Surely, there are moments in Airplane! (1980) that would confuse anyone not alive in the 1980’s. Today of course, smoking is prohibited on planes – and most everywhere else – the lax, simple security screeners went away thirteen years ago, food without an extortionate price tag is no longer served on flights.
Most noticeably, the films form of parodying and lampooning other films would be strange to a contemporary audience. Unfortunately.
Together, David Zucker and Jim Abraham created benchmarks in the art of lampooning genres and popular culture. Series like The Naked Gun, Airplane, and films like Hot Shots took parodying to a level at which the actual parodying was seamlessly integrated into the films. Films such as Meet the Spartans, Paranormal Movie, and most any other film from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Selzter, feel forced and disjointed. There is no logic in the mashups, other than to poach scenes from other genres and glue them together in a hodgepodge of wasted celluloid.
On the other hand, films like Airplane, while silly at times, weave pop culture and silliness into the storylines, forcing the characters to contemplate and accept the absurd as normal. Take for example Ted Striker’s (Robert Hays) drinking problem. The war-scarred veteran who turns to vices is a familiar trope turned on its head when we learn that Striker just can’t seem to get the water in his mouth. However, this surreal interpretation of addiction is widely accepted throughout the film as if it’s just as common as alcoholism. He is shamed and he is wet, and in the plot point’s continuation throughout the film it continues to be a problem, not just a one-off laugh elicitor.
Here, the world created is a strange one, but it’s not disjointed. Rather, the strange and absurd become normalized instead of boring.
Whereas films made in the ilk of Meet the Spartans easily fit into the imitative category of pastiche, wherein nothing is new and everything is an imitation of something else, parodies like Airplane becomes prime examples of post-modern comedy, wherein everything is recontextualized to highlight the absurdist nature of our lives and entertainments.
