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

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