Talk:Pop out cake

Trivia section

SMcCandlish, WP:MISC suggests that the content may be worth WP:PRESERVEing. This article is barely a day old. Let's think about what we might do with this content. Many people seem to be tinkering with the new article. Let's give it some time. How about 60 days or so. It may get another wave of interest at WP:DYK. There may be a way to salvage this content.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:28, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

There must be at least 1,000 scenes of people (usually women) popping out of cakes in movies, TV, etc. It's an especially common gag, usually with a joke of some kind, like it being an old lady or a hairy guy, or whatever, in goofy comedies like Family Guy, The Simpsons, etc., etc. A trivia list like that is exactly the same thing as trying to add a list of every movie or TV episode that has ever shown a 9mm handgun to the article 9mm handgus, or adding such a list of appearances of pit bulls to the article on pit bulls. Trivia does not become magically un-trivial after two months pass.

If popular-culture material is retained, it should be written as prose paragraph (which doesn't mean concatenate the list into a pseudo-paragraph of 'It happened in this movie, and in this one, and in this one ...", but an actual narrative of the major cinematic history of the idea (did early "Code" Hollywood try to ban such scenes? Have major works on cinematic themes criticized it as hackneyed? When was it first parodied? Have any jurisdictions banned films that feature it? Is it the subject of any feminist critiques? Etc.), and its migration from cinema into other contexts. E.g., the quote about the Big Bang theory being as inelegant as a party girl popping out of a cake might be useful in such an analysis. But not a list of "so-and-so used it in this novel, thus-and-such mentioned it in this article". You might be able to find a reliable source suggesting, e.g., that the Eleniak version was seminally memetic in some way, or whatever, but simply adding it to a list of "yep, it happened again here, and here, and ..." tells us nothing encyclopedic about this cinematic trope – its origins, why it's prevalent, anything about social reactions to it, and so on.

Here's a start on some critical sourcing, via Google Scholar: "out+of+a+cake"+OR+"from+a+cake"&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=. You can revert me if you want, but trivia section just cause people to add more trivia, and they attract deletionists from WP:AFD, because short, new articles with junk like that is usually trying to make it look like it's more notable than it is.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:59, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Trivia sections often survive for years while people attempt to figure out how to preserve content. Let's give it a while. I don't know what instances are historical. Actually, the Eleniak one is one that resonates with people of my generation. When I was asking about the name for the article a few days ago, I could mention the scene from the Steven Seagal movie and everyone knew what I meant.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:57, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

That's a WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument. We don't want that stuff to survive for years. That was the entire point of creating MOS:TRIVIA and the other pages, and the general tendency to add trivia (before people started organizing it into undesirable "In popular culture" sections) is the raison d'etre of WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE policy to begin with. The thing is, people don't attempt to figure out what to do with the content in these section, they just keep adding more trivia and the section fester and spread like a cancer, unless the article is a major and popular one, whereupon people remove the trivia, and work the non-trivia into prose. PS: The fact that some movie was popular with people in our age range and lots of them remember the scene (mainly because a famous Playboy Playmate, popular in the era, was nekkid in it, not because the scene was meaningful in any way) doesn't mean that trivia about it is encyclopedic. Everyone I know remembers and can do at least a passing imitation of the "Are you talkin' to me?" posing-with-gun-in-the-mirror monologue in Taxi Driver, but we don't need to add an "In popular culture" line item about that to any article at all, not Monologue, not Mirror, not Pistol, etc., etc. I'm at a loss why this is so difficult to get through. I'm torn between WP:RFC, WP:AFD, and WP:DGAF at this point.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:28, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I pointed to a guideline that says you are not suppose to jump in and delete this stuff. In my mind that means wait a few months and see how things evolve. At some point put a tag at the top. Then after those two steps you start pruning. You don't jump in with the axe on day 1. MOS:TRIVIA says they should be considered temporary. It does not say burn them down on sight.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:50, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

There is a lot of content and a great many examples. This is a meme or trope of a recurring nature over a long period of time. See Jumping Out of a Cake TV tropes. I am not here to debate the reliability of that website, but I am here to suggest they have a lot of examples, content and ideas that have validity. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 22:16, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Better sources

The Today I Learned source is interesting, but doesn't name any sources to properly contextualize the descriptions of ancient Roman and Caroline England. For all we know, these could be historical rumors and not actual practices. It would be helpful to find a source that explicitly cites the biography of Petronius by Tacitus, as well as a more reliable source for the Jeffrey Hudson pie event. Ibadibam (talk) 19:56, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Attribution

Added reference and text taken from Jeffrey Hudson. Lloyd, John; Mitchison, John. The QI Book of the Dead. Bloomsbury: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-24491-1. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:00, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:18, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Two additions

Since the article seemed a little thin, I added a significant example from an old (1927) show of the famous French bacaret "Moulin Rouge" - this way it avoids jumping from 1895 to the 1950s in the historical paragraph. I also mentioned the album "Dalton City" from the famous Western comics series "Lucky Luke". As I'm not a native English speaker, it would be good if someone could correct possible syntax errors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClassicalMusic33 (talk • contribs) 14:16, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your additions. Can you provide a source that describes the Lucky Luke reference? It would also be good to find a more reliable source for the Moulin Rouge than a tour operator website. Ibadibam (talk) 05:39, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Well, I have the Lucky Luke comic Dalton City. At page 41, Averell Dalton, showing the cake to Belle, tells her "Oh, Miss Belle, would you do me a small favour? Look, I've finished the surprise cake, I'd like you to get inside and to jump out shouting "yippee" when I serve it at the table". Then, the running gag of Belle unsuccessfully trying to break the lid lasts during pages 43 and 44. And at the bottom of page 45 (the penultimate page), Belle eventually pops out of the cake, and, the guests being no longer present, she says "Hey... Where did everybody go?". I don't think there's a source on the web that "describes" all that; what should I do when the source is the comic itself, and not a web article about the comic?

Concerning the Moulin Rouge, all other sources I found are in French (which is logical given that the Moulin Rouge is a Parisian cabaret). Should I put sources in another language than English if they are more "reliable"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClassicalMusic33 (talk • contribs) 17:47, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

We can certainly use non-English sources (per WP:NONENG)! The Lucky Luke issue, as a primary source, is a problem of original research. There are lots of examples of the pop-out-cake in various media, but this article isn't meant to catalog all of them (that's what TV Tropes is for). A secondary source demonstrates the notability of a particular example relative to all other examples. Admittedly, a lot of "cruft" ends up making it into Wikipedia articles that isn't well sourced. Ibadibam (talk) 07:11, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Concerning the Moulin Rouge paragraph, I'll add one or two French sources. Should I keep the English one or should I purely replace it?

I thought the Lucky Luke comic was notable enough, firstly because of the great fame of this comics series, and secondly because the pop-out-cake was a running gag lasting for several pages (towards the end of the comic), and not only an insignificant punctual occurrence as it is in most cases. But if you think I'm wrong, I'll remove the paragraph... ClassicalMusic33 (talk) 09:02, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

I just put a French source for the Moulin Rouge, I eventually find a source for the Lucky Luke comic, and I also added many other sourced references. I reorganized the paragraphs into four sections (History, Specificities, Famous examples, In fictional works).ClassicalMusic33 (talk) 23:52, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for working on this! The French source is self-published so we can still do better, but this is a good start. Lucky Luke is notable, sure. The question is whether it its reference to the pop-out cake is particularly significant, among its many other appearances in media. For example, did LL change the way the broader culture saw the pop-out cake, or perhaps make it more popular? That's what a secondary source can tell us. If you're interested, there's a whole essay on this at Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content. Ibadibam (talk) 18:54, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

C-Class ?

I just added several sourced paragraphs describing different existing variants of structure and shape. Is this article still not filling the criteria for B-Class status?

On the other hand, given than I'm not a native English speaker, my additions would need a syntaxical proofreading... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:2F3E:C630:718E:FF60:C417:94D4 (talk) 15:36, 8 April 2020 (UTC)