Super Mario, the new silent clown: Video game parodies as transformative comedy tools

Abstract

This article examines how the video game character Super Mario has become a key character in contemporary culture and an icon of user-generated comedy in hundreds of YouTube parodies, sketches and visual gags. The transformation of the original figure in user-generated makeovers highlights a vaudevillistic potential that allows Mario’s image to be reinvented, enriching and questioning the limits of fan re-appropriation.

First-Party Success or First-Party Failure? A Case Study on Audience Perceptions of the Nintendo Brand During the Wii U’s Product Life Cycle

“…High measures of perceived quality and brand image, despite the low utility score of the Wii U, could be explained by the cultural icon status achieved by the firm’s intellectual property. The high volume of user-generated content (e.g., YouTube videos) featuring Mario and Zelda perpetually promotes the myths and folklore of Nintendo characters in a positive light, regardless of utility of the console (Garin, 2015). User-generated adaptations of Nintendo characters being used to communicate humor, emotions, and feelings on many-to-many communication channels suggests that exposure to a Mario or Zelda game is a cultural experience that a critical mass of society has committed to its collective memory, regardless of specific engagement with Nintendo’s contemporary technologies (Suominen & Ala-Luopa, 2012).…”

“…Academic implications include demonstrating the utility of strategic brand management scales, frameworks, and theories in examining mass market phenomena, and the compatibility of applying existing brand management constructs to new media platforms. Sociocultural implications include demonstrating Nintendo’s establishment of their intellectual property as cultural icons that are resistant to the negative effects of weaker performing hardware (Garin, 2015; Richardson, Dick, & Jain, 1994), the provision of evidence against technological determinism (Jakobsson, 2011; Oyewole, 2015), and highlighting the degree of agency yielded by citizen actors in the establishment of Nintendo’s hardcore and causal game content brands as collective cultural experiences (Garin, 2015; Keller, 2008; Suominen & Ala-Luopa, 2012).…”