Quick Answer: A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satirical or ironic imitation. Often its subject is an original work or some aspect of it, but a parody can also be about a real-life person, event, or movement. Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice". The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon said "parody... is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music, theater, television and film, animation, and gaming. The writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies, that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche and burlesque.