Parody and Satire

The other night I was flipping channels and came upon Zero Hour!, an old black and white movie from 1957. I had remembered hearing that the film Airplane! was taken from Zero Hour! I have seen Airplane! many times and in some passages can recite the lines (yes, I am a nerd). So as I was watching Zero Hour! (oh, these exclamation marks are getting annoying) I was hearing many of the same lines I knew so well, except without the comic twist. I learned that the filmmakers actually bought the rights to Zero Hour! so they could directly borrow from the script.

Parody is making fun of something purely for entertainment (like Airplane!), whereas satire is trying to teach us something about the institution or person (or us) being satirized. Parody is always played for laughs, while satire may or may not be funny. If it is of the funny variety, it can feel like parody. Spaceballs is a parody of Star Wars. There is no deeper lesson behind Spaceballs. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is satire. Even though it is very funny, it is saying something about corporate domination and bureaucracy among other things. Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, is also very funny, but it is not a parody of religion. It is a satire about the followers of religion who get the wrong message (and there have been a lot of those).

Satire tends to be at least a little bit stealthy about what it is satirizing, whereas with parody, there is no doubt what is being made fun of. A Boy and his Dog doesn’t give away anything in the title, and on the surface, it is a post-apocalyptic survivalist story, but underneath, Harlan Ellison is satirizing the morals of the wholesome Americana conservative society. On the other hand, Bored of the Rings is an obvious sendup of Lord of the Rings. Shaun of the Dead is likewise making fun of Dawn of the Dead (and zombies in general). So, these are parodies.

I think Harry Harrison and Robert Heinlein came from different political stock. So it seem appropriate that Harrison would take one of Heinlein’s most militaristic and jingoistic novels (Starship Troopers) and want to satirize it. The result was Bill, the Galactic Hero. Seldom have I had more fun than reading Bill the Galactic Hero. Bill is a country boy as naïve as a spoon, who gets recruited into the military. He gets indoctrinated and soon learns that everything his recruiting sergeant promised him was a lie and he would be lucky to survive his first mission. This novel has the feel of a parody, but it is definitely very pointed satire all the way. The strange thing is, despite that, I really like both Starship Troopers and Bill the Galactic Hero. Go figure (I keep them on different shelves so they don’t fight).

Writing silliness is not as easy as you might think. Writing silliness with a deeper meaning is even harder. You might want to give Harry Harrison a try.

Star Liner

Comments

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...

Empathy

Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...

A speculative mind

Search This Blog