Fan Fiction and Parody

From music to poetry and prose, the practice of artists sampling other artists’ work is nothing new.

Shrek(1)

When a song tops the Billboard charts, it is only a matter of time before it gets chewed up and spat back out in some variant form. The Monkees’ 1966 number one hit “I’m a Believer” was given new life in Smash Mouth’s early-2000’s rendition, featured in the movie Shrek. (I’m ashamed to say that for a long time I was unaware that this wasn’t originally Smash Mouth’s song). In 2009, American rapper Flo Rida produced his number one single “Right Round,” which was more than loosely based on the 80’s pop hit “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by the British group Dead or Alive.

Similarly, popular books are often rewritten in various iterations. The old adage “if you build it, they will come” is never more true than in the case of literary franchises—if there is money to be made or fame to be had, there will be someone willing to make a remix or parody of a written work.

As explained by Chauncey Baker in a previous Snopes blog post, literary pastiche sometimes takes the form of “fan fiction.” Popular books are given new life, thereby generating new sales; the Twilight series becomes Fifty Shades of Grey one, two, and three, as well as Nightlight: A Parody, New Moan, etc. In a quest to fill the ever-expanding “paranormal romance” genre (aka vampire novels), Wuthering Heights becomes Wuthering Bites and Jane Eyre becomes Jane Slayre.

fifty-shades-of-grey-cac1d39d5bb5c20810b1314bcbf61dee35d8219b-s6-c30Beyond basic fan fiction, however, and more interesting still (in my opinion) are parodies of parodies. Itself a parody, Fifty Shades of Grey has morphed into its own franchise and spun in a multitude of directions, including Fifty Shades of Mr. Darcy, Fifty Shades of Alice in Wonderland, Fifty Shames of Earl Grey, Fifty Shades of Pink (complete with sparkles and unicorns!), A Coupla Shades of Taupe, and—my personal favorite—Fifty Shades of Chicken (a cookbook). Many of these seem to me like they’d be a stretch, at best…realistically, how big could the market for these books be? And yet no one would write them if the readers weren’t out there.

Why are we, as readers, so drawn to works that closely imitate other works? Do we value parodies as literary works in their own right? Or are we merely creatures of habit who are more comfortable with tried-and-true plotlines than original compositions? More to the point: is it even possible to still compose a truly original composition, or have all the “good ideas” been used up? Although parodies seem to catch a lot of flak (in spite of its shocking success, you’re apt to hear at least 5 people criticizing Fifty Shades for every one person who likes it), they also carry an undeniable appeal. Personally, I love a good parody. Last year, I bought my nephew Goodnight Moon…along with the more contemporary version, Goodnight iPad for Christmas. My brother and sister-in-law have also introduced me to Go the F**k to Sleep, a charming and hilarious just-for-adults parody of a typical children’s bedtime story. I am even the proud owner of a parody volume entitled Twitterature, in which literary classics (think Shakespeare, Salinger, Byron, Dostoyevsky) are told in a series of twenty (or fewer) tweets, each under 140 characters.

I’d love to hear your thoughts regarding any of the parodies above, or even parodies in general. Do you love literary parodies, or do you love to hate them? Do you have a favorite? Leave a response in the comments below!


Kudos to Amina Gautier

In the current issue of The Georgia Review reviewer Greg Johnson says of Amina Gautier’s story collection At-Risk (Georgia, 2011): “Richard Wright or James Baldwin might well admire and nod their heads over such a passage.  In general Gautier’s depictions of the problems of black teenage boys in America seems dead on, and she pays equal to the plight of teenage girls.”  In a later passage, Johnson adds: “Throughout this collection, Gautier employs detail to powerful dramatic effect, so the reader can easily see her people and their world.  In Hemingway’s parlance, there are no holes in her stories….”

For Gautier’s short short “Love, Creusa,” see the flash fiction in this issue of Shenandoah.


recent-meR. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.

 

Bare Bones? A Story by Martone

What are the minimum requirements for a sequence of sentences to result in a story?  One way to approach the question is to examine a short short story that has endured for some time and ask: 1)What elements of narrative are present here?  2)What elements of narrative is this piece doing just fine without?

The Mayor of the Sister City Speaks to the Chamber of Commerce in Klamath Falls, Oregon, on a Night in December in 1976
by Michael Martone

It was after the raid on Tokyo.  We children were told to collect scraps of cloth.  Anything we could find.  We picked over the countryside; we stripped the scarecrows.  I remember this remnant from my sister’s obi.  Red silk suns bounced like balls.  And these patches were quilted together by the women in the prefecture.  The seams were waxed as if to make the stitches waterproof.  Instead they held air, gases, and the rags billowed out into balloons, the heavy heads of chrysanthemums.  The balloons bobbed as the soldiers attached the bombs.  And then they rose up to the high wind, so many, like planets, heading into the rising sun and America. . . ”
I had stopped translating before he reached this point.  I let his words fly away.  It was a luncheon meeting.  I looked down at the tables.  The white napkins looked like mountain peaks of a range hung with clouds.  We were high above them on the stage.  I am yonsei, the fourth American generation.  Four is an unlucky number in Japan.  The old man, the mayor, was trying to say that the world was knit together with threads we could not see, that the wind was a bridge between people.  It was a hot day.  I told those beat businessmen about children long ago releasing the bright balloons, how they disappeared ages and ages ago.  And all of them looked up as if to catch the first sight of the balloons returning to earth, a bright scrap of joy.

[Winner of the 1986 World’s Best Short Short Story Contest and first published in Sundog.  Reprinted with permission of the author, whose new book, Four for a Quarter, is available from the University of Alabama Press.]


recent-meR. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.