I’ve been writing PuppetVision for about five years and blogging about puppetry on the internet since 2003. One of the coolest things about doing this has been all the amazing puppetry work I’ve gotten to see and the incredible puppeteers and puppet builders I’ve gotten to know. For every person who’s ever sent me an email saying that they enjoy reading the blog or have thanked me for pointing out some cool puppet video they’ve enjoyed, please know that I find that really humbling and that I’ve gotten back a hundred times more from PuppetVision than I’ve ever given to it.

I first started blogging about puppetry because I was trying to produce a web series six years ago and nobody was really talking about about the way the web was revolutionizing things for puppetry (thanks to all the great puppetry blogs out there that’s no longer the case). The real agenda for PuppetVision from day one was in some small way to hopefully encourage puppet film and video and help promote all the great stuff that puppeteers were churning out in their basements.

Now that we have shows with really good production values like Apollo’s Pad and innovative, quirky writing like Jigsaw, and, yes, even mainstream popularity like Potter Puppet Pals puppetry on the web is starting to grow up. And I’ve been thinking about that lately and how I’d like to re-orient PuppetVision to focus on quality over quantity.

Which brings me to what this post is really all about. I get a lot of stuff submitted to me every week. If it never finds its way in to the blog it’s usually because either I didn’t have time to write about it, or haven’t seen it yet (I currently have about 600 unread emails). Reader submissions are the lifeblood of PuppetVision and most what gets sent in is awesome in one way or another. Unfortunately, with the good comes the bad, and the bad includes a fair bit of stuff that is, frankly, crap.

Over the years I think I’ve willingly subjected to myself to every horrid, offensive and mindbogglingly-awful puppet video on YouTube. There are a lot of them out there, trust me. And while I’ve seen a lot of mindlessly dumb stuff, it took Ask Blackie to finally push me over the edge.

If Ask Blackie isn’t offensive, at the very least it risks reinforcing just about every negative stereotype about black culture out there. To give you an example of the tone of this show, this little gem is from the Ask Blackie Twitter feed today:

“Ladies (Must be 18+) who send in topless photos with “I Love Ask Blackie” written on their chest get a free shirt!”

First of all, I want to say that when it comes to shows like this I do get it. They’re meant to be ironic and tongue-in-cheek; Ask Blackie is probably an example of the whole subvert-a-stereotype-by-taking-ownership-of-it thing or whatever. Or maybe it’s just stupid. Or maybe I’m just getting old and cranky. I’ll let you decide.

My point is really just that eventually when you’re creating art and media I think you need to ask yourself whether or not what you’re creating is making a positive contribution to the world. If someone wants to make the equivalent of South Park with puppets that’s fine, but they should at least try to be as smart as Trey Parker and Matt Stone about it. If they’re going to do “adult” humour, they should put some effort in to mastering puppetry, like the puppeteers who do Fur TV and Apollo’s Pad. They should learn the difference between profanity and humour and not rely on lame YouTube puppet video clichés like sex, drugs and swearing because they’re too lazy to be, you know, actually entertaining.

How about we all challenge ourselves to really take things to the next level?

24/4/09 Update: Malgosia Askanas pointed out that what I’m referring to here as “bad puppetry” could also be called “lousy or questionable cultural occurrences that utilize puppets”, which is true.