| 1 | -> ''"I thought that the business, the industry, the presentation needed to change in the same way that music had changed, because music was all about Music/{{Poison}} and Music/MotleyCrue and Music/{{Winger}} and all these [[HairMetal hair bands]], and then along came Music/{{Nirvana}}, and '''BAM!''' The whole industry changed. So in the same way, I thought wrestling needed to change, in that wrestling had become the equivalent of hair bands, and we needed wrestling's version of Nirvana to come along and just shake everything up."'' |
| 2 | -->-- '''Wrestling/PaulHeyman''', ''The Rise and Fall of Wrestling/{{ECW}}'' |
| 3 | |
| 4 | While a WhamEpisode can change a single series forever... sometimes, something comes out that permanently alters an entire genre. It wasn't the first entry into the genre, nor was it the last, but things were never the same after it came out. This often -- but far from exclusively -- happens with particularly notable {{Deconstruction}}s; once one story has pointed how a certain genre will play out ''in reality'' this can cause a ripple effect across other stories in the genre. However, it doesn't always have to be a Deconstruction. Some shows can radically redefine a genre without taking it apart. {{Reconstruction}}s can have the same effect; incorporating ''realistic'' elements into the old-school storytelling can make the genre look new again. Some works can demonstrate that the genre can be done without a trope that was seen as necessary evil of the genre. |
| 5 | |
| 6 | Usually seen as a good thing, although there are genre fans who will feel negatively about it. Negative reception of genre turning is often given when the success of the work causes the genre to be homogenized, or causes tropes that increase the apparent profitability of the work at the expense of integrity to become widespread. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | Compare WhamEpisode, GenreKiller, GenreRelaunch, FollowTheLeader. Good chance of being a {{Trope Maker|s}} or TropeCodifier. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Not to confuse with GenreShift, where the work itself shifts its genre at the middle. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | '''[[Administrivia/NoRecentExamplesPlease No examples are allowed for works released within the last 10 years]], as it takes time to prove that the genre has indeed changed.''' |
| 13 | |
| 14 | ---- |
| 15 | !!Examples: |
| 16 | |
| 17 | [[index]] |
| 18 | * [[GenreTurningPoint/LiveActionFilms Film - Live-Action]] |
| 19 | * GenreTurningPoint/{{Literature}} |
| 20 | * GenreTurningPoint/LiveActionTV |
| 21 | * GenreTurningPoint/{{Music}} |
| 22 | * GenreTurningPoint/{{Sports}} |
| 23 | * GenreTurningPoint/VideoGames |
| 24 | [[/index]] |
| 25 | |
| 26 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 27 | |
| 28 | [[folder:Anime and Manga]] |
| 29 | * The HaremGenre was invented by ''Manga/UruseiYatsura'', but was ''re-invented by Anime/TenchiMuyo'', which refined and popularized the "harem anime" formula (ordinary guy lives with a bunch of attractive, quirky girls). In addition to the episodic plots it had longer story arcs and a protagonist one would want to ''root for'' instead of smack. Six years later, ''Manga/LoveHina'' further tweaked the formula by dropping the action/fantasy elements of ''Tenchi'' in favor of a straight-up romantic comedy, making TheProtagonist more of a sadsack, upping the wacky hijinks and setting new rules for the genre: namely, an UnluckyEverydude male protagonist who lives with a bunch of girls (the {{Tsundere}}, the HardDrinkingPartyGirl, the {{Ojou}} with the HimeCut, the ShrinkingViolet and the Exotic Foreign Girl) who all fall in love with him simply because [[SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan he's a nice and sensitive guy]], with the gaps in the plot smoothed over with dollops of fanservice. Almost every harem series since has followed its lead. [[NeverLiveItDown Haters of this genre cannot forgive]] Creator/KenAkamatsu. |
| 30 | * It was [[MenDontCry NOT okay for men to cry]] in anime before ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar''. Afterwards, however, tears became a symbol of [[ManlyTears honorable masculinity]] tempered by [[TenderTears a kind and gentle heart.]] It was also the first long-form shonen series to utilize supernatural martial arts as its main hook, predating ''Dragon Ball'' by two years. |
| 31 | ** It also wasn't the first fighting series, but was the first one to become incredibly popular and is one of the former "manga of the records" thanks to its over 100 millions copies sold. One of the main reasons for its success, is that, unlike previous fighting mangas that simply showed a fighter punching the opponent in the same panel, ''Fist of the North Star''[='=]s battle choreography had the directions of the attacks following the reading order, making it much easier to understand and much more appealing. Since then, every popular battle shonen followed the same rule, in particular ''Dragon Ball'', whose editor studied ''Fist of the North Star'' to understand its success, that would end up perfectioning battle direction in comicbook form and take ''Fist of the North Star''[='=]s popularity. |
| 32 | * The original ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' revamped the HumongousMecha genre, single-handedly invented most RealRobot plot devices, and, along the way, ushered the {{Otaku}} subculture into existence (though to be fair, other shows helped it in the latter). |
| 33 | * And before that ''Anime/MazingerZ'' is generally credited with changing HumongousMecha as piloted craft as opposed to something controlled by TheKidWithTheRemoteControl. Its near contemporary ''Manga/GetterRobo'' added the CombiningMecha to the mix. |
| 34 | * ''VisualNovel/YamiToBoushiToHonNoTabibito'' and ''Manga/DestinyOfTheShrineMaiden'' showed that {{Yuri|Genre}} anime could be profitable; ''Anime/{{Simoun}}'' showed that it could be TrueArt. |
| 35 | * ''Manga/{{Akira}}''. Before it came out, it was distressingly common to see anime films and shows targeted toward older audiences horribly {{Macekre}}d so they could fit into the AnimationAgeGhetto. After it came out, people in the West finally got the idea that anime movies didn't have to be targeted towards kids at all. Ironically, ''Akira'' was released by Macek's Streamline Pictures studio. |
| 36 | * ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': |
| 37 | ** The effect it had on the [[MechaShow mecha genre]] was similar to the effect a hammer has on an egg. While not the first giant robot show based around the concept that being a [[OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent naive teenager]] [[FallingIntoTheCockpit thrown into the cockpit]] of a [[HumongousMecha massively powerful war machine]] and forced to fight [[{{Kaiju}} titanic alien invaders]] to save humanity would ''[[GenreDeconstruction really suck]]'', it was the first to successfully '''[[TropeCodifier popularize]]''' it. Since the release of the show, a lot of genre anime (mecha or otherwise) has been influenced by the show's themes. |
| 38 | ** ''Evangelion'' can easily be pointed towards as a turning point for the ''entire medium'' of TV Anime. Before ''Evangelion'' the vast majority of TV Anime properties were (and still is) either manga adaptations or family oriented programs. ''Evangelion'' turning out to be a surprise breakthrough hit paved the way for several AnimeFirst properties which were more experimental and explored significantly darker and more mature themes, such as ''Anime/CowboyBebop'', ''Anime/TheVisionOfEscaflowne'', ''Anime/NowAndThenHereAndThere'', and ''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena'' for starters. |
| 39 | ** Its influence in anime and animation as a whole can also be found in the main cast, while Rei Ayanami [[ReiAyanamiExpy became the most notorious example]] of the character archetypes that ''Evangelion'' brought, there were many others as well: the archetype of the socially-awkward, snarky protagonist whose bravery is mostly limited to the battlefield can be traced back to Shinji Ikari (although Shinji himself was heavily influenced by ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'''s Amuro Ray); the red-haired/themed, hotblooded and aggressive {{Tsundere}} girl with a dark past (and arguably, foreign accent) is traceable to Asuka Langley Soryu; and finally, the mysterious, white haired character with an ambiguous attraction to the main character is the product of Kaworu Nagisa. |
| 40 | * ''Manga/DragonBall'': |
| 41 | ** The series introduced and/or codified many {{Shonen|Demographic}} tropes such as the innocent IdiotHero with a large appetite, the TournamentArc, etc. Its influence can be seen in many different anime and manga series to this day. |
| 42 | ** Critically, Goku had the potential to learn and grow, in contrast to predecessors like Kenshiro of ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'', who rarely learned new techniques or increased his physical abilities, instead existing in a constant state of badassery. |
| 43 | ** It also pioneered the villain-centric plot arc. As WebVideo/SuperEyepatchWolf put it in his DBZ video essay: |
| 44 | ---> What's interesting about how ''Dragon Ball Z'' uses its villains is how dramatically differently they were framed compared the standard villains that were popular in both western and eastern children's media of the time. Most children's entertainment of this era was structured to be highly episodic, with entire plotlines developing and concluding in a single episode, and so if there was a villain, they were usually designed to be introduced, fought and defeated in the same 22 minute span, and for decades, this was how children's television worked, clinging rigorously to the MonsterOfTheWeek formula, as seen in shows like the ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'', ''[[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983 He-Man]]'' and ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCats1985''. This kind of villain had actually been around even longer on Japanese television, coming to prominence in the mid-70s with classic {{Sentai}} shows like ''Franchise/KamenRider'', and eventually permeated its way into the power-obsessed anime and manga of the 80s, where underpowered, disposable villains were routinely obliterated by hyper-powerful heroes like [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar Kenshiro]]. The advantage of these disposable, replacable bad guys was that it was a simple, repeatable episodic formula, one that wouldn't [[ContinuityLockOut alienate new viewers]], but would [[MerchandiseDriven constantly introduce new opportunities for merchandise]], while also consistantly framing our heroes in the most powerful and victorious possible light.\ |
| 45 | But then came the villains of ''Dragon Ball Z''. Ultra powerful, near-invincible demigods, beings whose mere existence was so cataclysmic that they would dominate entire story arcs, committing atrocities on a mass scale and forcing our heroes into tense, desperate battles where survival seemed unlikely and victory felt impossible. No longer monsters of the week, these were just '''monsters''', routinely and soundly defeating our heroes, ones that shattered the 22 minute structure, and planted their feet deep in the story, staying there for dozens and dozens of episodes, during which the entire plot would centre solely around their existence. The story framed these villains in a way that made them feel so dominant and powerful that the idea of their defeat seemed genuinely impossible, but this created an exhilarating tension, as you really felt every blow, every energy blast, as our heroes inched their way forward in the face of such monstrously overwhelming odds, so when victory did occur it felt profound and earned.\ |
| 46 | \ |
| 47 | One of the reasons Goku's victory over Frieza feels so monumental is that at this point in the story, you've watched Frieza decimate our heroes for dozens of episodes, defeating Nail, Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Krillin... in a climate where 22 minute villains reigned supreme, Frieza felt like nothing less than a god, and watching Goku put everything he had into battling Frieza and eventually surpassing him, it was nothing short of inspirational. It really felt like this character had gone through a monumentally punishing ordeal and somehow come out the other end and survived.\ |
| 48 | \ |
| 49 | This aspect of ''Dragon Ball Z'' was one of the main elements that would come to define what shonen battle manga is, and be echoed in many classic arcs that followed throughout the years: ''Manga/OnePiece''[='s=] Enies Lobby, ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''[='s=] Dark Tournament Saga, ''Manga/HunterXHunter'''s Chimera Ant Arc. These are some of the greatest arcs in shonen history, and each one uses the same fundamental villain-centric structure that was defined and popularized in ''Dragon Ball Z''. |
| 50 | ** Finally, it, together with [[Creator/ToeiAnimation Toei]]'s other big hit ''Anime/SailorMoon'', and the then-fairly new ''[[Anime/PokemonTheSeries Pokémon]]'' anime, was pivotal in the explosion of anime and manga in the West. When these series reached the shores of the US, Canada, and Latin America in the later part of the 90s, they caught fire among kids who had never seen anything like them before, having until then grown up with either {{Zany Cartoon}}s, {{Edutainment Show}}s, low-budget MerchandiseDriven cartoons with LimitedAnimation, and Creator/{{Disney}}. For [[AnimationAgeGhetto various reasons]], prior anime imports were either preschool-aged series that didn't look much different from some of the cartoons at the time or had been notorious for {{Bowdleris|e}}ation and {{Macekre}}s. but while these three shows didn't fully dodge these pitfalls, they still remained faithful enough to the source material to be successful without wholly offending adult fans. What followed these GatewaySeries was a flood of Japanese animated series and comics in the late '90s and '00s, many of them initially aimed at a kid-friendly {{Saturday morning|Cartoon}} market but eventually including more mature stories as the audience that grew up with them became adults themselves, while Hollywood filmmakers increasingly drew influence from anime for action scenes and storytelling. Gene Park, [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2024/03/08/akira-toriyama-dragon-ball-appreciation/ writing]] for ''The Washington Post'' upon the death of ''Dragon Ball'' creator Creator/AkiraToriyama, stated that "[t]here is hardly a space in pop culture today that hasn’t been touched by Akira Toriyama’s art." |
| 51 | * ''Manga/SaintSeiya'' was another 80s shonen series that marked a transition from the old style to the modern style, contributing much in terms of promoting the values of friendship and teamwork in a FightingSeries, in contrast to lone-wolf heroes like Kenshiro, as well as featuring a far more {{shoujo|Demographic}}-like art style, which was later seen in series like ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' and ''Manga/YawaraAFashionableJudoGirl'', along with [[CastFullOfPrettyBoys numerous attractive male characters]]. |
| 52 | * ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' took all the tropes established by earlier {{Shonen|Demographic}} battle manga and packaged it all together into a formula that {{Shonen|Demographic}} mangaka are still using. Recent smash successes like ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', ''Manga/BlackClover'', ''Manga/JujutsuKaisen'', and ''Manga/DemonSlayerKimetsuNoYaiba'' all owe something to the smash success of Naruto. |
| 53 | * The MagicalGirl genre has shifted several times: |
| 54 | ** ''Anime/MajokkoMegChan'', from 1974, was an important milestone for MagicalGirl shows, as it was [[MultipleDemographicAppeal the first show to be marketed to boys as well as girls]], and featured a number of developments--it was the first MagicalGirl show with a tomboyish heroine, a rival to the heroine, a ''really'' [[BigBad evil]] villain, and also the first that includes {{Fanservice}} tropes (with LovableSexManiac characters), and serious issues like DomesticAbuse, extramarital relationships, drug abuse, death etc. |
| 55 | ** ''Manga/SailorMoon'' made the genre switch from the CuteWitch type to the MagicalGirlWarrior type, as well as mash in elements of {{Sentai}} that persist in the genre to this day. More broadly, it ushered in a revival of TV anime aimed at a broad general audience, in contrast to {{Otaku}}-bait [=OVAs=] that had dominated the anime market in the latter 80s, prior to Japan's "bubble economy" bursting and bringing the OVA market down with it. Of course, [[CyclicTrope otaku-bait did eventually rise to dominate the market again]]. |
| 56 | *** This also extends to Creator/{{DiC}}'s English dub of the show, as it was arguably the main reason the anime boom of the 90s and the 2000s happened. While it wasn't an initial success (due to getting poor time-slots in syndication and on the USA Network), it garnered very high ratings on Creator/CartoonNetwork, which stunned the execs. As a result, CN started the anime block ''Creator/{{Toonami}}'', and started airing other English dubs like Funimation's dub of ''Manga/DragonBallZ'' (which was a success in syndication contrary to popular belief, but the newfound freedom in cable and the healthier timeslots helped boost it); this led to more success. |
| 57 | ** ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' was not the first high-concept-deconstruction take on the genre (''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena'' and ''Anime/PrincessTutu'' came much earlier, and there was an even earlier attempt in the form of ''Anime/NurseAngelRirikaSOS''), but post-''Madoka'', practically every new Magical Girl franchise has [[FollowTheLeader followed]] its general theme of "DarkerAndEdgier subversive social commentary in which AnyoneCanDie." Many of them even have a similar FiveManBand cast. |
| 58 | * The development of sophisticated CGI that allowed elaborate dance sequences to be created on a TV budget led to the boom in the IdolSinger genre from the late 2000s to present. Said dance sequences can also be seen in some anime outside the genre, such as ''Anime/PrettyCure''. |
| 59 | * ''Manga/PrincessKnight'' is one of the first narrative-driven {{shoujo|Demographic}} manga and had massive influence on manga aimed at a young female audience, with notable examples including an androgynous lead heroine. |
| 60 | ** What ''Princess Knight'' started, ''Manga/TheRoseOfVersailles'' continued and solidified, as it was the first shoujo manga to achieve mainstream critical and commercial success. At the time it was first published in 1972, most shoujo manga series were simple stories aimed at elementary school-aged girls, but ''Berubara'' proved that manga aimed at teenage girls and women, with more complex plots to draw them in, could be just as successful. |
| 61 | ** The aforementioned ''The Rose of Versailles'' is the most famous (in the west, at least) work of the 1970s "Showa 24 Group" consisting of names such as Creator/RiyokoIkeda, Creator/MotoHagio and Creator/KeikoTakemiya, who revolutionized shoujo manga. Shoujo manga creators had previously being mainly men, and the rise of the Showa 24 group marked a transition to being dominated by female creators, added an emphasis on drama and heavy subject matter and more fluid artwork and panel arrangements that allowed shoujo manga to be taken seriously as an artform, with Hagio and Takemiya also becoming pioneers of the YaoiGenre along the way. The 1970s is now regarded as the "Golden Age" of Shoujo. |
| 62 | * While ''Anime/Megazone23'' was the first {{OVA}} to be commercially successful, ''[[Anime/{{Iczer}} Fight! Iczer-One]]'' took full advantage of the lack of content restrictions in the direct-to-video format, containing sex and violence that would not be acceptable on TV (even in Japan), and setting the stage for the kind of content that characterised the mid-late 80s OVA boom. |
| 63 | * While it was the works of Creator/KiyohikoAzuma, ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' and fellow sister series ''Manga/{{Yotsuba}}'', that became known as the pioneers of SchoolGirlSeries manga during the Main/TurnOfTheMillennium, it was Creator/UmeAoki's mid-to-late 2000s ''Manga/HidamariSketch'' that what would refined it moving forward and especially for its publisher, Magazine/MangaTimeKirara, as it was the first manga from them to be given an anime adaptation. In terms of Moe anime and manga, most would follow a very similar formula, mainly cute girls composed of four main members doing cute things with a type of extra hook or gimmick. This became true for most of Kirara's later works that follow this format and many others that would try to copy what Kirara did, including the likes of Magazine/ComicCune in the 2010s. More notably there was ''Manga/KOn'', which was released only a few years later and also had a similar impact on its genre. |
| 64 | [[/folder]] |
| 65 | |
| 66 | [[folder:Art]] |
| 67 | * From pretty much the dawn of humanity, most art was dedicated to capturing its subject matter in as realistic a depiction as possible... until the invention of photography, at which point artists had to reassess what "art" meant, opening the way for more abstract forms of art. |
| 68 | [[/folder]] |
| 69 | |
| 70 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 71 | * The publication of ''ComicBook/ActionComicsNumber1'' in the summer of 1938 heralded the birth of the {{superhero}} genre when it introduced the American public to ComicBook/{{Superman}}, the ultimate escapist hero for a beleaguered country struggling through the TheGreatDepression and the dark days preceding UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. While [[OnceOriginalNowCommon it might be difficult to appreciate this today]], the character was truly like ''nothing'' anyone had ever seen before: he was a herculean strongman from the Heavens who effortlessly invoked the awe and wonder of a mythic hero from the Ancient World, yet his adventures took place in an unmistakably modern cityscape bedeviled by contemporary social ills like poverty and crime, and his backstory -- as [[AnImmigrantsTale an immigrant from a distant world]] raised by a pair of honest farmers from the Heartland -- unmistakably marked him as a uniquely American bastion of virtue. Almost overnight, MediaNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks began in earnest, and superhero stories became a major cultural phenomenon. American pop culture has never been the same since. |
| 72 | * In the American comic industry, the creation of the ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica in 1940 began a pivot for the medium that nobody would've anticipated: continuity. While simply made to be a place to put characters who didn't sell that well, this was the first time that original works were in the same book together in the medium. This began building up the idea for creating a SharedUniverse for their characters, and the beginning of the {{Crossover}} in the medium, ideas that would lock the two big main comic companies into place in the far future for the worlds they would create. |
| 73 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', which ran from 1950 to 2000, changed NewspaperComics permanently. It gave strips the license to address deep and (sometimes) dark issues and not just be simple gag-a-day escapism. However, Creator/CharlesMSchulz's signature simple artwork gave newspapers the idea to reduce the size of the comic panels and force all the future artists to simplify their artwork to the point where all the art look like rushed cut-and-paste jobs. |
| 74 | * An example that isn't actually a "work": the outrage caused by Fredric Wertham's 1954 book ''Seduction of the Innocent'' led to the creation of MediaNotes/TheComicsCode. This killed horror and crime comics, then among the biggest hits for the industry, while saving the superhero genre, which was sinking at the time. This also led Creator/MarvelComics to give Creator/StanLee and Creator/JackKirby the green light to experiment, as they were hurting in the wake of this turn in the medium. (Which in turn led to the Marvel Age.) All of this led to the terms "comic book character" and "superhero" being almost interchangeable in the North American market. |
| 75 | * MediaNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks in the late '50s and '60s was when the modern superhero comic took form. It introduced more flawed and relatable characters, more sophisticated themes, and more complicated plots, leading to an eventual shift in the target audience for comics from children to late teens/young adults. |
| 76 | ** It is generally accepted that [[Franchise/TheFlash Barry Allen, the second Flash]], was the character that revived superhero comics in earnest and kicked off the Silver Age upon his debut in ''ComicBook/ShowcaseNumberFour'' in 1956, complete with sleek, form-fitting, cape-less costume, more scientific[[ScienceMarchesOn (ish)]] origin, and a RoguesGallery of gimmick villains. |
| 77 | ** ''ComicBook/FantasticFourNumber1'' in 1961 introduced the ComicBook/FantasticFour, a family team whose members clashed and bickered from time to time, and showed that superhero stories could firmly anchor themselves in the real world without sacrificing any of their inherent fun. The Four lived in the real world of 1960s New York rather than a fictional CityOfAdventure like [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Metropolis]] or [[Franchise/{{Batman}} Gotham City]], they didn't bother with [[SecretIdentity Secret Identities]], they were world-famous scientists and philanthropists in addition to being superheroes, their nemesis was the truly dangerous dictator of an Eastern European nation rather than a simple criminal, and their famous blue jumpsuits were a more realistic alternative to the flamboyant costumes that other superheroes wore. On top of that, The Thing pioneered the idea of a superhero who [[CursedWithAwesome viewed his powers as a curse]]. |
| 78 | ** ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk1962'': [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk The Hulk]] got a lot of attention as an ambiguous hero who was neither entirely a superhero nor entirely a monster, and his series pushed the boundaries of the Comics Code Authority by depicting the United States military as antagonists (the Code stipulated that comic books couldn't portray respected organizations in a negative light). With his anger, his inherently flawed nature, and his troubled relationship with authority figures, he also went on to become a counterculture icon, showing the potential for superheroes to act as a voice for the youth. |
| 79 | ** ''ComicBook/AmazingFantasyNumber15'' in 1962 was the origin story for ComicBook/SpiderMan, who broke the mold as a teenage superhero who was not a {{sidekick}} and had no mentor or guide, was [[HeroWithBadPublicity hated by most of the public]], and initially [[MoneyDearBoy tried to use his powers to make money]].[[note]]Okay, so ComicBook/PlasticMan started out as a thief, but Spider-Man still had a huge impact on the genre.[[/note]] His resolve to protect the innocent [[TheAtoner to atone]] for [[MyGreatestFailure selfishly refusing to stop the burglar that went on to kill his beloved uncle]] definitively established him not as a moralistic crusader out to punish evildoers, but a flawed young man [[ComingOfAgeStory with a lot of growing up to do]]. |
| 80 | ** In general, Creator/MarvelComics helped breathe new life into the {{superhero}} genre with stories that were ([[UnintentionalPeriodPiece for their day]]) unabashedly contemporary, reflecting the changing ''status quo'' of the 1960s. The Fantastic Four's origin story was explicitly tied to UsefulNotes/{{the Space Race}}, Spider-Man and the Hulk's origins were explicitly tied to the onset of the atomic age, ComicBook/IronMan's origin was explicitly tied to the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, the X-Men started out as a thinly-veiled allegory for {{the Generation Gap}} (and later reflected the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement with stories about [[FantasticRacism prejudice and bigotry]]), and ComicBook/DoctorDoom was effectively the living embodiment of everything that American readers found scary about the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. While most of that stuff inevitably became dated with time, it played a major role in the superhero genre moving beyond its [[TheGreatDepression Depression]]-era roots and becoming a true intergenerational tradition. |
| 81 | * For better or for worse, MediaNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks in the '70s rewrote the rules of the superhero genre, with a new generation of creators proudly [[DarkerAndEdgier pushing the boundaries of acceptable content]] after finally breaking free of the MediaNotes/TheComicsCode's heavy censorship. |
| 82 | ** Dennis O'Neil's ''ComicBook/GreenLantern[=/=]ComicBook/GreenArrow'', which started running in 1970, fizzled out pretty quickly in its day, but it's now considered an important part of comic book history for being one of the first explicitly political superhero comics. After reimagining Oliver Queen as a street-smart modern revolutionary who actually ''did'' [[JustLikeRobinHood rob from the rich and give to the poor]], he built an entire series around the character confronting contemporary social issues alongside his more conservative lawman {{foil}} Hal Jordan, with plenty of BothSidesHaveAPoint moments. Many of its more dramatic moments -- like Hal being [[WhatTheHellHero called out]] for failing to fight for African-American rights, and Oliver [[VerySpecialEpisode discovering that his sidekick Speedy has become addicted to heroin]] -- are still frequently cited as major milestones in the comic book industry's move toward social consciousness. |
| 83 | ** Creator/JackKirby's move to Creator/DCComics resulted in the creation of ''ComicBook/NewGods'' in 1971, often cited as the beginning of the Bronze Age. In its day, it was one of the most unabashedly experimental superhero comics ever published, freely mixing SpaceOpera and NewAge spiritualism with a vividly imagined original mythological system. While [[VindicatedByHistory not a big hit in its day]], it inspired many future creators to push the classic tropes and iconography of the superhero genre in bold new directions, often in ways that challenged the fundamental underpinnings of the genre. |
| 84 | ** Creator/GerryConway's classic 1973 ComicBook/SpiderMan story "ComicBook/TheNightGwenStacyDied" was one of the first mainstream superhero stories that unambiguously featured [[KilledOffForReal the death of a regular character]]. Not only was Gwen Stacy's murder treated with the utmost gravity and seriousness, it completely changed the course of the series, and it was made abundantly clear that her death would come with [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore permanent consequences]]. While arguably the start of [[StuffedInTheFridge a very controversial trend]] in comics, this helped demonstrate that superhero stories could be more than just joyful escapism, and they were capable of examining mature themes like grief and death. ComicBook/JeanGrey's tragic death in "ComicBook/TheDarkPhoenixSaga" (published around seven years later) just cemented that fact. |
| 85 | ** When Creator/ChrisClaremont took over ''ComicBook/XMen'' in 1975, he got major critical attention for writing superhero stories where drama and characterization were the primary draws over action and spectacle. Most Creator/MarvelComics series had already been soap operas before that point, but Claremont's writing made the soap truly operatic in scope. His focus on drama also came with a degree of [[BlackAndGreyMorality moral ambiguity]] that was previously unheard-of in superhero comics. Most famously: he drastically {{retool}}ed the X-Men's nemesis ComicBook/{{Magneto}} by giving him a backstory, revealing that he was actually a tormented [[WellIntentionedExtremist political extremist]] trying to fight humanity's oppression of Mutants, and that he grew to hate humanity because he was [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust sent to Auschwitz]] as a child. Most mainstream modern superhero comics, including the deconstructions of Creator/AlanMoore and others, were changed forever by the popularity of Claremont's writing style. [[note]]Creator/JohnByrne's art had something to do with it too, but Claremont stayed on the title a lot longer and had a lot more influence.[[/note]] |
| 86 | * Harvey Pekar's ''ComicBook/AmericanSplendor'', running from 1976 until Pekar's death in 2010, showed that comics could depict adult life without idealizing it. An autobiographical story, it told the tale of an ordinary man living an ordinary life, demonstrated that simple SliceOfLife stories could work in comics and still be compelling without a focus on action. |
| 87 | * ''ComicBook/LutherArkwright'' was an independent New Wave style ScienceFiction comic made by Creator/BryanTalbot starting in 1976. The techniques and storytelling he used have had large impact on many other writers and artists. Creator/WarrenEllis has said "LUTHER ARKWRIGHT invented the tools. ARKWRIGHT informs Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Creator/NeilGaiman, Creator/GarthEnnis, me, and all the rest of us. It's probably Anglophone comics' single most important experimental work." |
| 88 | %%* ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' started in 1977 and has been the most popular British comic of the past few decades, granted it's faded a bit but it was the starting place for influential creators like Creator/AlanMoore and Creator/GrantMorrison. |
| 89 | %%** More than just them, too. Chances are if there's a significant British creator from the last 30 years, he's almost certainly done something for 2000AD, even if it was just a one-shot Future Shock. |
| 90 | * In 1983, Creator/AlanMoore started writing ComicBook/SwampThing. From one writer no one in America had heard of on a dying third-string title at DC we eventually got the whole of Creator/VertigoComics, Marvel's Max Imprint and not a few smaller publishing houses (Avatar, for example). |
| 91 | * The cult success of ''ComicBook/AlbedoErmaFelnaEDF'' (1983-2005), with its deadly serious and sophisticated political MilitaryScienceFiction story featuring FunnyAnimal characters, marked the true beginning of the MatureAnimalStory genre and a kickstarter to UsefulNotes/FurryFandom as something for adult fans. |
| 92 | * ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', running from 1985 to 1995, carried forward the intelligent and philosophical underpinnings of ''Peanuts'' but also marked the beginning of a pushback in newspaper comics against the artistic simplification that ''Peanuts'' heralded, earning renown for its beautiful, highly detailed artwork and ability to [[NoDialogueEpisode tell complete stories without any dialogue]] and encouraging other comic artists in the funny pages to get more detailed and experimental. |
| 93 | * Creator/FrankMiller's ''ComicBook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns'' and Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' (both published in 1986) are credited with kicking off MediaNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks. |
| 94 | ** ''The Dark Knight Returns'' was a grim classical tragedy that presented a hypothetical look at an aging Bruce Wayne's final days as Franchise/{{Batman}}, portraying the character as a violent and antisocial loner driven to bitter self-destruction in his twilight years. ''Watchmen'', meanwhile, was a sprawling [[{{Postmodernism}} postmodern]] epic set in a painstakingly detailed AlternateHistory version of the late 20th century where superheroes really existed, and it featured a cast of broken and self-doubting antiheroes who subtly satirized common character archetypes in the superhero genre. While fundamentally different in many ways, both stories explicitly set out to [[GenreDeconstruction deconstruct]] the superhero genre by introducing political subtext and psychological depth to a popular juvenile escapist fantasy, showing that it was possible to write superhero stories for adults. |
| 95 | ** Both books also included levels of sex and violence that were unheard of in mainstream superhero comics at the time, which quickly became the things that made them notorious and the source of their most immediate impact on the medium. When later creators tried to copy the most superficial aspects of Miller and Moore's work without bothering to copy their writing quality or their thematic richness (possibly encouraged by editors and executives who [[FollowTheLeader wanted to replicate their success]]), it fueled persistent criticisms about mainstream comic book publishers [[PanderingToTheBase aggressively pandering to adult fans]] with excessively racy content--which arguably played a major role in codifying the modern "fanboy" stereotype, and likely contributed to the decline of the comic book industry in the 1990s. |
| 96 | * Starting in 1988, Creator/ToddMcFarlane gained much acclaim for his artwork on ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'' and ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'', especially because he drew with exaggerated details and body contortions and extremely dynamic action scenes. This style later paved the way for Creator/RobLiefeld as writer and artist of ''ComicBook/NewMutants'', where he created ComicBook/{{Cable}}. His work on ''Cable'' and ''ComicBook/XForce'' kicked off the art style of MediaNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks. |
| 97 | * Creator/ImageComics did a lot in the '90s to change what was possible for both creators and the comic book medium. |
| 98 | ** Before they were formed in 1992 by seven former Creator/MarvelComics creators, the only mainstream options were Marvel and Creator/DCComics when it came to reaching a wide audiences that wasn't Creator/ArchieComics. Neither company allowed the creator to own what they made, and only gave them modest pay despite playing a part in the creation of {{Cash Cow Franchise}}s. This in turn lead to the seven creators to form Image, under the idea that the creator will ''always'' own what they make. It was an instant success, even beating out DC at the time. Furthermore, it pushed the boundaries of what was possible for a comic book to reach for an audience. With the only option before being superhero comics, the only way to make comics more mature, often non-superhero fare was through small indie companies. Image, having become a place where creators can make their own original IP and succeed, meant there was much greater diversity on the market, especially after the success of... |
| 99 | ** ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'', published by Image starting in 2003, was the catalyst for changing the landscape of comic book industry. Before, Image was largely superhero-oriented and attempted to be a part of a SharedUniverse. ''The Walking Dead'', being part of its own independent continuity with a non-superhero storyline and mature themes, was an instant success that few could've predicted would happen. This was the point where Image would [[GrowingTheBeard greatly diversify their lineup]], and comics that wouldn't have been possible to be successes before were becoming sellers, especially since neither Marvel or DC would want anything to do with them. Comics like ''ComicBook/{{Phonogram}}'', ''ComicBook/MorningGlories'', ''ComicBook/EastOfWest'', and ''ComicBook/{{Saga}}'' were made possible by the success of ''The Walking Dead''. |
| 100 | * Creator/MarkWaid and Creator/AlexRoss' ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'' (published in 1996, exactly a decade after ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' and ''ComicBook/TheDarkKnightReturns'') is generally credited with ''ending'' the Dark Age of Comic Books. Presented as a hypothetical look as a future incarnation of the Creator/DCComics universe, its story painted a grim portrait of a world overrun by violent and amoral superheroes with no qualms about using lethal force, and no regard for the innocent people caught in the crossfire of their pitched battles. Notably, the story presents the aging ComicBook/{{Superman}} and his compatriots--who cling to a more old-fashioned breed of heroism--as a superior alternative to the new generation of heroes, with the crimefighter "Magog" (the first of the new generation) symbolically portrayed as a harbinger of the End Times. Most readers at the time recognized this as a pretty unsubtle [[TakeThat condemnation]] of trends in the industry at the time, and ''Kingdom Come'' is now regarded as one of the first major works to attempt to push back against the DarkerAndEdgier direction of comic books in the 1990s. |
| 101 | * Despite of Marvel's changes to the genre in the 1960s, by the turn of the millennium the superhero genre was a large FantasyKitchenSink. Starting in 2000, the ComicBook/UltimateMarvel reimaginations took the characters back to their basic premises, and made them work in a strictly grounded context, with a cinematic narrative style. Most fantastic stuff was either removed or introduced by DoingInTheWizard, rather than just played straight. And rather to be HoldingOutForAHero, the civilian world has S.H.I.E.L.D., the GovernmentAgencyOfFiction that keeps all potential threats under watch and control. The most successful titles were ''ComicBook/UltimateSpiderMan'', which introduced [[Characters/MarvelComicsMilesMorales Miles Morales]], a Black Spider-Man, and ComicBook/TheUltimates, a super hero team reimagined as a US military task force. The style was soon adopted by the mainstream Marvel titles, and also by DC Comics. |
| 102 | * [[ChildrensComics Children's and YA comics and graphic novels]] had existed long before Creator/RainaTelgemeier, but they [[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/03/raina-telgemeier-cartoonist-smile-guts-books/677180/ flourished in popularity]] after her work on ''ComicBook/TheBabySittersClub'' from 2006-08 and her 2010 graphic novel ''ComicBook/{{Smile|RainaTelgemeier}}'', using the medium to tell SliceOfLife {{Coming of Age Stor|y}}ies based on her own childhood in a manner akin to Creator/JudyBlume in literature. Her success showed publishers that there was a vast, untapped market of kids and teenagers interested in comics that weren't about superheroes, such that Creator/GeneLuenYang, creator of ''ComicBook/AmericanBornChinese'', credited her with creating an entire new category of comic books, the "middle-grade graphic memoir". |
| 103 | [[/folder]] |
| 104 | |
| 105 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 106 | * "A Fragment out of Time", published in ''Spockanalia'' (a Franchise/StarTrek fanzine running through the seventies), was the first known SlashFic to hit wide distribution. Virtually ''every'' YaoiFangirl can thank Diane Marchant, who originally published anonymously. |
| 107 | * Prior to ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged'', most AbridgedSeries tended to run on wacky NoFourthWall humor, general disregard for the actual plot of the series, [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]], exaggerated {{Flanderization}} of characters, being often devoted to making [[TakeThat Take Thats]] at whatever official dubs of the series exist. In contrast, ''DBZA'' (from the second season onwards) instead moved towards more low-key, character driven humor that tried to retain most of the drama of the actual plot while making genuine attempts [[FixFic to improve upon the original.]] Nowadays, modern abridged series, such as ''WebVideo/SwordArtOnlineAbridged'', use this formula instead. |
| 108 | [[/folder]] |
| 109 | |
| 110 | [[folder:Films -- Animation]] |
| 111 | * ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'' showed that not only can animation be entertaining and longer than 7 or 8 minutes, but that the audience can be emotionally connected with animated characters. During production, the film was seen by skeptical industry followers as a potential failure in the making, but it ended up becoming a massive success that helped launch the entire medium of animated movies in the process. |
| 112 | * '' WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat'' is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking animated films in history. Among other things: it was one of the first animated films aimed exclusively at adults to become a major box office hit, one of the first independently produced feature-length animated films, and one of the first animated films to extensively use improvised dialogue. For that reason, it's often credited with paving the way for later independent animated films aimed at adults, and for inspiring many later animators to break out of the mold developed by Creator/{{Disney}}. |
| 113 | * ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' were back-to-back smash successes showed that animated family features made outside of Disney could become huge successes, resulting in other studios getting in the game and making films of their own. . |
| 114 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'' was a surprise sensation in 1989, revitalizing interest in animated features (and helping to kick off MediaNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation in the process) and originating many of the tropes of the Creator/{{Disney}} Renaissance. For years afterward, its musical fantasy structure was the default setting for Western animated features, until it was eventually overtaken by the Creator/{{Pixar}} CGI boom. |
| 115 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' may not have invented the CelebrityVoiceActor trope [[note]] A handful of early animated films in the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon featured voice actors who were actually pretty well-known for other things in their day. For example, Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards (Jiminy Cricket in ''WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}}'') was a popular jazz musician, as were Phil Harris and Louis Prima (Baloo and Louie in ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967''). ''WesternAnimation/AliceInWonderland1951'' features character actor Creator/EdWynn as the Mad Hatter. And ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfIchabodAndMrToad'' memorably featured the voices of Creator/BasilRathbone and Creator/BingCrosby.[[/note]] but Creator/RobinWilliams' performance as the Genie ''was'' the definitive TropeCodifier that almost single-handedly opened voice-acting up to all of Hollywood. With the overwhelmingly positive response to Williams' take on the character--which utilized his [[SignatureStyle trademark comedic style]] to great effect--he turned voice-acting into a "respectable" gig that practically every actor in the business wanted to take a crack at. For perspective, Creator/BeaArthur had previously turned down the role of Ursula in ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid|1989}}'' just three years before ''Aladdin'' hit theaters--but ''after'' it was released, we got Creator/JamesEarlJones and Creator/MatthewBroderick in ''WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994'', Creator/MelGibson in ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'', Creator/JasonAlexander in ''WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}'', Creator/DannyDeVito in ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'', Creator/EddieMurphy in ''WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'', and Creator/MinnieDriver in ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}''. |
| 116 | * ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1'' (1995): |
| 117 | ** This film spawned the [[AllCGICartoon CG boom in animation]], which eventually took over Western animated film. The massive success of the first-ever completely computer-animated film, coupled with the lukewarm critical reception to Creator/{{Disney}}'s big movie that year ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}'', began an increasing trend of computer-animated films outperforming their 2D hand-drawn equivalents. The rise of Creator/DreamWorksAnimation's CGI films furthered this trend, as did [[GenreKiller the failures of multiple traditionally-animated films]] in the early part of the TurnOfTheMillennium such as ''WesternAnimation/TitanAE'', ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'', and ''WesternAnimation/SinbadLegendOfTheSevenSeas''. Today, hand-drawn animation is very uncommon, being mostly relegated to television series and independent animated films, while the AllCGICartoon dominates mainstream animated cinema. |
| 118 | ** Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of Disney's prior animated canon -- and a decent majority of animated films in general -- took place in fantasy worlds, often based in medieval times. This film's contemporary American setting would become more the norm in the decades ahead, though there have still been plenty of films with fantasy settings (albeit usually done in a more self-aware manner, thanks to the success of ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' and its sequels). |
| 119 | ** Also, in prior Disney films, as well as those which tried to copy their formula, the musical numbers generally took up around a third to a half of the runtime. This heavily scaled it back and went with a more dialog-focused approach, with only a couple of musical numbers, something which became much more standard for animated films starting in the following decade. |
| 120 | ** It was also the major turning point for celebrity voice casting as a major selling point. While this had existed [[OlderThanTheyThink as far back as]] ''WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994'' had been another earlier example of an animated film where most of the main characters were played by {{Celebrity Voice Actor}}s who were more well-known for their live action work, usually such roles had been typecast and were often relegated to minor characters. ''Toy Story'' featured two main voices that really weren't bringing anything special to the table (in contrast to far more notable voices like, say Creator/VincentPrice brought to a villainous role, or Creator/PaulLynde to a sneaky role), but were marketed as a big thing, cementing the trend of celebrity voice acting as the standard approach for the industry. |
| 121 | ** Finally, the movie had an unprecedented impact over family films in general, as live-action ones became increasingly unpopular with young children. As a result, they became less common, and most live-action films would become increasingly raunchy vehicles for established actors, dramas, or DTV material. |
| 122 | * ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' (2001) had a major, lasting impact on animated films when it came out. Its snarkier, more parodic take on the traditional fairy-tale animated movie format became a huge influence on all animated children's movies that came after it, resulting in movies like ''Film/{{Enchanted}}'', ''WesternAnimation/HappilyNEverAfter'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Hoodwinked}}''. Even after Creator/{{Disney}} animation experienced another revival, and the FracturedFairyTale-type movie eventually died out, most kids animated films, such as other movies by ''Shrek'' creator Creator/DreamWorksAnimation and movies by Creator/IlluminationEntertainment, are a lot snarkier than pre-''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' animated films and still follow the formula started by ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1''. The traditional Disney fairy tale films of today, such as ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'', deliberately have to subvert and deconstruct the tropes commonly involved with those movies, arguably all because ''Shrek'' robbed the studio of ever playing those tropes straight again. |
| 123 | * ''WesternAnimation/IceAge1'' (2002) isn't exactly viewed as a cinematic classic by most, but it's notable for being the first major [[AllCGICartoon CGI-animated feature film]] that wasn't made by Creator/{{Pixar}} or Creator/DreamWorksAnimation, being a Creator/BlueSkyStudios production distributed by Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox (although, Pixar's owner Creator/{{Disney}} would later buy the film when they brought 20th Century Fox). As a result, it played a major role in establishing CGI-animated movies as a permanent fixture at the American box office--instead of just a minor novelty controlled by two competing studios. |
| 124 | [[/folder]] |
| 125 | |
| 126 | [[folder:Professional Wrestling]] |
| 127 | * Pro wrestling had existed in Mexico since the 1800s, not much later than it had in the USA. Big business Lucha Libre didn't exist until Salvador Lutteroth was inspired to {{start|myown}} his own [[Wrestling/{{CMLL}} enterprise]] by the visiting Masked Marvel. Even then, masks themselves didn't ''really'' catch on until Lutteroth presented one of the Guzman brothers with a gimmick called Wrestling/ElSanto. |
| 128 | * Wrestling/GeorgeHackenschmidt traveled at least two continents wrestling rival claimants to the "World Heavyweight Champion". It was Wrestling/LouThesz who used this idea to not only unify championship status, but the entire "territory" where such a claim was made, cementing the power of the Wrestling/NationalWrestlingAlliance. The first major governing body for pro wrestling and ''only'' pro wrestling, the NWA would have a strong presence on no less than three continents at any given time for the next forty years and dictate most of pro wrestling's direction. Commissioners and boards of directors would be used as stock {{plot device}}s for years even after the NWA's decline. |
| 129 | * Gimmicks have been in pro wrestling since the Usefulnotes/CatchAsCatchCan days. Even the GorgeousGeorge gimmick is older than [[Wrestling/GeorgeWagner Gorgeous George]] himself. It was the combination of George being that over the top and the increasing affordability of television that made TheGimmick truly synonymous with pro wrestlers. |
| 130 | * Pro wrestling in Japan was private clubs and concert intermissions. Big money television business and sporting arenas did not happen until Wrestling/{{Rikidozan}}, fresh from a trip to the USA, recruited several sumo wrestlers and judoka to form the JWA. Rikidozan's untimely assassination was also a turning point, as it lead to the births of the two longest running Japanese feds, Wrestling/{{All Japan|Pro Wrestling}} and Wrestling/{{New Japan|Pro Wrestling}}. |
| 131 | * Women wrestlers had a world championship belt before men did, but from the very start Minerva was much more famous as a weight lifter, with the fact she also wrestled being treated as an afterthought. Women wrestlers saw their stock rise in the US during World War II and afterwards were promoted as special attractions in early NWA years. They lost a lot of stock in the US after the double crossing and banishment from the NWA of Mildred Burke in favor of June Byers, but this caused the stock of women wrestlers to rise in Japan as Burke took her WWWA promotion overseas and the Japanese in particular imitated it, and eventually [[FullyAbsorbedFinale absorbed it]] into [[Wrestling/AllJapanWomensProWrestling Zenjo]]. |
| 132 | * [[Wrestling/SuperstarBillyGraham "Superstar" Billy Graham]] did this for {{heel}}s in the mid-1970s. He was just as flashy and entertaining as any {{face}}, and proved that the heel didn't always have to be a StrawLoser. He was actually hoping to have a HeelFaceTurn during his 1977-1978 title run, and was extremely disappointed when that didn't happen, although he eventually did become a face when he returned to the WWF years later. He was the first major heel to hold a world title for more than a few weeks at a time. |
| 133 | * Mary Ellison, aka Wrestling/TheFabulousMoolah, left a major impact on women's wrestling from the '60s through the '80s, though how good an impact she left, especially compared to the efforts of Byers to [[VindicatedByHistory minimize the damage from the double cross on Burke]], is very much up for debate. As the leading women's wrestling trainer and booker during that time, Moolah helped forge the then-WWF's women's division and bring it into the spotlight. However, for better or worse, this was at the expense of the already ailing NWA and she was also a driving force behind the "Diva" style of wrestling that would predominate until the 2010s. Said style was heavy on {{fanservice}} and {{catfight}}ing but often accused of being low on athleticism. That's before getting into [[https://uproxx.com/prowrestling/what-did-fabulous-moolah-do-wwe-allegations-controversy-explained/ the accusations]] made about how she treated the women who trained under her, as well as her sabotage of Wrestling/WendiRichter's career and the WWF's Women's TagTeam division. As such, many wrestling fans have blamed Moolah for setting back women's wrestling in the United States by decades, between the wrestling styles she promoted and the backstage moves she made. |
| 134 | * El Santo didn't have a successor, he had three. Los Tres Fantasticos taking over his feud with Los Misioneros De La Muerte cemented {{Tag Team}}s and {{Power Trio}}s as big money in lucha libre, with three on three being the main match type for decades to come, and also cemented the in and out rules that for [[Wrestling/TheRockNRollExpress whatever reason]] never [[RickyMorton caught on]] in the US. |
| 135 | * Wrestling/SatoruSayama, Wrestling/AkiraMaeda and Wrestling/NobuhikoTakada's Wrestling/UniversalWrestlingFederation solidified, among other things, tapping out over verbal submission, that collar and elbow displays were unnecessary, that clean finish booking could make a lot of money, that wrestlers could legitimately beat and stretch each other while sticking to planned finishes. From these efforts, "shoot style" pro wrestling was born, and people took the claim "pro wrestling was the strongest martial art in the world" far more seriously than even Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling had ever managed to make them. Giant Baba's renowned booking of "traditional puroresu" in Wrestling/AllJapanProWrestling was moslty refined from UWF's example and applied to a different style. Showcasing martial arts bouts of other styles, as seen on [[Wrestling/AllJapanWomensProWrestling Zenjo]], early FMW, Wrestling/ProWrestlingZero1, and later even "Puroresu Love" era All Japan, was also inspired by UWF. |
| 136 | * The WWF's active effort to destroy the territorial system changed pro wrestling forever. While Jim Crockett was responsible for shutting down more territories, JCP only began doing so after [[Wrestling/VinceMcMahon Vince Jr]] did in a misguided effort to ''[[StartXToStopX stop]]'' Vince. In the NWA's heyday there were always at least 39 good money pay off promotions to work for in the USA alone. In the WWF dominated era wrestlers would be lucky to see three good options in the USA, and thus would have to work ''a lot'' more different companies at once if they didn't get into "The Big Three", go to another country, or both. The territorial system did encourage a revolving door to a lesser degree, so conversely wrestlers of the big three moved around a lot less, due promoters being less willing to work together and "Big 3" wrestlers all the way down to the {{jobber}}s fighting to keep their "spots", where before overstaying one's "welcome" was considered rude outside of especially high drawing faces. Big 3 rosters also ballooned in size, as one of Vince Jr's tactics was signing numerous wrestlers to contract to prevent "competition" from using them, often resulting in dozens of wrestlers the WWF could not realistically expect to [[OutOfFocus get their money's worth]] out of being kept around for the sake of it. WCW, [[StartXToStopX in an effort to beat Vince]], signed over a hundred wrestlers it had no intent to use. Giantic {{power stable}}s like the Wrestling/{{n|ewWorldorder}}Wo became more common while [[WalkingTheEarth traveling]] special attractions, LoserLeavesTown and CharlieBrownFromOuttaTown really lost their piss. Most smaller, "independent" comapnies were [[RunningTheAsylum fan]] or [[VanityProject wrestler]] driven projects that would have been branded outlaw by "legit" NWA promoters and didn't even pretend to recognize one another, which combined with more static Big 3 rosters made FaceHeelRevolvingDoor a lot more noticeable. "Big 3" [[TheGimmick gimmicks]] became more exaggerated, promos became longer and more scripted, work rate deemphesized as hour long title matches gave way to five minute ones, entrances became more elaborate with music and or pyrotechnics being a must, much [[PrejudicedForPecs more emphasis was put on upper bodies]] and shaving became more common. Anything [=McMahon=] didn't care for also became less prominent in the USA, which meant fewer masks, fewer managers, less emphasis on {{tag team}}s, no attention given to weight classes, no mention of time limits, Asians became even less prevelent despite continued Japanese excursions, women wrestlers had fleeting presence and matches became less technical and less violent. Since three companies can't do as much outreach as thirty nine, pro wrestling enterprises around the world could no longer count on the USA to prop them up in times of trouble and many were in fact wary of Vince Jr's predatory practices and or dismissive of the product he promoted. |
| 137 | * When Wrestling/BretHart defeated Wrestling/RicFlair on October 12, 1992 to win his first ever [[Wrestling/{{WWE}} World Wrestling Federation]] world title, it officially symbolized the end of dominance for big, [[WorldOfMuscleMen muscular men]] who could barely wrestle in the '80s WWF and put more emphasis on in ring skills along with Wrestling/ShawnMichaels and [[Wrestling/CurtHennig Curt Hennig/Mr. Perfect]]. Brian Zane in his ''WebVideo/WrestlingWithWregret'' [[https://youtu.be/aEUBw-CSFVo?t=76 video]] on the least likely world champions equated Bret Hart's victory over Ric Flair to when Music/{{Nirvana}} and {{Grunge}} killed off Hair Metal for good, as it too was a much needed step away from [[TheEighties the '80s]]. |
| 138 | * ''World Of Sport'' being canceled was the end of big money pro wrestling in the United Kingdom. Fairly or not, many wrestlers laid the blame for declining viewership at the feet of Big Daddy Crabtree, [[CasualtyInTheRing who was accused of killing]] opponent King Kong Kirk with his famous {{Belly Flop Crush|ing}}. As UK wrestlers often had to make more overseas trips to continue their careers, the island's pro wrestling circuit also got [[DarkerAndEdgier heavier and dreerier]](when they weren't {{parody}}ing the [[Wrestling/VinceMcMahon USA product]] anyway). The technical, almost acrobatic GoodVersusGood "blue eyes" bouts giving way to rougher chain wrestling, brawling, cheating, death defying dives and even sometimes {{Garbage Wrestl|er}}ing. |
| 139 | * Wrestling/{{ECW}} brought hardcore wrestling back to North America, made luchadores popular in the United States, reemphasized the value of mat technique and made professional wrestling DarkerAndEdgier at a time when the two biggest promotions, the Wrestling/{{WW|E}}F and Wrestling/{{WCW}}, were still putting out an altogether LighterAndSofter, more comic-book-ish product. Men such as Wrestling/DeanMalenko, Wrestling/{{Taz|z}}, Wrestling/EddieGuerrero, Super Crazy and Wrestling/MasatoTanaka were pushed solely on talent and crowd response, while others like [[Wrestling/JimFullington Sandman]] had their weaknesses painstakingly hidden. Amazingly enough, WCW, part of the Time Warner media empire, and WWF, a multi-million dollar entertainment company in its own right, ended up taking their cues from a tiny promotion that ran shows out of a converted bingo hall in South UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}. ECW didn't just bring back GarbageWrestling, it also brought in elements of shoot style that for whatever reason simply were not catching on in the US, such as tapping out, as well incorporating "puroresu" and "lucha libre" elements and helping those gain traction in the US. Unfortunately WWF and especially WCW raided ECW's lockeroom until only the only things that stood out about it when it closed were {{garbage wrestl|er}}ing and {{cat fight}}s. |
| 140 | * Born out of internal turmoil in the Universal Wrestling Federation, Satoru Sayama's Shooto, the world's first UsefulNotes/{{mixed martial arts}} promotion, took awhile to bare fruit. It was in fact largely ignored and forgotten by the MMA community. Nonetheless, mixed martial arts changed pro wrestling noticeably, most immediately and ironically by pretty much destroying the shoot style pro wrestling it was born out of (a one two punch with New Japan's burial of UWF during an [[UltimateShowdownOfUltimateDestiny invasion angle]]). Fans who wanted more serious or realistic pro wrestling simply turned to MMA rather than shoot style, quite a few successful mixed martial artists were more willing than shoot style wrestlers to work with and put over traditional puroresu and strong style in worked matches(understandable after NJPW buried UWF), while several hyped up shoot style wrestlers failed in MMA, with low and mid carders like Wrestling/KazushiSakuraba finding the most MMA success(since shoot style wrestlers were legitimately beating each other up the top stars working more matches, longer matches, were too beat up for legitimate fights). MMA also nearly destroyed the strong style shoot style was born out of, although this was less an audience shift as it had been with shoot style and more on Wrestling/AntonioInoki deciding to push wrestlers in New Japan based on the strength of their MMA records without considering their ability to work matches or appeal to crowds...or that fans who ''really'' cared ''that'' much about MMA records would just watch MMA. MMA is also behind a lot of the weirder developments of Japan. Several pro wrestling styles("traditional", "strong", "shoot", "lucharesu", "garbage") had long coexisted on the nation's circuit, but MMA is what convinced promoters things like Wrestling/FightingOperaHustle could find an audience. |
| 141 | * The WWF also had one at some point between 1996 and 1998, but mileage varies on what exactly it was. Some people cite [[Wrestling/StoneColdSteveAustin Steve Austin]]'s victory at King of the Ring 1996 and resulting Austin 3:16 promo, which made him the only thing to rival the Wrestling/NewWorldOrder in popularity. Others cite Austin's match against Wrestling/BretHart, face of the WWF along with Wrestling/ShawnMichaels, at [[Wrestling/WrestleMania WrestleMania XIII]], when Austin turned face and Hart heel. Others will cite the formation of Wrestling/DGenerationX, an edgy, raunchy stable that was somewhat [=nWo=] influenced (it had members of Wrestling/TheKliq in it as well, after) and feuded with the Hart Foundation, Bret Hart's group[[note]]The real start of the genre shift came in the fall of 1995 when the Clique held a house show hostage by refusing to perform until Vince flew out from Connecticut to address their concerns in person, where they pushed for a less silly and more adult-oriented product. It took a while for the changes made to be seen on camera, but one of the most immediate results of that meeting was most of the guys with a [[WrestlingDoesntPay "(X) by day, wrestler by night"]] gimmicks getting repackaged or fired[[/note]]. Resulting from that feud was Michaels and Hart's match at Survivor Series 1997, Hart's last match in the WWF under his current contract. The match was to end ambiguously and Hart was to surrender his championship the next day on Raw, but Michaels, Wrestling/VinceMcMahon and Wrestling/TripleH [[Wrestling/MontrealScrewjob conspired to end the match without Hart's knowledge.]] This event created the Mr. [=McMahon=] character and a decade's worth of unmitigated hostility between Hart and those involved. The final event is Austin's match against Michaels at [=WrestleMania=] XIV, when Austin defeated Michaels and in the words of JR "The Austin Era (had) begun." This event kickstarted the Austin-[=McMahon=] feud, which would be the focal point of the company for three years, in the company's most successful or second most successful era, the Wrestling/AttitudeEra. Similarly, at and before [=WrestleMania=] X-Seven, the Wrestling/AttitudeEra ended. Vince purchased WCW, the company's chief rival, and at Wrestling/WrestleMania, one of the greatest PPV's in history, Austin faced [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson The Rock]] for the WWF Championship, unbelievably, Stone Cold turned heel in his hometown and sided with [=McMahon=] to beat Rock. The central feuds of the Attitude Era, both in real life and kayfabe, had ended within a week of each other. |
| 142 | * All Pro Wrestling's King Of Indies {{tournament arc}} planted the idea that pro wrestlers on the independent circuit in a country virtually monopolized by WWF/E, wrestling for tiny feds with no television, could nonetheless draw money if given the chance. Seeing it caused foreign promotions as large and successful as westside Xtreme wrestling, Wrestling/ProWrestlingZero1, Wrestling/FightingOperaHUSTLE and even Wrestling/AllJapanWomensProWrestling to not only consider signing US indie talent on the strength of tapes alone but actively engage in tape trading and the scouting of small US wrestling schools and promotions to find more. KOI was directly responsible for Wrestling/RingOfHonor both existing and ''not'' being yet another ECW knockoff like early IWA M-S and Wrestling/{{CZW}}. Without KOI getting international attention Wrestling/{{TNA}}'s X Division would not have been nearly as big. In the UK a "King Of Europe" cup was imitated in hopes of creating similar opportunities for ''it's'' own wrestlers, who were virtually all at indie status with ''World Of Sport'' being no more. |
| 143 | * The 2006-2007 double whammy of the Sports Illustrated steroids report -- in which several wrestlers were named for purchasing performance-enhancing drugs, including several high profile fan favorites -- and the horrific Wrestling/ChrisBenoit murder-suicide of his family put the WWE under the harshest negative light it had encountered since Wrestling/OwenHart's tragic and preventable death. Sponsors began to leave in droves as the company was painted as a misogynistic, crass, steroid-fueled carny show and the media had ten years worth of Attitude Era footage to drive home that point (they had a field day with the infamous "Vince makes Trish strip and bark like a dog" segment). In 2008, the WWE began a company-wide sanitizing of their product to shed the "Attitude" image, phasing out blood, foul language, and sexually charged gimmicks and angles, cleaning up RAW to a TV-PG product, doubling down on their charity work with children, and implementing a strict drug testing program. They even removed "Wrestling" from its name in order to promote itself as family-friendly general entertainment and sever its association to pro wrestling and its associated stigmas ("WWE" is no longer an acronym outside of legalese). Although long-time fans decry the LighterAndSofter route to this day, the company has repaired its image in the public eye, as kid-friendly companies like Chef Boyardee renewed their sponsorships in the end, the media reports often on their charitable actions, and celebrities and athletes participate on the shows, illustrating that it is no longer a negative connotation to be associated with WWE. |
| 144 | * Wrestling/{{SHIMMER}} was the first USA women's promotion since the WWWA to successfully make headlines while focusing on athleticism, rather than either the blatant [[SexSells T&A]] that the WWE women's division could degenerate into at times, or {{Camp}} like Wrestling/{{GLOW}} and its successors. It started as an invitational talent showcase not unlike early ROH, specifically to help women get respect, and bookings, after the closing of Zenjo and GAEA, the world biggest women wrestling feds. It also did [[{{crossover}} double duty]] as the "women's division" of other independent feds like All American Wrestling, gradually eating away at the open msyogeny in the ROH fanbase in particular to the point that when the two companies parted ways there was a VocalMinority that consistently demanded ROH give them a replacement to the SHIMMER showcases for four years until ROH complied. New women's divions and promotions sprang up much more rapidly in the USA as well, some being more openly SHIMMER inspired than others(Absolute Intense Wrestling boasted their women's division would beat SHIMMER at its own game and as far away as [[LandDownUnder AUS]] the GLIMMER fed initially had the [[SincerestFormOfFlattery exact same logo font]]). The tiny Berwyn fed made such a buzz older efforts like PGWA and [=ChickFight=] actually benefited from it. As Pat Laprade and Dan Murphy wrote in ''Sisterhood of the Squared Circle: The History and Rise of Women's Wrestling'', "Without a doubt, a case could be made that the first shots of the 2015 WWE Women's Revolution were actually fired at the Berwyn Eagles Club a decade before." |
| 145 | * After WCW and ECW closed their doors in 2001, most wrestlers in the US and Canada thought that the only viable option for making it in wrestling was WWE... until Wrestling/{{Christian}} chose not to re-sign when his WWE contract expired in 2005, and instead go to Wrestling/{{TNA}}. While many wrestlers like Wrestling/{{Sting}} and Wrestling/AJStyles had turned down numerous WWE offers, while former WWE wrestlers had gone to TNA before, he was the first wrestler with a comfortable spot in WWE to choose TNA of his own volition, and set the ball rolling on the idea that WWE was not the be-all and end-all of wrestling, which has gathered steam in the decade-plus since with things like indy wrestler Steve Corino revealing he could make more money working in the indies than on a WWE developmental contract, Wrestling/CMPunk's "pipe bomb" promo where he mentioned Wrestling/{{New Japan|ProWrestling}} and Wrestling/RingOfHonor by name, Wrestling/CodyRhodes becoming a bigger star outside of WWE than he ever was with them, and Rhodes going on to play a huge role in the establishment of Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling. A major factor in this has been the advent of internet streaming, as it means wrestlers and companies no longer need TV pay-per-views to gain exposure. |
| 146 | * The sudden popularity of women's wrestling in [[Wrestling/{{WWENXT}} NXT]] (particularly the Four Horsewomen of Wrestling/BeckyLynch, Wrestling/SashaBanks, Wrestling/CharlotteFlair and Wrestling/{{Bayley}}) resulted in the decline of the model-type wrestler as well as the Divas moniker in favor of the more athletic type female wrestler. |
| 147 | [[/folder]] |
| 148 | |
| 149 | [[folder:Public Safety Announcements]] |
| 150 | * For the longest time airline safety demonstrations by flight attendants while the plane taxis for takeoff were all pretty much the same from airline to airline, being mandated by government aviation rules and international agreements -- how to buckle your seatbelts, no smoking, how to put on your oxygen mask, stow your tray tables and put your seat upright for takeoff, yada yada. The introduction of in-flight entertainment screens at first just outsourced the requirement to technology, with the videos all pretty much conveying the same info with maybe a "Thanks for flying with (airline)" to differentiate. Low-cost carriers were the first to look into making these part of the flying experience: Virgin Atlantic began toying with making the videos entertaining around 2000 by animating them, while Southwest Airlines began having their attendants inject one-line humor into their demonstrations (them being a carrier who couldn't afford video entertainment on their planes). But it wasn't until 2008 when Delta's "Deltalina" safety videos became a viral hit that the major carriers realized that these videos were a potential way to advertise their brand by making them really entertaining and memorable to passengers. Several commissioned their own series that both convey the necessary safety information in a memorable manner (yes, volcano in Italy, when [[https://youtu.be/dXsUrFJ3n6E?t=183s United says no smoking]] that means you) and impart the airline's own marketing and branding (compare these from [[https://youtu.be/Fi4RS7aARSo Air France]], [[https://youtu.be/T0Zkey8LMHU ANA]], and '''especially''' [[Advertising/AirNewZealandSafetyVideos Air New]] [[https://youtu.be/cBlRbrB_Gnc Zealand]]). |
| 151 | [[/folder]] |
| 152 | |
| 153 | [[folder:Radio and Podcasting]] |
| 154 | * In 1927, the American radio network Creator/{{NBC}} needed a way to alert network control engineers and announcers on their stations whenever programming was about to change. To do that, they came up with a seven-note series of chimes, later shortened to just three notes (G-E-C)... and in doing so, invented the ThemeTune as the "NBC chimes" became the network's calling card. |
| 155 | * On October 20, 1930, the UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} radio station WGN premiered the RadioDrama ''Painted Dreams'', generally considered to be the first SoapOpera. While ''Painted Dreams'' was canceled in 1943, the shows it inspired would go on to outlive radio as a medium for dramatic storytelling and profoundly shape the early history of television. ShowRunner Irna Phillips, remembered as the "Queen of the Soaps", went on to create several landmark shows in the genre, among them ''Series/GuidingLight'', ''Series/AsTheWorldTurns'', and ''Series/AnotherWorld'' -- and moreover, her fight with WGN in 1932 over the rights to ''Painted Dreams'' (which she wanted to sell to a national network) led her to seek full creative and financial control over her properties from then on out, allowing her to build a creative empire in the mid-20th century. |
| 156 | * ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}'' (1949-57 on radio, 1951-59 on television) invented the modern PoliceProcedural, using law enforcement as the basis for a series in which the plot of each episode would revolve around the investigation of a crime. Creator/JackWebb used his contacts within the Los Angeles Police Department to ensure authenticity, including using [[BasedOnATrueStory fictionalized versions of real cases]] as subject matter for his show, popularizing the use of RippedFromTheHeadlines plots in police procedurals along the way. It also marked a sea change in how American pop culture depicted the police. Beforehand, police officers were targets of mockery, portrayed as [[PoliceAreUseless bumbling and incompetent]] by the likes of the [[Creator/KeystoneStudios Keystone Cops]] and many others inspired by them, while Webb's steely, lantern-jawed Sgt. Joe Friday was a morally upstanding figure who commanded respect and authority, the prototype for generations of heroic police officers in television and film. Creator/BobChipman, in [[https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/how-dragnet-changed-the-entire-genre-of-crime-fiction-the-big-picture/ this episode]] of ''The Big Picture'', called it "one of the most influential and culture-shaping shows in history", and described most fictional portrayals of the police since as either "descendants of, or reactions to, ''Dragnet'' in some way." |
| 157 | * The payola scandals of 1959. |
| 158 | ** For starters, they are the reason why disc jockeys at commercial radio stations in the United States no longer have the freedom to choose what songs they want to play. The Congressional investigations into payola revealed that many [=DJs=] were being paid under the table to play songs that the record labels were promoting, a deep conflict of interest (especially for those, like Creator/DickClark and Alan Freed, who had ownership stakes in labels whose records they were pushing). The result was that many radio stations stripped their [=DJs=] of the authority to make programming decisions, with more power concentrated in the hands of the station manager. |
| 159 | ** The investigations into payola were also, together with the Day the Music Died, one of two [[GenreKiller Genre-Killers]] for RockAndRoll in 1959, giving it an image as manufactured pop music pushed by the labels rather than an organic fanbase. It took UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion to break rock out of that image. |
| 160 | * In 1981, Scott Shannon, then a host and operations manager at WRBQ in Tampa, Florida, invented the "morning zoo" program, a DenserAndWackier morning radio show focused on zany antics and interactions between the hosts in addition to straight news, weather, and music. Morning radio shows would become a lot more lighthearted and humorous as a result, especially after Shannon took his show to the struggling WHTZ in 1983 and turned it into UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity's biggest radio station almost overnight. |
| 161 | * In Australia, prior to the premiere of ''The Coodabeen Champions'' in 1981, shows analyzing sport in general and UsefulNotes/AustralianRulesFootball in particular were SeriousBusiness. The Coodabeens' laid-back, often comedic style influenced many shows, both on radio and television, to take a more casual approach, more a bunch of friends chatting about the game than experts talking about statistics and tactics. |
| 162 | * Creator/HowardStern and Creator/RushLimbaugh, upon their respective national debuts in 1986 and '88, both revolutionized the American radio TalkShow. Stern's [[Radio/TheHowardSternShow eponymous show]] pushed the boundaries of VulgarHumor on the radio while [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity riding the ensuing controversy to ever-greater heights of success and infamy]], leading to a wave of ShockJock radio hosts in TheNineties each trying to outdo Stern and each other. Limbaugh, meanwhile, took the same confrontational style and applied it to politics rather than comedy, exploiting the repeal of the FCC's "Fairness Doctrine"[[note]]The Fairness Doctrine stated that radio and television stations that used public airwaves a) had to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest (often done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials), and b) had to present contrasting viewpoints on such.[[/note]] in 1987 to create a program that wore its right-wing partisanship on its sleeve, leading to a similar proliferation of conservative talk show hosts. Together, Stern and Limbaugh also demonstrated that there was still a lot of life left in non-music radio formats, which had been in decline for decades since the rise of television. |
| 163 | * The fallout from Music/JanetJackson's WardrobeMalfunction at the UsefulNotes/SuperBowl XXXVIII halftime show in 2004, described in more detail on the Live-Action TV page, spread beyond just television. Not only did more sexualized and [[ClusterFBomb foul-mouthed]] musicians (including Janet herself) get pushed off of American pop radio playlists, the affair also ended the heyday of the radio ShockJock, with many of them vanishing from the airwaves as crackdowns on indecent content gathered steam. This led to a long boom in satellite radio in the late '00s and '10s as edgier music and talk shows became its KillerApp compared to a sanitized terrestrial radio landscape, one that would only peter out in the late '10s with the rise of streaming and {{podcast}}ing. Howard Stern [[ChannelHop moving his show]] from terrestrial radio to Sirius satellite radio (now [=SiriusXM=]) in October 2004 after [[Creator/IHeartMedia Clear Channel]] pulled his show off their stations is perhaps the most visible symbol of how the incident marked the EndOfAnAge in radio and the start of a new one. And with that... |
| 164 | * Creator/JoeRogan, with the launch of his show ''The Joe Rogan Experience'' in 2009, did this for podcasting. |
| 165 | ** He brought the radio TalkShow to the internet with a hip, edgy program filled with content that would never fly on terrestrial radio, while also being more accessible than satellite radio's paid subscription service. Many people who, before Rogan, would've become radio hosts instead started podcasts after seeing the far lower barrier to entry that the medium enabled, while many existing radio programs and networks (such as Creator/{{NPR}}) brought their shows to podcasting as well in order to reach younger listeners. |
| 166 | ** His brand of humor also marked a shift in radio programs geared towards young men. While his show still kept one foot firmly planted in unapologetic {{fratbro}} culture, Rogan embraced an EruditeStoner image that was simultaneously more laid-back and more intellectual than the {{Shock Jock}}s of the '90s and early '00s, with many episodes being long-form "shoot the shit" interviews with various public figures of interest to him, including athletes, authors, business leaders, comedians, politicians, and scientists. Many of the podcasts that followed in Rogan's wake embraced his more casual style. |
| 167 | * ''Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale'' changed the podcast game in one episode in 2012 with "A Story About You", highlighting the flexibility of the narrative and taking full advantage of the medium of the podcast. Since it did not have to show anything, it could tell one story and immerse the listener in a way that had never been done before. With attention on this one episode, ''Night Vale'' demonstrated the potential of the podcast as a medium for storytelling outside of small critical circles and gave it credibility as a legitimate art form, helping to revive and modernize the RadioDrama for a new generation. |
| 168 | [[/folder]] |
| 169 | |
| 170 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 171 | * In the mid-1980s, the appearance of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Battletech}}'' popularised fantasy and science fiction settings in {{wargaming}}, which had until then been dominated by historical games, and brought a new generation into the hobby. |
| 172 | * ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' was created when a couple of friends decided to see what would happen if, instead of playing wargames representing thousands of troops in huge, usually realistic, battles, you used similar rules to control just a few individuals. This quickly led to the idea of following them through a series of small encounters and building up a story rather than just a single battle, and thus the modern roleplaying game was born. The idea was so influential that even more traditional wargames like ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' these days focus on much smaller, more character-focused battles than had historically been the case, while for the most part roleplaying games took over from wargaming almost entirely. |
| 173 | ** ''Literature/{{Dragonlance}}'' was TSR's first attempt to go beyond simple DungeonCrawling and create a plotline reminiscent of epic fantasy novels, with the fate of the world at stake. And speaking of novels, it was the also the first instance of tie-in novels for a game setting. |
| 174 | ** ''WebVideo/CriticalRole'' proved that people were willing to watch an RPG that they weren't playing in. (At least, in the West. RPG "replays" had been a thing in Japan for a long time by then, although usually in text or audio format.) |
| 175 | * ''Franchise/TheWorldOfDarkness'' took the UrbanFantasy revolution that Creator/AnneRice's ''[[Literature/TheVampireChronicles Interview with the Vampire]]'' had started in fantasy literature and brought it into gaming and beyond. Its portrayal of [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade vampires]], [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse werewolves]], and other horror monsters and fantasy creatures as being organized into various factions with different supernatural abilities, a concept created mainly for gameplay purposes, soon leaped out of tabletop gaming altogether and influenced various modern portrayals of those creatures in books, movies, and TV, with concepts from the games having a heavy influence on [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire lore]] in particular. It was also a key popularizer of {{goth}}ic style and fashion, pulling it out of the '80s underground and making it into a sexy, cool, and edgy fixture of the '90s counterculture -- and, in the process, coining the term GothicPunk for how its style doubled back on the urban fantasy stories it influenced. |
| 176 | [[/folder]] |
| 177 | |
| 178 | [[folder:Theater]] |
| 179 | * Creator/{{Aeschylus}} did this for drama -- [[OlderThanFeudalism 2500 years ago]] -- when he made drama by introducing two characters and a chorus and used mythical themes to address contemporary concerns. |
| 180 | * Creator/{{Euripides}} reinvented theater again by pioneering many stage and narrative techniques for tragedy. In fact, it was his plays that were studied by scholars that led to the birth of the Renaissance as a whole and tragedy in particular. Some notable techniques that he introduced and was hugely influential included: |
| 181 | ** The framing of heroes as ordinary, relatable people under extraordinary circumstances. |
| 182 | ** The focus on female and minority characters as figures of pity and tragedy. |
| 183 | ** The comedic elements within Tragedy. Most notably, his main characters are as equally be the butt of a joke as everyone else while his contemporaries if they employ comedy within tragedy is relegated to background characters. |
| 184 | * ''Theatre/TheSpanishTragedy'' by Thomas Kyd was the TropeMaker and TropeCodifier for Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, paving the way for Creator/ChristopherMarlowe and Creator/WilliamShakespeare. Kyd introduced the classic revenge plot, FeudingFamilies in fancy exotic settings and most importantly the use of iambic pentameter and blank verse to tell a tragedy. The English rather than feeling second fiddle to the tragedies of Spain and Italy, could have a homegrown version in colloquial language, and this marked the start of the GoldenAge of English Literature. |
| 185 | * Shakespeare's plays probably didn't change theatre so much as ''the world'', but his plays, quite unintentionally, demonstrated that the so-called "classical unities" (i.e. what some authors thought Creator/{{Aristotle}} was prescribing in ''Literature/{{Poetics}}'') of time-place-action did not really get in the way of crowd participation and interest. Shakespeare's plays had action in many different places, rooms and settings, took place over many days and had many different actions. This wasn't as radical in England as it was in "the Continent" where French and German artists saw Shakespeare as an avant-garde writer. |
| 186 | * Creator/HenrikIbsen changed theatre by introducing psychological realism and everyday settings for his dramas. Ibsen was also one of the first dramatists that tried to represent social issues and problems (pertaining to marriage, divorce, women's liberation and nonconformism) as a ''deliberate'' object of critique. |
| 187 | ** He paved the way for Creator/BertoltBrecht (who was far more radical and less realist than Ibsen, but nonetheless was a social critic and used theatre to address it) and Arthur Miller (whose ''Theatre/DeathOfASalesman'' was highly inspired by Ibsen). |
| 188 | ** Ibsen paved the way for Creator/AntonChekhov (plays where "nothing" happened) and Creator/SamuelBeckett (where even ''less'' than nothing happened). After Ibsen, the living room and people's houses became the center of battle for stage. The problems of everyday people became the stuff of high drama, no less grand and capable of arousing pity and fear as the Kings, Demigods, heroes and schemers of Greek and Elizabethan Theater. |
| 189 | * In the mid-late 19th century, the London stage was full of all kinds of vulgar, lewd, and risqué shows (so were stages in all the European capitals); the works of Creator/GilbertAndSullivan showed there was room for family-friendly fare in the theatre. This in itself would be a turning point, but after Gilbert and Sullivan, those making "light opera" or "operetta" began following the G&S model... and a little while later, people realized that G&S had invented TheMusical. |
| 190 | * ''Theatre/{{Oklahoma}}'', upon its debut in 1943, elevated musical theater from fluffy entertainment into a legitimate form of artistic storytelling. While it was not the first musical to use song, dialogue, and dance (those have long been staples of the genre), it did combine these three elements in as mature and realistic a fashion as was possible in a story where characters routinely broke into song, organically integrating the musical numbers with spoken dialogue without trying to [[DiegeticMusic justify it]]. |
| 191 | * ''Theatre/AStreetcarNamedDesire''[='=]s original production in 1950 changed American (and by extension global) culture forever. Not only for the play and its great writing (by Creator/TennesseeWilliams) but also for its starring role by Creator/MarlonBrando and direction by Creator/EliaKazan. Its approach to psychological realism, focus on sexual neurosis and sympathy for mental turmoil, shifted theatre away from social problem issues to personal, identity issues dealing with human psychology and family hangups. Brando's performance introduced greater standards of realism and led to MethodActing becoming the dominant school, for better and worse. |
| 192 | * In TheSixties, Creator/LennyBruce became one of the most notorious comedians of all time with his live act, based around a mix of political, racial, and religious satire with a large dose of VulgarHumor, which got him blacklisted from television and made him a target of law enforcement but which also earned him a deeply devoted cult fandom. His battles with censors and obscenity laws were not only galvanizing moments in the history of freedom of speech in the US, they also made him a template for later comics like Creator/GeorgeCarlin and Creator/RichardPryor, both of whom cited him as a key influence. While modern stand-up comedy has its roots in {{vaudeville}}, the BorschtBelt, and the chitlin' circuit, Bruce made stand-up into the vehicle for edgy, boundary-pushing humor that it would come to be known for in the late 20th century. |
| 193 | * Creator/AndrewLloydWebber revolutionized the high-end [[Platform/BroadwayAndTheWestEnd Broadway and West End theater]] by popularizing the "megamusical", the musical theater equivalent of the SummerBlockbuster in its emphasis on {{spectacle}}, {{melodrama}}, theatricality, lavish production values, and a mostly [[SungThroughMusical sung-through script]]. His 1981 show ''Theatre/{{Cats}}'' is often specifically pointed to as marking the birth of the megamusical, though his earlier shows ''Theatre/JesusChristSuperstar'' (1971) and ''Theatre/{{Evita}}'' (1978) also contained elements of it. |
| 194 | * Creator/CirqueDuSoleil accomplished this trope three times over: |
| 195 | ** Starting with its 1987 tour ''Theatre/LeCirqueReinvente'', Cirque did a lot to raise circus out of the kiddie entertainment ghetto it had fallen into in North America. Now, there are numerous successful "contemporary circus" troupes/companies that play to a wide variety of audiences, without even counting the [[TheMockbuster blatant imitators]] of Cirque's style (which was derived from European and Asian circuses) that have sprung up. |
| 196 | ** On a related note, it also played a major role in killing off the use of wild animals in the circus. As the use of captive elephants, bears, big cats, and other creatures grew increasingly controversial from TheNineties onward, many animal rights activists pointed to Cirque as a model for how to create an engaging circus show while relying entirely on human performers. While Siegfried and Roy's infamous mishap with their tiger marked the ultimate tipping point for such (in addition to [[CreatorKiller permanently ending their own show]]), Cirque helped lay the groundwork for their decline before then. |
| 197 | ** Their first Las Vegas resident show, ''Theatre/{{Mystere}}'', helped change that city's entertainment scene. Siegfried and Roy's magic show at the Mirage had opened four years prior and was also a big game changer after years of increasingly stale showgirl revues, but ''Mystere'' was actually taken seriously as theater, to the point that ''Time'' magazine's theater critic named it one of the best shows of 1994. While it would lead to many acclaimed sister productions in the city, other Vegas casino-hotels imported such productions as Music/BlueManGroup, ''Theatre/JerseyBoys'', and ''Theatre/TheLionKing'', often with huge success, resulting in a more diverse range of entertainment for tourists. |
| 198 | [[/folder]] |
| 199 | |
| 200 | [[folder:Theme Parks]] |
| 201 | * Creator/WaltDisney didn't want to bring his kids to the same [[CrappyCarnival sleazy, ratty carnivals]] that he went to growing up, so he created Ride/{{Disneyland}} in order to raise the bar with a park more reminiscent of a World's Fair where parents and kids could have fun together. When it opened in 1955, Disneyland set a new standard for the industry, and many older parks had to step up their game if they wanted to compete. Virtually every theme park today follows some form of the template that Walt Disney originally laid down. |
| 202 | * The Racer at [[Ride/CedarFairEntertainment Kings Island]] in UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}} revolutionized roller coasters upon its opening in 1972, giving them a second wind in TheSeventies after decades of decline while demonstrating that wooden coasters, seen as increasingly obsolete in the face of faster, looping steel coasters, still had plenty of life left in them. |
| 203 | * In 1973, [[Ride/CedarFairEntertainment Knott's Berry Farm]] in UsefulNotes/{{California}} decided to juice up the park for [[UsefulNotes/AllHallowsEve Halloween]] by going beyond just static props and scenery and having Bud Hurlbut, the designer and operator of the Calico Mine Ride, put on a gorilla suit and scare the people riding it. It was an instant success, and became the genesis for [[Ride/KnottsScaryFarms Knott's Scary Farm]], which took Halloween attractions to a new level by having not just one dedicated haunted house or a handful of them, but an entire real-life AmusementParkOfDoom filled with hundreds of "scareactors" in costume there to scare the bejeezus out of guests. It became the inspiration for similar Halloween attractions at other parks, including Ride/SixFlags' Fright Fest, Ride/UniversalStudios' Theatre/HalloweenHorrorNights, and Ride/BuschGardens' Theatre/HowlOScream, as well as any number of smaller, independent haunted house operators in the years to come. |
| 204 | * Ride/TheWizardingWorldOfHarryPotter. |
| 205 | ** The opening of the first Wizarding World area at [[Ride/UniversalStudios Universal Islands of Adventure]] in 2010 decisively pulled the Universal Orlando Resort out from the shadow of nearby Ride/WaltDisneyWorld and made it into an attraction in its own right, demonstrating that parks not named Disney could compete with it on its bread-and-butter of production values and licensed properties. |
| 206 | ** The later opening of the Diagon Alley expansion to Universal Studios Florida in 2014 brought perhaps a bigger shift in the theme park world. What it proved was that theme park lands that were deeply immersive and themed to a single IP, as opposed to the broader collections of loosely connected attractions of lands passed, were deeply appealing to both guests and the parks themselves; Universal's research after opening the land showed them that guest satisfaction and spending was up in these immersive areas compared to outside of it. Both sides took note: Disney responded with ''Toy Story Land'', ''Ride/PandoraTheWorldOfAvatar'', and ''Ride/StarWarsGalaxysEdge''. Universal meanwhile would retool their under-construction Universal Studios Beijing to follow the "immersive lands" concept a bit more closely, and would design their fourth Orlando park, Epic Universe, around the concept of enclosed IP-based lands entirely. |
| 207 | * The 2013 documentary ''Film/{{Blackfish}}'', an exposé of [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals animal abuse]] and [[NoOSHACompliance unsafe working conditions]] (including spotlighting the 2010 death of trainer Dawn Brancheau) at theme parks like Ride/SeaWorld that boasted marine animals like orcas and dolphins as major attractions, kicked off a backlash against such parks that forced them to heavily change their practices. [=SeaWorld=] announced the retirement of its famous Shamu orca show, many other marine parks and zoos introduced new animal welfare guidelines, and more broadly, such parks shifted their focus from entertainment and stunt shows featuring animals performing tricks to conservation, education, and letting people observe animals in simulacra of their natural environments. Parks that didn't adapt to this shift, such as the Miami Seaquarium, came under [[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/11/miami-seaquarium-orca-dolphin-animal-rights growing pressure]] from regulators and animal rights activists. |
| 208 | [[/folder]] |
| 209 | |
| 210 | [[folder:Toys]] |
| 211 | * In 1956, Ruth Handler saw a German Bild Lilli doll while on a trip to Europe. While Bild Lilli, based on a bawdy character from a German comic strip, was aimed at adult men, Handler thought that little girls like her daughter Barbara would be interested in a doll portrayed not as a child like most of the American dolls made at the time, but as a glamorous fashion model and career woman. What's more, since she and her husband were the co-owners of Creator/{{Mattel}}, she had a way to get it made. And thus was born Toys/{{Barbie}} in 1959, who changed dolls and girls' toys forever. To paraphrase [[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nz8xx8/a-doll-with-breasts-the-radical-legacy-of-barbie a quote]] from Handler, she changed the paradigm of the doll industry from a fantasy of motherhood to a fantasy of being all grown up, an impact that stretched beyond just toys as the first stirrings of what would become the women's liberation movement arrived in little girls' toyboxes. The prologue for the 2023 ''Film/{{Barbie|2023}}'' movie demonstrated this metaphorically. |
| 212 | -->'''Narrator:''' Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been... dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. The girls who played with them can only aspire to be mothers. Which can be fun... at least, for a while anyway. ''Ask your mothers.'' This continued until...\ |
| 213 | <cue StandardSnippet/AlsoSprachZarathustra as little girls smash their baby dolls in favor of Barbie, in homage to the Stone Age scene from ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''> |
| 214 | * Another Mattel product, Toys/HotWheels, likewise changed toy cars upon its release in 1968. Before, toy cars were typically either all-metal or all-wood, based on real-world cars, had narrow wheels, and were designed to be rolled around by hand. Hot Wheels cars, meanwhile, were more inspired by [[PimpedOutCar customized hot rods]], and with their innovative suspension and wide plastic wheels, they could be smoothly raced on both flat wood and linoleum surfaces (like tables or kitchen floors) and specially designed tracks at speeds that would cause other toy cars of similar size to crash and go flying. Other toy companies, most notably Matchbox, had to scramble to catch up with Hot Wheels' innovations, which are now the standard for toy cars save for some "boutique" collectible companies. |
| 215 | * For years, the concept of [[VirtualPet virtual pets]] was limited to RaisingSim games on computers. In November 1996, [[Creator/BandaiNamcoEntertainment Bandai]] released the Toys/{{Tamagotchi}} virtual pets, a 2-inch tall plastic egg with a screen and buttons, with a simple, intuitive interface to raise a virtual pet. Rather than raising an ordinary pet like a dog or cat, a Tamagotchi's appearance and lifespan are both directly impacted by how well the owner cares for it. And because the Tamagotchi couldn't just be turned off during the day like its computer-based predecessors, the owner had to be attentive of it ''all day'' to ensure it didn't die. Over 20 years later, virtual pets, handheld toys and otherwise, are still built upon many of the the principles that Tamagotchi introduced. |
| 216 | * While companion style {{dolls}} have existed as long as dolls have, ''Toys/AmericanGirl'' helped popularize its particular size and style of dolls as opposed to the more common cloth rag dolls or all-plastic smaller dolls -- 18 inches tall, often with cloth torsos and vinyl limbs -- in the 1980s and 1990s. Their popularity and interest [[FollowTheLeader led to other companies releasing dolls in their style]], including adding companion stories and collections for characters. |
| 217 | [[/folder]] |
| 218 | |
| 219 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 220 | * ''VisualNovel/{{Doukyusei}}'' revolutionized the entire DatingSim genre upon its release in 1992 by taking full advantage of the fresh, new generation of computer hardware it arrived on, delivering a multi-hour experience with several different routes and made extensive use of a In-Universe Game Clock for timed story events, and as such it ended up being both the Trope Codifier and Trope Maker for many of the tropes that would come to define the whole genre from there on out. In fact, it is probably what can mainly be credited for love interests in Dating Sims having a personality outside "living love doll". |
| 221 | * What can be argued to be next big leap in DatingSim genre's evolution after ''Dōkyūsei'', came with the release of ''VisualNovel/TokimekiMemorial'' in 1994, which can be credited with successfully pulling a TamerAndChaster on the entire genre. By exorcising the pornographic content that the genre was otherwise known for, and instead focusing on lighter, more innocent romances and learning more towards more family-friendly comedy, ''Tokimeki Memorial'' became a mainstream smash hit and proved that SexSells didn't necessarily hold true for DatingSim or even VisualNovels in general. |
| 222 | * ''VisualNovel/{{Kanon}}'' is responsible for giving the ''male protagonist'' a personality, as well as making PornWithPlot [[HGame eroge]] just as marketable as PornWithoutPlot games (though the developers had previously done ''ONE -kagayaku kisetsu e-, Moon.,'' and ''Dousei'' before forming [[Creator/KeyVisualArts their own studio]], none of these games had the impact that ''Kanon'' had). |
| 223 | * ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo'' helped make visual novels a viable genre in the Western world, even though it was a Western-developed game. Combined with Steam allowing smaller publishers mentioned earlier, official localizations of visual novels are becoming more common. |
| 224 | [[/folder]] |
| 225 | |
| 226 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 227 | * ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'' wasn't the first web series by a long shot, but it ''was'' the first successful one, showing that internet video could support popular scripted series. It also wrote the book for all future {{machinima}}, raising the bar and setting a new standard for the genre while elevating it beyond the realm of cheaply-made fan films, demonstrating that it could appeal to far more than just fans of the games. |
| 228 | [[/folder]] |
| 229 | |
| 230 | [[folder:Web Video]] |
| 231 | * And the other half of the mid-late '00s web video revolution, ''WebVideo/{{lonelygirl15}}'', did for live-action shows what ''Red vs. Blue'' did for machinima and animation. It demonstrated that independent producers on Website/YouTube could make series with real production values and engaging long-term storylines, setting the stage for everything from ''WebVideo/TheGuild'' and ''WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog'' all the way up to the emergence of Creator/{{Netflix}}, Creator/{{Hulu}}, and Creator/AmazonStudios as serious players in television. Furthermore, ''lonelygirl15'' was the TropeMaker for the VlogSeries, a format later employed by other popular web shows as diverse as ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets'' and ''WebVideo/TheLizzieBennetDiaries''. |
| 232 | * In the short-term, the success of ''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd'' led to a [[FollowTheLeader string of copycats]] making their own CausticCritic web shows. In the long-term, his success helped pioneer the VideoReviewShow, the concept of which would later be refined and expanded on by future online reviewers such as ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'' and ''WebVideo/JonTron''. |
| 233 | * ''WebVideo/MisterPlinkettReviews'' pioneered and popularized long-form, detailed video essays in its 70-minute review of ''Film/StarWarsThePhantomMenace''. An online video of that length, particularly a critique of a film, was rather unheard of at this time. It helped that this was back when Website/YouTube only allowed videos of 10 minutes in length, requiring the essay to be broken into seven parts. Nowadays, lengthy and detailed analyses on a wide range of subjects are very common. |
| 234 | * TheAbridgedSeries genre, thanks to WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries (which pioneered the concept), for a good while tended to run on wacky NoFourthWall humor, general disregard for the actual plot of the series, [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]], exaggerated {{Flanderization}} of characters, being often devoted to making [[TakeThat Take That's]] at whatever official dubs of the series exist. And then WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged came along - while the first season certainly had some of these traits, season 2 (which is also where the series was considered to have [[GrowingTheBeard grown the beard]] largely by viewers but especially its own creators) shifted away from this approach more and more over time, and instead moved towards more low-key, character driven humor that tried to retain most of the drama of the actual plot while making genuine attempts [[FixFic to improve upon the original]] and delve more into the AffectionateParody aspect of the genre. Nowadays, modern abridged series, such as ''WebVideo/SwordArtOnlineAbridged'', use this formula instead. Ironically, this this shift in writing and tone also inspired Creator/LittleKuriboh, the creator of ''Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series'' (as well as a friend of the creators of ''DBZ Abridged'' and regular cast member of the series) to also do much the same thing with his own series, starting in season 3. |
| 235 | [[/folder]] |
| 236 | |
| 237 | [[folder:Websites]] |
| 238 | * [[https://web.archive.org/web/20181215003853/http://www.suck.com/ Suck.com]], a youth-focused, "Generation X" online magazine from the latter half of TheNineties that offered commentary on pop culture, politics, technology, and more, wrote the book for the likes of ''Website/{{Cracked}}'', ''Buzzfeed'', the Gizmodo Media (formerly Gawker Media) group, and countless other sites with its ironic, DeadpanSnarker house style. One of its innovations, the use of [[PotHole hyperlinks to drive a point or as a punchline]], is now ''de rigeur'' even on many "serious" websites. Even though the site was ultimately done in by the dot-com bubble in 2001, its legacy lives on in [[http://digiday.com/publishers/gen-xers-rejoice-suck-com-comes-back-daily-newsletter/ the many sites]] its writers and editors would go on to create or otherwise write for. |
| 239 | [[/folder]] |
| 240 | |
| 241 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 242 | * ''WesternAnimation/SteamboatWillie'' (1928) wasn't the first sound cartoon, but the quality of its sound, drawing, and storytelling showed the world that animation had chops as a serious art form. |
| 243 | * In Creator/WarnerBros [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes cartoons]], Creator/TexAvery revolutionized both the Warner cartoons and the animation industry itself. At a time when Warner and almost all other studios were bent on imitating Creator/{{Disney}}, and in which Warner cartoons in particular were suffering from deathly mediocrity, Avery came along in 1935 with his zany, faster-paced, smartassed, [[NoFourthWall fourth-wall-breaking]] comedy, and cartoons haven't been the same since. If you watch the Warner cartoon library in sequence and look at what the studio was doing by 1937 or '38, it's amazing to think that this same studio had been producing terminally boring cartoons just two or three years earlier. When Warner cartoons finally became funny, they had Tex to thank for it. |
| 244 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheDoverBoys'' (1942) is a double turning point for American animation. It marks the point were Creator/{{Warner|Bros}}'s animators completely stopped aping Creator/{{Disney}} and started experimenting with much more stylized action. It also marks the point when Creator/ChuckJones went from the junior director who did the ''Sniffles the Mouse'' cartoons to a major innovator on par with Tex Avery. |
| 245 | * ''[[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe]]'' (1983-1985) proved that [[MerchandiseDriven adapting a popular toy line into a television show as a form of cross-promotion]], instead of the other way around, was a financially viable concept. Without it, many long-running, popular series like ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' and ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' might not exist. |
| 246 | * Starting with ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGummiBears'' in 1985, the many animated television series made by Creator/{{Disney}}, with their higher budgets, better animation, and better writing and storytelling, played a huge role in the birth of MediaNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation, showing how television animation could be as capable of genuinely ''good'' works of fiction as animated films could be and breaking the taboo that television animation was all cheap, badly-made MerchandiseDriven schlock. |
| 247 | * The short lived ''[[WesternAnimation/MightyMouse Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures]]'' (1987-1988) completely overhauled the expectations of what a television cartoon could do and began the practice of cartoonist-controlled animation and en-masse pop culture references. |
| 248 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' (1989-present) is one of the most groundbreaking shows in American history, responsible for numerous innovations in not just TV animation but TV comedy in general. |
| 249 | ** It was one of the first animated series in decades that was aimed squarely at adults and not at children (even if children [[PeripheryDemographic thought Bart Simpson was awesome]], to the horror of MoralGuardians), breaking the AnimationAgeGhetto by demonstrating that grown adults will happily watch a "cartoon" provided it had witty, mature humor that didn't treat them like idiots. Shows like ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', and ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' would have never been possible without ''The Simpsons''. To [[https://archive.ph/lqXyz quote]] Creator/SethMacFarlane: |
| 250 | --->''The Simpsons'' created an audience for prime-time animation that had not been there for many, many years ... As far as I'm concerned, they basically reinvented the wheel. They created what is in many ways -- you could classify it as -- a wholly new medium. |
| 251 | ** Moreover, it accomplished this by fusing lowbrow slapstick, highbrow satire, pop culture homages, and surreal meta comedy in such a way that had never been seen in a sitcom before, animated or live-action. After ''The Simpsons'', TV comedy was free to get a lot more experimental than it had before, paving the way for everything from the {{postmodernism}} of ''Series/{{Community}}'' to the philosophical exploration of ''Series/TheGoodPlace''. |
| 252 | ** It has also been cited as the show that killed the LaughTrack. Most, if not all, sitcoms at this time had a laugh track, a tradition that ''The Simpsons'' bucked, demonstrating that it was not particularly necessary for a sitcom to have one in order to be funny. While ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'' would be the first successful American live-action sitcom that lacked one, it was ''The Simpsons'' that started the trend. |
| 253 | * ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' (1992-1995, 1997-1999) allowed comic book superhero animated series to move past the AnimationAgeGhetto of the ''WesternAnimation/SuperFriends'', with heroes and villains that have complex motivations and (often) tragic backstories, and spawned the very well-remembered [[Franchise/DCAnimatedUniverse franchise]]. It also proved that an animated show could be darker and deeper and have epic story lines while still appealing to children, and without alienating adults, which remains a major aspect in action/adventure shows to this day. Finally, it was the first TV cartoon to feature realistic handguns instead of ''Franchise/StarWars''-inspired laser blasters. |
| 254 | * ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' (1997-present), the show that put Creator/ComedyCentral on the map, had [[https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kpgap/my-attempt-to-list-the-ways-south-park-and-the-simpsons-changed-culture a big impact on adult animation and TV as a whole]]: |
| 255 | ** In the short-term, the show’s success (with some help from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'') would lead to a boom of adult animated series loaded with VulgarHumor, swearing, and other types of raunchy comedy, [[TropeCodifier codifying]] the AnimatedShockComedy genre, which dominated the animation landscape in the 2000s. With relatively few exceptions, it would not be until TheNewTens when less raunchy adult animation would return. |
| 256 | ** In the long run, the show, one of the first to be rated TV-MA, helped break new ground for the kinds of content television in general could show, and was one of the first shows on cable TV with uncensored swearing. |
| 257 | ** And on a societal level, the show’s “both-sides”, take-no-prisoners approach to sociopolitical satire, mocking everyone from [[MoralGuardians conservative parents' groups]] to moralistic liberals and not just one or the other. This helped birth what became known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican “South Park Republican,”]] a type of conservative that holds libertarian views on social issues and free-market views on fiscal issues, views influenced by how ''South Park'' tackled politics. |
| 258 | * ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' (2010-18) was released to massive popularity, and in the early days, fascinated viewers with its bizarre yet fantastical nature. Then the show started delivering a slew of [[WhamEpisode Wham Episodes]] and monumental revelations, which are jarringly emotional compared to the wacky, experimental silliness that makes up the rest of the show. Several members of the show's crew would eventually go off on their own to create critically acclaimed shows of their own with similar blends of comedy and emotional depth, such as Creator/RebeccaSugar with ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. The show today is recognized, along with ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' and ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', as having helped start an era of more artistic and critically-acclaimed television animation, one that gave us shows like ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', ''WesternAnimation/InfinityTrain'', and the aforementioned ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. |
| 259 | [[/folder]] |
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