Anti-Barney humor

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Anti-Barney humor is a form of humor that targets the children's television program Barney & Friends. The perception that the show is saccharine or insincere has made the program a target for parody by older children and adolescents all over America and elsewhere, as well as many adults, and a few famous entertainment personalities.

An early instance of Anti-Barney humor involved a fictional "jihad" against Barney, originating from the early 1990s. Today, it is maintained in the form of a Role-playing game.
An early instance of Anti-Barney humor involved a fictional "jihad" against Barney, originating from the early 1990s. Today, it is maintained in the form of a Role-playing game.

Contents

[edit] History

Almost immediately after Barney and Friends first aired in 1992, it mesmerized and fascinated younger children and infants but was despised by older children.[1] These children were among the first to practice anti-Barney humor.[2] Eventually, adults contributed to anti-Barney humor including some parents and a few famous entertainment personalities.[citation needed]

[edit] Examples of Anti-Barney humor

[edit] Z100 Prank Call

The New York City based Top 40 station WHTZ, better known as Z100, received a prank call during a morning radio show from a person who claimed to be Barney. When one of the DJs asked Barney what he does on the weekends when he's not filming the show, he admitted that he had "a severe addiction to sex with BeBop and crack" and that he "just can't stop smoking the stuff".

The people who made the prank call are believed to be high schools students from northern New Jersey, this is still uncertain though.

The call received semi-national re-recognition as a user at newgrounds.com used the audio from the station and created an accompanying Flash animation, he even depicted the baby stealing Barney's crack at the end.

[edit] Barkley vs Barney

Charles Barkley was the guest host of the television program Saturday Night Live on 25 September 1993. At one point during the show, Barkley parodied his Godzilla-themed commercial by facing off against Barney in a basketball match.[3]

[edit] Music and related video

One of the first well known anti-Barney songs was "Barney's on Fire" by Tony Mason (often miscredited to "Weird Al" Yankovic).[4]

Another well-known song, "Jurassic Park," was released on "Weird Al" Yankovic's Alapalooza record. The song featured the lyrics, "I'm afraid these things might harm me / Cause' they sure don't act like Barney." The music video featured a scene in which a tyrannosaurus bites Barney's head off but later chokes on it and is given the heimlich maneuver by an apatosaurus, which causes him to vomit it back out. A more recent music video, also by Weird Al, I'll Sue Ya, has a badly patched up, evil looking Barney chewing on a decapitated arm at the part where he sings about suing Toys R US

An online video combines clips from Barney and Friends with Tupac Shakur's song "Hit 'Em Up", making it appear that Barney and other characters from the show are rapping. Perhaps what actually makes this humorous is that the actual song contains heavy levels of profanity and violent content, which is quite the opposite of lessons and content regular on Barney.

An online audio clip called "Elmo Kills Barney" is another anti-Barney skit. The lyrics are Barney singing "I love you, you love me, We're a happy" and Elmo shoots Barney with a machine gun and yells "shut the f**k up!"

The music video for the 1993 re-recording of Suicidal Tendencies "Institutionalized" features frontman Mike Muir playing cards with Barney towards the end of the video, implying that Barney is really into [[ ]], a topic if covered on his show he probably would have been against. Barney's face is also censored in the video.

In the AtomFilms video "Chipmunkz Gangsta Rap", Barney and Winnie the Pooh were seen in a brief moment together going on a killing spree.

[edit] Print media

A small comic book imprint, Parody Press (an imprint of Eternity Comics), released an anthology comic book entitled Kill Barny in 1994, a collection of short stories and one-page strips depicting the death of the purple dinosaur. One multi-page story depicts "Beaver and Butt-Chin", characters drawn to resemble Beavis and Butt-Head, playing "Dinosaur Baseball" and setting the purple dinosaur on fire.

Several months later, another issue was released under the name Kill Barny Again!, reprinting most of Kill Barny but with some new material pages and a new cover.

[edit] Nine Months

The movie Nine Months (with Hugh Grant) had a Barney rip-off character called "Arnie". The "Arnie" character was clearly meant to represent the growing amount of Anti-Barney humor.

"Arnie" was making a personal appearance in the store. The Arnie character taunts Tom Arnold's character of Marty by trying to get him to buy various "Arnie" merchandise. Marty graciously says 'no thank you', but Arnie proceeds to chide Marty for not buying the merchandise. After being chided several times, Marty attacks "Arnie". Eventually Grant's character of Samuel is drawn into the fight. The fight occurs before stunned children.

[edit] Internet fiction

A group of adults wrote fiction revolving around not only killing Barney, but portraying him as a demonic force to be defeated in an epic tale. The most highly regarded of these were a series of short stories by writer Brian Bull including the Day of The Barney novel, and the cult hit Batman versus Barney. The popularity of stories by Bull and others elicited the attention of the producers of Barney and Friends who moved to shut down the sites, although the stories may still be found on the internet.

[edit] Jihad

The Jihad to Destroy Barney is a fictional jihad that sees itself in the ultimate battle against Barney (or B'harne) and his followers, the sponge minions. The Jihad's site is a source of Barney-related fiction and essays, in addition to its Jihad Universe Role-playing game.

References to a Barney "Jihad" are found on Barney-related Usenet newsgroups as early as 1993.[5]

The operators of jihad.net, in acknowledging the situation since the September 11, 2001 attacks, chose to continue their site, noting that "... while a group of geeky Western gamers keep hanging onto jihad.net, people with less pleasant intentions are unable to use it."[6]


[edit] Parodies of Barney in popular media

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Baloney the Dinosaur from Animaniacs.
Baloney the Dinosaur from Animaniacs.

[edit] "Barney = 666" Joke

Many individuals have been associated with the Number of the Beast (666) using a variety of schemes to transform their names or mottoes into the infamous number. One of the most widely-distributed works of Anti-Barney humour provides a 666 calculation for the character of Barney as follows:

1. Barney is well-described with the following phrase:

CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR

2. The old Latin alphabet used the letter 'V' in place of 'U', therefore the above phrase is modified to:

CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR

3. Letters that do not represent Roman numerals are removed:

CV-- -V--L- DI----V-

4. Add up the Roman numerals of the remaining letters:

C + V + V + L + D + I + V
100 + 5 + 5 + 50 + 500 + 1 + 5 = 666

A summary of the Antichrist calculation was included in the Barney FAQ v1.2 (posted on Usenet's alt.tv.barney newsgroup 1 December 1993). Since then, it has become one of the most widely-distributed instances of Barney humour.[7]

[edit] Computer games

Anti-Barney humor emerged from the modability of early 90's computer games, such as the popular first person shooter, Doom. Numerous "mods" circulated the Internet and third party mod collections would replace specific monsters. Other similar mods were released, replacing one or more monsters with Barney, often with new sounds as well. One such of these mods is Barneystein 3D, a spoof of Wolfenstein 3D, where, instead of killing Nazis, the player has to kill Barney's minions Beavis and Butt-head and finally kill Barney himself. Closely related was the "mashup" WAV file of Barney starting his theme song, interrupted by some German speech and various weapon sounds from the game Wolfenstein 3D (with the implication of killing Barney dead, over and over).

There also was a computer game for Mac called Barney Carnage.

A homebrew Colecovision game known as Purple Dinosaur Massacre Was released in the Internet in the late 90s.

Starcraft also has custom map downloadable, called Kill Barney, which the players kill the characters in the Barney show, and Barney himself as ultimate boss.

[edit] Legal responses

Lyons Partnership, which owns the intellectual property rights to Barney & Friends, took the view that Barney spoofs were instances of trademark and copyright infringement against the Barney character. Lyons' lawyers subsequently demanded that the owners of Anti-Barney humour websites remove their material from the Internet. Some site owners withdrew their Barney-related materials after such threats[8][9] while others resisted. However, American law has established parody as a fair use defense against such infringement claims.[10]

[edit] Barney vs San Diego Chicken

In 1994, comedy sketches of The San Diego Chicken during professional sporting events began to include scenes of the Chicken beating up a purple dinosaur character. Lyons Partnership began sending letters to Ted Giannoulas, who portrays the Chicken, demanding that he stop the alleged violation of Lyons' rights on the Barney character.

These threats did not stop the mock battles between Chicken and Barney. On 8 October 1997, Lyons filed lawsuit in Fort Worth, Texas federal district court against Giannoulas, claiming copyright and trademark infringement and further claiming that such performances would confuse children. This court ruled against Lyons on 29 July 1998, declaring the sketches to be a parody that did not infringe on the rights of the Barney character.[11][12]

Lyons appealed this ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but again lost their case to Giannoulas on 7 July 1999.[13]

[edit] Barney vs EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) hosted online archives from the Computer Underground Digest that contained Barney parody material. In 2001, Gibney, Anthony & Flaherty, LLP who were the lawyers for Lyons Partnership, issued a threat letter to EFF claiming infringement of the Barney character. EFF strongly defended itself against these claims citing the established defence of parody, backed by United States First Amendment protections.[14]

As of November 29, 2006, the EFF successfully defended a website ridiculing Barney from a lawsuit. An article in The Register applauded the victory.[15]

[edit] Barney vs CyberCheeze

Around 2001, the comedy website CyberCheeze[16] posted a work entitled "150 Ways to Kill the Purple Dinosaur". In response, a lawyer's letter on behalf of Barney's rights owners threatened legal action. CyberCheeze replied to this with a substantial dose of satire.[17][18]

[edit] Miscellaneous

Since 1995, when the website Newgrounds was established, several fan-made cartoons demeaning Barney have appeared, some of them depicting Barney as a drug addict or a terrorist. One of the most popular includes "Barney Busdriver", which depicts Barney as a drug addict/alcoholic/sadist who is driving an elementary school bus. Another animation portrays Barney as a friend of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and depicts him sexually assaulting a young girl.

Many cartoons targeted at older children have made fun of Barney directly or indirectly. Most cartoons do not mention Barney directly. Instead they use a parody and depict it as being mean. Some examples of shows that have done this include Dinosaurs, Rugrats, and Animaniacs.

In The Monkees 1997 ABC TV Special, Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees (Written and directed by Michael Nesmith) Davy makes a reference to Barney while the four of them prepare for their upcoming gig. They discuss their recent occurrence at the beach when Micky had amazed an 8-year-old boy by 'throwing up' confetti (His great new idea for a group gimmick, similar to Kiss). Davy had admitted that 8-year-olds deserve better than that. He soon stops and asks the others: "What's that purple dinosaur thing?" Peter then brings out a Monkees hand puppet (A popular children's toy from the 60's.) Davy responds: "That's exactly my point. All that purple dinosaur thing is is one of those...but WAY out of control! I mean, we're talking about mesmerizing four-year olds here!"

The science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research published in its January/February 1995 issue an article called The Taxonomy of Barney, including X-rays of his skeleton. It is freely available on the magazine's website.

There is a Usenet group named alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die . However, as of the early 2000s, it has been dropped from a large number of usenet servers. It is still accessible through Google Groups, though, and some usenet servers still carry it, although its legitimate traffic has receded due to the increased traffic in spamming and trolling. The regular members of the group have moved on to a message board called CGIAB4D, which requires membership and thus is less prone to flooding and trolling.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Indeed, Barney is on the receiving end of more hostility than just about any other popular cultural icon I can think of. Parents admit to a cordial dislike of the saccharine saurian, and no self-respecting second-grader will admit to liking Barney ..." - W.J.T. Mitchell, The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon, Chapter 37, "Why Children Hate Dinosaurs", ISBN 0-226-53204-6
  2. ^ Barney parodies from children were given an entire chapter of the 1995 book Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood by Josepha Sherman and T.K.F. Weisskopf, ISBN 0-87483-444-9 (see The Green Man Review entry)
  3. ^ Pete McEntegart, "The 10 Spot", Sports Illustrated 10 July 2005
  4. ^ See Tony Mason official website, indicating the song is a 1993 composition
  5. ^ "Joining the Jihad", alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die, 13 October 1993
  6. ^ "The Jihad Universe for Dummies", from jihad.net
  7. ^ See this Google search; as of 18 April 2006, this yielded 850 results, many of which include the Barney/Antichrist Joke.
  8. ^ Removal of "Barney Dies" sound files, Carolyn Gargaro
  9. ^ "A children's toy could get me sued", drwho.virtadpt.net
  10. ^ See "Copyright issues" under Wikipedia:Parody
  11. ^ Current.org: "The case of Barney v. Chicken", articles from 1997 and 1998
  12. ^ E! Online: Celeb Courthouse "Barney the Dinosaur v. the Famous San Diego Chicken".
  13. ^ FindLaw: 5th Circuit decision, Lyons Partnership vs Ted Giannoulas
  14. ^ EFF Response to "Barney" Legal Threat, Electronic Frontier Foundation letter, 6 July 2001
  15. ^ EFF defeats Barney the Dinosaur, The Register, 29 November 2006
  16. ^ Original articles on cybercheeze.com Unavailable as of 21 April 2006 as the site was under maintenance. Still unavailable on November 29, 2006.
  17. ^ The Register: "Barney barney makes dino outfit purple with rage"
  18. ^ Wired News: "Lawyers: Keep Barney Pure", includes reference to the EFF situation.

[edit] External links

(WARNING: Some of the sites below contain adult content)

Here are some examples of Anti-Barney Humor from the Internet:

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