There are various differences between satire and parody. According to Oxford Dictionaries, satire can be defined as the use of humor, irony or ridicule to criticize people’s stupidity. Parody, on the other hand, can be defined as an exaggerated imitation of an artist’s style. The main distinction between these two is that a parody is more of an imitative work while satire uses humor to shine a light on the flaws of mankind. While a parody focuses on bringing humor to the audience, satire does more than that in an effort to improve humanity.

A contemporary example of satire would be in an episode of Simpsons when Homer becomes an astronaut and travels to another planet. As the spaceship is traveling away from the Earth, Homer stares at his home planet in awe saying that “It’s beautiful” and that it’s the “Giver of life”. Right after he says this, he pulls out a bag of chips that he “smuggled abroad”. Once he opens the bag of chips, all the crumbs scatter around and put the equipment in danger. As a way to resolve this problem, he eats up all the chips with pride. This is an appropriate example of satire because the director uses humor to address a serious issue: obesity. Homer is a symbol of a typical American figure that disregards obesity to consume unhealthy food. Obesity continues to dominate American culture while Americans continue to ignore it. A contemporary example of parody would be Shrek. In this movie, there are several scenes that prove Shrek is a parody. For instance, in one scene Fionna sings to the birds which imitates Disney’s film “Snow White” because Snow White herself would sing to animals. Lastly, many fairy tale characters show up to Shrek’s house and all converse with one another in a humorous way. Thus, there are significant distinctions between satire and parody even though they both use humor to communicate to the audience.