Getting Crap Past The Radar: Subjective?

First, I want to start by saying that I've always been bugged by the way the trope is interpreted in the site. While the practice definitively exists, its interpretation has become so broad, that gotten to the point where everything and anything that a viewer might consider daring is considered to have been brought in under the radar, even in cases where said events are an explicit part of the plot or script.

Examples:

None of the events described here are of the blink-and-you-miss it variety—they're explicit, script-critical moments, where the fact that the event occurs is the total point of the scene. They didn't fly under any radar; the "radar" caught them, analyzed them, and decided that they were appropriate for the story in question. Sometimes, such as with the Gargoyles examples, they are included despite explicit evidence demonstrating that there was no flying under the radar. This goes way beyond weeding out bad examples—the examples I provided are the tip of the iceberg, and there's ample evidence supporting the idea that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the trope. Heck, I recall that not long ago, South Park had a Radar page—an utterly ridiculous notion by any standard.

Part of the problem here is that there is no set, uniform standard to what constitutes the radar, partly because what is considered acceptable varies between production houses and networks. Thus, what is considered appropriate for Justice League Unlimited would not be acceptable for, say. X-Men: Evolution. What's more, with rare exceptions, the audiences aren't privy to the thinking that goes behind establishing those standards, which renders determining what did and didn't fly under the radar a guessing game in many cases. What's more, it's a guessing game that's often played based on a person's individual thoughts about what he or she thinks others would consider appropriate or inappropriate, which makes it the very definition of a subjective trope.

Avatar art by Lorna-Ka.

I don't know if it should be made subjective (and I tend to be negative to that suggestion in general, since it seems to be thrown around a lot nowadays), but I agree that this page has suffered from massive amounts of Trope Decay. Some of the things listed are completely innocuous, others are in works that aren't even for kids in first place. I honestly don't know what to do with it.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

Support either cleaning or sticking on YMMV.

Fight smart, not fair.

We should do our best to clean it, but it may be inherently YMMV anyway.

It is about subtle dirty stuff. That this is the intent is a matter of assumption, but not really of opinion. I'm not sure if YMMV is the best place for it.

I don't agree that it's YMMV. What I do think is that it needs cleanup. Recently, there was an entry (a joke, hopefully) on the Video Games page which described the presence of a naughty tattoo on a bloke in Modern Warfare 2 — in No Russian, of all things — as an example.

These are some 'examples' I found on the Sonic The Hedgehog page. To give a guideline, how many of these are actual examples?

• An entry which seems to focus on the name of a discarded level, with just a small section at the end claiming a Death Star parody to be an example, followed by a paragraph explaining why it probably isn't an example.
• An 'example' based on a rare interpretation of the words 'cut through'.
• Humans kissing animals and kissing the dead is apparently not suitable for twelve-year-olds. Again, followed by a 'might not be an example because' paragraph. Implications disregarded, is it an example?
• A character looks at another's breasts in a game with a 12+/E10+ age rating.
• A huge paragraph with an example based primarily on the ambiguity of the word 'lust'.

edited 6th Mar '11 12:33:21 PM by halfmillennium

What would make you think that it is even remotely subjective? It just needs cleanup.

Assuming you're referring to me, I stated my reason why I think the trope's subjective: because without a consistent set of standards to determine what constitutes "The Radar" and how it's applied—which doesn't exist in any broad sense—determining if something indeed got past it involves guesswork based on nothing but a person's own judgment.

Say we decide on clean up: how do we go about it? Do we look for cases that have been backed up by Word of God? If so, get ready to eliminate 95% of examples. This isn't like Complete Monster, where the standards are, in the end, some we determine ourselves: if this is to be an objective trope, who determines what fits and what doesn't? Plus, given the sort of examples that we have, it's the kind of thing that will need constant vigilance. Anybody up for it?

Part of my issue with the trope—and I admit this is entirely personal—is that, more than an accurate classifying of a trope, a lot of the examples seem to be accompanied by self-congratulatory "hee-hee-hee, I'm so clever for figuring this out; how stupid can the people behind the radar BE", which feels unseemly and incredibly juvenile. I mean, really:

Congratulations: you got the joke. Stop assuming other people didn't, or that they're not incredibly obvious. At the very best—by which I mean that those who included these honestly believe that these commercials would not have been created if somebody had been paying attention—then it displays woeful ignorance of how TV works, how people think, or what jokes are.

edited 6th Mar '11 4:34:29 PM by DoKnowButchie

Avatar art by Lorna-Ka.

There are standards - it's just misused a lot.

Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.

This trope is definitively not subjective. I'm not sure it is YMMV, either. That the crap made it past the radar is an objective thing, if one just missed it it is a problem of one not watching the show with attention enough (or one being too dense).

"The Radar" seems pretty objective and clear to me (network censors are there, you know, and their work can be examined). The real problem seems to be people qualifying anything they want as "[The] Crap" nowadays. Needs a very fierce cleanup.

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

What's subjective is whether there was/is any radar to get it past at all. A lot of tropers (probably because they're relatively young) seem to believe that "the radar" was incredibly tight and sensitive before, when in reality, there were certain aspects that that was true about, but in other areas, it was very loose.

So I guess what I'm really saying is that I think the problem is that we're treating "the radar" as some monolithic, consistent thing, when it wasn't/isn't.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

"Let's not forget this commercial"

That the guy at 29 seconds actually says "dumbass" rather than "Dumass" (pronounced "do mahs") kind of proves this is not just something that "sounds like" dumbass. I would not consider it getting crap past the radar; I would think of it the radar letting the crap past.

@Madrugada: if that's the case, the objectivity of the trope can be evaluated by comparison of the censor's work. This mention of "crapword" passed but that other mention (perhaps in another similar show handled by them) didn't? That sounds fairly objective to me. The only problem is that it required study of who the censors were/are.

Also, "the radar letting the crap past" sets an important discussion point. Do we consider an observable (from the audience's perspective) difference in effect from the two that would merit reevaluating or removing such examples?

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

Yes, I think that would, indeed work, in theory. In practice, however, I'm not sure it's doable. For example, how does one go about establishing a precedent for commercials? We'd have to investigate advertising agencies and their body of work, which is, I fear, to big a task for most tropers.

What's more, there's the issue that standards are not static things: what may not be acceptable in one case may be acceptable in another. For example, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and sorry I keep bringing it up—it's just one of the shows I'm most familiar with) would, in its first few seasons, move heaven and Earth to make clear that the various mooks the turtles dealt with weren't killed; we can say with some certainty that this was something the radar was looking out for. This precedent, however, does not mean that the various on-screen deaths in seasons 3 and beyond flew in under the radar—the standards simply changed and became looser. Likewise, with Buffy, the fact that Willow and Tara were not initially allowed to kiss does not mean that the future Come-pleting was under the radar.

Also producers are not always internally consistent. 4Kids' One Piece, fans know, was edited in a multitude of ways, due to the fact that the 4Kids found several things to be inappropriate. However, several of the things which were inappropriate in that show were OK in TMNT. This has little to do with Radar.

Finally, there's the idea that what is and isn't allowed in a work is sometimes not about what people consider appropriate; sometimes it's about money. More successful works generally get more leeway than unsuccessful ones. For example, the Harry Potter examples may indicate that yes, the editor was asleep and let oblique references to sex pass by in a young-adults book. It might also indicate that he, it's Rowling—she can do whatever the heck she wants. How we go about determining which is which is the task that we have to undertake if we're going to clean this up.

edited 7th Mar '11 2:31:24 PM by DoKnowButchie

Avatar art by Lorna-Ka.

Without working on the show in question, it's almost impossible to tell who's radar was at work. It could have been the creator's, or the producer's or the network's Standards and Practices Board's, the industry's, or the government's. Or maybe it was no-one's because there was no "radar", and it was simply a preference of the creative team to not do certain things or say certain words.

There are some very broad categories that we know existed, but we can't be sure what their standards were. TMNT falls into this — we know that there were network and industry standards in place at the time that show was made that ruled that realistic violence and death was unacceptable in "children's cartoons". Hence, it was made clear that all the mooks survived. A children's cartoon from the same era, aired on American TV, that depicted realistic violence or that slipped killing a character "for real" through, could be safely assumed to be a legitimate example of Getting Crap Past the Radar — we know that there was radar and we know what it was looking for.

But using the name Dumass in a commercial? It's not getting anything past the radar, because there's virtually no radar in place trying to catch juvenile wordplay in advertising. There's no radar to get past.

edited 7th Mar '11 3:39:48 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

If we have to compare it to media regulations of the day and location, that could mean another problem. As opposed to just saying, 'this shouldn't have got past the radar', should we say, 'this shouldn't have got past the radar in Northern England in 1981 because the [former BBFC guidelines/obscure Act of Parliament/Mary Whitehouse] said it shouldn't'?

I don't know how we can avoid that problem.

Indeed. This page needs some truly massive cleanup. Could I start on Victorious, RegularShow, and ThePenguinsOfMadagascar?

edited 7th Mar '11 4:23:55 PM by OurGLORIOUSLeader

If it helps, I've been thinking of having a go at some of the game pages. Is that okay?

edited 7th Mar '11 4:26:43 PM by halfmillennium

^^^ That's the biggest problem, yes. The radar is different at different times and in different places.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Alright, I did Victorious. It's still a big page, but I axed a good half of it and kept only the examples that seem somewhat legitimate.

ThePenguinsOfMadagascar is done.

Aaaaaand now RegularShow is done.

I'll take requests. Are there any others you think need cleaning?

edited 7th Mar '11 5:14:33 PM by OurGLORIOUSLeader

Actually, I think even that particular example may be an oversimplification of the facts. Take the year 1995, for example, where we had Spider-Man:TAS, Batman:TAS, Gargoyles, and the tail end of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series on the air. On the Spider-Man end, we have "no punching", "Family-Friendly Firearms", "no death". On the other end, we have Gargoyles, with guns, blood, death and "Pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into hell"—all with the approval of Disney execs, as explained by Word of God. The standards of one had no bearing on the others. A more precise approach, I think, would be to compare an individual work against itself (at least with individual works—movies and such can't apply—but even then, there's the fact I mentioned before that standards of what's acceptable can change during a work's lifespan.

Changing the issue a bit, how about this for a general rule, for starters: plot elements cannot, by definition, go under the radar. So no, that episode of that animated show where that character got impaled by a hook on screen does not count. Second rule. If the [vaguely shocking thing] is the point of a scene or the joke, it is not flying under the radar. Potential rule #3: not everything that could possibly be interpreted as something sexual means it went under the radar; sometimes, the fact that things can be interpreted that way IS the joke, which again goes to the previous rule.

edited 7th Mar '11 5:30:53 PM by DoKnowButchie

Avatar art by Lorna-Ka.

Personally I'm sick of entries that basically amount to "if I squint and tilt my head sideways, they were maybe talking about vaginas here". I don't think the trope is subjective, but the usage of "this line sounded dirty to me" really is, because there's innuendo and then there's just you having sex on the brain.

I don't see a problem with that. In the past, when the show was aged X and the standards were Y, the show got some stuff past the radar. Now the show is aged X+N, the standards are Y+A-B, but none of that changes the fact that the show did get things past the radar once — it suffices with knowing what the standards Y were, examples-wise. It merely means the show can be passing completely different things past the radar now than it did then.

I'd state it as for LongRunners, the show should be compared to itself in a timeframe during which the standards are not drastically changed. Also, should we be comparing shows against standards for which there is record of execs / Moral Guardians explicitly saying they are hunting instead of just "any perceived standard"?

As for the guideline proposals, I'm all OK and fine and dandy with #1, but the other two make me think in circles for some reason. Care to show us an instance of how they [dis]qualify an example currently in the page? I seem to have missed a page of my own brain here...

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

Just to state how subjective it is, the OP gives a list of bad example including one from B Uffy - however, this specific example is an example of the trope by a certain definition - the writer of the episode has gone on the record to say that he doesn't know how they got away with that one. So that would be an example, but if you go by "it must be subtle", than it is not an example.

Depends what they meant by "we're surprised they let us get away with that one". "We're surprised they allowed that" or "we're surprised they didn't spot that"? The latter is Getting Crap Past the Radar. The former might be, but the existence of a Double Entendre isn't in and of itself evidence the Moral Guardians were asleep at the wheel.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:29:18 PM by Tyoria