The legal issues, for one thing, are far more clear-cut. Thanks to Larry Flynt’s own landmark Supreme Court case against Jerry Falwell, well-publicized and romanticized in The People vs. Larry Flynt, parody was legally guaranteed protection under the First Amendment. If you were a public figure or celebrity, you were fair game to be copied, no matter how unflattering the terms. This meant that lawsuits for defamation and loss of revenue, etc. are much harder to prosecute now – Tiger Woods will just have to deal with “Tiger Woods" banging a golf groupie on the ninth hole, for instance, as part of the price of his fame and glory.
The other issue is the sheer mass of porn out in the pornosphere. Again, thanks to the internet, there is a daily flood of amateur sex tapes, pro and semi-pro performers, and hundreds if not thousands of independent entrepreneurs who have inundated the market with product. Just looking at the DVD market, last year there were around 19,000 videos released. That’s about 50 a day. Making any flick stand out enough to capture a big enough audience to bring the big profits everyone seeks is difficult. So the industry is returning, once again, to parody to try to catch some attention. Luckily, the American porn consumer seems to like what they see.
The big difference between the porn parodies of 2010 and their predecessors is the attention to detail the producers are lavishing on the productions. Since the internet makes everyone an honorary nerd, half-assed productions that didn’t do justice to the original shows they were parodying won’t cut it for the fans. You can’t just throw a blonde, a brunette, and a straight-guy-pretending-to-be-gay in any old apartment set and expect Three’s Company to emerge. With that in mind, porn parodies today take great pains to not only ensure smokin’-hot sex, but also to casting reasonable doubles for original cast members, into building similar, if not identical, sets to the originals, and including elements in their storylines that borrowed heavily from what made the original show popular.
Take This Ain’t Star Trek XXX, for example. When director Axel Braun wanted to make the flick for Hustler, he knew he couldn’t half-ass it – Trekkies would revolt (or worse, not buy it) if it wasn’t a reasonable facsimile of the show. And as one of the most widely (and poorly) parodied TV shows of all time, fans were used to seeing their hallowed show brutalized not by raw sex, but by inaccurate translation to the screen. So Braun wisely paid meticulous attention to the construction of the bridge set and the casting of the show. He even convinced star Evan Stone to cut his signature long flowing hair for the part. He made certain that there was a reasonable stab at the plot, encouraged Stone to over-act ala Shatner, and included enough in-jokes to please the rabid fans. (It didn’t hurt that he also cast superstar Jenna Haze in the role of a hot alien chick, Jada Fire as Uhura [who else?] and Aurora Snow as a comely yeoman. YUM!)
The result? A credible homage to the show, strong sales, and a hit sequel.
The This Ain’t Married With Children XXX parody was another strong hit. Featuring new “it girl” and contract star Kagney Linn Karter, it delightfully re-created the stereotypical set that we all grew to love in the 90s. The first installment was so popular that it got the actor who played Bud Bundy in the original, David Faustino, to take a secret tour of the set during the filming of the sequel (considering his character’s propensity for our industry, it’s too bad he didn’t stick around and do a little commentary for the behind-the-scenes, but . . . ).
There are . . . less well-done parodies, as well. The less said about them, the better. That being said, there are some dreadfully-painful-but-still-hot-and-entertaining parodies out there . . . Star Wars fans were shocked by the treatment Private gave to their award-winning Porn Wars trilogy, including as it did heavily-accented Euros, dogfights between rip-offs of Virgin Galactic’s Space Ship One, and clumsy lightsaber battles. But they still bought it, out of morbid curiosity, and they weren’t disappointed by the sex. It helped that it was parodying the less-popular prequel trilogy, rather than the venerable classic -- but the original Star Wars hasn't been spared the porn treatment one bit. And that’s the great thing about parody – even when it’s dreadfully bad, it can still be good.
NEXT: Part 3: Why is parody so damn popular right now?
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