Shallow Parody: Difference between revisions

[[File:Super_Mouse_6320Super Mouse 6320.png|link=Mighty Mouse|frame|[[Don't Explain the Joke|See, it's funny because]] it's [[Superman]], only he's not a man, but a mouse! Ah ha ha... Genius satire.]]

However, [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]. Sometimes these parodies can be understood as effective parodies of trailers, of basic premises, or as exaggerations of elements in [[The Theme Park Version]] of said subject matter. For many people a '''Shallow Parody''' can be funnier than an overdone [[Affectionate Parody]] because of the lack of obscure inside jokes. Still, people who are actually fans of the subject of the parody will, more often than not, laugh at said parodies rather than with them (at best). It's notable that some of the below examples are intentional shallow parodies and derive humor from getting things wrong.

** ''Mad'' parodies used to be written after the film was released and thus published a few months later, in part to keep on top of what movies were well-known enough to warrant them. One late-1970s article had them "selling" prematurely written parodies of movies and TV shows that ''weren't'' popular (''Gable and Lombard'', for instance) at a discount. This lag still applies to TV shows -- theirshows—their parody of ''[[8 Simple Rules]]'' was in the October 2003 issue... [[Too Soon|just in time for John Ritter's sudden death]].

** On the one side of the spectrum, there are shallow parodies that are just there to serve as the backdrop for an ''SNL'' recurring character to appear <ref>(cf. The "Mad Men" parody on Jon Hamm's first episode quickly devolved to a sketch featuring Jason Sudeikis and Kristen Wiig's characters, "The Two A-Holes" [it was even retitled "Two A-Holes Visit An Ad Agency in the 1960s"], the "Basic Instinct" parody that had Julia Sweeney's Pat character, the "Crying Game" parody that also Pat in it, the "Glee" parody that had Kristen Wiig's Gilly character)</ref> or are intentionally made shallow to [[Deconstructive Parody|deconstruct the work]] (as seen in the Digital Short ''Party at Mr. Bernard's'' or the "Little Mermaid" sketch with Reese Witherspoon as Ariel telling Eric [played by [[Will Ferrell]]] that she's an actual half-human, half-fish creature whose father had sex with a mackerel to create her) or shoehorn a political message or warped Aesop (as seen in their other parody of ''[[The Little Mermaid]]'' -- this—this time with [[Tina Fey]] as Ariel trying to justify the decision to have Osama bin Laden wrapped in a shroud and sunk into the ocean).

** On the other side of the spectrum, you have the ''SNL'' parodies that are actually well-researched and spot-on, such as the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' parodies (which use characters that aren't featured in the movie trailers, use the first names of the Hogwarts teachers, and mention things like butterbeer) <ref>-- including the one that had [[Daniel Radcliffe]] on it as a washed-up Harry Potter who still lives in Hogwarts ten years after he was supposed to graduate</ref> and the one-off parody of ''[[There Will Be Blood]]'' from the season 33 episode hosted by Tina Fey (which was a Food Network show called "I Drink Your Milkshake," in which Daniel Plainview [Bill Hader] travels to America's malt shops and literally drinks their milkshakes). Bill Hader's Daniel Day Lewis is pitch-perfect, and the sketch references moments in the film that ''aren't'' [[Memetic Mutation|Memetic Mutations]]s, such as '''[[Large Ham|"I'VE ABANDONED MY CHIIIIIIIIIIILD"]]''' and Plainview's opening speech.

** Truth Media usually tries really hard to get everything ''wrong'' so they can post and mock the inevitable replies from [[Troll|Trolls]]s and [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|so-called-experts.]] The [[Grand Theft Auto|GTA]] San Andreas review was quite noticeable for getting the main character's name wrong despite knowing his initials.

* ''Pop Culture Shocke Therapy'' uses [[Shallow Parody]] as mortar and brick. Every strip is just some random thing happening, only for a random character to be involved and thus... ''and thus''... it is considered a "joke". A highway worker finds a dead cat on the road... ha ha! It's Garfield! A woman making a bed is revealed to sport a tramp-stamp... ha ha! It's Snow White! A person spontaneously combusts and burns to death... ha ha! It's Thing #1 from the Cat in the Hat! Aren't you just ''killing'' yourself laughing right now?

*** ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'', on the other hand, had fewer parodies -- likelyparodies—likely because it's much easier to set up a parody in a non-visual medium, when you don't have to worry about getting costumes or props to make it look right -- andright—and so the trope was mostly (if not completely) avoided.

* ''The Drowsy Chaperone'' [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|purports]] to be a forgotten Broadway musical from 1928, but bears very little resemblance (especially in its songs) to the musicals of [[The Twenties]] it aims to parody. This may have to do with actual musicals of the period being rarely seen on stage generations later except in [[Adaptation Decay|Adaptation Decayed]]ed revival editions. The review at TalkinBroadway.com even pointed out that complete cast recordings of shows weren't made back then, which means that the musical theater fans the show is meant to appeal to will realize this is shallow almost immediately. (A more accurate [[Affectionate Parody]] of these shows is ''The Boy Friend'', which was written in the 1950s.)

* Parodies of/jokes about [[Cirque Du Soleil]], no matter the medium, can wind up as this. Apparently, ''everybody'' in a given troupe is French or French-Canadian, they spend the whole show posing or contorting pretentiously if they aren't weird clowns who accost helpless audience members -- asmembers—as in an Expedia.com ad with a man's [[Imagine Spot]] having him pulled on stage to have a smiley face painted on his stomach -- andstomach—and it's all boring, needlessly expensive, and [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|incomprehensible]]. This is a side effect of Cirque being a [[Love It or Hate It]] thing, possibly in conjunction with its perceived "[[Men Are Uncultured|unmanliness]]".

* ''Thelemite'', and '''how'''. It's a fairly good game on its own merits, but as a parody of ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', it sort of kind of resemble the original game if you squint, and seems to have been written by someone who heard a summary of the game and once saw a picture of Alex Mercer. For starters, their Mercer stand-in becomes a "mutant ninja" who flies around kicking people complete with [[Power Glows]] and [[Kiai]]. This is roughly the equivalent of a parody of [[The Incredible Hulk]] that's utterly convinced the Hulk is a [[Token Mini-Moe|physically-ten-year-old]] [[Robot Girl]] whose primary form of attack is an exploding [[Rocket Punch]] -- the—the character is entirely unrelated, and although the attack does somewhat resemble something in their arsenal, it gets almost every other detail of it wrong.

** While ''Problem Sleuth'' is a Shallow Parody of Film Noir, it is also an [[Affectionate Parody]] of [[Adventure Game|Adventure Games]]s and [[JRPG|JRPGS]] - [[Genre Busting|and the Film Noir Shallow Parody is a part of this]]. How many times have you seen a detective do a [[Limit Break]]?

* ''[[Unwinder's Tall Comics]]'': [[The Rant]] for [http://tallcomics.com/?id=56 this page] [[Discussed Trope|discusses this trope]]. Parker noted that everybody and their mother has parodied ''[[Citizen Kane]]'' at some point, but the majority seem to only reference the scenes (the bit about the sled, "Rosebud", etc) that have spread via [[Popcultural Osmosis]]. Parker deliberately set out to avoid doing that with his parody, so he imagined a ''Citizen Kane'' sequel made by a director who's obviously familiar with the original but still managed to completely miss the point. Furthermore, Parker wasn't content to simply make "the ''Citizen Kane'' parody for people who actually watched the film"--he—he [[Shown Their Work|referenced a subplot that was left out of the finished film]], making his comic into "the ''Citizen Kane'' parody for people who read the screenplay".

* Invoked in [[MSF High]], in-game. Lily, when asked to cosplay as her boyfriend, instead did a [[Shallow Parody]] of RPG heroes, of which her boyfriend, Drake, is a Deconstruction/Reconstruction.