Don L. F. Nilsen - with Aileen Nilsen Assistant Dean, Division of the Humanities ASU Emeritus College

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PARODY
by Don L. F. Nilsen, and
Alleen Pace Nilsen

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3. Parodies of ASU:
Gammage 2013-2014 Season
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4. Another Visual Parody
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5. Jack Webb on Johnny Carson Show: Parody of “Dragnet” :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjquGpmgwOo
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6. “Las Meninas”
by Diego Velázquez
While we usually think of
parodies in relation to written
work, art can also be parodied
as happened to this 1656
painting of the Spanish court
by Diego Velázquez , who was
the leading artist of the
Spanish Golden Age.
The artist is standing to the left
with his paintbrush and palette.
Especially notice the dog, the
children, and the dwarf when
you look at the next slide.
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Pablo Picasso painted this parody in 1957. Notice
how much bigger he made the artist and how he
stylized the figures and the windows.
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8. Parodies Illustrate Deconstruction
Followed by Re-Construction
• Wolcott Gibbs wrote in The New Yorker that parody
is the hardest form of creative writing because the
style of the subject must be reproduced in slightly
enlarged form, while at the same time holding the
interest of people who haven’t read the original.
• Further complications are posed since it must
entertain at the same time that it criticizes and must
be written in a style that is not the writer’s own.
• “The only thing that would make it more difficult,” he
concluded, “would be to write it in Cantonese.”
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9. Why We Like to Parody Children’s
Literature
• Obviously, it is easier for people to enjoy a parody if they know
what the original was.
• In our increasingly diverse culture, memories of “classic”
children’s books may be one of the few things we have in
common.
• Advertisers, broadcasters, cartoonists, journalists, politicians,
bloggers, and everyone else who wants to communicate with
large numbers of people, therefore turn to the array of
exaggerated characters that we remember from childhood
books as in the picture on the next slide which parodies
Maurice Sendak’s 1962 Where the Wild Things Are to advertise
an upcoming comedy festival.
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• Chicken Little to represent alarmists
• Pinocchio to stand in for liars.
• The Big Bad Wolf to warn us of danger.
• Humpty Dumpty to point out how easy it is to
fall from grace.
• The Frog Prince to give hope to women of all
ages.
• Judith Viorst’s The Terrible, Horrible, No
Good, Very Bad Day to let us know that
things might get better.
Famous Children’s Literature Characters
and What They Represent

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Margaret Wise Brown’s 1947 Goodnight Moon
has inspired all kinds of parodies.

13. Besides this Sweet Dream book and Goodnight,
Goodnight, Construction Site, Michael Rex has written
Goodnight Goon: A Petrifying Parody.
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14. Identical Pieces of Children’s Literature
Can Be Parodied for Different Purposes
In the 1980s, Alleen’s
children’s literature students
brought in a full page
advertisement from APS (the
local power company)
showing Dorothy and her
friends from The Wizard of
Oz happily walking up a
brick road with the caption
“We’re on our way to more
efficient fuel alternatives.”
• In her most recent class,
students brought in a
cartoon in which the
Wicked Witch was saying,
“Forget the slippers. I
want the Tin Man’s Oil!”
• In the saddest cartoon,
Dorothy and friends had
sold the Tin Man to a
recycling center in
exchange for bus fare
back to Kansas.
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15. Humpty Dumpty
• In the old days when
Humpty Dumpty fell
off the wall, he was
always surrounded
by sympathetic
bystanders trying to
put him back
together again.
• A cartoon in the fall
of 2009 showed the
poor fallen egg
being shunned by a
donkey and two
wizard-like
characters saying,
“Salmonella!”
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16. The House That Jack Built
• In the 1980s, students
laughed out loud at a full-
page ad for U. S. Plywood
showing a darling couple
standing in a newly
paneled room.
• The adoring wife was
proudly saying, “This is
the room that Herb
paneled!”
• A recent Tom Beck
cartoon showed the
proverbial Jack standing
near the house he just
built with a big screw
through his belly.
• Nearby a bureaucrat and a
Supreme Court Justice
are holding up EMINENT
DOMAIN and PUBLIC USE
signs.
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17. Hansel and Gretel
• In a funny cartoon
from the 1990s,
Gretel was solemnly
quizzing the Witch
on the nutritional
value of the food in
her enticing house.
• In the fall of 2009, a
popular televised
advertising campaign
showed Hansel and
Gretel fearfully
wandering into Wall
Street and dropping
bread crumbs along the
way in hopes of being
able to find their way
out.
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18. The Old Woman Who Lived in a
Shoe
• In the 1980s, she
was happy to be a
huckster for
Hawaiian Punch as
she happily served
it to all of her
children while
keeping to her
modest budget.
• This year her house is
boarded up with a
FORECLOSURE sign on
it. In a second cartoon
a realtor is standing in
front of it, and saying to
a colleague, “It looked
kinda dumpy, but
appraised at a million-
two.”
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Whenever a book gets popular enough, even if
it’s a grammar book, there is room for a
parody.

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LEWIS CARROLL Was a Master
at Parodying Common Poems
• “Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star, How I wonder
where you are,” became “Twinkle, twinkle,
Little Bat, How I wonder where you’re at.”
• With most of his parodies, Carroll was
protesting the didacticism and the
sentimentality imposed on Victorian children
and their parents.

21. G. W. LANGFORD’S POEM
G. W. Langford’s poem not only
preached at parents but
threatened them with a
reminder of the high mortality
rate for young children:
Speak gently to the little child!
Its love be sure to gain;
Teach it in accents soft and
mild;
It may not long remain.
As a protest, Carroll turned it
into a song for the Duchess to
sing to a piglet wrapped in
baby clothes:
Speak roughly to your little
boy,
And beat him when he sneezes.
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.
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22. ISAAC WATTS’ ORIGINAL POEM: “AGAINST
IDLENESS AND MISCHIEF”
How doth the little
busy bee
Improve each shining
hour
And gather honey all
the day
From every opening
flower!
Lewis Carroll’s Parody
How doth the little
crocodile
Improve his shining
tail
And pour the waters
of the Nile
On every golden
scale?
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Part of Mark Twain’s
“WAR PRAYER,” Which Was a “Dark” Parody of Self-
Righteousness
• Oh Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody
shreds with our shells;
• Help us to cover their smiling fields with their patriot
dead;
• Help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane
of fire; . . .
• Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their
bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way
with their tears.
• We ask it in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of
Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all
that are sore beset and seek his aid. Amen.

24. MEL BROOKS’ and MONTY PYTHON
Famous Film Parodies
• Blazing Saddles
• The Producers
• Robin Hood, Men in
Tights
• Young Frankenstein
• Monty Python’s Life
of Brian
• Monty Python and
the Holy Grail
• Monty Python: The
Meaning of Life
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25. Parodies of Movies
20 Best Movie Parodies:
http://voices.yahoo.com/20-best-parody-movies-7375230.html
The Life of Brian--Always Look at the Bright Side of Life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo
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26. ADD TO THESE LISTS OF
CONTINUING MEDIA PARODIES
• Bulwer Lytton Fiction
Contest: “It was a dark
and stormy night.”
• Harvard Lampoon
• Julia Moore Poetry
Contest (The Sweet
Singer of Michigan)
• MAD Magazine
• National Lampoon
• MAD TV
• The Onion
• The Colbert Show
• Jon Stewart’s The
Daily Show
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Different Kinds of Parodies
• Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction, parodies the
flamboyant characters, mystery, and personal greed
found in thriller fiction.
• Jeffrey Katzenberg worked for the Walt Disney
Corporation from 1975 to 1984. He left in disappointment
when he did not get the promotion he thought he
deserved. In 1994, he joined Steven Spielberg and David
Geffen to form Dreamworks. One of the first things they
did was to create the “Shrek” film with the purposeful
intention of “getting even” with Disney by parodying
such Disney icons as Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella,
Dumbo, The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and
Sleeping Beauty.

28. Parody of 60 is the new 50
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29. A Parody of the News:
Auto-Tune the News:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBb4cjjj1gI
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30. Western Tall Tales Parody the Exaggerated
“Fish Stories” that Travelers Send Home
Alvin Schwartz was a well-
known collector and editor
of western folklore for
kids. Examples include
•Tomfoolery
•The Cat’s Elbow
•Whoppers
•Chin Music
•Kickle Snifters.
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31. Parodies of Songs:
“Weird Al” Yankovic:
Eat it (Michael Jackson’s “Beat it”):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI
Fat (Phat):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2mU6USTBRE
White and Nerdy (Parody of “Ridin”):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qYF9DZPdw
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PARODIES OF THE RHYTHM AND RHYME IN
EDGAR ALAN POE’S “BELLS”
Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody
foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the Icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight . . . . . .

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Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so
musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of
the bells.

34. In Parody, Bells 
Pills, Tea and Flutes
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DEMER CAPE’S PARODY
See the doctors with their pills---
Silver-coated pills.
What a world of misery their calomel instills.
How they twingle, twingle, twingle in the icy-
golden night.
You have taken two that mingle.
And you wish you’d had a single;
While your cheeks are ashy white…
Oh, the pills, pills, pills—
Pills, pills, pills, pills.
So ends my rhyming and my chiming on the pills.

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BARRY PAIN’S PARODY
Here’s a mellow cup of tea, golden tea!
What a world of rapturous thought its fragrance brings to me!
Oh, from out the silver cells
How it wells!
How it smells!
Keeping tune, tune, tune
To the tintinnabulation of the spoon
And the kettle on the fire
Boils its spout off with desire,
…
But he always came home to tea, tea, tea,
Tea, tea, tea, tea.

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ANONYMOUS’ PARODY OF “BELLS”
Hear the fluter with his flute,
Silver flute!
Oh, what a world of wailing is awakened by its toot!
How it demi-semi quavers
On the maddened air of night!
And defieth all endeavors
To escape the sound or sight
Of the flute, flute, flute,
With its tootle, tootle, toot…
Of the flute, flewt, fluit, floot, Phlute, Phlewt, Phlewght,
And the tootle, tootle, tooting of its toot.

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C. F. LUMIS’ PARODY OF “ANNABEL
LEE”
It was many and many a year ago,
On an island near the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you mightn’t know
By the name of Cannibelee;
And this maiden, she lived with no other
thought
Than a passionate fondness for me.
(The poem continues by developing the nature of
his fondness for Cannibelee and ends with the idea
of being eaten. He named it “A Poe-’em of Passion.)

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THOMAS HOOD JR.’S PARODY OF
“ANNABEL LEE”
It was many and many a year ago
In a District called E.C.,
That a Monster dwelt whom I came to know
By the name of Cannibel Flea,
And the brute was possessed with no other
thought
Than to live—and to live on me!

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BARBARA ANGELL’S “ULABEL
LUME”
I was a child and she was a child
And childishly childlike we’d romp.
But we loved with a lovelier love than love
In this old barge on the swamp.
With a love that made the winged seraphs in
heaven
Foam at the mouth and stomp.

41. This is Holly Chivers’ original poem, written
before Edgar Alan Poe wrote “The Raven”:
While the world lay round me sleeping
I alone for Isadore
Patient Vigils lonely keeping,
Someone said to me while weeping:
“Why this grief forever more?”
And I answered: “I am weeping
for my blessed Isadore.
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After Poe’s “The Raven,” Holly Chivers
wrote his “Humpty-Dumpty: A La Poe”
As an egg, when broken, never
Can be mended but must ever
Be the same crushed egg forever—
So shall this dark heart of mine
Which, though broken, is still breaking,
And shall nevermore cease aching
For the sleep which has no waking—
For the sleep which now is thine.

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• Chivers’ parody of Poe’s “The
Raven” is very dark. He wrote it
when Poe died, and the death in the
poem refers both to the death of Poe,
and the death of Chivers’ lover,
whose name was Isadore.
• Chivers felt that Poe had stolen his
own poem, entitled, “Isadore.”
• Chivers’ original poem read as
follows:

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While the world lay round me sleeping
I alone for Isadore
Patient Vigils lonely keeping,
Someone said to me while weeping:
“Why this grief forever more?”
And I answered: “I am weeping
for my blessed Isadore.”
(Falk 113)

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NOW BACK TO CHIVERS’ PARODY
As an egg, when broken, never
Can be mended but must ever
Be the same crushed egg forever—
So shall this dark heart of mine
Which, though broken, is still breaking,
And shall nevermore cease aching
For the sleep which has no waking—
For the sleep which now is thine.
(Falk 114)

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• Did Poe steal Chivers’
poem?
• You be the judge.