Interesting work that I've always wanted to see someone do. Well, the obvious thing to do is to break down other trash sets over the years and see if there has been a shift in subject matter. Grabbing something from 1997 or 1998 would be ideal, and maybe something from 2000 to check for continuity. I'm not volunteering to do that data crunching, but until one can quantify a shift, showing that one exists, it's a bit difficult to talk about a shift and whether or not it is a good thing. Someone go pick something off the Stanford Archive. The Ann B Davis from '96 to '98 would be a start. I will say this, though. Memory is an interesting area to study. There's this thing called the availability heuristic which I occasionally had reason to reference in an academic setting. Basically, people assume that what they can easily recall is a random sample of what's actually out there. quizbowlers will often have skewed perceptions of what comes up in the areas they most remember, usually the things they love and the things they hate. Because of this, I think there is reason to be a bit skeptical of compaints of mal-distribution unless someone actually goes into the questions and produces numerical data. I'm also going to go out on a limb and predict that if someone did go and amass a lot of data, the most referenced movie in trash tournaments (excluding series of films such as Star Wars or Police Academy), is Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And that's not including the probable recent deluge of Jeffrey Jones questions on account of everybody loves a pedophile. That being said, I can suggest a few theoretical explanations of some of this data. Movies that are still in theaters don't get asked as much for several reasons. One is that to get data for a question, you usually have to go to a theater or else rely on reviews that don't give the full story (including the ending). I've noticed a growing trend of people waiting until the movie is out on video. The big budget movies tend to be covered by questions before the movie actually comes out, including who's playing what role? That trend has been especially noticeable with Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies. And some of the top 20 most popular movies listed may have come out after some teams wrote their packets, or at least filled the quota for recent movies. There's also the possibility that there were questions on directors or actors that were not strictly on any of those top 20 movies, but which did mention associations. I would be curious to see how TV ratings for 18-49 would differ from 18-30. And really, if you wanted to be accurate, you'd look at white males 18-30. I'm not sure if that would cause any differences. Well, maybe no one in college watches Everybody Loves Raymond. Really, I'm surprised that anybody loves Everybody Loves Raymond. I'd be interested to see how much daytime television was not game shows. Regarding music, Clear Channel to the contrary, it feels like there is no real mainstream in a musical landscape that is undergoing a postmodern fragmentation. To put it another way, Kelly Clarkson doesn't strike me as the fakest mainstream music out there. I've come to the opinion that if you're a big fan of all the musical acts mentioned in a given round, the music selections are probably not diverse enough. Also, it would be interesting to see how many songs/albums/acts on the charts from a hard copy of Billboard from July-ish came up at Trashmasters. If I were to speculate, I think that many people want trash to be more low culture than popular culture, placing it in opposition to literature, classical music, and other things that you might see in an ACF round (where, strangely, rap and hip hop seem over-represented, or so I am told). Given trash's genesis as "things you can't write questions on for ACF," this explains why some people write questions on things that aren't really popular culture, including news of the wierd and wacky politicians. (And by the way, Dave Thorsley wrote the best question in the tournament...yes, it is the context somtimes.) And in closing, if there is a "cult" topic for which there is enough interest for someone to write a theme round and get a bunch of people to play on it, odds are that topic will come up more often than some people think it should. Anthony de Jesus who, for the record has seen three of the top 20 movies, watches semi-regularly three of the top 20 shows (all NBC sitcoms), and owns none of the albums listed (but would be most likely to acquire Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)....damn, I didn't really mean to write this much.... --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Mike Burger <mmb5_at_e...>" <mmb5_at_e...> wrote: > http://www.mikeburger.com/2002tmbreak.html > http://www.mikeburger.com/2002tmpopular.html > http://www.mikeburger.com/2002tmanswer.html
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