The death and rebirth of the parody genre
Though it may be hard to remember for our readers in the age of cinematic universes and legacy sequels, there was a time decades ago when parody movies were typically commercially successful and critically commended. Nowadays, parody films live in squalor, with the genre ceasing to exist. So how did we get here?
One of the earliest successful examples of parody in film was Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein (1974). We can see that the parody genre essentially takes a film or genre and turns aspects, cliches, plot points, and characters into a joke through exaggeration, slapstick, and wordplay, among other methods. This film uses elements from the classic James Whale horror film, its sequels, and horror like Frankenstein’s monster learning to dance to “Puttin On The Ritz” or the intimidating police chief adjusting his false arm whenever he wishes to gesture. Other parodies of this era, most perfected by Mel Brooks, followed this pattern, like Blazing Saddles (1974) or Eric Idle & Gary Weis’ The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978).
A further development in the parody genre would come in 1980. A trio of writers from Wisconsin—Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (Z-A-Z)—would create their greatest legacy: Airplane! (1980). This film removes the story and characters almost entirely from its plot, with the sole purpose of the film being to make the audience laugh, no matter the cost. Here, absurdity and surrealism, while still a factor in the parody films of the late 1970s, take a front seat in the comedies of Z-A-Z. In films like Airplane!, things occur for no reason other than comedy: When a character tells a lie, their nose grows like Pinocchio’s, and when a character has a “drinking problem,” they have a problem ingesting liquids.
The absurdity seen in Airplane! grew in Z-A-Z’s follow-up television series Police Squad (1982) and film Top Secret! (1984). A notable trait of the Z-A-Z comedies was actors commonly known for dramatic performances, such as Peter Cushing, Omar Sharif, Lloyd Bridges, and most famously, Leslie Nielsen, known for roles in Forbidden Planet (1956), and The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Nielsen would gain a late-career spike in popularity following his performances in Airplane! and the film adaptations of Police Squad!, the Naked Gun trilogy. This led to Nielsen being cast in numerous parody films, even if Z-A-Z was not involved. One of these films, Spy Hard (1996), had two writers attached whose mediocre dominance of the future of parody films would spell the beginning of the end.
The director of Spy Hard was Rick Friedberg, who, when making the humorous instructional video Bad Golf Made Easier (1993) with Nielsen, showed him a script written by Friedberg’s son, Jason, along with his friend Aaron Seltzer; this became Spy Hard. Off the back of Spy Hard, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer later got a spec script purchased by Dimension Films, a spoof of Scream and other horror films of the late 1990s.
After numerous rewrites from four writers of the sitcom The Wayans Bros., the project was titled Scary Movie (2000) and was a commercial success. Writers used extremely little of the original spec script by Friedberg and Seltzer, and the duo had no involvement in the final script, yet a decision by the WGA led to all six writers being credited.
Despite their minimal contributions to the Scary Movie project, Friedberg and Seltzer became popular. After several unproduced scripts, the duo got a job writing, producing, and directing a spoof of the romantic comedy genre: Date Movie.
You might have noticed that I haven’t gone into any major developments in the parody genre from Friedberg and Seltzer. Well, that’s because Friedberg and Seltzer have no real developments. Their “style,” to put it bluntly, is putting objects or characters from popular films at the time as short bits in their movies. For example, in their film Disaster Movie (2008), Anton Chigurh, a character from No Country For Old Men (2007), is at the main character's birthday party for no reason other than time relevance. This is par for the course with Friedberg and Seltzer’s “parody” films. Friedberg and Seltzer went lower, “satirizing” anything popular then, including Twilight, The Hunger Games, 300, and the Fast and the Furious films. Unsurprisingly, their films steadily brought in less and less money and were increasingly panned by critics and audiences. Now, in the present, when people think of “parody,” they think of cheap films made quickly with cheaper “jokes,” if you could call them that.
“Humor” is not made with love in the films of Mel Brooks and Z-A-Z but with disdain at anything remotely popular at the time, not to mention the audience. Now we barely get any “parody” movies. Other than that, parody films have generally disappeared. This only applies, however, to the landscape of film.
Parody has thrived since the internet's dawn on sites like YouTube, Newgrounds, and X (formerly Twitter). The digital space has been a breeding ground for short-form parody from various creatives, many more talented than Friedberg and Seltzer. However, that’s not a high bar to clear. Creators like Solid JJ, taking old cartoons like Super-Friends while putting a cynical twist on them, and Scott The Woz, an almost Z-A-Z-like spin on video game reviews.
An additional bonus to the movement of mainstream parody to the digital space is that the time it takes for parody to be made is shorter, the process is more straightforward, and short-form than major motion pictures. Whereas a quickly made ninety-minute “comedy” like the films of Friedberg and Seltzer makes for out-of-touch references, a quick video on X is likely to be found funny since the concept being parodied was only a few weeks, days, or even hours ago.
The parody film is almost dead, but the parody genre is alive and well, finding life after death through the internet. Will these films return? Possibly; that depends on who in Hollywood gets the job!