Greg Smith and Dan Harries talk about parody, but I wonder if it might not be appropriate to talk about irony. That there's some mechanism triggered by an aspect of style--whether visual, verbal, narrative, or whatever--that leads us to recognize that things are not what they seem. So the 14-year-old unaware of Freud (an avatar of Bowie!!!) can recognize that "something's going on" without knowing precisely what. I don't mean to quibble about terms, but I think the mechanism operates without the presence of parody also. [log in to unmask]