Dr. Ford in the English department has talked about how he’s very interested in the “aesthetics of badness” and I confess that I am too. Awful films or TV shows can be so enjoyable in that so-bad-it’s-good way and often develop serious cult followings. But this doesn’t seem to be the case with the E.T. Atari game. So I’m interested in what distinguishes good-bad from bad-bad. To illustrate, I have two pieces of E.T. media to share.
(E.T. Atari let’s play video by YouTube user J.C.’s Channel. Click the title and it will take you right back to the source)
(The musical masterpiece “ET Where R U” from “Themes for Television, Sports, & Aerobics,” directed and produced by George H Semper. Again, the title will take you right back to the source. The song has a really long intro, so skip to 2:45 for the good stuff. I’m using the term “good” loosely here)
Initially, I thought that maybe any video game with bad, clumsy game play would be despised. I’m not much of a gamer myself, but I imagine there’s a great degree of frustration when playing an unnecessarily difficult game. However, I did a bit of research on the best worst video games, and plenty of games made the list that were criticized for having really terrible game play.
So instead, here’s my conclusion. We can appreciate art for two reasons: 1. it is a good piece of art or 2. it makes us feel good. To be enjoyed, you have to meet only one of the categories. I will admit freely that the first Captain America movie is not a good film from a critical standpoint, but it brings me joy. Similarly, I appreciate Logan as one of the best superhero movies ever made, but I have no intention of ever sitting through it again, because it was extremely depressing.
So “ET Where R U” is an awful song. It doesn’t meet criterium one. But it’s just absurd enough to be really funny, therefore meeting criterium two, and therefore gets to be good-bad.
Just watching the play-through of the ET video game is maddening and frankly, pretty boring. And from an aesthetic, artistic standpoint, it’s just not that good. So, meeting neither criteria, it’s bad-bad.
I could see, perhaps in an alternate universe, the ET Atari game being a cult classic as a good-bad game if it were any fun to play.
To illustrate my point, here’s yet another YouTube video of some “so bad they’re good” games. The difference between the ET video and these games is clear. They’re garbage, but redeemed because they’re funny or enjoyable. ET, unfortunately, is just plain bad.
(Accessed from the WhatCulture Gaming YouTube channel)