Well, I hadn’t planned to write a late-night editorial about why the right to make parodies matters so much, but then I read this news story about how the makers of the excellent satirical show “Spitting Image” (warning – crude humour) are being sued over their parody of Paddington Bear.
If you haven’t heard of “Spitting Image” before, it’s sort of like the lesser-known British equivalent of “South Park”. It began in the 1980s and was a fast-turnaround late-night satirical comedy show featuring caricature-style puppets of various politicians, celebrities etc… Whilst it faded out during the mid-late 1990s, it thankfully got a bit of a revival five or six years ago, with the latest “season” of the show being a lower-budget free social media series with shorter 10-15 minute episodes.
Anyway, to pad out the space between the smaller number of comedy sketches in this latest series, there are these podcast-style segments featuring parodies of Prince Harry and Paddington Bear. Of course, in Spitting Image’s parody, Paddington is the complete opposite of Michael Bond’s original character. He’s mangy, he has bulging eyes, an exaggerated South American accent, connections to organised crime etc… This part of the show is funny because he’s so ridiculously different to the Paddington that we all grew up with.
This is also a bit of a cynical commentary about how people in 1950s Britain saw South America as “mysterious” and/or in a very rose-tinted way, but how – mostly thanks to US media – the popular image of the continent in English-speaking countries tends to be a bit more disparaging these days. Even though, for example, game developers in Chile made a cool survival horror game in 2021, awesome bands like Iron Maiden and The Offspring are very popular in Brazil etc….
This parody of Paddington also – for example – allows the show to satirise our rabidly right-wing tabloid press’ fanatical obsession with “illegal immigration” and how even allegedly “left-wing” politicians will bend over backwards to appease this sort of insular mindset. For example, one joke in a recent episode of the show from the 3rd October (warning – crude humour) ridicules our PM, Kier Starmer, for using “illegal immigration” as an excuse to revive the Labour Party’s dystopian two-decade obsession with forcing everyone to have ID cards. With the joke being that the show’s version of Paddington is completely unaffected by this – not only because he has multiple fake passports but also because, well, the sorts of people that he works for don’t even ask for ID in the first place. It’s satire as well as parody, freedom of expression!
And, to hammer the point home, he’s also badly-disguised as Rupert Bear too LOL! (Sorry about the replaced screenshot, I didn’t realise that the original would be shown in the WordPress Reader)
Whilst I’m not a lawyer, we gained a legal right to make direct parodies in Britain in about 2014 (?) or so – and we’ve still kept it after Brexit as well. The US has, albeit with a slightly different legal definition (less about humour, more about “commentary on the original work”), had a legal right to make parodies for centuries.
Parodies are important for a mountain of reasons. One important thing to remember about parodies is that they often make no secret about being parodies – the whole point of a parody is that it’s a response to something else. Whether it is fans affectionately joking about their favourite media, whether it is a more cynical criticism of a piece of media or whether it is someone using a popular piece of media as a vehicle for political and/or social satire, parodies have always been about people having a “right to reply”. Parodies are a response. And this is usually really obvious.
Before we had a legal right to make direct parodies in Britain, it certainly didn’t stop everyone here making parodies! Yes, we had to do stuff like coming up with new “original” characters which ridiculed pre-existing characters, we had to use “sound alike” type music etc… but people in this country kept finding loopholes and ways around the rules regardless because, well, we all live in a culture and we all respond to it in varying ways. Parodies are human instinct, they are a vital part of culture itself. After all, culture evolves by responding to itself.
“Oh, but Spitting Image should have asked for permission!” No! Asking for permission to make a parody would be like asking for permission to review something. It would totally defeat the point! Reviews are meant to be a person’s individual opinions on whatever they are reviewing. Reviews are meant to be independent!
Whether it is an experienced professional critic comparing something to other similar things, or pointing out the flaws in something. Whether it is a more “ground-level” review from an ordinary audience member, wanting to help other people decide whether or not to spend money on something. Reviews are meant to be totally independent for the sake of fairness. Put another way, if a review “has permission” or is “authorised”… then it’s basically just an advert. This is why copyright laws often explicitly protect the right to review things.
And the same is true for parody. Yes, people would find ways around it, but a world without the right to parody would be a world where culture was imposed on everyone in a “top-down” way. Where large media companies would have the level of power only dreamed of by religions. Where people could get in trouble for “blaspheming” against corporations like Disney and Nintendo. Do you really want to live in that sort of world?
Not only that, in the year 2025, the satirical elements of parodies are more important than ever! Yes, Jimmy Kimmel got back on air – thanks to almost everyone in the US TV comedy world standing in solidarity with him – but the fact remains that his satirical TV show was almost censored for political reasons by the US Government. Thankfully, being a British show, “Spitting Image” doesn’t have to worry too much about what US politicians think – allowing for ridiculously merciless satire 🙂
And satire is important because it’s vital for democracy itself – not only because people expressing different opinions is sort of the point of democracy, but also because it’s a safe and peaceful outlet for everyone’s anger about incompetent and stupid politicians as well. Put another way, most dictatorships censor dissent – parodies and satires – and these sorts of regimes virtually never last for more than a century. On the other hand, despite the year 2025, both Britain and the US have a centuries-long history of democracy and part of this is because people can make “political” satires and parodies and stuff like that.
So, yes, the right to make parodies matters. Parodies help culture evolve, they should never require “permission” and they are an important part of democracy itself.
