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 sugary 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.

[edit] History

Almost immediately after Barney and Friends first aired in 1992, it mesmerized and fascinated many younger children and infants but was despised by most 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.

The reasons of dislike typically differ from one individual to another. However, commonly cited reasons included the sugary content to dislikes in the ways songs are parodied on the show, to the fact that the experiences of the person totally contradicted what Barney presented on the show (for example, a person who has attended school will find that school is not all fun and games and not everyone is friendly for example, bullies, or they may already have a sister and realize that a little sister is not always as co-operative as depicted on the show). Some people still recall a few episodes that have since been pulled where Barney tells children to talk to strangers.^[3]

[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 crack problem" and that he "can't stop smoking the stuff".

The people who made the prank call were believed to be high school students from Northern New Jersey, but their identities were never confirmed.

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.^[4]

[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).^{[5][unreliable source?]}

"Jurassic Park," released on "Weird Al" Yankovic's Alapalooza album, featured the lyrics, "I'm afraid these things might harm me / Cause' they sure don't act like Barney." The music video included 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/brontosaurus (they are considered to be the same type of dinosaur). A more recent music video, also by Weird Al, "I'll Sue Ya", has an animated bandaged, evil looking Barney robot chewing on a severed arm.

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. The humor is based on the juxtaposition of the actual song's heavy use of profanity and violent content, which is inimical to the regular lessons and content on Barney and Friends. This video was created by Daddy Design and has been a huge hit on the web for over 9 years now.

Also a Mexican online video combines "Barney and Friends" scenes with a song about Mexican general election 2006 controversies making it appear that Barney is singing about Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's reaction about Felipe Calderon's victory.

The music video for the 1993 re-recording of Suicidal Tendencies song, "Institutionalized", features frontman Mike Muir playing cards with Barney towards the end of the video. Barney's face is censored in the video.

[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 Barney Again!, reprinting most of Kill Barny but with some new material pages and a new cover.

The Mad Magazine Fold-in for Issue #328 referred to Barney-bashing. It asked, "What Single Goal Has Brought Agreement And Unity Among Vastly Different Groups?" and the image, which featured pairs of opposite people proclaiming their support for the answer, folded into a dead Barney with the word "extinct" on it, and the caption then read "Death to Barney." MAD KIDS Issue #1, in "Puzzle Nook," asked readers to complete the phrase _NEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL" and one option was "BAR."

[edit] Nine Months

The Hugh Grant film Nine Months includes a character similar to Barney, named "Arnie". Arnie is apparently meant as the embodiment of the growing amount of Anti-Barney humor in that he demonstrates the subjectively perceived "worst" aspects of the character extended to extremes.

In one scene, Arnie taunts Marty (Tom Arnold) into buying various "Arnie" merchandise. Marty graciously declines, but Arnie proceeds to antagonize him. Finally, Marty is driven to physical assault on "Arnie" in front of an audience of 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^[6]) 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.^[7]

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."^[8]

[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:^[9][10]

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.^[11]

[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^[12][13] while others resisted. However, American law has established parody as a fair use defense against such infringement claims.^[14]

[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 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.^[15][16]

Lyons appealed this ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but again lost their case to Giannoulas on 7 July 1999.^[17]

[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.^[18]

As of November 29, 2006, the EFF successfully defended a website ridiculing Barney from a lawsuit. An article in The Register applauded the victory.^[19]

[edit] Barney vs CyberCheeze

Around 2001, the comedy website CyberCheeze^[20] 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.^[21][22]

[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.^{[citation needed]}

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. Some examples of shows that have done this include Dinosaurs, Garfield and Friends, Rugrats, and Animaniacs. One of the bosses in Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia is a monsterous Barney parody named Mr. Huggles who attacks by singing and trying to hug you. After fighting him, his suit comes off, revealing a more vicious Jabba the Hutt-like being. Also in the Arcade game Carnevil evil Barney-like creatures are some of the enemies in the Rickety Town level.

The Evil Con Carne episode "Everybody Loves Uncle Bob" has one kid shouting "it's that purple dinosaur guy" and then Boskov starts jumping around like Barney

One virus Digimon is the somewhat Barney-esque ExTyrannomon who is a black mass with eyes in the body of a stuffed dinosaur.

The character Smoochy from the film Death to Smoochy resembles Barney.

On October 31, 1993, a concert in Akron, Ohio for Halloween, Nirvana band members dressed up in costumes. Frontman and guitarist Kurt Cobain dressed up as Barney, with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand.^{[citation needed]}

In the Simpsons episode Rosebud, Homer watches a TV show where a Barney-like character is seen dancing and chanting 2+2=4.

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!"^{[citation needed]}

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.^[23]

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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

Clips from the episodes are seen on Jimmy Kimmel Live! as part of their Friday segment This Week in Unnecessary Censorship. Parts of the dialogue are bleeped out to make it sound inappropriate. A popular series of youtube videos filmed in the mid 1990s,made by Luke & Joel Hopkinson(HB videos)depict Barney(Mike Deanfrasio)as a foul-mouthed town outcast who does not wear a costume,but is nevertheless recognized as being Barney,even being called "purple pervert" and such,his adventures include incredibly mundane things designed to parody the shows lack of educational value,such as putting out controlled fires,trick-or-treating,tresspassing,attendin school,taking a bath etc.(although it can be interpreted that he is insane and the townspeople play along with him or that he is the out-of-costume actor who plays Barney)Barney frequently speaks in the 3rd person and tries to interact with the audience to get himself out of situations,his catch-phrase is "ho-ho boys'n'girls".Barney's worst enemy is the "Weird-guy-Stalker"(Joel)who appears in 4 videos,and he succeeds in killing Barney in one of them.

[edit] References