{"id":1541,"date":"2017-04-19T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T03:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2017-04-19T23:16:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T03:16:00","slug":"so-bad-its-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/04\/19\/so-bad-its-good\/","title":{"rendered":"So Bad It&#8217;s Good?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Ford in the English department has talked about how he&#8217;s very interested in the &#8220;aesthetics of badness&#8221; and I confess that I am too. \u00a0Awful films\u00a0or TV shows can be so enjoyable in that so-bad-it&#8217;s-good way and often develop serious cult followings. \u00a0 But this doesn&#8217;t seem to be the case with the E.T. Atari game. \u00a0So I&#8217;m interested in what distinguishes good-bad from bad-bad. \u00a0To illustrate, I have two pieces of E.T. media to share.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EFt-La3UUu0?start=145&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(E.T. Atari let&#8217;s play video by YouTube user J.C.&#8217;s Channel. \u00a0Click the title and it will take you right back to the source)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"ET Where R U.wmv\" width=\"525\" height=\"394\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ighyOLzLaQo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(The musical masterpiece &#8220;ET Where R U&#8221; from &#8220;Themes for Television, Sports, &amp; Aerobics,&#8221; directed and produced by George H Semper. \u00a0Again, the title will take you right back to the source. \u00a0The song has a really long intro, so skip to 2:45 for the good stuff. \u00a0I&#8217;m using the term &#8220;good&#8221; loosely here)<\/p>\n<p>Initially, I thought that maybe any video game with bad, clumsy game play would be despised. \u00a0I&#8217;m not much of a gamer myself, but I imagine there&#8217;s a great degree of frustration when playing an unnecessarily difficult game. \u00a0However, 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.<\/p>\n<p>So instead, here&#8217;s my conclusion. \u00a0We can appreciate art for two reasons: 1. it is a good piece of art or 2. it makes us feel good. \u00a0To be enjoyed, you have to meet only one of the categories. \u00a0 I will admit freely that the first Captain America movie is not a good film from a critical standpoint, but it brings me joy. \u00a0Similarly, I appreciate\u00a0<em>Logan a<\/em>s one of the best superhero movies ever made, but I have no intention of ever sitting through it again, because it was extremely depressing.<\/p>\n<p>So &#8220;ET Where R U&#8221; is an awful song. \u00a0It doesn&#8217;t meet criterium one. \u00a0But it&#8217;s just absurd enough to be really funny, therefore meeting criterium two, and therefore gets to be good-bad.<\/p>\n<p>Just watching the play-through of the ET video game is maddening and frankly, pretty boring. \u00a0And from an aesthetic, artistic standpoint, it&#8217;s just not that good. \u00a0So, meeting neither criteria, it&#8217;s bad-bad.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>To illustrate my point, here&#8217;s yet another YouTube video of some &#8220;so bad they&#8217;re good&#8221; games. \u00a0The difference between the ET video and these games is clear. \u00a0They&#8217;re garbage, but redeemed because they&#8217;re funny or enjoyable. \u00a0ET, unfortunately, is just plain bad.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"10 Video Games So Bad That They&#039;re Actually Awesome\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XpJJ4RQAaS0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(Accessed from the WhatCulture Gaming YouTube channel)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Ford in the English department has talked about how he&#8217;s very interested in the &#8220;aesthetics of badness&#8221; and I confess that I am too. \u00a0Awful films\u00a0or TV shows can be so enjoyable in that so-bad-it&#8217;s-good way and often develop serious cult followings. \u00a0 But this doesn&#8217;t seem to be the case with the E.T. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/04\/19\/so-bad-its-good\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;So Bad It&#8217;s Good?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-b"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1548,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}