This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Random832: Is there any merit to the idea of something being "So So Bad, It's Good it's bad again?"
Seven Seals: It's debatable. The notion has been used rhetorically ("it's so bad, it's bad") but whether one can truly transcend So Bad, It's Good or merely get stuck on a Wall Banger... Most things that are bad are just that — a slithery pulp of rancid mediocrity and fetid listlessness. When it gets really bad, which is really only possible with an admirable determination to not let the risk of success scare you off from the road to failure, the work becomes a commentary on its creators — So Bad, It's Good. Can there be anything beyond that to subvert it again? To me it's like asking if it's possible for a joke to be too funny.
Kizor: There's a level below So Bad, It's Good, but it takes a unique level of badness and draws people only out of a sense of horrified curiosity. I've been planning to give that its article once I get this one copy-edited a bit.
Krid: I completely missed this page and made my own by mistake. (Sorry!) On the off chance somebody wants to cannibalize parts of it to improve this one, here's what I had:
Failwin Have you ever seen a series that was so horrifically bad that you can't seem to bring yourself to turn away, but a little while later you discover that the train wreck effect has worn off and you're actually watching it because you've started to enjoy it? Congratulations, you've just experienced Failwin.
Failwin is an illogical concept wherein something is so bad that it actually falls off the bottom of the chart in a very real way and lands right back up at the top. If a Failwin movie or show were to improve, then it would revert to simply being bad and jump the shark.
Something which is Failwin has an inordinately high probability of becoming a Cult Classic.
This is the opposite of Winfail (A state where a show is so awesome that it actually wraps around to become a piece of crap) in every way, including the fact that Winfail currently exists only in theory while Failwin has many ready examples.
Many Failwin shows are heavy on Camp and Guilty Pleasures, although that's not necessarily always the case.
Examples:
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a textbook case of this. As a movie it was a failure, but it managed to fail so badly that it's become one of the most respected and revered movies of all time.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 fits here as well. The pauses between movie segments are poorly done all around, but it's done in such a way that nobody cares. Despite the crappiness of it, the framing of the series is often as much or more fun to watch than the content itself.
- This is often seen in Internet Memes, when people combine two or more horrible things (Or pieces thereof) into something good. Leeroy Jenkins, for example.
Ununnilium: I fused some bits from it to the existing entry. Note I didn't put in the MST3K example, because it doesn't really fit; while it's low-budget, it's intentionally so, and they use it to make things that are funny on their own.
Grev: I think I know where the discussion is headed, but how is Leeroy Jenkins an example of Memetic Mutation producing something So Bad, It's Good?
Ununnilium: Is this Crescent Love series an actual example? From the description, it seems to be Plain Ol' Bad.
Jisu: I was going to put it in So Bad Its Horrible, but people actually made it to the end laughing at it — something that would put it under here. On the Crescent Love note, the "DVD cabbage" picture was a hoax - it never improved.
Kizor: Should we use the first panel of the last page of this
as an illustration, or would it clutter the article too much or be the kind of content that we'd rather be without or not actually so bad it's funny?
Citizen: I'd like to cut down on the quotes for this entry, and perhaps have something from the Repercussions of Evil
(it's so hard to resist quoting the whole thing...):
- Document N: That would have to go under intentional examples, though.
- Document N: ...and now I see that it's already on the page; I just needed to look for "Peter Chimaera" instead of "Doom". Never mind.
Willy Four Eyes: Who keeps deleting the Soulja Boy entry? Surely that has to qualify for So Bad, It's Good status. Of course, I'd prefer adding MIMS' "This Is Why I'm Hot
" in its place, if that's to be removed. (Link goes to a humorous "graphical dissertation" of the song, posted in the Village Voice last year).
Lead Pal: How about we add this image
◊ to the page? Perhaps a tad nauseating, but it's exemplary of something So Bad, It's Good.
Crazyrabbits: This example:
- The Shield. A Cop Show created by people who know little or nothing about real-life policing, but know cop drama inside out.
That doesn't make it a bad show. Perhaps you should set aside your own preconceptions about television and try to understand that The Shield is quite a good show, one that has been nominated for numerous awards and accolades, and employs considerable Hollywood actors like Forest Whitaker and Glenn Close. Those facts alone are enough to prove this show is nowhere near bad or corny. Yes, it's a stylized version of inner-city policing. Unless you have more proof to back up your claim, I'm deleting it.
Charred Knight: deleted some examples that just listed the name of the entry. Give reasons why its so bad its good or don't post it at all. Also please try to include only entries OTHER people believe is so bad its good. This is not a personal opinion trope, if it was it would have about 500+ examples, and 3/4 of the page would be flame wars.
Treguard: Isn't the plot of "The Producers" a utilization of this trope?
cg12345: Sort of. In "The Producers", they were aiming for So Bad Its Horrible, but ended up with So Bad, It's Good, thanks to Misaimed Fandom.
Sketch: Moved the James Bond examples to Your Mileage May Vary since it seems more at home there.
Crazyrabbits: Removed the Big Rigs example. For one thing, it's under [1] AND [2] at the same time. For another, there's no compelling evidence to support his claim. The link in the description leads to a blog entry with people telling the author that his post (a one-paragraph post showing how he laughed at the game) and website were terrible. More evidence, please.
Raekuul: Why was the Arfenhouse series on neither this or {{So Bad It's Horrible}}? I added the Arfenhouse Games and first two movies in here, but they sorta toe the line between the two.
goodtimesfreegrog: Moved Limbo of the Lost to So Bad Its Horrible Video Game Examples...sigh.
Austin: From what I've heard of All-star Batman, it sounds more like a Take That against anyone who doesn't like Frank Miller's Batman. Notable is the line "You think I'm nuts? I'll show you nuts!".
Air Of Mystery: Willy Four Eyes, why did you remove the Doom comic example? Sure, maybe the quotes were gratuitous, but the comic is a valid example.
Would the Beatles cartoon of the 1960s apply to this?
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Worth a shot.
- Batman Forever and Batman and Robin.
Trogga: Don't more people think they're so bad they're horrible?
Bob: Both are valid opinions, but personally I'd say they're more "unintentionally funny" than "flat-out obnoxious".
Korodzik: Worth1000? What?
SpaceChief: The Curse Of The Screaming Dead never appeared on MST 3 K as far as I know. This should probably be moved to under "Film".
Starscream: Can someone please tell me why this trope hasn't been divided into separate pages, in the mold of stuff like So Bad Its Horrible?
Freezair For A Limited Time: Cut:
- Ben 10 Alien Force: There's just something unique about a George Lucas Love Story spread over a parade of Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong written by people who just can't write that you aren't going to get anywhere else.
Considering that Ben 10 has plenty of unironic fans, this is more a case of Your Mileage May Vary.
fleb: This was cut back in June, but I'm going to restore the first bullet point. The badness itself isn't contested, after all. If there's ever a dispute as to whether something like this is So Bad, It's Good or So Bad Its Horrible, then it's SBIG by default. You can't dispute So Bad Its Horrible; it's self-evident.
- Frank Miller's All-Star Batman & Robin (a.k.a. "ASSBAR", "The God-Damn Batman!"). Home to lines like "What are you, dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the goddamn Batman." and "Out of my way, sperm bank." Also, Frankie would like to remind you that Dick Grayson, age twelve, is in fact twelve years old. Every time his name appears in print.
- Contested. This troper and plenty of others find Frank Miller writing himself running around in the cape and cowl, killing every random mook he comes across and setting bleach on fire, to be worthy of eyerolling at best, indicative of how far DC's fallen at worst.
- While the above opinion is shared by most dedicated comic book fans, the less the readers belong to comic fandom the more it's likely that they will find the series entertaining. I guess you can't blame the fans, given that Miller's work seems deliberately construed to make fun of his own "Dark Knight" and everything connected to that. But some of those less attached to the character can honestly love reading a totally whacked-out Batman comic that looks like Sin City's Miller directing Adam West. This troper in particular can't wait to see what Madness Miller and Lee will come up with in the next issue. Same goddamn time. Same goddamn channel.
- Contested anyway by this female troper, who considers herself as much of a laid-back comic book fan as there is going. She has no particular brief with the fans who defend ASBAR as a homage/parody of the classic pulp novels,a la Mickey Spillane; she would just like to point out that that genre as a whole was only ever truly light-hearted fun if you're a white American male.
fleb: This is either too meta to be an example, or it's actually an integer-overflow joke.
- In Girl Days, a genuinely good Ranma 1/2 fic, Kenchuro Tojo, a martial artist, has invented a style called Baka-ken that utilizes this very trope.
Genma: Let me see... so your idea is to become the world's worst possible martial artist while still technically BEING a martial artist, and there by passing straight through pathetic inadequacy through to the other side, becoming in a flash the greatest martial artist that the world has ever known?
Mencken on Warren G. Harding in 1921 Baltimore Evening Sun article entitled 'Gamalielese'
"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
Why did the Simpsons episode get removed?
