductee....
, who decided to use 29 seconds of the music from the song When Sonny Gets Blue to parody Johnny Mathis
Johnny Mathis

Johnny Mathis is an United States singer of popular music.One of the last in a long line of traditional male vocalists who emerged before the 1960s, Mathis concentrated on romantic jazz and pop standards for the adult contemporary audience through to the 1980s....
' 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)

Film parodies

Some genre theorists
Genre

A genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other Art#Art forms or utterance....
, following Bakhtin, see parody as a natural development in the life cycle of any genre
Genre

A genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other Art#Art forms or utterance....
; 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, the audience laughed. One famous film parody is the Scary Movie franchise.

Self-parody


A subset of parody is self-parody
Self-parody

A self-parody is a parody of oneself or one's own work. As an artist accomplishes it by imitating his or her own characteristics, a self-parody is potentially difficult to distinguish from especially characteristic productions ....
 in which artists parody their own work (as in Ricky Gervais
Ricky Gervais

Ricky Dene Gervais is an England comedian, author, actor, Television director, Television producer, screenwriter and former pop music musician....
's Extras) or their work (such as Antonio Banderas
Antonio Banderas

'Jos? Antonio Dom?nguez Banderas' , better known as 'Antonio Banderas', is a Spanish people film actor and singer. He began his acting career at age 19 with a series of films by director Pedro Almod?var and then starred in high-profile Hollywood films including Assassins , Evita , Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicl...
's Puss in Boots
Puss in Boots (Shrek)

Puss in Boots is a fictional cat from the Shrek film series, voiced in English and both Spanish versions by Antonio Banderas. He is based loosely on the Puss in Boots , and is the main "other fairy tale character" in the two sequels....
 in Shrek 2
Shrek 2

Shrek 2, released in the United States on 19 May 2004, is the 2004 in film Academy Award nominated sequel to the 2001 in film computer animation DreamWorks film Shrek in the Shrek ....
), or an artist or genre repeats elements of earlier works to the point that originality is lost.

Copyright issues

Although a parody can be considered a derivative work
Derivative work

In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work....
 under United States Copyright Law
United States copyright law

United States copyright law governs the legally enforceable rights of creative and artistic works under the laws of the United States.Copyright law in the United States is part of federal law, and is authorized by the United States Constitution....
, it can be protected from claims by the copyright owner of the original work under the fair use
Fair use

Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review....
 doctrine, which is codified in . The Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal United States federal courts. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with th...
 stated that parody "is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works." That commentary function provides some justification for use of the older work. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Case citation was a Supreme Court of the United States copyright law case that stands for the proposition that a commercial parody can be fair use....


In 2001, the United States Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a United States federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the United States district court in the following United States federal judicial district:...
, in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin
Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin

Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin Co., Case citation per curiam, opinion at 268 F.3d 1257, was a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit against the owner of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, vacating an injunction prohibiting the publisher of Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone from dis...
, upheld the right of Alice Randall
Alice Randall

Alice Randall is an United States author and songwriter. Randall grew up in Washington, D.C.. She attended Harvard University, where she earned an honors degree in English and American literature, before moving to Nashville in 1983 to become a country songwriter....
 to publish a parody of Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind is a romantic drama and the only novel by Margaret Mitchell. The story follows Scarlett O'Hara, the daughter of a plantation owner in Georgia during and after the Civil War....
 called The Wind Done Gone
The Wind Done Gone

The Wind Done Gone is the first novel written by Alice Randall. It is a historical fiction parallel novel that reinterprets the famous United States novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell....
, which told the same story from the point of view of Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O'Hara

Scarlett O'Hara is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later Gone with the Wind . She also is the main character in the 1970 musical Scarlett and the 1991 book Scarlett , a sequel to Gone with the Wind that was written by Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television mini-series in...
's slaves, who were glad to be rid of her.

Social and political uses

Parody is a frequent ingredient in satire
Satire

Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre; although, in practice, it is also found in the graphic arts and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improv...
 and is often used to make social and political points. Examples include Swift
Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satire, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Dublin....
's A Modest Proposal
A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satire satire essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729....
, which satirizes English neglect of Ireland by parodying emotionally disengaged political tracts, and, in contemporary culture, The Daily Show
The Daily Show

The Daily Show is an United States news satire television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central in the United States....
 and The Colbert Report
The Colbert Report

The Colbert Report is a Peabody Award- and Emmy Award-winning American news satire television program that airs from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 midnight Eastern Time Zone each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central in the United States and on both The Comedy Network and CTV Television Network in Canada....
, which parody a news broadcast and a talk show, respectively, to satirize political and social trends and events. Some events, such as a national tragedy, can be difficult to handle. A 9/11 update of George Orwell
George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an England author. His work is marked by a profound consciousness of social injustice, an intense dislike of totalitarianism, and a passion for clarity in language....
's novella Animal Farm
Animal Farm

Animal Farm is a novel by George Orwell. Published in England on 17 August 1945 in literature, the book reflects events leading up to and during the History of the Soviet Union before World War II....
—Snowball's Chance
Snowball's Chance

Snowball's Chance , is a parody of George Orwell's Animal Farm written by John Reed , in which Snowball the pig returns to the Manor Farm after many years' absence, to install capitalism?which proves to have its own pitfalls....
 by U.S. author John Reed
John Reed

John Reed may refer to:In Arts, Letters & Entertainment:* John Reed , New York novelist and author* John Reed , actor and singer with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company...
—raised the ire of the George Orwell estate, and critics such as Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens is a United Kingdom-born, United Kingdom and United States author, journalist and literary critic. Currently living in Washington, D.C., he has been a columnist at Vanity Fair magazine, The Atlantic, World Affairs , The Nation , Slate , Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets....
. Chet Clem, Editorial Manager of the news parody publication The Onion
The Onion

'The Onion' is an United States "news satire" organization. It features satire articles reporting on international, national, and local news as well as an entertainment newspaper and website known as The A.V....
, told Wikinews
Wikinews

Wikinews is a free content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia. Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an encyclopedia article."...
 in an interview the questions that are raised when addressing difficult topics:

Parody is by no means necessarily satirical, and may sometimes be done with respect and appreciation of the subject involved, while not being a heedless sarcastic attack.

Parody has also been used to facilitate dialogue between cultures or subcultures. Sociolinguist Mary Louise Pratt
Mary Louise Pratt

Mary Louise Pratt is a Silver Professor and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University.Her first book, Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse, made an important contribution to Critical Theory by demonstrating that the foundation of written literary narrative can be seen in the structu...
 identifies parody as one of the "arts of the contact zone," through which marginalized or oppressed groups "selectively appropriate," or imitate and take over, aspects of more empowered cultures.

Shakespeare often uses a series of parodies to convey his meaning. In the social context of his era, an example can be seen in King Lear
King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606, and is considered one of his greatest works....
 were the fool is introduced with his coxcomb
Comb (anatomy)

File:Rooster portrait2.jpgAnatomically, a comb is a fleshy growth, caruncle, or crest on the top of the head of Galliformes birds, most notably Turkey s, pheasants, and domestic chickens....
 to be a parody of the king.

See also

  • Intertextuality
    Intertextuality

    Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author?s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader?s referencing of one text in reading another....
  • Literary technique
    Literary technique

    A literary technique or literary device is an identifiable rule of thumb, convention or structure that is employed in literature and storytelling....
  • Parody advertisement
    Parody advertisement

    A parody advertisement is a fictional advertisement for a non-existent product, either done within another advertisement for an actual product, or done simply as parody of advertisements -- used either as a way of ridiculing or drawing negative attention towards a real advertisement or such an advertisement's subject, or as a co...
  • Parody music
    Parody music

    Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or recycling existing musical ideas or lyrics - or copying the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music....
  • Parody religion
    Parody religion

    A parody religion or mock religion is either a parody of a religion, sect or cult, or a relatively unserious religion that many people may take as being too esotericism to be classified as a "real" religion....
  • Parody science
    Parody science

    Parody science, sometimes called spoof science, is a parody of science. One parody science can make a parody of several branches of science at the same time....
  • Subvertising
    Subvertising

    Subvertising refers to the practice of making spoofs or parody of corporation and politics advertising in order to make a statement. This can take the form of a new image or an alteration to an existing image....
  • Joke
    Joke

    A joke is a short story or ironic depiction of a situation communicated with the intent of being humour. These jokes will normally have a punch line that will end the sentence to make it humorous....


Examples


Historical examples

  • Sir Thopas
    Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topas

    Sir Thopas is Geoffrey Chaucer tale in The Canterbury Tales .In Canterbury Tales, there is a character named Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's portrait of himself is unflattering and humble....
     in Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
    Geoffrey Chaucer

    Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
  • Don Quixote
    Don Quixote

    , fully titled is an early novel written by Spain author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story based upon a manuscript by the invented Moors historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli....
     by Miguel Cervantes
    Cervantes

    Cervantes refers to:...
  • Beware the Cat by William Baldwin
    William Baldwin

    William "Billy" Baldwin is an United States actor, known for his starring roles in such films as Backdraft and Flatliners ....
  • The Knight of the Burning Pestle
    The Knight of the Burning Pestle

    The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a play by Francis Beaumont, first performed in 1607 in literature and first published in a book size in 1613 in literature....
     by Francis Beaumont
    Francis Beaumont

    Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher .Beaumont was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas ....
     and John Fletcher
    John Fletcher (playwright)

    John Fletcher was a Jacobean era playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men , he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivaled Shakespeare's....
  • Dragon of Wantley
    Dragon of Wantley

    The Dragon of Wantley is a 17th century satire verse parody about a dragon and a brave knight. It was included in Thomas Percy's 1767 Reliques of Ancient Poetry....
    , an anonymous 17th century ballad
  • Hudibras
    Hudibras

    Hudibras is a mock heroic narrative poem from the 17th century written by Samuel Butler ....
     by Samuel Butler
    Samuel Butler (poet)

    Samuel Butler was a poet and satirist. Born in Strensham, Worcestershire and baptised 14 February, 1613, he is remembered now chiefly for a long satire Burlesque poem on Puritanism entitled Hudibras....
  • "MacFlecknoe
    MacFlecknoe

    Mac Flecknoe is a verse mock-heroic satire written by John Dryden. Written after the English Restoration, when King Charles II of England came to power, Mac Flecknoe is full of satire and criticism....
    ", by John Dryden
    John Dryden

    John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of English Restoration to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden....
  • A Tale of a Tub
    A Tale of a Tub

    A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is arguably his most difficult satire, and perhaps his most masterly....
     by Jonathan Swift
    Jonathan Swift

    Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satire, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Dublin....
  • The Rape of the Lock
    The Rape of the Lock

    The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in May 1712 in two cantos , but then revised, expanded and reissued under Pope's name on March 2 1714, in a much-expanded 5-canto version ....
     by Alexander Pope
    Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope is generally regarded as the greatest England poet of the eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer....
  • Namby Pamby
    Namby Pamby

    Namby Pamby is a term for affected, weak, and maudlin speech/verse. However, its origins are in Namby Pamby , by Henry Carey .Carey wrote the poem as a satire of Ambrose Philips and published it in his Poems on Several Occasions....
     by Henry Carey
    Henry Carey

    Henry Carey may refer to:*Henry Charles Carey , American economist*Henry Carey , dramatist and songwriter*Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon , politician, general and potential illegitimate son of Henry VIII of England...
  • Gulliver's Travels
    Gulliver's Travels

    Gulliver's Travels , officially Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships, is a novel by Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre....
     by Jonathan Swift
  • The Dunciad
    The Dunciad

    The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version was published in 1728 anonymously....
     by Alexander Pope
    Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope is generally regarded as the greatest England poet of the eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer....
  • Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus
    Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus

    The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus is an incomplete satirical work ostensibly by the members of the Scriblerus Club but which was principally written by John Arbuthnot....
     by John Gay
    John Gay

    John Gay was an English people poet and dramatist. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch....
    , Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot
    John Arbuthnot

    John Arbuthnot, often known simply as Dr. Arbuthnot, , was a physician, satire and polymath in London. He is best remembered for his contributions to mathematics, his membership in the Scriblerus Club , and for inventing the figure of John Bull....
    , et al.
  • Kat Kongby Dav Pilkey
  • The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
    The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

    The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, often abbreviated to Rasselas, is a novella by Samuel Johnson. He wrote the piece in a week in January 1759 to help support his seriously ill mother, although the money he made was ultimately spent on her funeral ....
     [sic
    SIC

    Sic is a Latin word that means "thus" or, in writing, "it was thus in the source material".Sic may also refer to:* Sic, Cluj, a commune in Romania...
    ] by Samuel Johnson
    Samuel Johnson

    Samuel Johnson was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer....
  • Mozart
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always...
    's A Musical Joke
    A Musical Joke

    A Musical Joke K?chel catalogue 522, is a composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the composer entered it in his Verzeichnis aller meiner Werke on June 14, 1787....
     (Ein musikalischer Spaß), K.522 (1787) - parody of incompetent contemporaries of Mozart, as assumed by some theorists
  • Sartor Resartus
    Sartor Resartus

    Thomas Carlyle's major work, Sartor Resartus , first published as a serial in 1833-34, purported to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdr?ckh , author of a tome entitled "Clothes: their Origin and Influence." Teufelsdr?ckh's Transcendentalist musings are mulled over by a skeptical...
     by Thomas Carlysle
  • Ways and Means
    Ways and Means

    Ways and Means may refer to:* Committee of Ways and Means of the UK parliament* United States House Committee on Ways and Means* Ways and Means , an episode of the television series The West Wing...
    , or The aged, aged man, by Lewis Carroll
    Lewis Carroll

    Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll , was an England author, mathematics, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer....
    . Much of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
    Through the Looking-Glass

    Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of children's literature by Lewis Carroll , generally categorized as literary nonsense....
     is parodic of Victorian
    Victorian era

    The Victorian Era of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the period of Victoria of the United Kingdom reign from June 1837 to January 1901....
     schooling.
  • Batrachomuomachia (battle between frogs and mice), an Iliad
    ILiad

    The iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing. Like the Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, the iLiad makes use of an electronic paper display....
     parody by an unknown ancient Greek author
  • Britannia Sitting On An Egg a machine-printed illustrated envelope
    Envelope

    An envelope is a packaging product, usually made of flat material such as paper or cardboard, and designed to contain a flat object, which in a postal-service context is usually a letter , card or bills....
     published by the stationer W.R. Hume of Leith, Scotland, parodying the machine-printed illustrated envelope (commissioned by Rowland Hill (postal reformer)
    Rowland Hill (postal reformer)

    Sir Rowland Hill Order of the Bath Fellow of the Royal Society was a United Kingdom teacher and reform movement. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of Uniform Penny Post, and later served as a government postal official....
     and designed by the artist William Mulready
    William Mulready

    William Mulready was an Ireland genre painter living in London. He is best known for his romanticizing depictions of rural scenes.William Mulready was born in Ennis, County Clare....
    ) used to launch the British postal service reforms of 1840.


Contemporary examples

  • Swiss Family Guy Robinson
    Swiss Family Guy Robinson

    Swiss Family Guy Robinson premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival on July 8, 2006. It is a one person show inspired by the classic novel The Swiss Family Robinson and the popular animated TV series Family Guy with co-creator and impressionist Brian Froud doing impressions of various "Family Guy" characters and celebrities....
     - A Canadian play by impressionist
    Impressionist (entertainment)

    An impressionist is a performer whose act consists of giving the "impression" of being someone else by imitating the other person's voice and mannerisms....
     Brian Froud
    Brian Froud (actor)

    Brian Froud is a Canadian actor, voice actor and comedian. He has been nominated for 3 Canadian Comedy Awards: once in 2005 for his one person show The Wizard Of Coz, and twice in 2007 for his one person show: Swiss Family Guy Robinson....
     that parodies "The Swiss Family Robinson
    The Swiss Family Robinson

    The Swiss Family Robinson is a novel, first published in 1812, about a Switzerland family who are shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Port Jackson, Australia....
    " and "Family Guy
    Family Guy

    Family Guy is an animated cartoon Television in the United States Situation comedy created by Seth MacFarlane that airs on Fox Broadcasting Company and regularly on other television networks in syndication....
    ". 20th Century Fox
    20th Century Fox

    Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation , also known as 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, or simply Fox, is one of the six Worldwide major film studios....
     issued the show a cease and desist
    Cease and desist

    A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity, or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
     order over the telephone after mistakenly asserting that it relied on copyrighted material from "Family Guy
    Family Guy

    Family Guy is an animated cartoon Television in the United States Situation comedy created by Seth MacFarlane that airs on Fox Broadcasting Company and regularly on other television networks in syndication....
    ".
  • Stan Freberg
    Stan Freberg

    Stanley Victor Freberg is an United States author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director....
    's, "Weird Al" Yankovic
    "Weird Al" Yankovic

    Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an United Statesn singer-songwriter, music producer, actor, comedian and satire. Yankovic is known in particular for his humorous songs that make light of popular culture and that often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts....
    's, Tom Lehrer
    Tom Lehrer

    Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is an United States singer-songwriter, satire, pianist, and mathematics. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater....
    's, Cledus T. Judd
    Cledus T. Judd

    Barry Poole is an American country music artist who records under the name Cledus T. Judd. Known primarily for his parodies of popular country music songs, he has been called the "Weird Al" Yankovic of country music , and, like Yankovic's, his albums are usually an equal mix of original comedy songs and parodies....
    's, Bob Rivers
    Bob Rivers

    Bob Rivers is a well known United States rock and roll radio disc jockey in the Pacific Northwest as well as a prolific Record producer of parody songs, most famous for his Christmas song parodies....
    ', Art Paul Schlosser
    Art Paul Schlosser

    Art Paul Schlosser grew up listening to novelty music like Allen Sherman and Tiny Tim as well as funny songs by The Beatles and The Monkees. When Art was 11, he, his Mother, and his Sisters moved to Madison,Wisconsin after his parents got a divorce....
    's, Allan Sherman
    Allan Sherman

    Allan Sherman was a Jewish United States musician, parody, satire and television producer....
    's and Steve Goodie's innumerable song
    Song

    A song is a musical musical composition which contains vocal parts that are performed, 'sung,' and feature words , commonly accompanied by musical instruments ....
     parodies
  • Barry Trotter - Popular parody of Harry Potter
    Harry Potter

    Harry Potter is a Heptalogy fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the eponymous adolescent wizard Harry Potter , together with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, his friends from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry....
  • Mel Brooks
    Mel Brooks

    Mel Brooks is an United States film director, writer, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and Film producer, best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parody....
     films such as Spaceballs
    Spaceballs

    Spaceballs is a 1987 science fiction parody film co-written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks. It was released on June 24, 1987, and earned only modest returns, but has gone on to become a seminal cult film on video....
    , Robin Hood: Men In Tights
    Robin Hood: Men in Tights

    Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a 1993 in film comedy of the story of Robin Hood. Produced and directed by Mel Brooks, the film stars Cary Elwes, Richard Lewis , and Dave Chappelle....
    , and Blazing Saddles
    Blazing Saddles

    Blazing Saddles is a satire Western #Western movies comedy film directed by Mel Brooks. Starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, it was written by Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, and Al Uger, and was based on Bergman's story and draft....
  • Christopher Guest
    Christopher Guest

    Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest , better known as Christopher Guest, is an United States screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor and comedian....
    's mockumentary films such as Waiting for Guffman
    Waiting for Guffman

    Waiting for Guffman is a musical mockumentary starring, co-written and directed by Christopher Guest that was released in 1997. Its cast of actors has appeared in a series of Guest-directed mockumentaries....
     (parodying theater documentaries) Best In Show
    Best in Show

    Best in Show may refer to:*Best in Show , a 2000 film*Best in Show , a 2005 album by Grinspoon*The Best in Show award or the Best in Show competition in conformation show....
     (parodying dog show
    Dog show

    Dog show can refer to:*Conformation show, the most-common meaning of "dog show", in which dogs are rated for how well their appearance conforms to a standard...
    s) and A Mighty Wind
    A Mighty Wind

    A Mighty Wind is a 2003 mockumentary about a folk music reunion concert and the three groups that must come together to perform on national television for the first time in years....
     (parodying music documentaries)
  • Airplane!
    Airplane!

    Airplane! is a Cinema of the United States comedy film directed and written by Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker. It stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty and features Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves , Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lorna Patterson....
     - parody of airplane disaster movies (namely Zero Hour!
    Zero Hour!

    Zero Hour! is a 1957 movie written by Arthur Hailey, starring Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Sterling Hayden. Zero Hour! served as the basis for the parody, Airplane!....
    ).
  • Austin Powers
    Austin Powers

    Sir Austin Danger Powers, Order of the British Empire, is a fictional character from the Austin Powers series of films. He first appeared in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and is portrayed by Mike Myers ....
     series - parodies of spy films, especially the James Bond
    James Bond

    James Bond 007 is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections....
     series, and a broad range of popular culture
    Popular culture

    Popular culture is the totality of Distinction memes, ideas, Perspective s and Attitude s that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture....
    .
  • National Lampoon magazine - numerous parodies in several different media
  • The Boomer Bible
    The Boomer Bible

    The Boomer Bible is a book compiled by R. F. Laird. In structure, the book is based on the Christian Bible, but it is neither a simple parody of the Bible, nor is it sacrilegious specifically toward the Bible or Christianity....
     - a book by R. F. Laird, which parodies contemporary society and mores.
  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
    The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

    The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is a parody of the plays written by William Shakespeare with all of them being performed during the show by only three actors....
     – a parody of all of the plays of William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
    .
  • CNNNN
    CNNNN

    CNNNN was an Australian television show, satire United States news channels CNN and Fox News. It was produced and hosted by the same team that published The Chaser newspaper....
     - an Australian parody of 24 hours cable news networks, such as CNN
    CNN

    Cable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is a major US Cable News Network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first station to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States....
     and Fox News.
  • The Daily Show
    The Daily Show

    The Daily Show is an United States news satire television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central in the United States....
     - satirical news show on Comedy Central hosted by Jon Stewart.
  • The Colbert Report
    The Colbert Report

    The Colbert Report is a Peabody Award- and Emmy Award-winning American news satire television program that airs from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 midnight Eastern Time Zone each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central in the United States and on both The Comedy Network and CTV Television Network in Canada....
     - a parody of pundit
    Pundit (politics)

    A pundit is someone who offers to mass-media their opinion or commentary on a particular subject area on which they are knowledgeable. The term has been increasingly applied to popular media personalities....
     programs, particularly The O'Reilly Factor
    The O'Reilly Factor

    The O'Reilly Factor is an United States talk show on the Fox News Channel hosted by pundit Bill O'Reilly , who discusses current politics and social issues with guests and often on controversial topics....
    .
  • Dead Ringers
    Dead Ringers (comedy)

    Dead Ringers is a United Kingdom radio and television comedy impressionist show on BBC Radio 4 and later BBC Two. The programme was devised by Bill Dare and developed with Jon Holmes, Andy Hurst and Simon Blackwell....
     - Is a BBC satirical radio and tv impressionist show.
  • Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood
    Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

    'Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood' is a 1996 in film film. Similar to the Wayans brothers' previous effort I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, the film spoofs a number of African American, coming-of-age, 'hood films' such as Juice , Jungle Fever , South Central , Higher Learning, Do The Ri...
     - A parody of coming-of-age 'hood movies' such as Juice
    Juice (film)

    Juice is a 1992 in film crime film drama film that stars rapper Tupac Shakur and Omar Epps. Additional cast members include Jermaine 'Huggy' Hopkins, Khalil Kain, Samuel L....
    , South Central
    South Central (film)

    South Central is a 1992 in film drama film, written and film director by Steve Anderson. This film is an adaptation of the 1987 novel Crips by Donald Bakeer, a former high school teacher in South Central Los Angeles....
    , Higher Learning
    Higher Learning

    Higher Learning is a 1995 drama film, starring an ensemble cast. It also featured Tyra Banks' first performance in a theatrical film.Laurence Fishburne won an NAACP Image Award for "Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture" for his performance; Ice Cube was also nominated for the award....
    , Do The Right Thing
    Do the Right Thing

    Do the Right Thing is a 1989 in film written, produced and directed by Spike Lee. The film tells a tale of bigotry and racial conflict in a multi-ethnic community in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York on the hottest day of the year....
    , Menace II Society
    Menace II Society

    Menace II Society is a 1993 in film hood film and the directorial debut of twin brothers Hughes Brothers. The hit movie gained notoriety for its frequent scenes of violence, profanity and drug content....
    , Poetic Justice
    Poetic justice

    Poetic justice is a Literary technique in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punishment, often in modern literature by an irony twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct....
    , New Jack City
    New Jack City

    New Jack City is a 1991 in film crime film-Thriller /Neo-noir film starring Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Mario Van Peebles, Judd Nelson and Chris Rock....
    , Dead Presidents
    Dead Presidents

    Dead Presidents is a 1995 in film crime drama film screenwriter by Michael Henry Brown and film director by the Hughes Brothers , and stars Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, Freddy Rodriguez, N'Bushe Wright and Bokeem Woodbine....
    , and most prominently Boyz N the Hood
    Boyz N the Hood

    Boyz N the Hood is an Academy Award-nominated 1991 in film hood film written and directed by John Singleton. Starring Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Angela Bassett, Regina King, and Larry Fishburne, the film depicts life in poor South Central Los Angeles, California, and was filmed and released in the summer of 1...
    .
  • Drawn Together
    Drawn Together

    Drawn Together is an United States animated television series, which ran on Comedy Central from October 27, 2004 to November 14, 2007. The series was created by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein, and uses a Situation comedy format with a TV reality show setting....
     - parodies the various genres of animation
    Animation

    Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of Motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways....
    , along with TV reality shows
    Reality television

    Reality television is a genre of television programming which presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors....
    .
  • Facelift (TV series) - parodies of NZ Celebs, politicians, sports-people , advertisements and tv shows.
  • Gooflumps
    Gooflumps

    Gooflumps is the name given to a two-part parody series written in 1995 by Robert Hughes under the pseudonym of R. U. Slime.Overview...
     - parodies the popular Goosebumps
    Goosebumps

    Goosebumps is a series of children's horror fiction novellas created and authored by R. L. Stine. List of Goosebumps books were published under the Goosebumps umbrella title from 1992 to 1997, the first being Welcome to Dead House, and the last being Monster Blood IV....
     series of books
  • Hot Shots!
    Hot Shots!

    Hot Shots! is a 1991 comedy Parody starring Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Kevin Dunn and Jon Cryer. It was directed by Jim Abrahams, co-director of Airplane! , and was written by Abrahams and Pat Proft....
     - A parody about the war film Top Gun (film)
    Top Gun (film)

    Top Gun is a 1986 American film directed by Tony Scott and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer in association with Paramount Pictures....
     and other movies.
  • The Institute of Internet History - a parody of Internet history and, more generally, the veracity of information on the Internet.
  • The Kentucky Fried Movie
    The Kentucky Fried Movie

    The Kentucky Fried Movie is an United States comedy film, released in 1977 and directed by John Landis. The film's writers were the team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker....
     - A parody of kung-fu movies, courtroom TV shows, women-in-prison movies, pornography, etc.
  • Kung Fu Hustle
    Kung Fu Hustle

    Kung Fu Hustle is a Hong Kong films of 2004 Cinema of Hong Kong martial arts film comedy film co-written, co-produced, directed by and starring Stephen Chow....
     - a movie by Steven Chow parodying Chinese wuxia
    Wuxia

    Wuxia or Wuxi? . Wuxi? is a Chinese martial literary form that has figured prominently in the popular culture of Chinese-speaking areas since ancient times to the present; the most important Wuxi? writers have devoted followings....
     films, as well as gangster films in general
  • Landover Baptist Church
    Landover Baptist Church

    The Landover Baptist Church is a fictional Baptist church based in the fictional town of Freehold, Iowa. The Landover Baptist web site and its associated Landoverbaptist.net Forum are a parody of fundamentalist Christianity and the Christian right in the United States....
     - Parody of Southern Baptist hyper-religiosity.
  • MAD Magazine - magazine that features parodies of movies, music, video games, and television shows.
  • MADtv
    MADtv

    MADtv is an United States sketch comedy television series. It licenses the name and logo of Mad , but otherwise has no connection with the humor magazine outside of animated Spy vs....
          - an american show which parodies tv shows, celebs, inventions and everyday life problems
  • Chris Morris
    Chris Morris (satirist)

    Christopher Morris is an England comedian, writer, director, actor and former radio DJ.Morris began his career in radio before moving into television....
    's The Day Today
    The Day Today

    The Day Today is a Surrealism British parody of television news programmes. It is an adaptation of the radio programme On The Hour. The series is composed of six half-hour episodes and a selection of shorter, five-minute slots recorded as promotion trailers for the longer segments....
     and Brass Eye
    Brass Eye

    Brass Eye is a United Kingdom television series of satire mockumentary which aired on Channel 4 in 1997 and was re-run in 2001.The series was created by Chris Morris , and written by, amongst others, Morris, David Quantick, Peter Baynham, Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan....
     - parodies of high paced self-important genre of TV news programmes
  • The Naked Gun
    The Naked Gun

    The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! is a 1988 in film comedy film, the first in a The Naked Gun starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy , and O....
     series - A parody of police movies and TV shows (based upon the Police Squad!
    Police Squad!

    Police Squad! is a television comedy series first 1982 in television. It was a Parody of police dramas, packed with visual gags and Non sequitur s....
     TV series).
  • Not Another Teen Movie
    Not Another Teen Movie

    Not Another Teen Movie is a 2001 in film comedy film released on December 14, 2001 by Columbia Pictures. It is a parody of the teen film and other cinematic portrayals of adolescence which have accumulated in Hollywood over the last few decades....
    , a movie that parodies teen flicks such as She's All That
    She's All That

    She's All That is a 1999 in film romantic comedy film, directed by Robert Iscove, and is a modern remake of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion ....
    , American Pie
    American Pie (film)

    American Pie is a 1999 in film teen film comedy film film directed by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, and written by Adam Herz. It was the first film to be directed by the Weitz brothers, and the first film in the American Pie ....
    , The Breakfast Club
    The Breakfast Club

    The Breakfast Club is a 1985 in film United States teen film written and directed by John Hughes . The storyline follows five teenagers as they spend a Saturday in Detention together and come to realize that they are all deeper than their respective stereotypes....
    , Bring It On
    Bring It On (film)

    Bring It On is a film about two competing high school cheerleading squads, starring Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, and Gabrielle Union....
     and various others.
  • The Onion
    The Onion

    'The Onion' is an United States "news satire" organization. It features satire articles reporting on international, national, and local news as well as an entertainment newspaper and website known as The A.V....
     - parody of newspaper and magazine journalism
    Journalism

    Journalism is the craft of conveying news, descriptive material and editorial via a widening spectrum of Media . These include newspapers, magazines, radio and television, the internet and, more recently, the cellphone....
  • The Regal Seagull - parody of news based on the strangeness of Utah politics, people, and events journalism
    Journalism

    Journalism is the craft of conveying news, descriptive material and editorial via a widening spectrum of Media . These include newspapers, magazines, radio and television, the internet and, more recently, the cellphone....
  • Parodius
    Parodius

    or just Parodius, is a Shoot 'em up#Scrolling shooters video game developed by Konami for the MSX computer and was released in Japan. The game is notable for being the first title in the Parodius series, although it is often confused with Parodius Da! -Shinwa kara Owarai e- in that respect....
     - parody of the side-scrolling video game Gradius
    Gradius

    The Gradius games, first introduced in 1985 in video gaming, is a series of Shoot 'em up#Scrolling shooters video games published by Konami for a variety of portable, console and arcade platforms....
     as well as other Konami
    Konami

    is a leading video game developer and video game publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, Japanese arcade cabinetss and video games....
     franchises
  • Perfect Hair Forever
    Perfect Hair Forever

    Perfect Hair Forever is an United States comedy animated television series which is largely a parody of anime. It was created and produced by Williams Street, and primarily aired in 2005 on Adult Swim and The Detour in the US and Canada respectively....
    - an anime parody on adult swim
    Adult Swim

    Adult Swim is an adult-oriented cable television network that shares channel space with Cartoon Network in the United States and broadcasting in countries such as Australia and Japan....
    .
  • El Privilegio de Mandar
    El privilegio de mandar

    El Privilegio de Mandar was a successful Mexico Parody broadcast by Televisa on XEW-TV. It started as a sketch in another Televisa show, called La Parodia, that parodies political, social and cultural events happening in Mexico....
     - is a Mexican politic parody. It's also the most popular parody in the country.
  • Radio Active - BBC parody of poorly funded rural local commercial radio
  • Real Stories
    Real Stories

    Real Stories was an Australian comedy television series which screened on Network Ten in the latter half of 2006. Eight episodes were produced....
     - a parody of Australian current affairs television.
  • Reno 911!
    Reno 911!

    Reno 911! is an United States comedy television program on Comedy Central that debuted in 2003 in television. It is a mockumentary-style parody of law enforcement documentary television series shows, specifically COPS , with comic actors playing the police officers....
     - a parody of the reality series COPS (TV series)
    COPS (TV series)

    COPS is an United States documentary television series that follows police officers, constables, and sheriff's deputies during patrols and other police activities....
    .
  • Eating Media Lunch
    Eating Media Lunch

    Eating Media Lunch is a satire New Zealand news show hosted by Jeremy Wells. It began in 2003 and is currently in its 8th series, airing on New Zealand's TV 2 and online on ....
     - a parody of New Zealand current affairs television.
  • Restart - theatrical parody of British politics by the UK's Komedy Kollective.
  • The Rutles
    The Rutles

    The Rutles was a fictional band created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes as a pastiche of The Beatles. The group is known because of the 1978 mockumentary television film, All You Need Is Cash ....
     - parody of The Beatles
    The Beatles

    The Beatles were a rock music and pop music band from Liverpool, England that formed in 1960. During their career, the group primarily consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr ....
  • Scary Movie
    Scary Movie

    Scary Movie is a 2000 in film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, as part of Wayans Bros. Entertainment. It is an Cinema of the United States dark comedy which parodies the Horror film, slasher film, and Mystery film genres....
     (Quadrilogy) - Parodies of horror movies such as Scream
    Scream (film)

    Scream is a 1996 in film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson . The film revitalized the slasher film genre in the mid 1990s, similar to the impact Halloween had on late 1970s in film, by using a standard concept with a tongue-in-cheek approach that combined straightforward scares with dialogue that satirized slash...
    , I Know What You Did Last Summer
    I Know What You Did Last Summer

    I Know What You Did Last Summer is a 1997 in film thriller /slasher film starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze, Jr....
    , The Exorcist
    The Exorcist (film)

    The Exorcist is a 1973 in film United States horror film, adapted from the 1971 The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl, and her mother?s desperate attempts to win back her daughter through an exorcism conducted by two priests....
    , The Haunting
    The Haunting (1999 film)

    This article deals with the 1999 film. For other things with this name, or a similar name, see The Haunting.The Haunting is a 1999 in film remake of the 1963 horror film The Haunting ....
    , Signs
    Signs (film)

    Signs is a 2002 in film science fiction thriller film written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, and Abigail Breslin....
    , The Ring
    The Ring (2002 film)

    The Ring is a 2002 in film United States remake of the 1998 Japanese J-horror Ring . Both films are based on the novel Ring by K?ji Suzuki....
    , The Grudge
    The Grudge

    The Grudge is the 2004 in film American remake of the Japanese film Ju-on: The Grudge. The film is the first installment in the American horror film film series The Grudge ....
    , Saw
    Saw

    A saw is a tool that uses a hard blade or wire with an abrasive wear edge to cut through softer materials. The cutting edge of a saw is either a serrated blade or an abrasive....
     etc. Followed by Epic Movie
    Epic Movie

    Epic Movie is a 2007 in film cinema of the United States film film director and screenwriter by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. It was film producer by Paul Schiff....
     and Date Movie
    Date Movie

    Date Movie is a 2006 in film romantic comedies film, which was film director and screenwriter by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, two of the writers of the first Scary Movie....
  • Second City Television
    Second City Television

    Second City Television was a Canada television sketch comedy show offshoot from Toronto's The Second City troupe that ran between 1976 and 1984....
     - parody of North American network television programming.
  • Shaun of the Dead
    Shaun of the Dead

    Shaun of the Dead is a 2004 in film Cinema of the United Kingdom zombie comedy comedy film directed by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and written by Pegg and Wright....
    --parody of contemporary zombie films ranging from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead series to more recent films such as 28 Days Later.
  • Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
    Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

    Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a 1978 in film comedy film directed by John De Bello and starring David Miller. The film is a spoof of B-movies....
     - A cult favorite parody of monster movies and musicals that spawned three sequels, a video game, and a TV series
  • South Park
    South Park

    South Park is an United Statesn animation situation comedy, notorious for its toilet humour, surrealism, and often black comedy, which satirizes Subject matter in South Park including religion, politics, violence, abuse, sexuality, and mental disorder....
     - A tv show that parodies events in politics and pop culture.
  • Soap
    Soap (TV series)

    Soap is an American sitcom that originally ran on American Broadcasting Company from 1977 to 1981.The show was created as a parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour long primetime comedy....
     - soap-opera parody
  • The Twelfth Man
    The Twelfth Man

    The Twelfth Man is the name for a series of comedy productions by Australian satirist Billy Birmingham. Birmingham, a skilled impersonator, is generally known for parodying Australian sports commentators' voices....
     - Australian parody of Nine Network
    Nine Network

    The Nine Network, or Channel Nine, is an Australian Television broadcasting in Australia based in Willoughby, New South Wales, a suburb on the North Shore of Sydney....
     Cricket
    Cricket

    Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games team sport that originated in southern England. The earliest definite reference is dated 1598, and it is now played in more than 100 countries....
     TV coverage.
  • The Sunday Format
    The Sunday Format

    The Sunday Format, "BBC Radio 4's first high-quality weekend broadsheet newspaper", is a United Kingdom satire radio comedy. The programme is a parody of British middle class newspapers, in particular the lifestyle supplements and glossy celebrity magazines that fill Sunday papers....
     - BBC radio parody of vacuous lifestyle journalism
  • This Is Spinal Tap
    This Is Spinal Tap

    is a 1984 in film mockumentary rockumentary directed by Rob Reiner and starring members of the fictional heavy-metal/hard rock band Spinal Tap....
    , a spoof of the heavy metal music
    Heavy metal music

    Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in England and the United States. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified Distortion , extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall...
     business, by Rob Reiner
    Rob Reiner

    Robert "Rob" Reiner is an United States actor, Film director, Film producer, writer, and political activist. As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Archie and Edith Bunker's son-in-law, Michael Stivic, on All in the Family....
  • Underneath the Bunker, a parody of a European literary journal
  • Encyclopedia Dramatica
    Encyclopedia Dramatica

    Encyclop?dia Dramatica is a website that catalogs and satirizes current events and themes, especially Internet-related ones. It has been described by The New York Times Magazine as a "wikt:snarky Wikipedia anti-fansite"....
    , a spoof of Wikipedia
    Wikipedia

    Wikipedia is a Free content, multilingualism encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki and encyclopedia....
     and internet culture.
  • National Lampoon
    National Lampoon Inc

    National Lampoon, Inc. is a company that was formed in 2002 in order to be able to use the historical recognizability of the brand name "National Lampoon" in humor, comedy and entertainment....
     - series of movies.
  • Paral & Piped - French songs parodies.
  • The Discworld
    Discworld

    Discworld is a comedy fantasy book series by the British author Terry Pratchett, set on Discworld , a Flat Earth balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Discworld #Great A'Tuin, the star turtle....
     series by Terry Prattchet parodies many different genre, from adventure to fantasy, to fairytales, detective police stories, to ancient myths
  • Get Smart
    Get Smart

    Get Smart is an United States comedy television series that Satire the Spy fiction genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 of CONTROL, a secret U.S....
     parodies the spy genre
  • Excel Saga
    Excel Saga

    is an absurdist comedy manga series written and illustrated by Rikdo Koshi. It has been serialized in Young King OURs since the April 1996 issue, with individual chapters collected and published in tankobon volumes by Shonen Gahosha....
     - a parody anime
    Anime

    is animation in Japan and considered to be "Japanese animation" in the rest of the world. Anime dates from about 1917.Anime, in addition to manga , is extremely popular in Japan and well known throughout the world....
     series that mocks a wide variety of genres.
  • Gintama
    Gintama

    is a comedic manga created by Hideaki Sorachi. The original manga began in December 8, 2003 and is currently being published by Shueisha in Weekly Shonen Jump....
     - a parody of Japanese culture, economy, and history.
  • Galaxy Quest
    Galaxy Quest

    Galaxy Quest is a 1999 in film science fiction / comedy film written by David Howard and Robert Gordon and directed by Dean Parisot; starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Daryl Mitchell, Missi Pyle and Justin Long in his feature-film debut....
     - a parody of Star Trek.
  • Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo
    Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo

    is a manga by Yoshio Sawai, published by Shueisha in Japan and serialized in the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is a comedy influenced by Japanese manzai humor that uses puns, double-talk, breaking of the fourth wall, non-sexualized cross-dressing, visual gags, and satire and popular culture references, which makes its n...
     - a surreal manga
    Manga

    , , are comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century. In their modern form, manga date from shortly after World War II, but they have a long, complex pre-history in earlier Japanese art....
     and anime
    Anime

    is animation in Japan and considered to be "Japanese animation" in the rest of the world. Anime dates from about 1917.Anime, in addition to manga , is extremely popular in Japan and well known throughout the world....
     series that parodies various manga and anime.
  • Hot Fuzz
    Hot Fuzz

    Hot Fuzz is a British films of 2007 Cinema of the United Kingdom action film comedy film written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and starring Pegg and Nick Frost....
     - a parody of police action movies, specifically Bad Boys and Point Break.


Visual examples

Mona Lisa
 


Marcel Duchamp's
Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a France artist whose work is most often associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art....
 Dadaist readymade L.H.O.O.Q.
L.H.O.O.Q.

L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp first conceived in 1919. The work is one of what Duchamp referred to as Readymades of Marcel Duchamp....
 parodies DaVinci's
Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italy polymath, being a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, Painting, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer....
 Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa is a 16th century portrait painting painted in oil painting on a poplar panel painting by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance....
 by marring it with a goatee and moustache. In keeping with his Dadaist practices, which called artistic conventions and aesthetic assumptions into question, Duchamp paired his visual parody with a low pun; in French, when the letters "L.H.O.O.Q." are pronounced one after the other, the phrase sounds like "elle a chaud au cul", or "her ass is hot".