Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Needs major revision
, started by Vox on Apr 5th 2011 at 6:00:45 PM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by shoboni on Oct 1st 2013 at 6:07:41 AM
I think there's a clash of definition about Cult-classic. I mean, Looney Tunes? They're among the most well known cartoons and well praised cartoons ever made. Sure, they could be interpreted as "bizarre", but not necessarily alienating.
I treat all living things equally. That is to say, I eat all living things Hide / Show Replies
I agree. I mean, why are South Park and the Simpsons listed? How are they cult classics? Everyone has heard of South Park and the Simpsons.
Agree fully. A devoted fan base alone does not make a film cult classic; some of the films listed here were and are very much maintream hits, raking in millions at the box office and spawning big-budget sequels. Cult classics are ones that had only small if devoted notice originally and have picked up fans over time, not anything maintream, like most if Wes Craven's stuff listed here. The list needs a severe trimming.
White Hindu
How is Chrono Cross a Cult Clasic? Didn't it get straight 9 and 10s from all professional reviewers upon release? Also, it sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, which I'm pretty sure counts as commercially successful.
"What's out there? What's waiting for me?"
How is Cult Classic a Subjective Trope??? Whether a work is good or bad in your eyes is subjective, sure, but how many people in general consider a work to be good or bad, and whether it has a loyal following years after its release - in other words, the criteria - those are objective!
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That's what I said! I think whoever insisted on it was hung up on the word "classic", but that is really just a common turn of phrase. A couple film critics have written diatribes complaining about how "cult classic" is a perfectly objective phenomenon (at least in some genres) that had been misinterpreted due to people assuming a literal meaning. I know that if most people saw a perfectly awful film such as The Room listed as a Cult Classic the reference would still make sense.
Edited by berr
The NoMouth Nocturnal
Does Bizarro Fiction count as the literary equivalent of the cult film, making the literary genre a genre of cult classics? Will that ever go on this list?
"War has nothing to do with humanity. War is something inhuman." - Zlata Filipovich Hide / Show Replies
It's hard to discuss in the case of literature because many well-reviewed "literary" novels are read by so few people that you have to figure out what the benchmark is. But if you're familiar enough to suggest some examples...
My personal feeling would be to focus on individual works that have a persistent, dedicated following, rather than, say, all works by a given person (since that seems to imply inherent marketability). But I'm just thinking out loud.
Edited by berr
The list of "cult classic" comics contains most of the most famous, best-selling graphic novels I can think of. Granted the medium as a whole is a bit cultish, but this approach renders the section useless.
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Be Bold and remove anything that is considered a defining example of the medium. If it's widely known by the general public I think the general consensus is that it doesn't fit the -narrow- definition.
It would fall under a -broad- definition, one that is overly broad for a trope (I think Roger Ebert once complained that calling Star Wars "cult classic" rendered a perfectly good english phrase useless. In any case he or one of his cohorts wrote an article parsing the meaning of the phrase "cult classic" once, I wish I could find it).
Edited by berr
I am tempted to make this an index. If anyone objects, they can reverse it, but please reply and say why, if this issue has been discussed before. (The reason I ask is because it seems like a glaring omission not to have been done deliberately, since the page is formatted as an index.)
Edited by berr Hide / Show Replies
Indexing doesn't seem to work [ ninja'd - temporary indexing glitch, it seems ]
I'm un-indexifying it because it's very silly for an index to be YMMV. "YMMV whether this page should be indexed here," no, that doesn't really work, does it?
You can tell it's not formatted as an index, btw, cuz it's sorted by medium. That's a trope thing, not an index thing.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
I've been gone from TVT for six months (I'm a perfectionist and it got too stressful active-editing pages) but I extensively cleaned up the page when I indexified it. I can see this issue both ways (whether or not it's an index). I don't really consider Cult Classic YMMV... If something isn't widely considered cult (by critics), it probably isn't. :-) I think people who classified it as YMMV got hung up on the word "classic" but that's really just an idiomatic phrase, not an objective description of quality. Similar example would be when BFM (a genre) was renamed "Epic Movie" by Madrugada, but not in a YMMV sense. Anyway I've been out of touch, so I'll have to look up what the latest consensus is. One of the things I found stressful is that I think YMMV tropes should be put in a separate dropdown on the main page, not segregated in a different namespace... :-)
Edited by berr
I don't think just because something is a horror movie automatically makes it a cult classic. Wes Craven's movies are fairly popular, so much so that they're considered the quintessential horror movies.
What is a Cult Classic
I made some edits to the definition of a "Cult Classic" because it repeated a common fallacy - that a Cult movie was something which bombed on its original release. This common mistake was actually one of the first things Mark Kermode (UK film critic) felt the need to put-right in his first appearance on a late-night BBC Radio 1 show in the mid-90s where he reviewed various cult movies. To make his point, he cited Reservoir Dogs (then a recent film) and Star Wars as examples of Cult films.
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That doesn't make any sense. A cult film is supposed to be the source of adulation of a subculture. Star Wars is about as mainstream as it gets.
See you in the discussion pages.
I'd agree that it doesn't have to bomb on initial release. But it should have a small but devoted following of some sort, so Star Wars doesn't count.
Edited by berr
I would say a "cult classic" has to create its own "cult", if you will. Star Wars/Star Trek conventions prove their fans are whacko enough to dress up and expose themselves to massive ridicule; they should qualify, if not being the Definers. And why does everyone insist that a "cult" following must be small? There are quite a few Catholics in the world, and organized religion is the textbook example of "cult".
In short, "cult" is not based on the size of the following, but rather said following's fervor.
This troper would describe cult films as part of "the geek's Bible" or "must-see" in whatever genre or direction they occupy. As in, a fan o AI stories can be expected to have watched Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner to get that badge, or Firefly and Cowboy Bebop in the "gritty space sci-fi" genre.
Would anyone say Little Nicky is a Cult Classic? I'd say it was, though I might be a bit biased, as if the cult exists I'm one of them.
There seems to be a lot of people who liked it on eFilmCritic.
Is there any consensus on how old a work has to be to qualify as a cult classic? Say, an indie game that is a few years old, got mixed reviews, but earned and still has a small but pretty dedicated fanbase. Does something like that count?
Edited by ichigoare