Unclear Description: Jiggle Show

I believe this trope is about shows that solely exist to show off the "attributes" of good looking women. I can't be sure because the summary is a mess and the examples have little to no explanation (and we already have Fanservice and Sex Sells). 62 inbounds, so we shouldn't cut the page.

As for wicks:

• ABC: refers to a type of show, with examples of Charlie's Angels and Three's Company
• Airplane!: talks about a display of breasts bouncing
• Amaenaide yo!!: no context given
• Americas Next Top Model Cycle Five and Americas Next Top Model Cycle Three: references the assets of specific contestants, without context
• Angels Revenge: not much context
• Baywatch: no context, but I can guess that the example writer was referring to the many ladies in swimsuits?
• Bitch Slap: talks (rather creepily) about the leading ladies and the camera shots
• Bring It On: talks about why the show has a Periphery Demographic, citing this trope as why
• Bring It On: example implies that this trope is about the women more than the show
• Cat Fight: summary says that the Cat Fight is often featured in a Jiggle Show
• Charlie's Angels: no contextt
• Chorus Girls: "Compare the Jiggle Show, where the women are actually the stars of the show, rather than decoration." <—
• Click: I have no idea
• Deader Than Disco: "The Jiggle Show. During the Seventies and Eighties, shows like Threes Company, and Charlies Angels, and, to a lesser extent, the Wonder Woman series and The Dukes Of Hazzard that were long on beautiful actresses but (percieved as) a little short on plot were incredibly popular, and the joke was that they were especially popular amongst sexually frustrated men who would be willing to sit through thirty minutes of flimsy dialogue for the chance to see Suzanne Somers in a bikini or Farrah Fawcett run after a bad guy in a tight sweater. The genre peaked with Baywatch, but rise the rise of both the internet and more accessible pornography, along with more liberal views of all things related to sex, shows that are expecting to coast on the beauty of their casts are finding themselves disappointed." ; this seems to be the core of the trope
• Fan Service Extra: mentioned as a staple
• Freddie Vs Jason: mentions that one of the female characters provides this
• Friends: mentions the trope as used in the Deader Than Disco entry
• Gainaxing: mentions that Jiggle Show is the live action TV version
• Hello Project: no idea
• LayCool: apparently the wrestling duo provide an example of this trope
• New Girl: one of the extras provides fanservice
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: I can't tell
• Pokémon The Abridged Series: apparently provided?!
• Tenjho Tenge: suggests that jiggle shows can exist in anime
• The Dukes Of Hazzard: no context
• The Facts of Life: "The first season was made at the height of the "Jiggle TV" era, so the older girls ran around in skimpy shorts for large portions of every episode."
• The Little Mermaid: apparently Ursula provided one O_O
• Three's Company: mentioned as the "archetypal" jiggle show
• Un-Cancelled: suggests jiggle shows are just an excuse to show fanservice

There seem to be two things at work here:

1. the original definition, which is a genre of show that has little plot and is just an excuse to show lots of fanservice
2. any instance of fanservice

I recommend we shape the current page to suit (1) and cut all instances of (2), which shouldn't be difficult since I went through pretty much all of the wicks.

edited 1st Jun '12 3:05:37 PM by Autumncomet

I didn't know that we had this trope.

As a woman, let me say that I feel uncomfortable with the fact that this is apparently a thing that exists. :(

Anyway, I think you're right. The description is rather vague.

"A show where the draw is that it has attractive women as protagonists" is what I got out of it. The description is unclear, all right!

I agree as well, as I said in the previous thead. In my opinion this article needs an improvement or, preferably, cut.

edited 1st Jun '12 9:25:10 PM by Anfauglith

This trope is an unworkable mixture of humor and earnestness. The definition is "A show more about the characters' breasts than about the characters themselves." Which is a sly, funny critique of shows like Charlies Angels - except those shows aren't literally more about the breasts than the characters, so we can't actually make a trope around that sort of thing.

That paragraph in Deader Than Disco seems to offer more content than the trope's own article, but I would dispute the point it's trying to make. Shows have tried to sell themselves on fanservice before, during and after the the 70s and 80s. We now have shows even lighter on plot that still rely on nothing but the cast's attractiveness (except now they're usually reality shows). Though Wonder Woman, Charlies Angels etc did form a genre that's now dead, it was about camp adventure, not breasts.

And individual examples are bad. Many are just "breasts jiggle" or "breast fanservice," which we've established many times over as non-tropes.

edited 1st Jun '12 9:22:26 PM by Routerie

I'd say it is a trope, even if it's not all that well-written. Not a widely used one, but I've heard of the expression several times before I knew TV Tropes existed. And probably before it did. Essentially a show that focuses on fanservice and doesn't have a very good plot to back it up. Well, it can, but it would still work if all you're interested in is the fanservice.

It's on the Show Genres index, so that suggests it was meant to be an index of shows whose main draw is attractive characters. Which is...I'm not sure we want this on the wiki? Unless we rework it per and have Jiggle Show be about camp adventure and the like.

Before the thread got cut back, Fast Eddie said this.

That does not mean that we are not allowed to give evidence on a counter-argument. Furthermore, this thread is not looking to eliminate the trope because of prudishness, but to revise or otherwise deal with it because the description and examples are not well-defined enough.

In other words, we are saying something completely different from the earlier thread, albeit something with some degree of overlap in the basic conclusion.

P.S. Why am I saying "we" here? I just stepped into this thread. Goddamnit, subconscious mind, why do you do this to me...

edited 2nd Jun '12 9:44:48 AM by JHM

The shows in question weren't necessarily "light" on plot... its just that the plots were simple, repetitive, and made room for showing off the female cast in the skimpiest outfits imaginable.

Oh, and as for the Dukes Of Hazzard example, the "context" was putting Catherine Bach in a flanel shirt that was tied just below her boobs, and an amazingly high-cut pair of cutoff jeans shorts that are still, to this day, called "Daisy Dukes" because of Bach's character.

edited 2nd Jun '12 9:52:31 AM by ArtfulCodger

So, shows best known for their fanservice? We have a trope for that. But "This show is bad; people only watch it for fanservice" is not a trope, just an insult. Charmed? Did men watch it at all, for fanservice or otherwise? (I knew a dozen people who watched it, all straight women.) Threes Company? Our own page on it says "people called it the archetypal Jiggle Show, but it was more than that."

If Jiggle Show really is an outside term, we could make an exampless definition page for it.

This could be helpful

Might be good to make to just explain the origin of the term, and only list a few notable examples in the description itself.

edit: You're right about Charmed. If it's anything, it's the gender-flipped equivalent of a Jiggle Show.

edited 2nd Jun '12 3:28:13 PM by abk0100

I'm not sure why it has to be exampleless. Are the examples causing a problem, other than with concern trolls?

The description could use a little work, though.

"A work written with an eye towards finding opportunities to show off the female stars' assets — by which we don't men their dramatic talents."

... only longer, with an indication of Charlie's Angels as the Trope Codifier.

The problem is that this is too subjective to be a genre. When does a work stop just having fanservice or using Sex Sells and starts being a "Jiggle Show"? Who judges when is the plot bad enough to qualify?

edited 2nd Jun '12 3:30:49 PM by Anfauglith

To clarify the issues, let's have a discussion about whether Star Trek The Next Generation is a Jiggle Show or not. The plots, certainly in earlier seasons, tended to not be very imaginative and the outfits, especially the female ones, tended to be very figure-hugging. Is this all that is required?

The plots mostly weren't excuses to put the women in other skimpy outfits, though.

No, the setting was that.

This. We can list audience reactions, and we can describe genres. But genres cannot be audience reactions.

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:42:28 PM by Routerie

I think the exact genre borders for anything is subjective enough as it is. I mean, take Sci-Fi. How many years into the future do you need to write about? How much more advanced technology? Is it enough with the next gen smart phones? What about two generations? Or three? And that's just a simple example. And then there's all the music genres... How far do you need to go from Heavy Metal to to get to Black Metal? Death Metal? Thrash Metal?

I don't see how this one is significantly different from that.

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:23:54 PM by Feather7603

Because we are measuring badness of plot and amount of fanservice, and the whole description is "A show about babes...or rather their attributes".

"Is X science fiction?" is obviously not the same as asking oneself "does X work have enough fanservice and is the plot crappy enough for being part of this supposed genre?"

Also, I don't believe that a work abusing Sex Sells counts as a genre.

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:33:45 PM by Anfauglith

"I think the exact genre borders for anything is subjective enough as it is. I mean, take Sci Fi. How many years into the future do you need to write about? How much more advanced technology? Is it enough with the next gen smart phones? What about two generations? Or three? And that's just a simple example. And then there's all the music genres... How far do you need to go from Heavy Metal to to get to Black Metal? Death Metal? Thrash Metal?

I don't see how this one is significantly different from that. "

Seriously? Sci-Fi?

"How many years into the future do you need to write about? How much more advanced technology?"

Enough that technology is recognizably different than the day the story was published.

"Is it enough with the next gen smart phones?"

No.

"What about two generations? Or three?"

If technology advanced significantly enough to change how life is lived by humans, yes. If not, no.

"And then there's all the music genres... How far do you need to go from Heavy Metal to to get to Black Metal? Death Metal? Thrash Metal?"

An actual fan of Metal could answer this better, but surely you can tell the difference between:

Black Metal: (0:33 seconds in)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4U33U_UyzQ

Death Metal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vfwE_lNYi4

and Trash Metal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umeZtszNShk

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:32:36 PM by Mazz

A type of show is not a genre, and I disagree that the plot needs to be bad to count.

And none of those metal genres (or sci-fi, or any other genre) is an audience reaction. Lame Metal is not a legitimate genre.

So anything with a lot of fanservice should end up in this article?

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:44:30 PM by Anfauglith

A specific kind of fanservice, sure

Defining what this specific kind of fanservice is should be kept in mind for improving the description (if we agree on keeping the trope).

P.S.: Your signature is rather unfortunate

edited 2nd Jun '12 6:34:42 PM by Anfauglith