Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
What is the difference between parody, satire, and farce?
2
A Parody (sometimes referred to as a spoof) is essentially imitative work. It uses the skeleton of an original work and adds its own comedic elements that strive towards either exaggerating the flaws of the original work or trivializing it, or in some cases both. There are many examples of parodies out in the mainstream media right now. A good one would be the Scary Movie franchise in which each movie borrows from the most popular shows and movies as well as current events from the last year or so and creates a story line parodying them. There are also channels on YouTube entirely dedicated to building parodies of hit videos and movies.
What is the difference between parody, satire, and farce?
Although the three devices mentioned here might share some fundamental elements, they are meant to serve very distinct purposes in the art of storytelling.
A Satire on the other hand uses irony, and in some cases, exaggeration to expose vices and shortcomings of an entity, be it an individual or a complex and interdependent system such as our society. Humor might be part of it, but the end result is almost never funny. It is used to elicit thinking and realization in the audience. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift is considered one of the best satirical works in English literature. Some contemporary examples of satire would be shows like The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, etc. where the hosts use humor to provide social commentary on issues that currently plague the society.
A Farce is a comedy that uses highly exaggerated situations to entertain its audience. These situations are more often than not exaggerated to an extent that ultimately renders them improbable.