2. What Is Parody?
Oxford English Dictionary defines parody as ‘An imitation of the style of a particular
writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.’
It originates from Ancient Greece where, according to Aristotle, Hegemon of Thasos
was known for slightly altering words of poems in order to turn the sublime into the
ridiculous.
In Ancient Greek literature a parodia was a narrative poem in the style of epic poems
but with a light hearted or satirical subject. However these were seen as counter songs
to be set against the original as a comparison as the word literally means beside or
against (par) and song (odie).
In the second century Lucian of Samosata parodied epic travel poems such as The
Indica and The Odyssey in order to poke fun at writers who had written such poems
without actually travelling.
The first use of parody in English is said to be in 1598, in Ben Jonson’s play ‘Every Man
Has His Humour’. "A Parodie, a parodie! to make it absurder than it was."
3. Meghan Trainor ‘Me Too’
This is a song just begging to be parodied due to it’s unbearable smugness. It
can only really be sung ironically or the singer looks like a total narcissist.
Fortunately someone came to our rescue and saved us all from suffocating on
an obviously overinflated ego by poking fun at the song. We shall be forever
in his debt.
The song is about how great Meghan’s life is and how we must all want to be
her. This is obvious in the rather cringeworthy line ‘If I was you I’d want to be
me too.’ The rest of the song includes such gems as how she deserves respect
for wearing gold.
The video starts with her waking up and getting ready for the day. She then
spends the rest of the video in a giraffe onesie telling us how great her life is
and how much better she is than everyone else.
4. The Parody
Bart Baker is very well known for parodying music videos and actually has his
own Youtube channel for that purpose. For some reason he seems particularly
fond of blowing up Meghan Trainor.
His parody starts off exactly the same with ‘Meghan’ waking up in bed. The
costumes are the same, the sets are the same, and the main obvious
difference is that he has rewritten the lyrics to really illustrate how
obnoxiously egocentric the original is. Another difference is that the parody
has ‘Meghan’ trying to turn everyone else into her, much to everyone’s
annoyance. In the end she succeeds with the help of a scientist and a cloning
machine. Everyone becomes Meghan, she proposes to herself and finally
explodes with happiness.
