Line #44 Main/SpotMonkey


1	->''"If you can enjoy a match where a man gets a uranage on a guardrail and then gets body slammed on a guardrail and five minutes later is making a comeback and not selling his back? This is a match for you. If that sort of thing annoys you, not a match for you. This was a video game match with better psychology but a wrestling match with not great psychology."''
2	-->--'''Bryan Alvarez''' on Christopher Daniels vs Jay Lethal for the TNA X Division Title at Bound For Glory 2007
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4	A "spot", in ProfessionalWrestling lingo, is a move as scripted into a match, including the reaction by the opponent.[[note]]While the outcomes of matches are scripted, most of the match is improvised, with the exception of spots at key moments. One of the most important and difficult parts of a pro wrestler's job is to make the improvised parts flow properly from one spot to the next, and come off like a real athletic competition, or at least like a real ''fight''.[[/note]] Some (particularly younger) wrestlers know a lot of great spots, which look absolutely brutal and require a great degree of athleticism, and yet they still don't really know how to ''wrestle''; they have no idea how to tell a story in their matches, or even the basics of acting like something really hurt. They're the type of wrestlers who will do a Triple-Tope-Quebradora-Con-Queso through three flaming tables onto a bed of thumbtacks and ground glass wired with explosives, and then get up like nothing happened, only to perform an even ''more'' spectacular spot later in the match. These wrestlers are referred to as "Spot Monkeys" by fans, and their matches are often "Spotfests" (in other words, spot after spot with little or no rhyme or reason to them).
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6	Interestingly, the term "Spot Monkey" is seeing less relevance these days, partly because modern fans buy less into {{Kayfabe}} and the need for selling, partly because there is an increasing trend of audiences preferring more amazing stunts (and wrestlers who are happy to satisfy), and partly because the term has too often been used as shorthand for "wrestler I don't like." In the other direction, "spotfest" isn't always a negative term, and a fan can use it to when they are impressed with the conditioning or ability to put together rapid fire spots ''well'', or tell a good story with those spots. Contrast WrestlingPsychology, which tends to get ignored when this trope is in play.
7	----
8	!! Professional Wrestling
9	* Averted with Wrestling/ShawnMichaels, who is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time and one of the absolute best at telling a story through a match, but played straight in the ''influence'' he had on today's spot monkeys, being a great practitioner of high-level spots himself.
10	* Likewise, Wrestling/{{Rey Mysterio Jr}} is '''not''' a spot monkey, in fact he probably has the best WrestlingPsychology of any of the ''lucha libre'' guys. But the kids that watched him growing up just remember all the flips. Ask any male wrestler under 200 pounds or just about any female wrestler period who their influences are, Rey and Shawn will probably be the first two names mentioned.
11	* [[Wrestling/{{ECW}} Extreme Championship Wrestling]] is often accused of inspiring this trope in future generations of American wrestlers, although whether it had enough examples to be actually guilty is up to debate.
12	** Former ECW and [[Wrestling/ImpactWrestling TNA]] (and recent re-signee with Wrestling/{{WWE}}) wrestler Wrestling/RobVanDam often gets accused of being a spot monkey, but he shows more awareness of the "story" factor in his matches than most spot monkeys do, making him a borderline case at best.
13	** Van Dam's is more about his lack of selling a story rather than lack of selling an attack. A case in point would be his match with Wrestling/{{Abyss}} at ''Bound For Glory''. Abyss had tried to ''kill'' RVD with a block of wood covered with huge nails and forced RVD to vacate the belt. During the match, RVD played to the crowd and generally acted like this was just another match rather than a high-level blood feud. Spot monkey may not be the correct term to describe this, though; perhaps 'so laid back by nature that he acts high even when he hasn't touched any marijuana recently' fits better. It may just not be in RVD's emotional design to be able to get, or sell, being seriously angry.
14	** Back in the old days of RSPW, this was called a Wrestling/{{Sabu}} Match, named after ECW wrestler Sabu. It's actually an interesting case of Sabu's wrestling style. Back in the old days, Sabu really could wrestle and would throw in the occasional high spot. However, the ECW crowd only cheered the high spots. It eventually devolved to the point where Sabu only did high spots because that's all the crowd would react to. The end result would be a high spot, a couple of minutes of walking around or resting, and then another high spot which completely destroyed any sense of wrestling psychology or workrate.
15	* Lucha libre can often seem like this to a casual viewer, in that the rules for trios matches don't allow for American-style heat building [[note]]In lucha libre, if a wrestler leaves the ring, a replacement can enter without tagging, meaning there is no such thing as a RickyMorton scenario[[/note]] and the harder rings make traditional "bumps" all but impossible. Since about 99% of modern American pro wrestling is babyfaces selling heel offense, and then heels taking big bumps for the comeback, it just looks like a bunch of masked men doing pretty flips.
16	** Also in lucha libre it's somewhat common for the técnicos (faces) to be spot monkeys and provide the high spots, and for the rudos (heels) to be more grounded and responsible for telling the story. Watch pretty much any Wrestling/{{Rey Mysterio Jr}} vs Wrestling/{{Psicosis}} match from the 90s, and how Psicosis controls the pace and sets Mysterio up for his high spots.
17	** While most of Essa Rios's spots were both impressive and oddly sensible, some during his WWF run were senseless such as his Jakked match where he gave Wrestling/LowKi an arm drag that did not carry any of the momentum from his prior acrobatics, making him look like a showoff. In his better spots, his acrobatics made basic moves seem a lot more painful.
18	* Despite having its roots being in realistic martial arts, not even Japanese pro wrestling is immune to this phenomenon, and it is even believed to be a source/inspiration for this showing up in the American indy scene. Partially it comes from a lot of Japanese promotions employing a psychology an American fan may not immediately understand, like rapid exchanges of high impact moves (as opposed to reeling after one or two), constant transitions between submission holds (rather than locking one in as long as possible), simultaneous adrenalin surges punctuated by [[{{kiai}} screaming]] (which is easier for foreign fans to understand but can still be a little weird when a wrestler suddenly powers up) and selling almost nothing at the start of the match but sell progressively more as it goes on (which makes wrestlers seeming more energized at the finish rather than wearing down as the fight goes on). But of course, it also comes too from the Japanese love for extreme things, in this case athletes doing some high spots for little reason other than them looking nice, which wrestlers from Wrestling/MichinokuProWrestling and Wrestling/{{F\|MW}}rontier Martial-Arts Wrestling were guilty of popularizing.
19	** Wrestling/TheGreatSasuke has been often called the original Japanese spot monkey, as not even injuries and ring wear have prevented him from trying to kill himself on the ring from time to time, though Hayabusa also came behind, and even Wrestling/JushinThunderLiger had his own moments (he was the innovator of the shooting star press, for instance). Extreme high-flyers from Japan like Wrestling/KotaIbushi, Wrestling/TakuyaSugi and MIKAMI can trace their style back to them.
20	** Another reason for needlessly spectacular movements came from applying SoLastSeason to finishing moves, which at one point started to form a wrestling style itself, the "King's Road". Born in Wrestling/AllJapanProWrestling and inherited by Wrestling/ProWrestlingNOAH, it saw the emergence of the notion that both wrestlers and audiences would become accustomed to a high-impact move enough for it to lose credibility, leading to the usage of even nastier, more lethal-looking moves. By the end of this fad, main eventers were finishing matches only by wrist-clutch lifting spinning head-drop drivers or something even more complex, which brought a batch of neck injuries and even the death of one of them, Wrestling/MitsuharuMisawa.
21	** Even although the Kings's Road style ended up dying out, Wrestling/DragonGate would further inherit a similar variation of it, in a not small part because the influence Japanese wrestling had in American indy wrestling came full circle to influence DG. The promotion would be described by Vince Verhei of [[Wrestling/TheWrestlingObserverNewsletter Figure Four Weekly]] as "two guys/teams come out, they do 75,000 moves as fast as they can in a 10 minute span, and then at a random point, one of them is pinned."
22	* Some indy wrestlers could be called "stiffness spot monkeys". Stiffness is a wrestling term to describe how hard the fake strikes are - the harder they are, the stiffer they are. The advantage of stiffness is that it's easier to make strikes look real when they for all intents and purposes ''are'' real. The first disadvantage is that if not ''very'' well-timed and targeted, stiff strikes can greatly increase the risk of injuring your opponent. Counter intuitively, the second disadvantage is that a stiff strike can be harder to [[TheatricsOfPain sell]], making matches look like clumsy brawls. Wrestling/WilliamRegal and Finlay are two good mainstream examples of stiff workers, and two examples of ''good ones''. But on the indy scene, some guys just whale on each other as hard as they can for no particular reason. Wrestling/{{Raven}} actually ranted about this phenomenon on his blog. This is due to the influence of Japanese wrestling on the indy scene, and the popularity of super-stiff Japanese wrestlers like Wrestling/KentaKobashi. But Kobashi, like Finlay and Regal, can work stiff responsibly, and the Japanese touring schedule is much more relaxed, allowing the wrestlers more time off to recover and thus allowing them to take more punishment in the ring.
23	** One example of a "stiffness spot monkey" (as opposed to a stiff, but responsible wrestler) on the Japanese circuit was legend Wrestling/StanHansen; who would often legitimately injure his opponents due to the fact that he was [[BlindWithoutEm legally blind]].
24	** In his autobiography, Wrestling/BretHart accused the younger Japanese wrestlers from Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling (and Japanese-trained [[Wrestling/AllenCoage Bad News Allen/Brown]]) of this; the cult-like dojo system that produced them taught them not to "respect" (i.e., sell for) an opponent that wasn't legitimately beating the hell out of them.
25	** In the 1980s, Pavillón Azteca ''Super Lunes'' shows were characterized by overly stiff matches, especially those involving Super Muñeco, a popular draw known for having the second highest number of [[HumiliatingWager apuestas wins]] in lucha libre history. Because Muñeco was a small man with a {{comedy\|ghetto}} [[NonIronicClown clown]] gimmick, his opponents resented having to lose to him and would make sure to legitimately beat him up before allowing him to win.
26	** While Baby Bull would later become one of the best stiff workers in the business, Wrestling/BigVanVader, he admits that during his early days in the Wrestling/AmericanWrestlingAssociation he was under the impression beating the piss out of your opponent was how to go about a match and the Gagnes had to teach him to dial it back.
27	** La Nazi had trouble finding work on the Mexican independent circuit during the 90s due to her unrelenting stiffness. Eventually Commandante Pierroth taught her how to protect opponents, after which she was quickly snatched up by Wrestling/{{AAA}} and Wrestling/{{CMLL}}.
28	** La Nazi's counterpart North of the border is Trenesha Biggers, who was snatched up by TNA and Lucha Libre USA ''without'' receiving similar instruction[[note]]She had been through WWE's Deep South developmental territory, but Deep South was considered a failure for a reason[[/note]], leading to a fight after hitting Roxxi Laveaux too hard in the former and [[Wrestling/TheWrestlingObserverNewsletter Bryan Alvarez]] giving out the rare minus five stars rating after she beat on Octagoncito and Mascarita Dorada in the latter.
29	** Wrestling/{{M\|ontelVontaviousPorter}}VP has also ranted about this on the independent circuit, though unlike those above his complaint was about opponents hitting him too lightly, saying too many wrestlers who had no business throwing kicks [[FollowTheLeader were suddenly trying to imitate]] a match between Wrestling/LowKi and Wrestling/SamoaJoe that [[StarMakingRole made the latter a star]].
30	** Low Ki himself has been all but called a stiffness spot monkey by Jim Cornette for hitting people too hard at the wrong time, referencing how Low Ki was supposed to have a fairly long opener in EVOLVE with Ahtu and had no idea what to do when he accidentally knocked Ahtu unconscious with his first kick. In response to MVP's accusations, Joe basically said he had no plans to work that[[NoHoldsBarredContest Fight Without Honor]] so stiffly and was only going by the standard Low Ki had set. Outside of stiffness, Low Ki does seem to get all other aspects of psychology though, with Cornette hypothesizing that "small" wrestlers sometimes feel the need to "[[TheNapoleon prove]]" they can hit hard.
31	* A good portion of the Wrestling/RingOfHonor roster in the early days could be accused of this; most notable is the group Special K, who almost served as a {{Lampshading}} of the wrestling style. All of the members were rich kid ravers who were on so much drugs that they could pretty much kill themselves doing ridiculous moves with no rhyme or reason to it (conveniently sidestepping the question of how they actually had the motor coordination to actually pull these spots off in Kayfabe), and they flaunted their lack of storytelling and "respect for the business" for heel heat.
32	** Special K was negatively contrasted with Wrestling/LowKi, a "[[SeriousBusiness shoot-style]]" pro wrestler who relied more on stiff kicks (and unlike the other "stiffness spot monkeys" described above, ''usually'' knew how to be stiff responsibly). It didn't help Special K's reputation (or them in kayfabe) that Wrestling/LowKi was one of ROH's top stars and kayfabe threats at the time.
33	** Jack Evans, innovator of the 720 moonsault and leader of ROH's Generation Next and Vulture Squad, in a big bad way. Practically every single move he does involves at least one flip. The worst part, he's sloppy as hell and has landed on his head countless times, only surviving for how flexible he is.
34	** A particularly infamous example is indy ''primadonna'' Teddy Hart. In addition to being a royal pain backstage and [[SmallNameBigEgo having delusions about his own popularity]], Teddy was well known for no-selling within seconds of a match's finish just so that he could show off with more athletic moves. The height of this was Teddy performing several unplanned spots off the top of a cage following a Wrestling/RingOfHonor cage match. The spots made no sense, diminished the story of the match by having Teddy be energetic enough to perform them, were a blatant attempt at drawing attention to himself, and put the other wrestlers in danger because they had to catch him with no preparation. ROH blackballed him, and future WWE Heavyweight Champion Wrestling/CMPunk [[http://cmpunk.livejournal.com/9301.html publicly lambasted]] Teddy for his actions. This single incident is probably the most extreme example of everything that is wrong with the Spot Monkey style.
35	-->'''Wrestling/CMPunk''': There is no god, and the cage wasn't 30 feet.
36	** Not to mention that both Punk AND Hart got blackballed (at least from that company) for a fight that they had while both employed by TNA. Thankfully Hart's spot monkeying and locker room hell raising gradually diminished over the years to the point then rookie wrestler [[Wrestling/{{MJF}} Maxwell Jacob Friedman]] was able to convince Hart to ''not'' have a Canadian Destroyer off a ladder through a flaming table be one of the spots in an Wrestling/{{MLW}} match they had.
37	* Wrestling/{{WWE}}'s Wrestling/JeffHardy went through a severe spot monkey phase (and likely inspired a whole generation of other monkeys) before his departure from the company, to the point he was [[AlternateCompanyEquivalent called]] the Teddy Hart of WWE, but got somewhat better after his return; while he's still known for his tendency to dive off high things, he is at least much better about using such spots as part of a match's story.
38	* Wrestling/JohnMorrison gets painted with this brush. Mostly since he's a former gymnast who now practices LeParkour and UsefulNotes/{{Capoeira}}, his spots can be ''spectacular'' when he does do them. As far as everything in between them, he's improved since his debut, but many of his TV matches boil down to him doing three spots, followed by his finisher, with the other guy doing most of the work. Since leaving WWE and working for Wrestling/{{AAA}} and Wrestling/LuchaUnderground as Johnny Mundo and [[Wrestling/ImpactWrestling TNA]] as Johnny Impact his psychology and consistency has improved substantially, so he rarely faces these accusations any more.
39	* Some of the members of [[Wrestling/ImpactWrestling TNA]]'s X Division, including Sonjay Dutt and Wrestling/JayLethal. Others, like Wrestling/AJStyles and Wrestling/ChristopherDaniels, employ a wrestling style with just as many impressive spots, but manage to actually chain them together with decent wrestling, and thus avoid being tarred with the spot monkey brush. It should be noted Alvarez still gave the match mentioned in the page quote three stars. "Good but could be better".
40	* A non high-flying example would be Wrestling/GailKim from her first WWE run, who used complicated, nasty looking submission holds with no rhyme, reason or buildup. Ironically whenever she wrestles with her high flying moveset, she shows full awareness of how to tell a story with her moves.
41	* Most of the roster of ''Wrestling/WrestlingSocietyX''. In some cases [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this was deliberate]], as the show was only thirty minutes long and there was a segment set aside for a musical guest, so the wrestlers had to let everyone know what they could do in a hurry and still create a product that was distinct from WWE or TNA. They also had to appease executives who were most interested in explosions and broken furniture.
42	* Wrestling/KellyKelly used to have a big problem with this around 2009. As a former gymnast she would often pull out all kinds of headscissors, hurricanranas and complicated flips in every match with little rhyme or reason. When she was moved to ''[=SmackDown=]'' she worked to improve and has averted this now.
43	* Wrestling/ShaneMcMahon, despite the fact he is a sitting executive at WWF/E, part of one of the most legacied families in the business, and the boss' only son, who knows how to fight and wrestle. Did a flying elbow drop from the corner to the announce table at ''Wrestling/WrestleMania X-Seven'' to his dad, his signature move is a corner-to-corner dropkick into a trashcan, and his most famous spot is definitely the Leap of Faith off the Titantron or Wrestling/HellInACell. He has also taken some nasty bumps too (such as being thrown through the King of the Ring set onto unpadded concrete, a bump that took ''multiple'' attempts to make work, with him landing squarely on his head on the failed tries), being sent through a plate of plexiglass twice and landing on his head and neck the first time, doing a Shooting Star Press onto a garbage can in his match with Wrestling/KurtAngle at the 2001 ''Wrestling/KingOfTheRing'' PPV, since it was pure showing off as the move would only hurt Shane and do nothing to Angle. He's also ''still'' a Spot Monkey well into his 50s and after a 17-year hiatus, and he has received multiple concussions and injuries for still retaining his high-flying moveset.
44	* Wrestling/{{Layla}} is an odd variation of the trope - she is a '''comedy''' spot monkey. Moreso as a heel than as a face (as a face she merely comes across as a little playful before getting down to serious business). She has a habit of forcing excessive comedy spots into a match where they don't make much sense and don't particularly flow well with the story. And she has very little understanding of subtlety - as a heel she's a fountain of {{Narm}}.
45	* Wrestling/MichelleMcCool was a more traditional example, doing handsprings and such for little reason than to show off (they would not even transition into another move or anything). She quickly got better about it but [[NeverLiveItDown some fans really let it go and insist]] she was always a mediocre talent who was only being pushed because of her relationship with Wrestling/TheUndertaker.
46	* Pro Wrestling Ponderings have accused AR Fox of degenerating from doing moves to hurt people to doing moves to look cool as his EVOLVE run progressed. They periodically made such accusations toward EVOLVE in general leading up to its "reboot", as it was built on the specific psychologies of technical wrestling and contrasting styles and felt EVOLVE shows lost meaning as those things became less central.
47	* One of the more common complaints from detractors of Wrestling/TheYoungBucks is their matches tend to involve a ton of unnecessarily added flips and way too gratuitous use of superkicking. On the flip side, many also see the pair as a [[ParodiedTrope parody]] of this trope, as they are well aware of the smarky audience that tends to watch their matches (they named one of their moves after ''[[Wrestling/TheWrestlingObserverNewsletter Dave Meltzer]]'' for crying out loud) and purposely act like spot monkeys as a way to piss them off in order to play the {{Heel}} role.
48	* The final confrontation between Wrestling/BrockLesnar and Wrestling/{{Goldberg}} at ''Wrestling/WrestleMania 33'' showed that the only way to get a really entertaining match (distinct from the 86-second SquashMatch they'd had at ''Wrestling/SurvivorSeries'' the previous year) out of them was to go for a full-bore hoss spotfest. The two did nothing except trade signature moves and finishers for less than 5 minutes, with Goldberg hitting multiple spears (including one through the barricade outside the ring) and Lesnar delivering ''ten'' of his trademark German Suplexes, kicking out of Goldberg's Jackhammer (the first time anyone has ''ever'' done that other than the botched spot where Wrestling/HulkHogan was forced to kick out when Wrestling/KevinNash's interference was late) and finally putting Goldberg down with an F5. For the entire match neither man so much as threw a punch, it was just spot, spot, spot from bell to bell. Surprisingly, it was considered an excellent match between them, ''worlds'' better than their plodding and overly drawn-out encounter at ''[=WrestleMania=] XX'' 13 years earlier.
49	* Since debuting on Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling's flagship show ''Dynamite'', all of Private Party's televised TagTeam matches featured them using dangerous moves exclusively, including a vaulting body press as a mid match spot even though it is almost visually identical to the senton bomb they [[FinishingMove tended to end the match with]]. This died down after they were [[DealWithTheDevil conned by]] and became the lackeys of Wrestling/MattHardy.
50	* Wrestling/SammyGuevara has been reckless and over the top from day one of his All Elite Wrestling debut, but really cemented himself as a spot monkey after the collective HeelFaceTurn of [[PowerStable The]] Wrestling/InnerCircle. Be it a missed tope, a power slam off the top rope, a pile driver through a table or missed charged into the post baby face!Guevara [[NoSell will not sell]]. Even when legitimately injured he no sold a missed senton on the ring apron, aggravating what might have been a bump he could have walked off with by just selling, working the rest of the match slower and taking a day or two off, in order to do more spots.
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52	!! Non-wrestling examples:
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54	[[AC:ComicBooks]]
55	* Some ComicBook artists embellish their pages with art which actually detracts from the story, in order to make it more sellable in the Original Art market.
56	** ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'' will usually make note of something like this happening. If a book is utter crap, but has great artwork, Linkara will not shy from complimenting the art and making sure the viewers know he likes the artist's work. He will then break apart the story and show us its faults, thus proving that good artwork does not a good story make.
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58	[[AC:{{Film}}]]
59	* Gore-driven TorturePorn films have this reputation in the horror genre. The lesser of these films ignore trying to build suspense in favour of elaborate gore, giving the scenes a "wasn't that cool" mentality instead of being actually scary. There's a reason the more effective and scary horror films are those that don't rely on gore for their scares, instead using it as a punchline after lengthy, suspenseful buildup if they use it at all.
60	** This said, this may not be deliberate. Many of the more famous "torture porn" directors are haemophobes, and to them, these scenes are as legitimately scary as a more traditional horror moment.
61	* For a similar reason above, Creator/MichaelBay has built a career off of this for his films. He doesn't get the best scripts to work with, and his direction may leave something to be desired, but his films are CGI filled, car chase ridden, [[StuffBlowingUp explosion fested]] love letters to the word ''awesome''. He's made a lot of money doing this, so it's not like anyone can fault him (and his plots and directing aren't usually all that bad anyhow, just not masterpieces). Furthermore, he does have a sense of humor about his status, using SelfDeprecation humor in a few TV ads and cameos.
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63	[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
64	* An in-universe and accidental aversion in ''Literature/ReservedForTheCat''. When dancing the title role in ''La Sylphide'' for the first time outside a rehearsal room, Ninette is so wiped at the end that she delivers a very brief death scene for the Sylph. One reviewer compliments her for not padding out the death scene to show off her ballet moves (something the ''prima'' she was substituting for was notorious for doing). Later, when she and Nigel are planning the show in England, the trope is played straight -- Ninette's part will involve several flashy ballet moves linked together with "looks nice, but no strain whatsoever" dance.
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66	[[AC:{{Music}}]]
67	* A curiously-related example can be found in {{opera}}. In what is meant to be a sung story, a lot of the more spectacular singers ignore the acting element in favor of scene-stealing vocal performances (i.e., not making eye contact with someone you're meant to be 'acting' with in a duet, opting to sing for technique and not for emotion, etc). The phenomenon is strikingly similar enough to call them spot monkeys.
68	* Even ''more'' curiously related, this behavior contributed to the downfall of the Castrati -- men who'd been castrated at a young age so that the high pitches and clarity of tone from their pre-pubescent voices never faded, but were instead added to by the power of adult male lungs and a more flexible ribcage. Many, many Castrati, shamelessly self-satisfied, embellished and improvised the arias they were given to make themselves look as magnificent as possible, with no regards to what the opera was about or what that aria itself was even trying to say. Fed up, one of the most influential opera composers of the time announced he was sick of this bullshit and that he was no longer writing ''any'' parts for Castrati in his operas. This caught on as many composers were equally done with having their carefully crafted art chewed up and spat out with gaudy, vocal acrobatics and as a result, the Castrati vogue -- which had gone on for quite some time and produced a number of bonafide superstars -- began to subside.\
69	The Church tried to cap it by banning the creation of castrati for musical purposes, but problems with LoopholeAbuse inevitably set in -- all later boys had just [[ContrivedCoincidence 'happened' to 'need' their testicles removed or destroyed at about 13 for some 'medical' reason]]. (Surgeons in those days did not have any sort of regulation, and child abuse was only regarded as such if it were liable to actually kill the child.) France managed to stop the craze first by banning them ''performing'' -- everywhere else, the change in fashion came at about the same time as changes in medical practice (with surgery done by doctors) ''and'' a change in social attitudes to children's rights. Ball-less Spot Monkeys.
70	* There's another musical version of spot monkeys. There are several singers who can achieve very high notes in a range known as the Whistle Register. Minnie Riperton was one of the first, and others such as Music/MariahCarey and Debelah Morgan have been able to achieve it more recently. Possibly because it's difficult to make your voice jump up and down your range (or because listening to it for long periods can get frustrating), but any time a singer uses the Whistle Register, it's never used for the purpose of the song, or even ''during'' a song. It's usually added on to the end of it, almost just to say "Listen to what I can do."
71	* MelismaticVocals in general can be considered a musical spot monkey, since many cases result in the song getting thrown by the wayside in favor of letting the singer show off. (Depending on who you ask, you can thank/blame either Music/MariahCarey or Music/ChristinaAguilera for this getting ''really'' out of hand.) It's not so bad when it's a solo singer since lung capacity will usually keep it under check, but if it's a group, the melisma never seems to really stop.
72	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lO5eGEnyRA "Where My Girls At?"]] by 702 seems to always have someone warbling in the background.
73	** Speaking of Aguilera, you have both times when she performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at sporting events, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc5R19IUugw the first]] being at the 2004 [[UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation NBA]] All-Star Game and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj5NPNe3jNU the second]] at UsefulNotes/SuperBowl XLV. In both instances, she used the occasion as an excuse to show off her singing, changing the melody in the process (though in both cases, her singing was hardly the only indignity done to the NationalAnthem).
74	* This can happen in piano too, most often in styles such as Ragtime where the player is allowed and sometimes even expected to improvise. So they decide to show off their speed and technical ability, oftentimes at the expense of the music.
75	** Compare [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ocdQjQTAig this version]] of ''The Chevy Chase'' by Eubie Blake, which is fairly close to the way it looks on sheet music, to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBcfXuvo0_c this one]] played so fast and altered so much that there's almost no trace of the actual song left.
76	** Ragtime is an interesting example in that there were plenty of [=composer/performers=] who happily embellished their songs. Compare [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI1__i9FSB4 the sheet music]] of Lucky Roberts' "Pork and Beans" to the way it sounded when Lucky Roberts himself [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk7Gt1YTcwY played it]]. On the other hand, Music/ScottJoplin - widely considered the greatest ragtime composer - was ''not'' a fan of this style. His written sheet music often had a note that read "Do not play too fast. It is never right to play ragtime too fast."
77	** Throughout his long musical career, from his beginnings as a classical concert pianist to his heyday as a Las Vegas headliner and television star, Liberace had the unusual distinction of being accused of playing like this in both directions: one notorious review leveled the accusation that, "''Liberace recreates — if that is the word — each composition in his own image. When it is too difficult, he simplifies it. When it is too simple, he complicates it.''" Liberace himself allegedly just stopped practicing the piano at a certain point because he could play most of his sets by rote and covered his increasingly sloppy technique with flashy playing that ''looked'' and ''sounded'' more impressive than it was to actually ''play''.
78	* Neoclassical[=/=]Jazz Fusion shred guitarists in RockMusic and HeavyMetal often have this reputation. This is because in many cases, these musicians, while technically excellent, will merely rely on their ability to play extremely fast[=/=]complicated guitar parts rather than contributing anything of value to the song they are playing. In fact, this was part of the HypeBacklash against HairMetal in [[TheNineties the early '90s]], as many of the genre's bands relied too much on flashy leads and guitar work rather than musical substance to sustain their songs, which caused listeners to turn against them.
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80	[[AC:{{Sports}}]]
81	* Roller derby used to involves entire teams of spot monkeys back in the '70s, where every score, every block, every fall, and every fight was scripted beforehand, though [[{{Kayfabe}} the players obviously denied this.]] Modern teams occasionally pull some spectacular trick skating out to gain popularity with the audience before the match or during half time, but these days matches are totally unscripted and often about ten times more brutal as a result. Modern roller derby matches are regularly promoted and described as "bouts".
82	* Because of the way the game is played, UsefulNotes/{{basketball}} players can become spot monkeys by choosing to go for the highlight reel dunk shot instead of simply scoring, sometimes to the point of refusing to make passes to teammates who have wide open shots.
83	** During the '90s, the Melbourne Tigers in Australia's National Basketball League seemingly kept a player named Brett Rainbow on their list exclusively for slam dunk competitions, never playing him in an actual game.
84
85	[[AC:VideoGames]]
86	* A common criticism leveled at modern action games (perhaps most notoriously the later installments in the ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' series) is that they have become long strings of barely-connected {{Videogame Set Piece}}s that introduce new gameplay mechanics for one stage, climax with a big "wow" moment, then jump on to the next one and never use the just-introduced mechanic again. The similarity to spot monkeying is quite striking.

Context Main / SpotMonkey