Quackcast 732 - Meet the Parodians

Parody and satire are a certain kind of humour. They're VERY easy to do because you just base them off real, already existing things, then you twist it a bit to add humour and make it ridiculous. But that's where it gets tricky! Satire is a parody of a real situation rather than fictional, it tends to have a harder edge. Where it usually goes wrong is that people mistake it for something straight, i.e. NOT satire, not comedy, not exaggeration or ridicule. The two main approaches to parody are a broad satire of a genre, like Princess Bride on fairytale fantasy, or a more targeted approach like Spaceballs which satirised Star Wars, and things in between like Airplane, which made fun of the film Zero Hour but also used it as a chance to parody the disaster movie genre and include a shotgun approach to pop-cultural jokes, making fun of everything happening in the 1970s.

When I was growing up Mad Magazine movie parody comics were always a fave of mine, I'd prefer them to the actual movies they made fun off. The art was amazing with great caricatures and the humour was always very cheeky. Asterix was another comic series I enjoyed, which involved a lot of historical satirical humour. One big issue with that kind of targeted humour though is that it's often very dependent on its references for the jokes to fully work, so if you lack familiarity with them it won't bite as hard or sometimes not at all. The trick is to include enough of the context for context dependant jokes so that they can work regardless. If you do your job well enough people will not even remember the original and your satire or parody will completely stand on its own!

In our Quackcast we even covered things that become self parodies like the Deadpool Marvel Movies, some of the Roger More James Bond films, the late horror franchise films like Nightmare on Elm street, Friday the 13th and so on. What are some of your fave parodies or satires?
I think Princess Bride, the Life of Brian, Blazing Saddles, and Spaceballs are real standouts. But things like Lego Batman, Not Another Teen Movie, and even The Toxic Avenger have their own place. On that last one: Lloyd Kaufman is like a B-movie parody version of Mel Brooks, Mel does the A-list parodies and satires and Lloyd handles the crazier, gross and kinky low budget ones Mel wouldn't touch LOL!
Of course Meet The Spartans is the best parody ever, so much better than The 300.

This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by Occult by lux - A heavy, heavy, distorted, fuzzy, rocking, and yet magical take on the Arabian Nights, with the brutally metal revere of chaos, and beautiful oriental groove!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Excavator - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/mar/18/featured-comic-excavator/

Featured music:
Occult by lux - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Occult_by_lux/ - by Lux_occult, rated A.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS