This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Rothul: I'm not really sure if Teen Titans in DCAU continuity question is actually a question of the comedy ghetto, so much as the fact that Word of God refuses to say one way or the other, and it is very difficult to figure out where it fits on it own. I mean, Static Shock was often as goofy as Teen Titans, and no one doubts its place in the DCAU, and The Batman could be quite intense, and everyone knows it's a separate continuity.
Planet Cool: It's true about Word of God, Static Shock, and all that, but that didn't stop the fanboys from crying bloody murder at the fact that Teen Titans didn't play all of its stories as Serious Business, the way the DCAU traditionally had. Maybe it's just a problem that happened when the show first came out in 2003, but when you look at it, even the lighter Justice League episodes are more "serious" than most Teen Titans episodes. I think it does qualify, but in any case I just observed the debate from the sidelines.
Muninn: Moved the following section from the article description
- In a subset, many a hardcore anime nerd (extra points if he's a white full-blooded American) maintains that because anime is different from western cartoons in the sense that it's more likely to have a Darker and Edgier (i.e. not funny) tone, feature extended story arcs, sex, and violence, the medium is fundamentally superior to its live-dynamite-and-anvils-from-the-heavens counterpart. Any semblance of logic in this supposition has yet to be discovered.
- I wrote that. As an anime fan myself, I certainly didn't mean to be offensive to my brethren, but still, you can't pretend that what I describe up there doesn't happen all the time and has become a noticeable (for lack of a better term) phenomenon. I think it should still be included, but go ahead and discuss it up just in case.
Muninn: The main problem I see with this trope is that it doesn't explain specifically what the ghetto is about. Animation Age Ghetto is specifically about animation being percieved as "for kids", Sci Fi Ghetto is about the supposed lack of characterization and original plot-ness in "genre fiction", and this trope is kind of all over the place. The description talks about people not being able to see comedy as "true art", but the examples are all about comedy being considered... bad? "Bad" has no meaning by itself.
Planet Cool: Does anybody really think science-fiction is perceived as not having good characterization and original plotting? Not really, the ridiculous idea that floats around circles with that kind of mindset is that the genre is too frivolous to convey anything meaningful to the audience. This trope is all about the opinion that "dramatic" things have higher artistic merit than comedic ones. Nobody really thinks comedy is "bad", per se, but an awful lot see it as... well, as having the same supposed faults as sci-fi.
