Overshadowed By Controversy Cleanup

The delay rule is already implemented - six months in this case.

I deleted two examples.

• Paramount and Nickelodeon's Wonder Park started out under the title Amusement Park and was set to be the directorial debut of up-and-coming animator Dylan Brown. Then numerous women came forward accusing Brown of sexually harassing and abusing them, and after conducting an investigation, the studio fired him and even changed the film's title to lessen its association. This got a bit tricky when it turned out Brown had already completed enough of the film that the replacement director David Feiss couldn't legally be credited with the role, causing it to be the very rare film to officially have no credited director.

The film premiered last month.

• The Ben Stiller-produced CW series In the Dark, about a blind woman investigating her friend's murder, raised quite a few eyebrows by casting sighted actress Perry Mattfield in the main role. Making this especially notable is that none of the usual excuses for avoiding Disabled Character, Disabled Actor apply: Mattfield isn't any kind of big name star who would bring interest on her own, the character lost her sight as a teenager so flashbacks to when she could still see wouldn't be an issue, she isn't any kind of Handicapped Badass who a blind actress would have trouble playing, and they even cast a genuine blind actress in a supporting role. And then the pilot actually has someone ask her why she doesn't "look blind" to which she replies "The same reason you probably don't look stupid," very much coming off as a preemptive insult toward the people who'd be upset at this refusal to give a lead role to an extremely underserved set of actors for no apparent reason.

The series literally premiered three days ago.

So, about the example I mentioned before about YMMV.The Jim Jefferies Show, is it an example of OBC or not? And if not, should it be cut or moved to some other trope? It hasn't been a month yet since the supposed "controversy" happened.

Found this on Doc McStuffins:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: While it hasn't aired as of this writing, the episode "The Emergency Plan" is shaping up to be this. The focus is on a doll family with two mothers surviving an earthquake. While previews show that it's just a regular episode, this has garnered the attention of the organization One Million Moms, who think the show isn't clean anymore.
  • Now that the episode has aired, it's gotten a lot of praise for its portrayal of LGBT, and is still a well regarded episode even without it.

There's the blatant violation of Examples Are Not Recent and the fact that the example flat-out states it was written before the episode's release, and the second bullet point just says "many people liked it" which doesn't clarify anything.

Cut for being too recent.

I found this example for real life.

• It is flat out impossible to talk about Donald Trump without bringing up just how polarizing his policies and decisions have been, including suspending immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, attempting to build a wall across the United States/Mexico border, establishing notoriously abusive detention camps for undocumented immigrants (which have been compared to the Japanese-American internment camps from World War II) and even trying to deny the children of undocumented immigrants who were born on U.S. soil citizenship. Trump has also achieved notoriety for defending world leaders generally considered dictators, such as Turkey's Erdogan, Russia's Putin (see below for more on him), and even the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, often by invoking the Appeal to Worse Problems, and for posting several tweets in the vein of Game of Thrones, which HBO and some of the stars of the show mocked. Trump has become such a controversial political figure that people have been banned from internet forums for expressing blanket support of his policies; Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment heavily applies when talking about him.

Already a very sensitive topic, I think the fact that his presidency hasn't ended should be taken into account before placing him there. Besides, the fact that they are mentioning too many different things seems to go against the main idea, what is exactly overshadowing what here?

Edited by ElBuenCuate on May 1st 2019 at 10:39:36 AM

Not "overshadowing" anything, so cut it.

What should be done about any example or pothole that talks in a future tense? Like "It's unlikely that they will recover..."

Should those examples be outright cut?

Does The Punisher fit? He's another character who's become infamous as of late for being idolized by the alt-right, to the point that there was a petition circulated to cancel his Netflix series due to the association, but I don't know if that is yet the only thing people think about when discussing him.

No, The Punisher does not fit. Simply claiming that he is "idolized" by a vaguely-defined group does not overshadow the work.

YMMV.Once Upon A Time In Hollywood that just came out has a OBC example. It looks like the controversy is older than the movie itself. Is it worth keeping it?

Twelve Forever is currently in the midst of a controversy regarding the creator, and there are already entries regarding it in YMMV.Twelve Forever and OvershadowedByControversy.Western Animation. The problem is the controversy is apparently still extremely fresh (as in, I'm not even sure it's a day old yet), so I think it's way too soon to call it overshadowed. Permission to remove?

Questions of waiting period aside, the example text doesn't do a good job of establishing that the film is actually overshadowed by the controversy. I'm sure there was some controversy somewhere, but I'm not convinced that "most people would know little else aside from the controversial aspects" as the definition requires.

Edit: A Google search for the film reveals only one result on the first page that mentions any controversy: an article that talks about various controversies regarding Tarantino's portrayal of the Manson family and says nothing about the casting of Hirsch, which is what the example text focuses on.

I think it's safe to call this one shoehorning and cut it.

Seconded. Too soon to call, cut.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 1st 2019 at 8:11:11 AM

Bumping this question.

It might be a valid example, but as written it's troping the person, not their work. Is the band and its music OBC, or just the person?

The person, and apart from the band. I could be wrong about the last part, though. I just heard "Breathless" at work and thought it as Awesome Music, so I could stand to do more research.

If something gets overshadowed due to Short Run in Peru or Content Leak, does the six months apply to the early/leaked release of the official release?

Leaks don't count, official releases do.

More specifically, legitimate early releases count.

I'd call it a case-by-case thing. If the controversy is largely centered around the Russian fanbase, then I'd argue that it's the Russian release date that matters even if it got a Short Run in Peru first.

The following was just added to Joker (2019), despite the fact that the film doesn't open for another week:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: In the weeks leading up to the film's release, much of the conversation about it turned toward its potential to stir up an especially dangerous Misaimed Fandom who would take Arthur's criminal rampage as something to emulate, which became a particular concern given the massacre at a theater showing The Dark Knight Rises by a man claiming to be the Joker (that theater understandably opted out of showing the film entirely by mutual consent with the studio). Joaquin Phoenix didn't help much when he angrily stormed out of an interview the second the subject was raised, saying he'd never once considered it.

The film isnt even out yet. Theres nothing to overshadow yet.

...

Ok, I'm usually not into pointing fingers - and I really hate to do it - but I've noticed that this editor is a repeated offender in putting knee-jerk OBC for a while. Has anyone tried to send a message?

Edited by Silverblade2 on Sep 24th 2019 at 12:18:08 PM

Semi-related, but that DKR shooter never identified as the Joker, it seems to be a rumor made by a journalist. https://www.denverpost.com/2015/09/18/meyer-the-james-holmes-joker-rumor/

There's only one entry in Heartbeat, but the wording it uses is kind of iffy to me:

The transphobic comments made by the developer were only fairly recently revealed (I think around September 20-ish), and I'm not sure the game has gone into the sort of decline needed for the "overshadowed" part. The entry also violates Examples Are Not Recent, even if a second troper added the "circa September 2019" part to clarify.

The "wave of propaganda" comment is also causing alarm bells to go off in my head. I don't know if I'm overreacting, but I thought I'd bring it up here just in case.