‘So bad it’s good’ is a familiar enough concept. It has often been invoked by fans,

critics and academics in connection with certain kinds of movies and certain kinds of

reception, being associated especially with cult film. Yet ‘bad’ can carry a multitude

of meanings in a cult context. For this SCMS panel we seek work whose focus is

specifically texts that are valued, by fans or critics, for their aesthetic ineptitude or

failure – what in film studies is often called ‘badfilm’.

From Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) to The Room (2003) to ‘viral’ internet videos

like Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ (2011), the text valued for its aesthetic badness

is championed via a form of interpretive competence which rewards perceived

incompetence. However, while scholarship often invokes the concept of ‘so bad it’s

good’, the texts and phenomena to which it refers have in fact received little detailed

examination. What reading protocols, interpretive communities, or taste hierarchies

are at play in this particular form of cult appreciation? Equally, does ironic valuation

complicate or rather shore-up traditional frameworks of aesthetic value and/or

assumptions about artistic intention?

We are inviting proposals for 20 minute papers on the subject of media artifacts

commonly deemed ‘so bad they’re good’. Possible topics and approaches might

include:

- ‘So bad it’s good’ and reception (e.g.: studies of participatory audiences, fan

criticism, cult communities, etc.)

- The aesthetics of ‘so bad it’s good’ (the function of traditional aesthetic categories

such as value, intention, interpretation, irony, etc. in the construction/appreciation of

these texts)

- ‘So bad it’s good’ and the internet (the role of video-sharing and social media in the

growth of cults around badfilms, etc.)

- Intentional ‘so bad it’s good’ (e.g.: Planet Terror, Tim and Eric Awesome Show

Great Job!, Look Around You, etc.)

- ‘So bad it’s good’ and tastemakers/gatekeepers (e.g.: Mystery Science Theater,

Found Footage Fest, Charlie Brooker, etc.)

- ‘So bad it’s good’ and comedy (comedy as textual or contextual phenomenon/effect/

experience, etc.)

- The politics of ‘so bad it’s good’ (e.g.: the ‘othering’ of the bad text, cult audiences

as subculture, the history and oppositional function of camp taste, etc.)