Parody

Parody: What can I get away with?

Thanks to the Fair Use Doctrine, parody is actually considered to be one hundred percent legal as dictated by the first amendment to the United States constitution.

The only chink in the Fair Use armor is that the work must actually be easily defined as parody. There can be some confusion regarding the actual definition, so you might want to know exactly what the term “parody” means before putting a whole lot of work into something that winds up qualifying as plagiarism or copyright infringement.

For a derivative work to qualify as a parody, it must actually be making a statement, or statements, directly relevant to the original work which it parodies. For example, take the character of Batman. Batman is obsessed with the idea of capturing criminals. If you draw an unauthorized Batman comic wherein he is so obsessed with capturing criminals that he is even willing to devote a lot of his time and energy to capturing jay walkers and people who return library books late, then that would probably hold up as parody, because you are targeting an integral element of the original character.

On the other hand, if you write a story wherein Batman is basically acting as he always does in the comics, playing it straight, and the comedy targets things besides Batman’s general nature, that would count as plagiarism. Like if you wanted to have Batman playing it straight while turning the rest of the comic into a political satire, attacking society or the government, then the use of Batman would be unauthorized.

Oftentimes, parody even uses portions of the original work directly without it constituting plagiarism. For example, on Saturday Night Live you might see the recurring sketch “Fun with Real Audio”, wherein popular songs, movie dialog, or broadcast news interviews, all of which are protected by copyright, are accompanied by humorous animation. Because the work qualifies as parody, any issues regarding plagiarism or unauthorized use of an original work are sort of sidestepped.

Likewise, nobody has ever successfully sued MAD Magazine.

The basic premise of the first amendment, and… indeed, the very principle that the United States of America was founded on is this: In order for a country to be truly free, absolutely no limitations must be placed on what a person can say. Of course, if you’re just taking someone else’s movie, putting a new title on it, and selling it without paying them anything, that actually qualifies as intellectual property theft, and does not really qualify as a first amendment issue. Rather, the concept of the first amendment is that there must be no limits placed on criticism. The idea is that, if the government or anyone else has the right to tell you “Don’t criticize this” or “Don’t criticize that”, then these groups can basically do whatever they want and not have anyone complain about it. You don’t keep a country free by shutting people up when you don’t like what they say. In the United States of America, you can march right in front of the Capitol Building with a sign that says “Demolish the Capitol Building!” and you will be well within your rights. The right to criticize anything we have a problem with, thanks to the Fair Use Doctrine, extends into the world of literature, art, and entertainment, and as such, as long as you are actually targeting the original work for humor or criticism and not just calling something parody to get away with plagiarism, you are one hundred percent protected.

And now to step off of the soapbox for a moment…

Fair use also covers educational purposes. For example, if a college professor teaching a course on film wanted to show “Citizen Kane” to teach about lighting techniques, that would be perfectly fine. Of course, as with parody, simply claiming that the film is being screened for educational purposes won’t always cut it. The professor must actually be using the film to teach something. It’s too easy for someone to do an unauthorized remake of a film and call it a parody when it doesn’t even have any jokes or criticism in it. Likewise, it’s too easy for someone to screen a movie, charge admission, and call it a filmmaking course, when in fact, the person isn’t a qualified teacher, and they don’t couple the film itself with a lesson or any educational commentary.

So with the Fair Use Doctrine, you can get away with any form of parody, and you can get away with using something as a means of educating a student, but you can’t get away with using it as an excuse for copyright infringement.