Sketch – Parody of parody

In preparing for this sketch, we recognised that in parodying certain video types, many parodies create their own cliches which many people continue to follow, with this sketch we attempted to satirise these unoriginal cliches by having a person interrupt a parody review similar to the style of our project one sketches, as he begins aggressively criticising the unoriginality of the reviewer, and ridiculing them as someone who has no appreciation for older forms of comedy/parody. This recognises the fact that parody in more complex than some people make it out to be, as you have to have a knowledge of the original content and deconstruct it effectively before parodying it, rather than simply inserting basic and cliched jokes. This also shows that parody is not necessarily condemning of the original material, but can also be a celebration, something we show through the dialogue in the sketch as the second character references the ‘good old days’ of parody. These ideas are particularly clear in our sketch, because it is in itself a parody video so there must be some appreciation for the sub genre of comedy. It also proves that nothing is parody proof, something we have picked up through the creation of these sketches. This is a more experimental take on the probe, as we wanted to see how one would go about parodying parody, and what we learnt was the we were not creating so much of a hybrid in the process but a meta video, one that allowed us to understand the idea of parody even more. In terms of narrative, the structure shifts from non-narrative to narrative through the use of parody. Narrative may have been added in slightly through the use of parodying character in the ‘original’ video, but there is a definite narrative present when the second layer of parody is applied, as there is a new character dynamic and a new cause and effect structure as an immediate relationship between the two characters and the theme has to be implied.

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