Parody

10th September 2009


Parody is a literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule or something so bad as to be equivalent to intentional mockery. Caricature is another word which is similar to parody which is use to make fun or ridicule a literary work.
In today’s lesson, we learned different kinds of parody in some famous classical stories, such as Cinderella, Goldilocks, Snow White, The Frog Prince,Little Red Riding Hood, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Three Little Pigs, Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Codependent Goats Gruff and Rapunzel. I enjoyed reading the parody stories because they were short and simple as they were in a summary.
I noticed in parody, the stories were all in a twist. For example, in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story, the drafts were supposed to save Snow White from death. However, they sold Snow White’s body when she was fainted for the prince to have sex so that they could earn more money. Other than that, Snow White and the queen were supposed to be enemy but became friends instead and both agreed to throw the dwarfs out of the forest. It was absolutely absurd.
Although parody is considered as a type of literary component and may be fun in reading, I dislike reading it. It is because the story has turned upside down and is illogical. In parody, the protagonist has to face the bad outcome of the antagonist such as being exiled, killed or villain and protagonist became good friends. In my opinion, parody is just a type of literary work which is for entertainment and amusement. It is a literary work that is absurd, but somehow, it has an intended meaning which need readers to discover.
For example, the parody in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it may want to portray a message about feminism where women are always on the weaker side where they are seen as a sex object for men to earn money. In the story, there were Snow White and the queen. However, the dwarfs decided to sell Snow White’s body for the prince to have sex in order to earn more money. Besides that, in Little Red Riding Hood, the word “women” was replaced by “womyn”. It could be seen that women are being emphasized again. There was a woodsman in the story and was being labeled as “sexist” and “speciesist”. Again, men were related to sexist when the women were in the story. This was to show that women once again were portrayed as sex objects for men. Thus, from reading the parody, there is a message which actually wanted to voice out by the writer.
In conclusion, parody is a literary work that is to make fun, ridicule or to mock on something which is an ongoing issue indirectly. Although I dislike reading it, I feel that it is necessary to read sometimes because it has an internal message which carries out an issue by the writer.