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Overshadowed by Controversy: Difference between revisions
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* Deceptive or offensive marketing, including [[Contemptible Cover]]s
See also [[Dancing Bear]], [[Just Here for Godzilla]], [[Mainstream Obscurity]], and [[Watch It for the Meme]]. Compare [[No Such Thing as Bad Publicity]], [[The Tyson Zone]]. When a whole genre gets held under controversy, it would become [[The New Rock and Roll]].
[[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|Please be cautious about editing this page]]. It isn't supposed to imply that there's no other redeeming factor for the works on this list.
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== Literature ==
* ''[[Fanny Hill]]'' is well known for having been a subject of obscenity tests and for having been banned in America from inception until a 1966 Supreme Court case ruled that the book has redeeming social value. When it was published in 1748, it got the author arrested on obscenity charges.
* ''[[Lolita]]'' is unfortunately more famous for the controversy that surrounds it than the actual content and quality of the novel: Vladimir Nabokov went through many publishers who refused to publish it, and after it was published, it was banned in many places for being "pornographic" or "an instruction manual for paedophilia" (which it is not). Even for people who aren't familiar with the history of the book, a lot of the covers/jackets make it look like erotica. It also gave rise to the term "loli" or "[[lolicon]]", which are taboo words in their own right (even though it has also been used in a legitimate, non-paedophilic context e.g. those so-called "[[Elegant Gothic Lolita|Lolita fashions]]" popular with some cosplayers); [[Google]] won't auto-complete them if you try to search for those terms, and would attempt to block out anything remotely resembling paedophilia, occasionally warning users that such content can and will land them a jail sentence. [[TV Tropes]] reflexively banned it in counterfeit moral outrage during their [[Think of the Advertisers!|purge of revenue-threatening material]] after [[The Second Google Incident]], and only restored its page when they realized that leaving it censored was worse for their image than having it on the wiki. It also didn't help that the underground Tor site ''Lolita City'', which was seized by the FBI for hosting child pornography, was named after the novel.
* ''The Satanic Verses'' by [[Salman Rushdie]] is recalled more for the ensuing fatwa declared on the author by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and for the fallout from that incident, than for the novel itself.
* The ''Uncle Remus'' stories are a group of actual fables told by slaves and former slaves in the American South, making them a valuable cultural resource. However, though once popular, they are now nearly unknown. Compiler and editor Joel Chandler Harris' fictional character who tells the stories, Uncle Remus, was written as an elderly ex-slave who was basically content to continue to work for a white family. The implied racism is now almost all that is known of the stories. The fables themselves, taken out of the Remus context, are stories about animals using their wiles to trick each other, and man, in order to survive. Unlike Aesop's fables, they are not meant to be morally instructive, but are a commentary on man resorting to animal-like behaviors in desperate circumstances.
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* In general, reality shows don't have that much love in recent years due to what is perceived as pretentious and unnecessarily melodramatic either for publicity or ratings. While the events of these shows are presented as "reality", in practice these are rehearsed and in some cases fabricated especially when the situation is deemed too mundane to pass muster on TV. Case in point ''[[Pimp My Ride]]'', where controversies and issues with the contestants and their cars were made apparent years after the show's cancellation–cars were deliberately made worse than they actually were prior to their makeovers, elements from the "pimped" cars removed after being handed over, and contestants' reactions were faked and rehearsed. A 1999 Dodge Grand Caravan (which actually stood in for a Plymouth Grand Voyager Expresso the GAS crew deemed to be non-road worthy) which was pimped in an episode was later found in a state of disrepair and purchased for just $850 by a YouTuber.
* Tabloid talk shows such as ''[[Jerry Springer]]'' and ''[[Maury]]'' are cited by television and social critics as an [[Egregious]] example of low-brow, bottom-of-the-barrel "entertainment" meant to exploit on disadvantaged individuals and/or families, or a form of "human bear-baiting" as what some call it. ''[[The Jeremy Kyle Show]]'' for one prompted immense backlash especially when one of the show's participants, a 63-year-old named Steve Dymond, was found dead in an apparent [[Driven to Suicide|suicide]], likely due to immense grief following a polygraph test in an effort to prove his infidelity. Mounting pressure from British MPs and organisations forced [[ITV]] to cancel the show and [[Old Shame|purge all traces]] of the show from their social media accounts and their web site.
* For a while, Peruvian talk show Laura Bozzo was just as known for the trashy
== Music ==
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* The ''[[Manhunt (series)|Manhunt]]'' series was best known for its premise of being about a convict being forced to take part in snuff films (the gameplay was mostly stealth based, with elements of [[Survival Horror]]). The first game was given mixed reviews, with some marking it down for the [[Gorn]] and others praising it for its atmosphere, the sequel received average reviews across the board and the series was mostly forgotten. It got to the point that even Rockstar Games employees themselves felt uneasy about the game's subject matter. Former R* employee Jeff Williams stated "there was almost a mutiny at the company over that game", and while it was "Rockstar North's pet project" most Rockstar staffers [[Everyone Has Standards|wanted nothing to do]] with it; ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' gets a free pass as mass slaughter isn't mandatory to play through the game, and had a somewhat [[Lighter and Softer|lighter]] tone to it, being more of a satirical commentary on American society compared to ''Manhunt''{{'}}s snuff film simulation.
* The ''[[Postal (video game series)|Postal]]'' series is well-known for being a common target for [[Moral Guardians]] to campaign against video game violence. Footage from ''Postal 2'' was featured in the 2003 [[Black Eyed Peas]] protest song "Where Is The Love", implying the band's contempt for media violence.
* Taking ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]]'' and ''[[Mortal Kombat]]''{{'}}s place as the poster child for video game obscenity controversies is ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' especially in the 2000s when ''[[Grand Theft Auto III]]'' first came out, though the first game in the series did gain some notoriety in the UK thanks to a PR campaign by Max Clifford (who ironically would be controversial in his own right due to his rather inappropriate interactions with minors). [[Moral Guardians]] and authorities alike singled out the game and blamed it for causing real-world violence, which led to bans in a number of countries and certain versions of the games censored to appease ratings bureaus like in Australia, Germany and Japan.
** ''Vice City'' attracted racism accusations when Haitian-American groups took umbrage at a mission involving a Cuban-Haitian gang war, the Haitian ''gangs'' serving as the villains. Haitian Centers Council and Haitian Americans for Human Rights staged protests in New York City over complaints about how the game portrayed Haitians in an unflattering right, with the mission "Cannon Fodder" having a genocidal-sounding objective "KILL ALL THE HAITIANS!!" and other dialogue by [[Large Ham|Umberto Robina]] expressing grave hatred towards the gang. While Take-Two Interactive argued that the dialogue and objectives should be taken within the context of the game, the company relented and had subsequent releases of the game altered to remove any references to the Haitian gangs. The Haiti racism issue may have also accounted for the presence of the Cholos in ''Vice City Stories'' in lieu of Haitians.
** Besides wanton violence, ''GTA''{{'}}s sexual content also came under intense scrutiny, most notably the (previously) [[Dummied Out]] "Hot Coffee" minigame where CJ engages in casual sexual intercourse with a number of women. The minigame, which was discovered and re-enabled by Dutch software engineer Patrick Wildenborg, sparked significant controversy especially in the United States, where now-disbarred lawyer [[Jack Thompson]] and senator Hillary Clinton campaigned against the game and called for stringent ESRB regulations. And contrary to initial statements by Rockstar that the mod was the product of "hackers" who made "significant technical modifications to and reverse engineering" the game, this would be proven [[Blatant Lies|untrue]] when similar code was found in the console versions, and could be re-enabled through a third-party tool. It is later revealed that there was some tension within the company over the contested scenes, and Dan Houser lamented about the [[Double Standard|double standards]] in the United States with sex and violence keeping them from pushing the boundaries of the video game medium. They were however forced to hastily disable the minigame as the potential Adults Only rating the scenes would garner were not worth the decreased sales.
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* ''[[Thrill Kill]]'' for the PlayStation was billed to be the "new ''[[Mortal Kombat]]''", with the technical feat of up to four players fighting in the same room as its selling point, but the gratuitous violence and hardcore sex content, which garnered a rare "Adults Only" (AO) rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board, was too much for [[Electronic Arts]] to swallow, ordering Paradox Development to scrap the game; former Paradox employees who worked on the game eventually leaked beta and pre-final builds of the game to a scene group, and the game engine was later reused for ''[[Wu-Tang Clan|Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style]]'', ''X-Men: Mutant Academy'', ''X-Men: Mutant Academy 2'' and ''Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots Arena''.
* Perhaps hypocritically enough, EA [[No Such Thing as Bad Publicity|purposely courted controversy]] for ''[[Dante's Inferno (video game)|Dante's Inferno]]'' by staging a fake protest where twenty protesters picketed at E3 2009 and condemned EA for what was viewed as a sacrilegious and insensitive game. EA later confirmed that it was just a publicity stunt to drive up hype, only for ''actual'' Christian bloggers to condemn the video game giant for pulling off such a tasteless stunt.
* ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]]'' not only courted controversy for its gore and occult imagery, it also came under fire (pun not intended) for being associated with a number of school shootings in the United States, most notably the [[Columbine]] massacre where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured 24 others. It didn't help that Harris and Klebold were avid players of the game and made WADs themselves (though contrary to sensationalist reports, the "Harris levels" were not at all based on the Columbine High School's layout and did not contain sprites of the school's students and faculty), and that Harris said that the killing would be "like playing Doom", and "it'll be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, World War II, Vietnam, Duke Nukem and Doom all mixed together", and that his shotgun was "straight out of the game". Upset by the mainstream media's stereotyping of video game players as degenerate youth, the ''Doom'' community distanced themselves from the shooters by deleting and/or banning any (re-)uploads of the Harris WADs and defended themselves and the game from any sort of direct responsibility. Prominent Doomworld community members Javier "Dukrous" Heredia and Scott "Covaro" Cover both explained their side of the story to news media (in Covaro's case during a round-table talk with Bill and Hillary Clinton on ''Good Morning America''), contending that the community is comprised of law-abiding citizens and would not in any way emulate the actions depicted in the games.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20010909175952/http://www.cnn.com/US/9904/28/dark.culture/ No easy explanation for Columbine killings]</ref><ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr2K3bfkLEg&t=3169s Good Morning America Broadcast June 4 1999]</ref> Much of the controversy concerning ''Doom'' has died out though, as the usual moral guardians have moved on to the next scapegoat, despite the recent entries in the series featuring arguably more visceral and hellish imagery.
** Ironically enough, the latest entry in the series, ''[[Doom Eternal]]'', courted controversy not for its hellish imagery but for its use of a ''kernel-mode'' driver by Denuvo as an anti-cheat deterrent. While kernel-mode drivers have been successfully used elsewhere provided that there is transparency over what it does and that the drivers are easily removed when uninstalled, security concerns and Denuvo's already dubious reputation caused backlash which forced Bethesda to have the driver removed in favour of a different anti-cheat solution.
* ''[[Kingpin: Life of Crime]]'' also had the unfortunate timing of being released shortly after the Columbine tragedy. Xatrix Entertainment, later known as Grey Matter Interactive and merged with Treyarch, was faced with mounting pressure from legislators and [[Moral Guardians]] who were scrambling to seek the truth as to what motivated Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold into going on [[Going Postal|a blood-drenched rampage]]. American senators debated on the game's obscene content, and the National Institute on Media and the Family singled out ''Kingpin'' in its 1999 report on video game violence. Xatrix responded by implementing a [[Bowdlerise|safe mode]] option upon installation where players can opt for a censored experience devoid of blood and with bleeped-out profanities. Xatrix CEO Drew Markham assured in an install-time message that the game "was never intended for children" and was made "with mature themes made for a mature audience." Regardless, many retailers have chosen not to stock the game, making it a commercial failure and leading to Xatrix's demise; they would later reform as Grey Matter Interactive which only developed a few games before shutting down for good.
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* Speaking of controversies on journalistic integrity and ethics, ''[[Driver 3]]'' aka ''DRIV3R'' became embroiled in a review scandal called "[[Scandalgate|DRIV3Rgate]]" where two outlets operated by Future plc, ''PSM2'' and ''Xbox World'', gave the game 9/10 scores despite it especially the PC version having been saddled with numerous technical issues, leading to accusations of bribery and corruption through review-fixing on part of Atari and Future plc. Rubbing salt in the wound was that of a controversial thread on the GamesRadar forums, also owned by Future, being filled to the brim with posts critical of the dubious reviews. Posts defending ''DRIV3R'' and Future followed suit, but this was later outed as a desperate act of [[Astroturfing|astroturfing]] by Babel Media, a marketing company hired by Atari to generate fake praise, when the questionable posts were traced to them by the forum moderators. The controversy spilled over to [[Wikipedia]] several years later, when doubts over the scandal's notability were made as noted by YouTuber Larry Bundy.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEQOv2g0JA The Driv3rGate Scandal: The Full Story (DriverGate)]</ref> It also did not help that some of the revisions on the ''DRIV3R'' article were made by an anonymous user who claimed to be an ex-Future employee who maintained that the scandal [[Blatant Lies|never took place]] and any reviews made on ''PSM2'' and ''Xbox World'' were true.
* Despite receiving critical acclaim from mainstream gaming press, ''[[The Last of Us Part II]]'' was [[Critical Dissonance|savaged]] by a number of gaming circles for its inclusion of LGBTQ+ content and themes, branding it a "[[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|social justice warrior]]" or a "woke" game as some perceive it as [[Anvilicious|pervasive agenda-pushing]] not unlike films featuring female, LGBT and racially diverse cast members. Kotaku's Riley MacLeod saw the controversy as a weak point with Metacritic's aggregation system, where he stated that the site "fails to take into account the diverse critical opinions of the game", instead focusing on the overall scores and seemingly padding it out to make the game appear better than it is, than the actual content of the review and provide a more even assessment of the game's critical both in the eyes of the press and the gaming public. It also didn't help that, like what happened with the ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' remake, the game's cast members were unfairly harassed and trolled by self-styled "edgelords" who take offense at anything remotely "diverse" or "feminist". Considering the disconcertingly divisive sociopolitical atmosphere in the United States in this day and age, the homophobic and anti-feminist sentiment thrown at ''The Last of Us Part II'' is unsurprising.
** The other part of the controversy was due to leaks of the game revealing that one of the main characters of the first game got [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|a very ignominious death at the hands of the new playable character]], while the other remaining characters received extreme [[Character Derailment]] compared with their previous characterization (and the actual release of the game revealing that the game has a bleak [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] story–with a lot of [[Shoot the Dog|figurative and literal dog shooting]]–with a [[Bittersweet Ending]] very high in the bitter that gave little emotional resolution). The leaks forced a definite release date of the game after some years in [[Development Hell]], and the ensuing takedowns of leaks and early critics only irritated gamers that were already angry with both Sony and Naughty Dog. The above was not helped by the heads of the project responding to their harassment by calling any critics that didn't like the game "regressive" and "misogynists", [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|whenever they actually were or not]] due to lumping the people criticizing the game for their narrative choices with the misogynistic trolls mentioned above.
* The eternally delayed [[Animesque]] stealth-action indie game ''[[Yandere Simulator]]'' solicited controversy for its graphic and sexually explicit content, as the game involves killing or maiming those whom the player character believes is monopolizing her senpai's attention. Besides its violence, whom creator YandereDev cites the ''[[Hitman]]'' series as a major influence, its sexual themes was seen by some as concerning owing to its high school setting which may give out [[Ephebophilia|ephebophilic]] undertones; YandereDev maintains that, despite the supposedly juvenile setting and glaring evidence to it, none of the characters in the game are minors. Said controversy made ''Yandere Simulator'' a total pain in the rear to stream uncensored on sites such as Twitch or YouTube, due to the game's premise falling afoul of said platforms' terms of service. YandereDev wasted no time to shoot back at those who banned his game from being streamed online, citing "[[Censorship Bureau|self-righteous ideologues]]" for the ban.
** The game has become mired in many a controversy since, with the repeated delays themselves now among them - this has spawned at least [https://twitter.com/BeforeYandere one account] on [[Twitter]] dedicated to chronicling events that took place since the game [[Development Hell|began development in '''2014''']].
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