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Parody and satire are a certain kind of humour. They're VERY easy to do because you just base them off real, already existing things, then you twist it a bit to add humour and make it ridiculous. But that's where it gets tricky! Satire is a parody of a real situation rather than fictional, it tends to have a harder edge. Where it usually goes wrong is that people mistake it for something straight, i.e. NOT satire, not comedy, not exaggeration or ridicule. The two main approaches to parody are a broad satire of a genre, like Princess Bride on fairytale fantasy, or a more targeted approach like Spaceballs which satirised Star Wars, and things in between like Airplane, which made fun of the film Zero Hour but also used it as a chance to parody the disaster movie genre and include a shotgun approach to pop-cultural jokes, making fun of everything happening in the 1970s.
When I was growing up Mad Magazine movie parody comics were always a fave of mine, I'd prefer them to the actual movies they made fun off. The art was amazing with great caricatures and the humour was always very cheeky. Asterix was another comic series I enjoyed, which involved a lot of historical satirical humour. One big issue with that kind of targeted humour though is that it's often very dependent on its references for the jokes to fully work, so if you lack familiarity with them it won't bite as hard or sometimes not at all. The trick is to include enough of the context for context dependant jokes so that they can work regardless. If you do your job well enough people will not even remember the original and your satire or parody will completely stand on its own!
In our Quackcast we even covered things that become self parodies like the Deadpool Marvel Movies, some of the Roger More James Bond films, the late horror franchise films like Nightmare on Elm street, Friday the 13th and so on. What are some of your fave parodies or satires?
I think Princess Bride, the Life of Brian, Blazing Saddles, and Spaceballs are real standouts. But things like Lego Batman, Not Another Teen Movie, and even The Toxic Avenger have their own place. On that last one: Lloyd Kaufman is like a B-movie parody version of Mel Brooks, Mel does the A-list parodies and satires and Lloyd handles the crazier, gross and kinky low budget ones Mel wouldn't touch LOL!
Of course Meet The Spartans is the best parody ever, so much better than The 300.
This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by Occult by lux - A heavy, heavy, distorted, fuzzy, rocking, and yet magical take on the Arabian Nights, with the brutally metal revere of chaos, and beautiful oriental groove!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Excavator - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/mar/18/featured-comic-excavator/
Featured music:
Occult by lux - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Occult_by_lux/ - by Lux_occult, rated A.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Quackcast 732 - Meet the Parodians
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, March 25, 2025
Banes,
Drunk duck,
Excavator,
Featured comic,
Gunwallace,
Kawaiidaigakusei,
Meet the Parodians,
musical feature,
Occult by lux,
Ozoneocean,
Quackcast 732,
Tantz,
Webcomics hosting
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Ozoneocean at 9:11PM, March 25, 2025
@bravo1102 - hahaha! Not realy a fan per se but I HAVE watched it all the way through and it had its moment hahaha!
Ozoneocean at 9:09PM, March 25, 2025
@marcorossi - oh yes Kabukiman and his other films are so cool... Tromio and Juliet especially. I met Lloyd back in 2010 I think, He was an amazing guy, awesome in person.
Ozoneocean at 9:08PM, March 25, 2025
@marcorossi - Erik the Viking is a classic. My sister and I watched it at the cinema when it came out. It had the amazing Eartha Kit in it as well as the incredible Micky Rooney, who had been the biggest star in the world back in the day. It's a very cool movie. It's on Amazon Prime I think?
Ozoneocean at 9:06PM, March 25, 2025
@Paul- Yup, I cover the independent contextuality further down in my post and how humour in parody and satire is hard to get right even if starting ff the process is easy ^_^ I didn't know that at all about the pirates in Asterix! I like Hotshots AND Loaded Weapon, they were both lots of fun!
PaulEberhardt at 11:21AM, March 25, 2025
Every pirate scene in Asterix is a nod to the "Barbe Rouge" comic series that nobody outside France and the Benelux countries could really have the tiniest chance of spotting. Doesn't matter! I'd also say The Princess Bride, Spaceballs, Airplane!, the Naked Gun etc. have all got a certain charm that makes them stand out apart from being parodies. I remember that as a teenager my first contact with classic military action movies was through Hot Shots 1 and 2. I wasn't yet legally allowed to watch about anything they spoofed, but I could easily enjoy it in its whole absurdity even so, and a few years later, I found the memories helped me appreciate the originals even more than I would have anyway - like suddenly recognising some obscure reference in Asterix during Latin lessons. I think this is what distinguishes well-made parodies from the rest, no matter how silly: they're entertaining even if you don't get the references and ideally make you want to find out about them later.
PaulEberhardt at 10:56AM, March 25, 2025
Love them all! I'd contest that satire and parody are easy to do, though. Granted, in a way they ARE easy to do, but like so many things they're far from easy to do really well. You need to be spot on with the amount of mischief and how you present it, and there are of course all those little things that determine how it'll stand the test of time, how re-readable or re-watchable it'll be. Targeting the classics and fundamental human fallacies is playing it safe, but may get old for any one reader quickly, so it's not just about the references.
marcorossi at 7:03AM, March 25, 2025
Speaking of Monty Python, when I was a kid I watched some parts of Erik the Viking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_the_Viking ) and it impressed me a lot, so much that in the times of Emule I spent a lot of times hunting it down. I still like the movie a lot, but I see it has low ratings and some people don't like it at all. Weird how one movie that hits the target for one person may miss completely another one.
marcorossi at 6:58AM, March 25, 2025
If you say Toxic Avenger, I say Kabukiman NYPD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNni4xvB7IA (Life of Brian is awesome anyway).
bravo1102 at 5:33AM, March 25, 2025
Someone else who likes Meet the Spartans! That movie nailed the original so well as well as Meet the Parents. I'm also a fan of the Scary Movie franchise and the various Muppets movies like Muppets Treasure Island which is a pure spoof.
Ozoneocean at 12:07AM, March 25, 2025
That's me in the pic ^_^