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There is a lot of bad media out there.
Now, to be fair, the word “bad” is doing a lot of work here. “Bad media” as a concept can be pretty subjective; anyone can label anything as bad for any reason they want. It is even possible for someone to convince others to agree with those reasons. Sometimes those reasons are even valid, though, of course, sometimes they’re not.
Still, there is plenty of media out there that most of us can agree is, in some way, just plain bad, and that bad media can earn the label in a variety of ways. The plot can simply be poorly thought-out, the concept can be inherently flawed, or the message could even be downright harmful, to name a few. It can be ugly, gaudy, too simple, overly-complex, bigoted, or any of the many other labels people give to bad media. In the end, it all ends up bad.
Sometimes, though, a piece of media combines a variety of bad elements and creates something else. It certainly isn’t “good” — not by most standards — and yet it carries with it something that, for whatever reason, people are drawn to. They begin to value the work, perhaps not for a reason it’s creator intended, but they value it nonetheless. The question, of course, is why?
To Point And Laugh
One reason these works occasionally stick with us is obvious: sometimes bad can be funny. Many movies, games, and books take terrible ideas to dizzying new heights and arise as something so absurd it can only be interpreted as comedy. A fantastic recent example of this is Cats (2019). Many of us are familiar with the antics surrounding Cats (2019), but for those who aren’t, it is most important to understand the movie’s design flaws.
For reasons absolutely incomprehensible, the creative team behind Cats (2019) decided to make all the characters — who, for the record, are indeed meant to be cats — look as humanoid as possible while only retaining a handful of cat-like features. The aforementioned cat-like features chosen to remain were odd and implemented strangely, to say the least. The result is an uncanny-valley abomination that looks very naked, very furry, very human, and yet is also somehow very much not any of the above.
The Plots Of “Bad” Movies
The character design elements of Cats (2019) aren’t the only things that push it over the edge into absurd, of course. The movie plot takes directly from the broadway musical it is based on and tells the story of a clan of cats who compete against each other each year to gain the prize of a new life by dying. There’s more. Only some of the cats wear clothes, implying they understand the concept of nudity but that most still choose to run around naked. Many of their musical numbers have a surprisingly sexual tilt. One of the cats, the “evil” cat, has some sort of magical power and keeps teleporting other cats onto a barge floating in the river Thames in the service of some unexplained grand evil plan. And again, all of this is performed by very human, very naked, very furry actors.
To sum up: bizarre is a mild way to describe Cats (2019). However, despite all the absurd and poorly-constructed elements of the movie, there are still people who absolutely loved it. It’s steadily becoming something of a new cult classic, a must watch for bad movie lovers. All the elements, all the terrible choices made throughout its development — from the inscrutable plot to the unfathomable antagonist to the very questionable character designs — makes Cats (2019)
“enraging, unfathomable, and laughable,” as one reviewer describes it.”
Cats is a masochistic experience that this reviewer rather hesitantly recommends – if only for the gamut of emotions, it will take you through, leaving you scratched all over((Dang, Harris. Film Review: Nothing will prepare you for the experience that is Cats. The AU Review. 20 December 2019. http://www/theaureview.com/watch/film-review-nothing-will-prepare-you-for-the-experience-that-is-cats/)).”
There are plenty more pieces of media that compile all their terrible elements into something funny; this writer particularly loves the Resident Evil movie series as well as the video game “Sonic Boom” for that exact reason. There’s just something silly and charming about watching Milla Jovovich blast her way through the hordes of actors in bad zombie makeup and the excessive practical-effects blood spurts in Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse. Making Knuckles glitch-jump his way out of bounds in “Sonic Boom” and into game areas he is most definitely not supposed to always get a chuckle.
Some people won’t find Knuckles, Milla Jovovich with a shotgun, or strange cat-men very funny, of course. Not everyone can find mirth in the objectively terrible, and “funny” can be just as subjective as “bad.” However, it’s still remarkable when others do find the hilarity in Knuckles, Milla Jovovich with a shotgun, or strange cat-men, because it makes these stories stick around, despite their many, many flaws.
Where Media Leads Others
Comedy is not the only thing we can find of value in bad media, however. It’s not unheard of for people to find inspiration as well. Evidence of this can be found in “fix-it fics,” a type of fanfiction in which the end goal is to write a plot or characterization better than the original creators of the work the fanfiction is for.
A lot of these fix-it fics have recently been made for Supernatural, the long-running CW show. The series finale of Supernatural, which debuted earlier this year in November, was fraught with controversy, and many considered it an abysmal end for the show. Plenty of strange narrative choices were made, and many viewers were torn on how the series handled a major character coming out as queer and confessing his love to another. Without going too deep into the machinations of a show that ran for fifteen years, it’s still safe to say that things were a bit of a mess for Supernatural at the end.
So what is a dedicated fanbase to do when their favorite piece of media takes a turn for the worse? Why make fix-it fics of course! Major fans took great inspiration from the ending of Supernatural, despite their distaste for it, and, at the time of writing, there are 449 works in the “Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On” tag on Archive Of Our Own, the popular fanfiction hub. Some are tens of thousands of words long and still going.
The dedication to a piece of media that these fans show — despite the fact that not only do other people dislike it but that they dislike it — is phenomenal. That they would write thousands of words in an attempt to better something so bad is a strange yet wholesome thing.
Long-Lived And Beautiful For It
Oftentimes, too, these things — these pieces of bad media that, for whatever reason, we hold dear — don’t necessarily fade away. They have staying power, simply for being as “out-there” as they often are. Take The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example. It’s certainly not fine cinema. It’s campy, gaudy, audacious, and confusing. Plotlines get picked up and dropped just like that. Twists are placed everywhere throughout the storyline simply for the shock of it all. Aliens show up in the last act. It’s a cavalcade of nonsense.
However, since its production in 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has had an intense cult following, which has grown to the point of having its own culture. Halloween showings of the movie have been held annually at theaters across the country for decades. They feature live actors alongside the original film and props for the audience to play with during certain moments in the movie.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show rapidly grew from a campy musical comedy into an entire interactive production, all because people enjoyed the weird, niche thing it was doing. In a way, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a culmination of both the responses to Cats (2019) and Supernatural, and the effects that have on the people who love it is astounding. Not only has this piece of media grown far beyond its roots, its lasted as a cultural touchstone for decades.
Love For Its Own Sake
So, it’s no wonder that bad media leaves a lasting mark on people. It’s wild and weird, and people truly do love the wild and the weird. It’s possible that Cats (2019) and Supernatural will ascend to the heights of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Well, maybe Cats (2019) will, anyway. Of course, there is one other reason people love bad media. One that doesn’t revolve around its weirdness, or its hilarity, or anything else. Sometimes, people just like it.
It was mentioned earlier, but it bears repeating: “bad” is subjective. Not everyone is going to agree that something is actually terrible. Even if others lay out why something has bad writing, acting, choreography, coding, or anything else, there will still be people out there who love that thing. It may be because a character resonates with them, the worldbuilding is interesting, the level design is fun, or their favorite actor is in it. Whatever the reason, they still love it, and that’s okay. Loving a piece of media for its own sake, whether good or bad, is okay. Not everything has to be perfect to be lovable.