IN TELEVISION & MOVIES:
Der Ring des Nibelungen, because of its size and seriousness, lends itself well to parody. One well-known parody is Chuck Jones's 1957 Looney Tunes cartoon What's Opera, Doc? in which Bugs Bunny plays Brünnhilde and Elmer Fudd plays Siegfried. When it was featured in the 1979 compilation film The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, Bugs mis-pronounced the name of the source opera as "The Rings of Nebulon".
IN LITERATURE:
Anna Russell's The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis) is not really a parody, since it follows Wagner's story and actually discusses many of the Ring's leitmotifs as academically as she makes them entertaining. However, Russell draws attention to some of the more unusual elements in the plot that people often miss, to the delight of her audience.
Anthony Burgess's version of the Ring Cycle is the 1961 novel The Worm and the Ring, which transposes the action to an Oxfordshire grammar school. The comic fantasist Tom Holt similarly chooses to set Expecting Someone Taller, his sequel to the Ring, in a rural English setting.
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings appears to borrow some elements from Der Ring des Nibelungen; however, Tolkien himself denied that he had been inspired by Wagner's work, saying that "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases." Any similarity arises because Tolkien and Wagner both drew upon the same source material for inspiration, including the Völsunga saga and the Poetic Edda.
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