Misused (New Crowner 6 Nov 2020): Getting Crap Past The Radar

I agree with the rename to Sneaking Crap Past The Radar, it's similar enough that inbounds probably wouldn't have problems finding it. As for requiring Word of God, I can go either way. Since I was part of the wick checkers, I remember one example which was correct (Writer Revolt about Kim Possible) and one that was considered uncertain though I think was correct (Austin Powers), though none of those had Word of God, both of them certainly explained how exactly the stuff got past the radar (the second one did explain it on Radar.Film, though it may lead to us having to type in what exact rating is needed which we may not want.)

In a lot of examples, the issue wasn't that we didn't know if the radar existed or not; it was that the examples were just innuendos or dumb stuff like Toilet Humor or adult-oriented humor, none of which even qualify as being snuck past the radar and wouldn't upset the radar anyway. It's that "make the show seem more mature" issue as discussed; it's not about examples not being cited or verifiable, just about people using this for anything they deem slightly inappropriate.

Just renaming it to Sneaking Past The Radar isnt really going mitigrate the misuse rate. It sounds more like a lateral move to me.

I don't think that the name is the main problem here and even if it were, renaming a trope with this many inbounds is hard to justify. Sneaking Crap Past The Radar also still sounds like it includes innuendo.

One major problem is that you need to be familiar with the "Radar" to properly gauge examples. That requires deep knowledge of the publisher's Standards & Practices and how they change over time and in different places. I certainly don't know this info for any work. Someone who does needs to pen up an Analysis.Getting Crap Past The Radar to cover this.

For Word of God, discussed, conversed etc. examples, one question is: Is it still Getting Crap Past the Radar if the creators/characters genuinely think that they accomplished that trope even if actually, the censors would have let it pass?

I don't think we should have a Word of God requirement for the reasons already stated here. Second, I think we should take into account the work's target audience and rating at the time of release. A TV show for the 50's (just saying) would probably use this trope to sneak in jokes that would go uncensored in today's audience.

I think we should also clear up examples between this and Accidental Innuendo - the latter is when there's nothing weird going on but can be taken as such out of context, right? Maybe mention some ambiguous examples in this thread.

Edited by Lermis on Jun 5th 2020 at 6:31:47 PM

Thing is, there aren’t many examples of innocent things being seen as accidental innuendos- the problem is more people viewing stuff like sexual innuendos in kids shows as Getting Crap Past the Radar, even though stuff like that can easily get past the radar nowadays.

Edited by jandn2014 on Jun 5th 2020 at 11:40:05 AM

If it matters, making Word of God confirmation a requirement wouldn't be a first. TRS previously did that with Creator's Apathy.

I suppose a similar comparison could be made with Unfortunate Implications, since it was TRS that came up with its citation requirement.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 5th 2020 at 11:01:42 AM

I'm going to repeat what was previously stated; how many examples would be actually left, and would creators really confirm such a trope if the whole point is to go undetected. Moral Guardians would go nuts over the creators admitting that they put adult jokes in the shows their kids watch, which would ruin the show's reputation, and quite possibly the studio and network's too.

Well, the creators of Animaniacs admitted in an interview with The Nostalgia Critic that they didn't expect the "Fingerprints" joke to get in. I'd think creators would be more willing to talk about such things after the show's run is over.

I’ve come up with potential rules for our new improved Sneaking Crap Past The Radar.

• It has to be aimed at a demographic or released on a network that would censor such content.
• It must be something that would normally be censored or considered inappropriate for children in the location of the work’s origin and at the time of the work’s creation.
• It must be something that the Moral Guardians and Media Watchdogs would object to.
• It must be intentional, an Accidental Innuendo or when people are Having a Gay Old Time does not qualify.
• It has to succeed in its mission, stuff that does get censored later on is Not an Example.

Edited by GeneralGigan817 on Jun 5th 2020 at 1:09:20 PM

I agree with all of this. By the way, you have a typo. It's "to succeed in its mission".

Edited by Lermis on Jun 5th 2020 at 8:06:11 PM

That's Parental Bonus. Intentional stuff to get past the "censor" of the children, but not the actual censor of the people making the show.

I strongly oppose just renaming Getting Crap Past the Radar, because of the massive number of wicks and inbounds. That's why'd I'd prefer turning it into a supertrope, but a disambig might work too.

Edited by Discar on Jun 5th 2020 at 11:17:11 AM

There are times when I think conforming the trope to the misuse is the best option, but this isn't one of those times. The problem we're having is that people are posting any and every example of innuendo, Toilet Humor, and slightly dark visuals as GCPTR. It's not worth allowing these sort of examples in the first place as most of them are just people overreacting to incredibly minor things or exaggerating to make the work sound cooler and more mature than it actually is, as though a kid's show having a lot of poop jokes makes it far less appropriate for young children- hell, in a way it comes off like the people of TVT are the censors here, freaking out over literally anything that might be considered vaguely sexual in nature, regardless of how average those things actually are.

This is why my favored solution is Septimus's "on-page-examples-only" idea, where we just cut anything and everything that doesn't make the cut and keep the examples on the trope page only for easy curation. We don't need a trope for people to post about how a vague dick joke in a sitcom exists, and we don't need to go through the trouble of renaming it, either. We just need some damn good curation to preserve the good examples that already exist and burn the rest of it.

Neglected to mention this before, but my previous post wasn't meant to be a vote in favor of requiring Word of God confirmation. I only intended to state that it's been done in the past.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 5th 2020 at 2:21:10 PM

Good, because I too oppose Word of God requirement. Unlike Creator's Apathy Radar isn't really something any creator talks about.

x5: Sounds good, but I would strike that last bullet of being disqualified if it got censored later on. If it managed to sneak past it once it's still a success in my book, even if the network eventually caught up.

Edited by BreadBull on Jun 5th 2020 at 3:37:07 AM

My WOG idea was not meant to be absolute so much as a factor that lets us believe it is correct. If you can prove that the work was subject to standards forbidding X lest Y happen, and the work manages to get in X without Y happening, it is an example of GCPTR.^note For the purposes of this, we will also assume there's no such thing as "too minor to ignore"/de minimis in terms of censorship.

I like the idea of making it Triva and requiring Word of God. It's difficult to know what the radar is and what was required to get past it without some external information. Even saying "this is a 50's TV show, therefore the radar is X" requires knowing cultural and historical context that is not part of the work itself and that many viewers may not have.

The issue with requiring WOG I've found is that it just leads to tropes being underused. There's a small subset that function - namely, trivia tropes that can be classified as "What the creators said about their work" - but most don't.

True, but the trope is very overused right now. How many legit examples are there where word of god does not exist? This is still less restrictive than the proposal to make it definition-only.

What's different about the name Sneaking Past The Radar? It sounds more or less synonymous to me.

I don't know if I'm for the idea or not, but I don't think requiring Word of God would be impossible. Censor Decoy is a related trope that's entirely about us being told by the creators about their plans on getting past censors and how that worked out.

Incidentally, the Animal House and Casino (at least, I just noticed those first) examples on that page are also proof that sometimes the censors don't follow the standards you expect them to follow, even at the time, let alone later.

I'm not really sure how best to move forward (I'd like to keep the page in theory, but know how bad things like Nightmare Fuel got), but I thought I'd point those things out.

Edited by Jokubas on Jun 6th 2020 at 3:38:05 AM

I don’t think it should be a Trivia trope, Trivia is for behind-the-scenes stuff that don’t happen in a work, while Getting Crap Past the Radar is something that happens in the work.

I am not sure about WOG being a requirement but I don't think the claim that it will the trope's usage. Like I said before, things getting past censors isnt that common to begin with. Some examples on the page that arent on subpages WOG. When I have time I will try to round up all the WOG examples in a sandbox.

The trope will lose most of its wicks and examples with the WOG yes, but 30-50 solid examples are better than thousands upon thousands of misused examples and wicks.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 6th 2020 at 6:47:56 AM

The thing with Getting Crap Past the Radar is that it’s one of THE Tropes, the ones everyone thinks about when they talk about this wiki, cleanup gets pretty hard for a Trope like this.

Which is why I don't even think it's worth bothering, I'd rather have one page of decent examples under constant curation than a wiki full of bad examples.

Yeah should probably left alone and bought up on a case by case basis on the clean up thread. I would support having one page of examples and cutting the subpages