Parody
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In contemporary usage, a parody is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. As literary theorist Linda Hutcheon (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 polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice."
Parody exists in all art media, including literature, music, and cinema. Cultural movements can also be parodied. Light, playful parodies are sometimes colloquially referred to as spoofs. The act of such a parody is often called lampooning.
Visual example
Marcel Duchamp's Dadaist painting L.H.O.O.Q. parodies Leonardo da Vinci 's Mona Lisa by marring it with a goatee and moustache. In keeping with his Dadist 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", due to the long time she has been sitting on the chair.
