Parodies and Satires

Parodies are exaggerated versions of the truth. Without parodies, we wouldn't gain nearly as much insight into our society today. As I am writing a parody now, I am truly appreciating the beauty of them.

My parody concerns school in the point of view of a totally evil principal. There's so much gold there! Usually, I have to make multi-dimensional characters that people can relate to in my stories but in parodies, it's unnecessary. I am free to play around with stereotypes and to make them as flat and one-dimensional as I can. It's pretty fun and it’s not like anything I've done before.

Parodies are really silly, first and foremost. That’s the whole point of why they are even made then. They're meant to entertain and they're meant to make people laugh and a lot of the time, they end up succeeding in doing so. What makes them so funny are all of those little specks of truth mixed into them, a truth so distorted that it has been transformed into fiction (like all jokes, of course).

At the same time though, parodies are serious under those layers of silliness. The joker usually has something serious to say under the shroud of comedy, though it probably isn't something apparent to all of it, of course. Parodies zero in on something's weaknesses, criticizing it with a smile rather than a scowl. They accentuate its basest qualities and then they expand on it. While they might make you laugh, they also end up making you think right after thinking about everything.

Many who would get defensive when treated with vitriol laugh when they are shown a parody and they see their own weaknesses in a much clearer way. A society is much more likely to see its own faults when they see them written out. For these reasons, parodies are extremely important to society. Ultimately, parodies are a sign that we are still able to laugh at ourselves, to end up laughing in its face.

For the above reasons, parodies are quite difficult to write. As I write it, I wonder if I am being funny enough. Wonder if my characters are too exaggerated, that they are too far away from the truth that I ended up writing them all from. Yet whenever I find myself thinking such things, I end up stopping myself. I can't really end up doing all of that, though. The thing about parodies is that you can't take them too seriously. I can't take my own writing too seriously either. I mean, usually when I make something funny, it's because I'm not thinking about how to end up making too funny. I don't know what I'm supposed to think when I’m writing it and I think that’s a good sign.

I am one of those contributors to the world, however insignificant of a writer that I am. I am recognizing while I write my parody is that school is incredibly funny and that that makes it gold to write for a parody, of course then. At the same time, I am also pointing out all of the flaws and the corruption in the public school system without ranting it out in a bunch of different blog posts. Maybe it will end up making it much more effective in that way, who knows? I don’t know what to think.

A parody is the reflection of society in the mirror of the world. They are a permanent footprint on the ground of history and for that, I will forever value them.