Jumping the shark
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Look up jump the shark in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Jumping the shark is an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise. The phrase was originally used to denote the point in a television program's history where the plot spins off into absurd storylines or unlikely characterizations. These changes were often the result of efforts to revive interest in a show whose audience had begun to decline, usually through the employment of different actors, writers or producers.[1][2][3]
[edit] History
The phrase jump the shark refers to the climactic scene in "Hollywood", the third part (written by Fred Fox, Jr.[4]) of a three-part episode opening the fifth season of the American TV series Happy Days in September 1977. In this story, the central characters visit Los Angeles, where Fonzie (Henry Winkler), wearing swim trunks and his leather jacket, jumps over a confined shark on water skis, answering a challenge to demonstrate his bravery. The series continued for nearly seven years after that, with a number of changes in cast and situations.
The expression was coined in 1985 by Sean J. Connolly, the college roommate of Jon Hein,[5] at the University of Michigan who would later create the web site jumptheshark.com and popularize the term. Hein explained the concept as follows: "It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it 'Jumping the Shark.' From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same."[6][7] Hein created the web site in 1997, inviting visitors to give their opinions of when various TV series (and other things) jumped the shark. Hein sold the web site and the domain name to Gemstar (publishers of TV Guide) in 2006, and, in early 2009, the domain was redirected to the main TV Guide web site as part of the dissolution of various TV Guide properties.
In a 2010 Los Angeles Times article, former Happy Days writer Fred Fox Jr., who wrote the episode that later spawned the phrase said, "Was the [shark jump] episode of Happy Days deserving of its fate? No, it wasn't. All successful shows eventually start to decline, but this was not Happy Dayss' time." Fox also points to not only the success of the episode itself ("a huge hit" with over 30 million viewers), but to the continued popularity of the series. "If this was really the beginning of a downward spiral," Fox argues, "Why did the show stay on the air for six more seasons and shoot an additional 164 episodes? Why did we rank among the Top 25 in five of those six seasons?"[8]
[edit] Nuking the fridge
An analogous term in film franchises, Nuking the fridge, is an allusion to a scene early in the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In the scene, Indiana Jones is hit by the blast of a nuclear weapon while hiding inside a lead-lined refrigerator in a desperate attempt at survival. The refrigerator is hurled a great distance through the sky and tumbles hard to the ground, while the structures surrounding it are utterly obliterated. A relatively uninjured Jones emerges to witness the mushroom cloud miles away. Some moviegoers found the absurdity of this event disappointing and reflective of the decreased quality of the series, thus the term nuking the fridge,[9] which was later used in other media [10] [11] and was ranked fifth in Time Magazine's "Top Ten Buzzwords of 2008"[12] and nominated for Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.[13]
[edit] References
- ^ A Few Pixels Short of a Personality, Washington Post, July 25, 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2003/07/25/AR2005033117626_pf.html
- ^ Joanne Hollows, Rachel Moseley (2006). Feminism in Popular Culture. Berg Publishers. ISBN 1845202236. http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1845202236&id=0RuRknkzxe4C&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&ots=ndXlAqWT8I&dq=%22Jumping+the+shark%22&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html&sig=5I2XsOulJy7IwqN6GYeisA53uxg.
- ^ ML Arnold, Jump the Shark: A Rejoinder to Howley, Theobald, and Howley., Journal of Research in Rural Education, 2005, https://www.umaine.edu/jrre/archive/20-20.pdf
- ^ First Person: In defense of 'Happy Days' ' 'Jump the Shark' episode, Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2010
- ^ Ward, Eric (2007-03-20), JumpTheShark.com Redesign Integrates TV Guide Content, URL Wire, http://www.urlwire.com/news/032007.html, retrieved 2010-08-21
- ^ Turner, Chris (2004), Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation, Volume 2005, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, p. 41, ISBN 978-0-306-81448-8
- ^ FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ), JumpedTheShark.com, archived from [www.jumptheshark.com/about.htm the original] on 2000-08-17, http://web.archive.org/web/20000817233601/www.jumptheshark.com/about.htm, retrieved 2010-08-21
- ^ Fox Jr., Fred (2010-03-09), First Person: In defense of 'Happy Days' ' 'Jump the Shark' episode, Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-jump-the-shark-20100903,0,6800871.story, retrieved 2010-05-09
- ^ Ball, Sarah (July 7–14, 2008). "‘Jump the Shark,’ Meet ‘Nuke the Fridge’". Newsweek.com. Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/143782. Retrieved 2008-12-09.
- ^ Cohen, Noam (July 28, 2008). "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Absurdly Implausible Excess". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/business/media/28fridge.html. Retrieved 2009-02-19.
- ^ "Cinema and Pa: 24 Movies to Watch With Dad". Entertainment Weekly. pp. 22 of 25. http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20206651_22,00.html. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
- ^ Cloud, John (2008-11-03), Time Magazine's Top 10 Buzzwords of 2008, TIME, http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864100_1864105,00.html, retrieved 2010-08-21
- ^ A Way with Words: Nuke the Fridge, Mediafly, 2008-11-23, http://www.mediafly.com/Podcasts/Episodes/Nuke_the_Fridge_23_Nov_2008_2, retrieved 2010-08-21
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