People are deeply familiar with the cultures in which they live. This familiarity leads to strong resonance when humor is created with culture as the subject matter. Many, many kinds of things can be cultural landmarks: locations, events, celebrities, books, shows, songs, words, idioms, etc. Widely-shared preferences within mass media, entertainment, sports, fashion and more are known as pop culture. Pop culture provides the primary source material for the humor culture category of parody.

Parody is the comic duplication of a cultural entity whose characteristics are exaggerated and altered in humorous ways. Parody is often humorous all by itself, but beyond the internal humor, each of the newly-altered characteristics forms a detectable humor kernel with the parallel characteristics from the source. The connection to and contrast from the original amplifies humor resonance. Knowledge of the original is exposition for these particular parody humor kernels.

A parody of a person is called an impression. Movie parodies are called spoofs. A parody combination of two sources is called a mashup. A parody of a documentary is called a mockumentary. A caricature is a parody portrait.

Parody is a humor culture category, but examples of parody also exhibit all the previously-described humor event components from kernel and context. Of particular importance is the fifth humor gauge (meant / not meant), as this is the separation line between parody and satire. Satire is parody meant as criticism.

Return to the third broad category Culture

Continue to the second Humor Culture category Satire