Smart you for setting up a new thread
Esty, I am now free to float further ideas about parody and Tolkien.
I said initially that I don't like parodies or spoofs, and I stand by that, insofar as I don't like books that make fun of other books. I do, however, like
satiric parodies in which a book or a movie makes fun of a human foible, weakness -- or a particular political/social aspect of the human world. I satire because it can be entertaining while fulfilling a social purpose by commenting directly on the world in such a way as to seek change or redress shortcomings.
This is perhaps why satire and Tolkien (or satire and fantasy) are incompatible. Fantasy is already a form of commentary on the world (my comments in the "Real" thread notwithstanding
) that exists at an oblique angle -- the primary world is already tweaked into different shapes in order for the commentary to take place. There is, then, no need or place for satire in a fantastic work.
Satire and fantasy, at their best, do the same work from different ends. Satire criticises the world with the idea of transforming it; fantasy transforms the world in such a way that implies criticism. In either case we are given a view of the world transformed, and a hint of what things could or should be like. This difference leaves a profound imprint on the finished works. A satiric work like Swift's
Gulliver's Travels attempts to re-imagine humanity by shrinking people down to the size of toys, or blowing them up to giants so that we can see humans in all their deformity and flaws, and then act to change those in ourselves. A fantastical work like
LotR attempts to re-imagine humanity by shrinking people down to the size of hobbits, or inflating them to a towering figure of perfection like Aragorn so that we can see what human nature is capable of becoming.
As I work through this I'm really beginning to see more and more connections between how fantasy and satire work!!! In both, there is not an attempt to show the 'human condition' in a single emblematic character; instead human traits or aspects are split and embodied among bunch of different characters. In this sense, Swift divides the human into Hounyhyns and Yahoos, Tolkien into the Edain and the Eldar.
Interestingly enough, satire can seem to bear the weight of fantastical elements (i.e. horses that talk, people the size of your thumb, giants) while the reverse is not true. As soon as an overtly satiric element emerges in a work of fantasy, the "spell" of the secondary world would fall apart since it would become merely a mask or palimpsest for the primary world and not a separate subcreated reality. I think this is because in a satiric work, the fantastic elements are expressions of allegory (i.e. tiny people=human pretensions to greatness; giants=humanity's gross desires and hungers), and we all know that for fantasy to 'work' it must work toward or within applicability not allegory!