Hackwork hacked

If good pornography is a you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of thing, good parody is exactly the opposite: A parody succeeds when large numbers of people don't recognize the thing as a parody. By that standard, Ward Sutton's "Kelly" cartoons for The Onion are 24-carat fool's gold. Their wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels layers of lampoon and self-reference make it nearly impossible to tell the dancer from the dance.

By Tim Cavanaugh

March 29, 2007