Anti-Barney humor is a form of humor that targets the children's television program Barney & Friends. The notion that the show is saccharine, boring, annoying, sugary, dangerous or uneducational has made the program a target for parody and negative attacks by children of various ages, adolescents, and many adults in the United States and elsewhere.

Contents 1 History 2 Examples of Anti-Barney humor 2.1 Barkley vs Barney 2.2 Music and related video 2.3 Print media 2.4 Internet fiction 2.5 Jihad 3 Barney = 666 joke 4 Computer games 5 Miscellaneous 6 Legal responses 6.1 Barney vs San Diego Chicken 6.2 Barney vs EFF 6.3 Barney vs CyberCheeze 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

History

Almost immediately after Barney and Friends first aired in 1992, the result was that it mesmerized and fascinated many young viewers under the age of 4, but was strongly disapproved by most older children for its saccharine, sunshine-and-flowers, one-dimensional execution.^[1] University of Chicago professor W. J. T. Mitchell noted, "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."^[1] They were among the first to practice anti-Barney humor, and were given an entire chapter of the 1995 book Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood.^[2]

Eventually, adults began to contribute to anti-Barney humor, including parents and celebrities. Many families now refuse to watch the show because of its one-dimensionality and lack of educational value, and several YouTube videos have plush dolls of the character either blown up or set on fire. Sources of hostility include episodes of the show that have since been removed from the airwaves showing the anthropomorphic purple dinosaur instructing children to talk to strangers in addition to other potentially harmful acts such as lying, cheating, and catching stinging insects.^[3] Other reasons for the hostility also include the purple dinosaur's dopey voice, never-changing smiling facial expression and self-centered attitude, as well as how the kids on the program interact with the dinosaur characters.^[4][5]

One specific criticism is that

"his shows do not assist children in learning to deal with negative feelings and emotions. As one commentator puts it, the real danger from Barney is denial: the refusal to recognize the existence of unpleasant realities. For along with his steady diet of giggles and unconditional love, Barney offers our children a one-dimensional world where everyone must be happy and everything must be resolved right away."^[6]

It is ranked on TV Guide's List of the 50 Worst TV Shows of All Time at #50.^[7]

Examples of Anti-Barney humor

Barkley vs Barney

Charles Barkley was the guest host of Saturday Night Live on September 25, 1993, and performed a skit that parodied his Godzilla-themed Nike commercial by facing off against Barney in a one-on-one matchup.^[8]

Music and related video

One of the first well known anti-Barney songs was Tony Mason's^[9] "Barney's on Fire" (often miscredited to "Weird Al" Yankovic, who denied writing the song).^[10] The music video for "Jurassic Park," from Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza, however, featured a scene in which a Tyrannosaurus bites Barney's head off, then chokes on it and is given the Heimlich maneuver by an apatosaurus.^[11] The music video for another one of Weird Al's songs, "I'll Sue Ya," also features a toy dinosaur in the color scheme of Barney gnawing on a disembodied arm.^[12]

Comedian Stephen Lynch has gained fame from his "Evil Barney Bus Driver" audio skit, which he did for Opie and Anthony in 1997 and has been commonly posted on the internet.

An online video created by Ryan Steinhardt in 1998 combines clips from Barney and Friends with the 2Pac single "Hit 'Em Up", making it appear as if 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, as opposed to the regular lessons and content on Barney and Friends.^[13][14]

Print media

A small Italian comic book imprint, Parody Press (an imprint of Eternity Comics), released an anthology comic book entitled Kill Barny [sic] in 1994, a collection of short stories and one-page strips depicting the death of the purple dinosaur.^[15] 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.^[16]

The Mad Magazine fold-in for issue #328 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."

Internet fiction

Several works of short fiction revolved around not only killing Barney, but portraying him as a demonic force to be defeated in an epic tale of good versus evil,^[17] including a series of short stories written by Brian Bull, such as the Day of The Barney trilogy about two children who fight the purple dinosaur and free hordes of children from his demonic control,^[17] and Batman versus Barney.^[18].

Jihad

The Jihad to Destroy Barney is a fictional jihad that sees itself in the ultimate battle against Barney (spelled "B'harne" therein^[19]) and his followers. It is described as "a heterogeneous organization of people on the Internet dedicated to defamation, humiliation, eradication, killing, and removal of Barney the Purple Dinosaur of the television show Barney & Friends from the airwaves and from every human's life."^[20][21] B'harne is depicted as a grotesque, even more reviling purple, scaly lizardlike demon with sharp talons, long teeth and glowing evil red eyes.

References to a Barney "Jihad" were found on Barney-related Usenet newsgroups as early as 1993.^[22] The website itself was active as of 1995.^[23][24] Furthermore, Douglass Streusand, a professor of Islamic history at Marine Corps Staff College in Virginia, discovered that the first entry of an Internet search on the term "jihad" referred to Barney.^[25]

Barney = 666 joke

One of the most widely-distributed works of anti-Barney humor appeared in the 2001 book Science Askew, which provided a "666" calculation for the character as follows:^[26]

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 in December 1993).^[27]

Computer games

Starcraft has a custom map called "Kill Barney," in which the players kill characters from the show and ultimately mutilate Barney himself as the final boss. There was also a computer game for Macintosh platform called Barney Carnage.^{[28][dead link]} One of the bosses in Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia is a monstrous Barney parody named Mr. Huggles, who attacks by singing and attempting to hug unwilling pedestrians. After fighting him, his suit comes off, revealing a more vicious Jabba the Hutt-like being.^{[citation needed]} In the early-to-mid 1990s, a text-based BBS game called "Barneysplat" appeared, in which the player attempts to harm Barney (and the rest of the show's cast), commit various acts of vandalism, and otherwise gleefully cause havoc.^{[citation needed]}

Miscellaneous

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 Beavis and Butt-head episode Tornado, Beavis and Butt-head are watching Barney when his hand catches fire as he pulls a cake out of the oven. MTV removed the fire scene after a 1993 fire killed a two-year-old and was blamed on the show.

The science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research published in its January-February 1995 issue an article called The Taxonomy of Barney that included X-rays of his skeleton.^[29]

The Evil Con Carne episode "Everyone Loves Uncle Bob" has one kid shouting "It's that purple dinosaur guy" while it was really Boskov, who was also big and purple. He then started dancing like Barney.

In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "War of the Colossal Beast", Joel exclaims, "Barney's been in a fire!" Crow then sings, "I love you. You burn me."

Animaniacs once featured a Barney-like character named Baloney, who was always cheerful and singing. He greatly annoyed and frightened Yakko, Wakko and Dot, which prompted immediate abuse (such as cutting off his oxygen or hitting him with explosives), but he appeared unscathed at each hit. In Wakko's Wish, the character is last seen being hit with an anvil, never to be seen again.

Legal responses

Lyons Partnership, owners of the intellectual property rights to Barney & Friends, claimed that Barney spoofs represented trademark and copyright infringement. Lyons' lawyers subsequently demanded that such material be removed from the Internet. Some site owners complied after such threats,^[30][31][32] but American law establishes parody as a fair use defense against such infringement claims.

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 the 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. In his case, Giannoulas cited that the purple dino was a "symbol of what is wrong with our society--an homage, if you will, to all the inane, banal platitudes that we readily accept and thrust unthinkingly upon our children", that his qualities are "insipid and corny", and that he also explains that, in an article posted in a 1997 issue of The New Yorker, he argues that at least some perceive Barney as a "pot-bellied," "sloppily fat" dinosaur who "giggle[s] compulsively in a tone of unequaled feeble-mindedness" and "jiggles his lumpish body like an overripe eggplant." This court agreed with Giannoulas, and ruled against Lyons on 29 July 1998, declaring the sketches to be a parody that did not infringe on the rights of the character that Lyons created.^[33][34]

Lyons appealed this ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but again lost their case to Giannoulas on 7 July 1999.^[35]

Barney vs EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation hosted online archives from the Computer Underground Digest that contained Barney parody material. In 2001, Gibney, Anthony & Flaherty, LLP, 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.^[36]

As of November 29, 2006, the EFF successfully defended an anti-Barney website from a lawsuit. An article in British publication The Register applauded the victory.^[37]

Barney vs CyberCheeze

Around 2001, Olympia, Washington-based comedy website CyberCheeze^{[38][dead link]} posted a work entitled "150 Ways to Kill the Purple Dinosaur." Lyons threatened legal action in response, and CyberCheeze replied on their site that the threat was "about as intellectual as the purple quivering mass of gyrating goo you call Barney, but that it also is demeaning to everyone that visits our website and reads this worthless attempt and scare tactic."^[39][40]

See also

• Baloney & Kids

References

External links

• List of Anti-Barney Songs