Discussion Board Wednesday’s Pos

Unit 5 Discussion Board Wednesday’s Post

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http://globaltoynews.typepad.com/.a/6a0133ec87bd6d970b016301bb0cbe970d-500wi

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Parody is a form of sarcasm or poking fun at an original idea or thought. There are many examples of parody in the world in many different forms. The film we just watched last week called Young Frankenstein was a parody for the original novel of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Another great example of parody is Weird Al Yankovic. His entire music career is based off of make parodies of other people’s music. Parody can be controversial at times because some people do not want their stuff to be made fun of; but because of freedom of speech and the fact that it is changed up a bit people can legally do it here in the United States.

The example of parody I have found online during my research is a mock of Walmart’s logo and tagline. Rather than having the name Walmart in the logo it says China. This is a poke at multiple things, such as Walmart itself, and a great amount of products being made in China as it is cheaper to outsource for many products to different countries. China being one of the main places this country outsources to for goods. This describes and says a lot about society in the United States right now. Many people do not like that so many things are outsourced for. These people believe that they are taking jobs from American citizens by doing so. Others believe that it is a good thing because it provides us with cheaper goods and these are low paying jobs to begin with. This also represents our economy in the United States and in a way the classes with in it. In a way this represents the feelings of different social classes with in our society. It shows how we are doing as a country with our economy and the concerns of the people living in it. This simple parody of a store logo has many messages with in it and can be quite powerful to many people who view it. Some could find it very funny and amusing, while others might just get irritated by it for a whole host of reasons depending on the person and where they stand on the issues that this piece points out.

Parody is almost always offensive to someone. Some might consider them over sensitive and up tight. While others might look at something like this and think this is a real issues to be concerned with and it is not funny at all, or that their ideas are opposing and it is just nonsense to them. It is interesting to see how something so small and seemingly not that big of a deal could get so many reactions and different emotions out of a variety of people. That is what is interesting to me about parody, it is often times light hearted fun pointing out real issues or problems capable of so many variations of thought and feelings from people.