Parodies replicate the familiar elements of a given genre,
auteur, or specific work, and at the same time subject it
to a fresh comic twist. These spoofing variations are
demonstrated best by Mel Brooks (b. 1926): his Blazing
Saddles (1974) is a takeoff on westerns; High Anxiety
(1977) tweaks the mystery-thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock
(1899–1980); and Young Frankenstein (1974) warmly kids
Universal’s horror films of the 1930s. Parody is often
confused with satire, which aggressively attacks the flaws
and follies of society, as in Wag the Dog (1997), a biting
examination of a Clintonesque president using a nonexistent (staged) war to distract the public from a sex scandal.
Parody is essentially affectionate in nature, without satire’s
goal of offering a corrective to behavior.
Parody has been around since cinema’s beginning.
The comic pioneer Mack Sennett was at his best when
spoofing the melodramatic adventure pictures of his
mentor, D. W. Griffith (1875–1948). Sennett’s Teddy
at the Throttle (1916) poked fun at Griffith’s penchant
for the last-minute rescue, as in the close of the controversial classic The Birth of a Nation (1915). While it
usually has a specific target, the spoof film is peppered
with eclectic references to other ‘‘texts.’’ Although
Airplane! (1980) makes parodic mincemeat of the
Airport movies of the 1970s, it also pricks films from
other genres, as in the opening credit, which deflates Jaws
(1977), and the lovers’ beach scene, which skewers From
Here to Eternity (1953). Parody is often enhanced by various direct links to
earlier films. For example, Brooks was able to locate and
use the original laboratory sets from the 1931
Frankenstein in his Young Frankenstein. Moreover, he
further replicated the look of the period by shooting his
spoof in black and white and using 1930s techniques
such as the iris-out and the wipe. Sometimes casting also
adds to the parody interest. The Bob Hope spoof of what
would become known as film noir, My Favorite Brunette
(1947) casts celebrated noir performer Alan Ladd in a key
scene. Similarly, Hope’s western spoof Alias Jesse James
(1959) closes with a corral full of sagebrush cameos
ranging from Jay Silverheels (Tonto of Lone Ranger fame)
to Gary Cooper, an actor often associated with the genre.
Spoofing artists also recycle old film footage, as in Dead
Men Don’t Wear Plaid (Carl Reiner, 1982), which inserts
extensive footage from numerous 1940s noir masterworks so that Steve Martin seems to interact with a who’s
who of the genre, including Humphrey Bogart and Alan
Ladd. Similarly, Marty Feldman’s The Last Remake of
Beau Geste (1977) had the comedian interacting, via old
footage from Beau Geste (1939), with Gary Cooper.
Beyond mainstream parody is an edgier type that
fluctuates between spoofing deflation and reaffirmation
of the genre under attack; ironically, these parodies are
often grouped into the genres they target. A perfect
example is An American Werewolf in London (John
Landis, 1981), in which broad parody (such as the use
of the songs ‘‘Bad Moon Rising’’ and several versions of
‘‘Blue Moon’’) alternates with shocking horror (graphic
violence and painfully realistic werewolf transformations). This produces a fascinating tension between genre
expectations (in this case, horror genre expectations) and
parody that is comic without generic deflation. The
Scream trilogy (Wes Craven, 1996, 1997, 2000) works
in a similar way but adds an increasingly popular parodic
component, referential self-consciousness, with its characters talking about horror film characters.