I’m Just Kiddin’ Like Jason: Parodying the Ridiculous

Overthinking It has hosted some posts of late debating pop-cultural parodies, like Starship Troopers and Steel Panther. These posts have generated some contentious yet rewarding discussions. In these posts, and the discussions that follow, a common question has emerged: does the fact of being a parody excuse the parody from being offensive? Is “I’m Just Kidding, Guys” a sufficient defense?

Consider the lyrics to Steel Panther’s “Death To All But Metal”:

Death to Britney Spears, kill the little slut
Kill Madonna too and then f*** her in the butt
F*** Mariah Carey, death to Sheryl Crowe
They can kiss each other on the camel toe
50 Cent’s a fag, so is Kanye West
Shooting hot sperm on each others’ chest!

Wow. That’s pretty terrible. Even above and beyond the unrepentant homo-bashing, those lyrics reach new levels of explicit detail. But that’s what makes it work as a parody. The hair-metal of the 80s didn’t shy away from misogyny. So in order to not just imitate that style but lampoon it, Steel Panther has to go over the top. They need to crank their amp to 11.

So that’s how you parody hair metal – by aping the cliches of hair metal but taking them to ridiculous extremes. Once you get that ridiculous, everyone knows it’s a joke.

Family Guy, back when it was funny, made its bones by creating parodies in the same style. Take a recognizable cliche, inflate it past any reasonable levels, then inflate it even further. Then make it about twenty seconds longer. Then add an explosion. The Season One “Chicken Fight” is perhaps the best example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpoki4wBwtA

That’s how you make a parody. Take an aspect of the source material that the audience recognizes. Blow it up to insane proportions. Then broadcast it.

Now here’s a follow-up question: how would one go about parodying gangsta rap?

Gangsta rap has its own set of identifiable cliches: rampant misogyny and gay-bashing, opulent displays of consumption, glorifying violence and the drug trade, slow-mo shots of gangs parting seas of clubgoers like fields of wheat, etc. So if I wanted to start up a posse called the OTI Boyz and create hilarious gangsta rap knock-offs, I’d just write a song and shoot a video that took all of these elements over the top. Right?

Consider the lyrics to DMX’s “Where Da Hood At”:

Man, cats don’t know what it’s gonna be
F—in’ with a nigga like me
D to the M to the X, last I heard
You niggas was having sex with the same sex
I show no love to homo thugs
Empty out, reload and throw mo’ slugs
How you gonn’ explain f—in’ a man?
Even if we squash the beef, I ain’t touchin’ the hand
I don’t f— with chumps; for those up in the jail,
That’s the cat with the Kool-Aid on his lips and pumps
I don’t f— with niggas that think they’re broads
Only know how to be one way: that’s the Dog.
I know how to, etc.

Here’s a sampling of the lyrics to Notorious B.I.G.’s “Gimme Da Loot”:

Then I’m dipping up the block and I’m robbing bitches too
F— the herringbones and bamboo
I don’t give a f— if you’re pregnant
Gimme the baby rings, and the #1 MOM pendant

[…]

Man, niggas coming through, I’m taking high school rings too!
Bitches get strangled for their earrings and bangles
And when I rock her and drop her I’m taking her door knockers
And if she’s resisting – [mimics gunshots] ‘BAKA! BAKA! BAKA!

And here’s a sampling of Lil’ Wayne’s “Alphabet Bitches”:

Well, the A is for Ashley
She always ask for me
To take it out her p***y and put it right in her ass
And the B is for Brittany, she bright in the class
And she be hatin’ on Ashley ’cause she tight in the ass
The C is for Christina, want me to big screen her
The way she d**k kiss should be a misdemeanor, so have you seen her
I been searchin’ but can’t find her
Ever since I been with Diamond with diamonds in her v****a
etc, etc.

Okay, so … if I want to lampoon gangsta rap, how do I get more offensive than that? Biggie goes into explicit detail about how defenselessness, poverty and pregnancy won’t stop him from robbing (and perhaps murdering) women. Lil’ Wayne breaks a long list of women down into nothing but their sexual characteristics. And DMX, long a lightning rod for racial discourse, says in no uncertain terms, “I want to shoot gay people.” Where do you go from there?

So maybe lyrical content isn’t the way. But maybe I can make fun of the style. If I make a rap video where the rapper dresses in outlandish costumes – not just baggy pants and puffy jackets, but clothes so ridiculous that no human could comfortably wear them – that’ll make clear that it’s a parody. And then, to touch on the (critical) perception that all rap music is indecipherable gibberish, I’ll make the rapper spit rhymes that no one can possibly comprehend.

 

Huh. All right.

This, then, is the problem. When you have a genre that, to outsiders, already seems ridiculous, how do you lampoon it? How can you tell which is the original and which the parody?

Critics of gangsta rap would consider the smoking battlefield displayed above and smirk. “Well, of course,” they’d say. “Gangsta rap is so ridiculous that it’s beyond parody.”

Unfortunately, that’s just not true. For one thing, gangsta rap isn’t inherently ridiculous. Originators like Nas bring a lyricism to each of their songs that you could spend hours diving into. The Notorious B.I.G. brought clever, catchy and evocative metaphors to every track he rapped on. And on the other coast, Dr. Dre turned production from trial-and-error into an art form.

Gangsta rap may be gritty – and unquestionably offensive – but it’s not garbage. It is art.

For another thing, gangsta rap can be parodied. It’s been done! Consider, as an example, this skit off of X-Ecutioner’s Built From Scratch – the “Hip Hop Awards”:

Rap connoisseurs could tell exactly which genres are being parodied in each of those three nominees: the babbling, high-energy style of Busta Rhymes; the blunt, unapologetic violence of DMX or Ja Rule; and the baroque lyricism of indie-rap “backpackers” like Del tha Funkee Homosapien or Atmosphere. The winner of the Hip Hop Awards Show, “Thug Doug,” makes a few more appearances on the same album. It’s pretty funny.

Or consider this Nationwide Insurance commercial, famous from the 2007 Super Bowl.

That’s also obviously a parody. A complete alien to Western culture might not know it at first. There’s nothing about the lyrics, video style or production values that would be out of place in a rap video. But nobody who knows the genre needs to be told that this is a joke.

So on the one hand, we have excess that we’re supposed to take seriously – Biggie, Lil’ Wayne, DMX. On the other hand, we have excess that we’re supposed to know is a parody – Thug Doug and K-Fed. What’s the distinction?

The easy answer is to say, “Well, the producers of the parody meant it as a joke, but the producers of the original work were serious.” But that only takes us so far. Of course the parody was meant as a joke: that’s a tautology. We’ve learned nothing by saying that. If the original work is just as excessive as its own parody, then why wasn’t the original meant as a joke?

The intention for humor is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for a parody. I would argue there are two more.

Again, critics of gangsta rap might think they have a way in here. “Gangsta rap is a joke,” they’d say. “The misogyny, the violence, the terrible lyrics, the derivative clothes … it’s all garbage.”

To keep this from devolving into a critique of gangsta rap – since I’d rather critique the art of parody – let’s get back to the original genres in question: hair metal and war movies.

Here’s Steel Panther’s rock anthem, “Party All Day (F*** All Night)”:

Now here’s Mötley Crüe’s rock anthem, “Hell on High Heels”:

Pop quiz, hotshot: which one is the parody? Show your work.

Round two: here’s a clip from Starship Troopers.

And here’s a clip from First Blood.

 

Which one is the parody? And why?

To understand what makes parody, we first ought to consider what is parody. Parody is, as we’ve said above, anything which exaggerates, twists or otherwise alters recognizable conventions of a work of art for the purposes of getting a laugh.

Don’t confuse parody with satire, though. Satire is an attack on human or social vices that uses humor as a weapon. Satire employs parody, often to great effect, but the two are not the same. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is a satire on the cruelty of British absentee landlords and the poverty among the Irish that resulted. It takes the form of a parody of serious cultural essays, circulated through London at the time. Swift’s essay is an attack. The Wayans Brothers’ Scary Movie, by contrast, is a parody of horror movies. But it’s not an attack.

This is no trivial distinction: parody does not (necessarily) condemn the genre it parodies. I don’t know the men behind Steel Panther personally, but I don’t think they hate hair metal. In fact, hating hair metal would probably hinder their parodies, since they’re so damn good. “Party All Day (F*** All Night)” is a catchy song. It’s a loving parody: a recognition of what is good in the genre – virtuoso guitar playing, use of synthesizer and harmony – while chuckling at the parts that are silly.

Steel Panther is laughing at metal, but they’re inviting the rest of us to laugh with them.

We decided earlier that intending it to be a joke wasn’t enough to make something a parody. So let’s add another qualification: a parody has to show fondness for the work it parodies. Steel Panther may make fun of the tights and makeup, but they put enough work into their guitar licks to show that they knew – and loved – Def Leppard. Verhoeven may want to warn us about the tendency of war to make us cheerleaders for Power, but he also wants to show kickass fight scenes where men shoot bugs and make them explode.

And the Scary Movie series (or Date Movie, or Disaster Movie, or Epic Movie, or any of them) might not be good parodies. They’re little more than laundry lists of genre tropes, painted up and shoved onstage. But they clearly weren’t made by people who hate the films they’re mimicking. They turn genre conventions into comedy, but they don’t call the genre conventions “stupid.”

So that’s two elements you need for a parody: the intention to be funny and a fondness for the source material. Are those sufficient? I would argue you need one more thing.

“Genre” is an imperfect label, applied by critics to a collection of artists after the fact. When Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic started the band that became Nirvana in 1988, they didn’t set out to invent a genre called grunge. They just wanted to create rock music that sounded unlike what was coming out of L.A. at the time (Poison, Mötley Crüe, Warrant, Ratt, etc). And Nirvana didn’t invent grunge, either; they were following a style that had been set down by bands like The Melvins, Gang of Four and various contemporary acts in the Seattle alternative scene. Only after the fact could rock critics come in, lump Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Mudhoney together and give the package a name.

Nobody sits down one morning to invent a genre. They just want to make art.

And yet with every great innovator comes a legion of imitators, followed by the audiences that adore them, followed soon after by the critics who comment on them. To create a label – grunge, heavy metal, war films, gangsta rap, action movies – is to identify common elements from disparate items. Grunge has distorted guitars, slurred lyrics and an angry tone. War films have action setpieces, stirring speeches and nationalist sentiment. Gangsta rap has misogynist lyrics, intricate metaphors and violence. But you don’t create art by simply slotting these elements together. You create art, then someone recognizes those elements in it – after the fact – and assigns you a genre.

These genre elements evolve from the natural selection of artists competing for an audience, but they are not evidence of intelligent design.

If parody is the exaggerating or twisting of a genre’s elements, then first someone has to identify those elements. That identification process can’t happen on day one. Rob Halford didn’t take the mic at the first Judas Priest concert and say, “Oy! Now that we’ve discarded our blues origins in favor of a louder and faster sound, this a new type of rock music, innit? Something a little bit heavier, wouldn’t you say?” Heavy metal didn’t know it was heavy metal (as distinct from the bluesy rock of Led Zeppelin or Cream) until after it had been heavy metal for many years.

So parody has to come after the genre has evolved. It must come after, or at the very earliest during, the critical phase. No parodies spring forth full-grown, like Dave Mustaine from the head of James Hetfield, on the first day of creation. Someone, whether Billboard or Roger Ebert or the New York Times’ Review of Books, must have already said, “Hey, this new crop of artists is distinct enough from their forefathers to deserve a different name.”

That gives us three elements that distinguish a parody from the original work of art, no matter how ridiculous the original may be:

• The intention to be funny;
• A fondness for the source material;
• A consciousness of the genre elements that follows the critical phase.

The title of this post comes from a line in Nelly’s 2002 hip-hop earworm, “Hot in Herre”:

Stop pacin’; time a-wastin’
I got a friend with a phone and a basement
(What?)
I’m just kiddin’ like Jason
(Oh)
Unless you gonna do it!

This is frankly ridiculous. “Hey, let’s go to my friend’s house and have casual sex.”

“What?”

“I’m just kidding!”

“Oh.”

“Unless you were seriously considering my offer! In which case I was not kidding.”

Now here’s folk singer Jenny Owen Youngs singing Nelly’s 2002 song, “Hot in Herre”:

Is her cover a parody? I would suggest not, since there’s no obvious intention to be funny and she’s not sticking too closely to the source material (aside from the lyrics).

But the music video clearly is! It’s like a bangin’ loft party, except it’s in an igloo! There’s a yeti behind the bar! There’s breakdancing penguins! Everyone’s circling around to watch two Lappland dancers! The lights keep fading in and out! It takes all the elements of a rap video and replaces them with adorable Arctic icons. Which is an ironic twist, see, because it’s hot … in the igloo!

… get it? Get it?

I hope you get it. I think I do, anyway.