Recently, SNL Korea, the comedy program from ‘tvN’, has been making a big splash. In this program, Actor Choi Min-su showed a shoot-out scene which was in his movie, Holiday, by acting it in a comedic way, and comedian Lee Young-ja and Shin Dong-yup reinterpreted the recent drama ‘That Winter, the Wind Blows’ for the amusement of adults. This comedy program became more popular, and it is based on parody. Parody technique has been considerably used in various fields such as TV commercials, movies, and TV comedy shows since the middle of the 90’s. Thus, the Chungbuk Times(CBT) researched parody from its first work to the latest work using parody. –Ed.
 

 
How was parody used before?
  Parody originated from the Greek word ‘paradia’, and it means responding song or deriving song. The prefix ‘para’ has a meaning of responding, contrasting, and besides. This word appeared in Poetica by Aristoteles. Hipponax, an ancient Greek epigrammatist, is known as the progenitor of the word, parody.
  Parody of the past is found in the artwork <Parodie du ‘Bois sacré’de Puvis de Chavannes> by Lautrec in 1884. The original work was ‘Bois sacré’ by Puvis de Chavannes, which is a drawing filled with goddesses in a holy forest. However, Lautrec added all kinds of modern people of that moment and himself, a short person with a limp, in his work. Lautrec, who had a painful disability by nature, was unhappy with the view of normal people’s world by Chavannes, who was famous and had a successful life unlike Lautrec.
  The movie, Blazing Saddles, which was released in 1974, shows satire about a western drama. Unlike most western dramas, this movie shows a black sheriff instead of a white one. It makes audiences think back on their stereotypes. Additionally, at the end of the movie, everyone in the set starts fighting with pies while they are moving from the set to the cafeteria in the film studio. It is satirizing the western dramas which always end with a gunfight or a showdown.
 

 

New era for parody arrived
  Parody in the past imitated contents or styles from existing works of art to satirize or exaggerate them, but recent parody culture has a very different goal. Since anyone has been able to make and share parody work with developed IT technology and communications, netizens started making it for fun, public interest, or enjoyment rather than satire.
  Thousands of people all over the world parodied Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ music video. All kinds of people uploaded their parody video clips onto Youtube, which is the biggest video sharing web site. This is not happening only due to popular stars, but it is easy to find parodies in TV comedy shows for fun. Many parodies are conducted on the most popular comedy show from KBS, ‘Gag Concert’. One of the skits, ‘Noae’, which parodied the very popular drama ‘Choono’ brought us laughter as they reenacted a funny version of the love story between slaves. Furthermore, another skit, ‘Wait Wolf’, which parodied the romantic movie ‘A Werewolf Boy’, was pretty entertaining and humorous as it showed a very different story where the werewolf boy frequently pushes or kicks the homely female main character.
  It is easy to find the commercial side of parody on the TV through TV commercials. Since the middle of the 90’s, many TV commercials have appeared with parodies from famous movies or TV dramas. They targeted people who already knew existing works such as popular movies or dramas very well. Recently, a beer company advertised its new product by parodying a famous scene from ‘Secret Garden’ in their TV commercial. Actress Ha Ji-won is helping somebody to sit up that is supposed to be Actor Hyun Bin, but unlike the drama, surprisingly the guy, Psy, is ugly and fat. This TV commercial was successful because they matched the drama’s popularity to its new product. Parody commercials target people’s expectation and unexpectedness. People try to guess how the scene they know will be changed in the commercial, and its unexpected story makes them remember the advertisement deeply. Even though there is criticism that those TV commercials have a limit from a lack of fresh and creative ideas, they can obtain a great advertising effect as they parody famous existing works such as movies or dramas.
 

 

How do students think about parody?
  CBT investigated how students in Chungbuk National University(CBNU) think about the parodied works in the online community for CBNU students. Kim Kyu-hyeon(’09, School of Civil Engineering) said about current parody culture, “I think parody is the path to relieve people’s stuffy feelings. I hope the person who is being parodied will regret their faults when they watch comedy shows parodying their behaviors.” Another anonymous individual expressed his or her feeling saying, “When parody is used for a comedy, it is a really good way to bring people laughter.”
  On the other hand, there were also some students who expressed sincere concerns about parody culture. One of the anonymous students said, “Even if people have freedom of expression, the problem is where the limitation is. If the parody is for art or satire, it can be popular culture. However, if it goes further, we need to think about defamation of the person who was parodied and the original works’ damage. Kwon Oh-hyun(Dept. of International Business) said, “We have to consider the people who suffer from parody when we parody something.”
 

By Shin Jae-hyoung
jh32@cbnu.ac.kr