Indecisive Parody: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Black Lagoon]]''. it's hard to tell, at times, whether it's an over-the-top parody of the Hollywood action film genre or a straight example with a tendency to occasionally take [[Refuge in Audacity]]. The series seems to swing a bit back and forth depending on the arc in question.

* ''[[Busou Renkin]]'' is also somewhere in between, but often seems closer to a very self-aware [[Shounen]] entry, especially in the second part when the [[Cerebus Syndrome]] sneaks in.

* ''[[Love Hina]]'' starts mocking the harem genre hard, inserting audience surrogate Keitaro in a female dorm inhabitated by character prototypes from diverse dating games, in an onsen (making every early episode an onsen episode). It goes so far into comedy land that one wonders if the romantic plot will ever resolve or is it going to go for a [[Tenchi Solution]]. But when it wants to get serious it gets serious.

* ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]]'' is this for [[Humongous Mecha]] shows. For every over-the-top [[Unwanted Harem]] scene or bizarre character or situation, there's also [[Mood Whiplash|real, serious drama]] (often when those over-the-top characters get killed). Even the [[Show Within a Show]] ''[[Gekiganger 3]]'' goes from a silly [[Homage]] of [[Super Robot]] shows to a real problem in the show's universe. It's bad enough that the protagonist explicitly states the [[An Aesop|Aesop]] in the final episode just to be sure everyone's on the same page: [[MST3K Mantra|stop taking anime so goddamn seriously]].

* ''[[Ouran High School Host Club]]'' parodies romance anime but has strong romantic storylines as well.

* ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' It's said that this happened here, but that the parody elements didn't last much beyond the first few episodes, then it became a partial deconstruction and partial homage of the genre.

** A [[Real Robot|genre]] that was [[Mobile Suit Gundam|practically brand-new]], in fact.

** The beginning of it feels like [[Affectionate Parody]]. It loses pretty much all semblance of parody after the [[Time Skip]]. The base is broken over which period is the best.

 

 

== Films -- Animation ==

 

 

* ''[[Enchanted]]'' has elements of both, thus this trope. While it mocks a lot of the tropes of fairy tales and shows how ridiculous they would be in real life, it also has a happy fairy-tale ending and suggests that life would be better if people did live more by fairy tale ideals of kindness and trust. The only way that a relationship between Giselle and Robert can work is for her to become less of a fairy-tale true-believer (and give up the perfect prince) and him to become more of one (allow himself to love someone again).

* ''[[Feast]]'' , a survival horror film starts as an obvious parody of such films, wherein the characters are simply named after their archetypes. However, despite the occasional sex joke, it creates some truly frightening monsters and horrific death scenes. By the end of the movie, no-one's laughing.

** That happens to most spy movies aimed at children and teenagers. ''Spy Kids'', ''Agent Cody Banks'', ''Stormbreaker'', ''Los Superagentes'' and even ''Cats and Dogs'' suffered from it.

* ''[[The Golden Child]]'' can't seem to decide if it's an [[Affectionate Parody]] of [[The Chosen One]] or a straight use -- and incidentally also stars Daniel Wong as a [[Trickster Mentor]].

* ''[[Gremlins]]'' The first film didn't seem to know if it was supposed to be a parody of monster films or just a particularly weird monster film itself. While it had the highly goofy scenes with the gremlins themselves, it otherwise portrayed them as a very real threat. Action sequences were a bit hard to pin down. For example, is the violent kitchen fight supposed to be just a simple horror action sequence or a parody of it? The sequel was a more clear cut case of being a spoof.

* ''House of the Wolfman'' can't seem to decide whether if it wants to be a spoof of old [[Monster Mash]] films or a [[Retraux]] horror film.

* ''[[Last Action Hero]]'' tried to split the difference between [[Lampshade Hanging]] mockery of action movie cliches and [[Affectionate Parody]] of them, and suffered for it.

* ''[[Lesbian Vampire Killers]]'' At times seems to be parodying the ridiculous oversexualisation of female vampires and vampire clichés, it also has long scenes of gratuitous nudity and a massive phallic sword [[MacGuffin]].

* ''[[Mystery Men]]'' cannot decide whether it is a ruthless [[Deconstruction]] of the [[Superhero]] genre, or an [[Affectionate Parody]]. At first, the "heroes" are made to look like some deluded loons <s>in a world without superpowers</s>... until an old mentor and a new member with actual superpowers appear, and then the bunch of losers finally save the day against all odds.

** Ultimately, it ends up firmly on the side of [[Affectionate Parody]]. ''[[Mystery Men]]'' may [[Lampshade Hanging|hang a few lampshades here and there]], but it's rooted firmly in comic book logic. The only subversion is that the film focuses on superhero [[Fan Boy|Fanboys]] who end up inheriting the real job.

* ''[[Pineapple Express]]'' starts out as mushing a stoner movie into an action movie, showing how poorly this type of thing would go in real life. But then Seth Rogen [[Took a Level In Badass|takes an offscreen level in badass]], and is jumping ontop of people and shooting everything.

** More obviously a parody in the book (if only because of Goldman's "analyses" of "S. Morgenstern's" work. See the whole idea is Goldman is pretending it's someone else's... it's a weird setup). Would you believe it ends with a {{spoiler|[[Bolivian Army Ending]]}}?

* ''[[Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves]]'' is never really sure whether or not it's serious.

** The fact that Paul Giamatti is in an action movie ''at all'' should have been something of a clue.

** There's a scene were he shoots up an entire room full of bad guys WHILE having sex, and another were he shoots out the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. People took this movie seriously?

* ''[[This Is Spinal Tap]]'' A lot of people didn't understand that the "[[Rockumentary]]" film was a parody of the burgeoning heavy metal scene of the time. [[Stealth Parody|People thought it was a documentary of a real band]]. Much of this was probably because of how much [[Truth in Television]] it had (Eddie [[Van Halen]] is quoted as not finding it funny because "everything in that movie had happened to me"... Which just goes to show how [[Serious Business|serious Eddie Van Halen takes himself]]).

** Confusing things further, [[De Fictionalisation|Spinal Tap actually toured]]. After opening act [[A Mighty Wind|The Folksmen.]]

** Interestingly, whether or not a person likes ''Van Helsing'' seems to be determined a great deal by whether they thought it was a parody or not.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' varies between [[Affectionate Parody]], [[Deconstructive Parody]], and just being extremely [[Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness|silly]].

** {{spoiler|[[Word of God|From the author]] - nah, they would have broken up in about six months. But I didn't have time to write a book that long. }}

* ''[[Snow Crash]]'' is an [[Indecisive Parody]] of [[Cyberpunk]]. In places it feels like a checklist of all the cyberpunk tropes ramped [[Up to Eleven]]: instead of the [[Mega Corp]] being as powerful as governments, corporations literally ''replace'' governments. The [[Hero Protagonist]] is ''named'' Hiro Protagonist, and is both the world's greatest hacker ''and'' the world's greatest [[Katanas Are Just Better|katana-duelist]]. [[Evil Counterpart|Raven]] is the epitome of [[Badass]], [[Invoked Trope|complete with a whole passage explaining in detail why]] he is the world's greatest badass. There are infodumps about various subjects, from toilet paper to Sumerian mythology, thrown in at random. From the [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|mock-epic]] first chapter to the insane climax, it oozes [[Rule of Cool]]. It's considered a landmark work of Cyberpunk, a parody of Cyberpunk, and a herald of [[Post Cyber Punk]].

== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'' When it premiered, it straddled the line between parody & nighttime soap before landing on the side of soap (albeit with a good dose of comedy).

* ''The 7pm Project'' Part of the reason it's struggling in the ratings is because of this. Is the show a news satire, a news parody which looks at amusing stories, or an ordinary news show that happens to be hosted by comedians?

* ''[[She Spies]]'' Nobody seemed to get that it was an action-comedy series bordering on parody, mainly because to the untrained eye, it looked like just another trashy syndicated action show. Which is probably why it got [[Retool|retooled]] into a straight action show for its second (and last) season.

** [[Alanis Morissette]]'s cover does it much better.

*** But at that point it's the [[Genre Shift]] that makes it funny.

** [[Your Mileage May Vary]]. There's plenty of metal heads that denounce Dethklok. [http://metal-archives.com/review.php?id=170953 Take a look at the metal-archives.com review page for the first Dethalbum.]

*** Noting, of course, that most of the reviews vary from lukewarm to positive, with ratings of around 60-90%, and that of the few bad reviews, one is titled "I hate this and anyone who likes it is a scumbag", which betrays just the ''slightest'' twinge of bias.

 

== Radio ==

 

 

 

== Theater ==

* The play ''[[Done to Death]]'' is an [[Affectionate Parody]] of the [[Mystery Fiction]] genre. However it combines drastically different styles and the first scene of Act 1 is extremely different from the rest of the show.

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[A Very Potter Musical]]'' and its sequel run on [[Rule of Funny]]--until they get to a particularly serious moment from the books and play it up as heartwrenchingly as possible before settling back into nonsense again.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

 

{{reflist}}