So Bad It's Good/Other Media

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Examples of So Bad It's Good in Other Media include:

Art

  • The entire Dada "anti-art" movement was specifically made to be so stupid and terrible that it was art.
    • A famous example is when Marcel Duchamp submitted an upside-down urinal called "The Fountain" as an "interactive" art installation. He was trying to get a rise out of some exhibition organizers who claimed they would accept anything.
      • Supposedly the first "found object", the urinal was actually made from paper-mache.
  • Similar to the Dada movement, the "Museum of bad art" is dedicated to collecting the worst paintings they can find.
  • Many who dislike British conceptual artist Damien Hirst see him as this; there's just something disgustingly delightful about factory-made 'artworks' that were paid for in thousands of pounds just for the sake of making a splash. Really, one of his most famous 'works' is a skull studded entirely with diamonds. What's not to love?
  • The Burnside Fountain of Worcester, Massachusetts. Affectionately known as the "Turtle Boy Love Statue", it apparently depicts a nude young man having improper relations with a sea turtle.
  • The Lenin Statue of Freemont Washington is subject to this.
  • The art community even has its own term for So Bad, It's Good; they call it Kitsch.

Sports

  • Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, a British ski jumper who qualified for the 1988 Winter Olympics because every country was (at the time) allowed to be represented in any given discipline, and he was the only British applicant. Edwards had the disadvantages of weighing 9 kg more than the next man in his category and being extremely far-sighted, and his general skills were less than stellar to say the least. Nevertheless, his sheer determination and love of the sport endeared him to audiences everywhere. The Olympic Committee was less enthusiastic about someone "making a mockery of the sport", however, and the rules for qualification were changed next time around, largely to prevent another such case from happening.
    • There's even a mini-meme atached to him. Every single youtube video featuring him has, as on of the top rated comments "Legend".
    • Featured at the same Olympics were the Jamaican bobsled team who inspired the movie Cool Runnings five years later. Though they haven't competed in the Olympics recently, the Jamaican bobsled team did place as high as 14th (ahead of the USA, Russia, France, and one Italian sled) in the 1994 Winter Olympics.
  • Similarly, Eric "The Eel" Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, qualified for the 2000 Summer Olympics through a wildcard draw designed to encourage developing countries lacking expensive training facilities to compete. He had never even seen a 50 metre pool before competing, having only taken up swimming eight months beforehand and having previously having trained in a 20 metre pool. In his qualifying heat, his two opponents were disqualified for jumping the gun, leaving Moussambani to compete on his own. He qualified for the final, setting the national record for Equatorial Guinea.
  • Stanford University's "mascot", the Stanford Tree. Despite Stanford not officially recognizing the Tree as its mascot, the Tree is allowed to dance around during games, and there is a special student committee that determines who gets to be the Tree each season. Whoever is the Tree has to design the costume, hence the varying quality of the Tree each year.
    • Stanford's band occasionally has the same reputation, but not for their music, which is quite good. Their conduct is what gets them recognized. For starters, they (since they're not a traditional marching band) don't wear uniforms in the same way that other bands do. What gets them the most attention, though, is their shows, which have earned the ire of some universities, since they have contained performances that others might find somewhat classless. The Other Wiki has a listing.
  • The 1962 New York Mets, whose 120 losses remain the post-1900 Major League Baseball record, remain one of the more beloved teams in history.
  • A beloved complete failure in the sport of horse racing is the jockey known as "the Duc of Albuquerque", famous for entering the Grand National steeplechase seven times and never being able to complete the course. Each and every time he'd fall off the horse at one of the fences, and the bookmakers eventually caught on to this fact—resulting in the Duc making history in 1963, when the bookies began offering odds of 66-1 against his managing to stay on the horse for the entire race. He never gave up, though; in 1974 he fell off the horse during training and entered the race itself with a broken collar bone and a leg in plaster. Amazingly enough, this turned out to be the only time in his career when he actually finished the race without falling off.

Other Media

  • Planes, Trains, and Plantains, the self-proclaimed "worst term paper ever written." (The author explains the Backstory behind it here.)
    • The amazing part was that it still managed to get a 61%, one point above failing, possibly because it still technically contained a correct overview of the story of Oedipus the King.

"In the version which must have been the favorite of Sophocles's Athenian audience, Oedipus found sanctuary at Colonus, outside of Athens. The kindness he was shown at the end made the city itself blessed. Which was the gayest ending ever."

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