It doesn’t even have to be that the message is bad or completely objective and propaganda fuelled, it could just be its often incredibly recited, copied and pasted or just a blatantly obvious good lesson that you are completely aware of.
“This character is a freak, let’s make fun of them for being different, even run them out of town.” Character saves their lives, usually using the thing that makes them different “Hey everyone, this character is the best, we love them!”
Acceptable theoretical moral: Love everyone. Actual implied moral: Love everyone because you’ll never know when they might be useful to you.
Or worse only love them after they proved helpful
It’s so gross.
Almost as bad is if they get treated worse for saving the town, with the townspeople blaming them for any collateral damage.
Rudolph’s Nose trope.
Exactly. HATED that and the Clifford books as a kid for that reason.
It’s also kinda harmful to disabled people. The implication is they can only be accepted if they prove themselves exceptional
Right???
I’m tired of seeing the telling of “the scorpion and the frog” fable ham fisted into so many stories. I don’t think I ever heard that one growing up, yet I’ve heard it a dozen times in shows.
The only acceptable telling of this story
Any kind, empathetic character in a book sacrifices themselves to help others? “Oh, that character is an allegory for Christ, that’s why they acted that way.” I used to hear this all the time in English classes from middle school on, and eventually it got annoying enough that I wound up sitting down and reading the whole damn bible, just so that I could ask “In what way are this character’s actions better explained by them representing Jesus than by the fact that they’ve been an empathetic, kind character who looks out for others for the whole book?” and actually be able to call out teachers that were just using it lazily.
Yes, there are plenty such allegories out there in books, but it got to the point where it seemed like some sort of thought terminating cliché for literary analysis in middle school and high school.
The amount of references to Christianity in random pieces of media makes me want to crash out God damn America cult
Christ is already a fucking allegory! Maybe there can be people who are just nice.
Anyone can achieve great things, even if they come from nothing… As long as they secretly have a great background and heritage out the wazoo. Or it is pre-ordained and has to be them; all other attempts doomed to failure.
The initial message might be fine, but it then undermines itself.
The power of love saves the day
I may be biased since im ace
Interstellar and Arrival, great films ruined by this lazy pathetic trope.
except it’s not the day, it’s the entirety of space-time.
God how much better they would have been had they had like a cool science solution to the plot, but they’d have never made any money without the hackneyed ‘love saves the universe’ shit endings they had.
The original Frozen was a nice twist on that, where it wasn’t romantic love that saved the day, but familial love.
Basically any moral plugged into hallmark movie channel or similarly designed crap. Things rarely “just”work out, and certainly never because of love, god, or good vibes.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Yeah I get it unless you’re a morally corrupt psychopath.
I don’t (at least, I try not to) consume media with typical “morals of the story” and narratives. But looking back into my childhood, I hate the stories about solving conflicts diplomatically, in a nonviolent way. I wish I had someone to teach me stand up for myself with my fists. I really lacked the skill of giving one a good smack when needed, and still do. Because in real life nobody listens to what you say, unless you can back your words with something sensable.
when the “villain” is objectively correct, pointing out the failure of the establishment and that change is necessary, and then also skins puppies alive for no reason, and then the points they bring up are never addressed again
Literally this:
I mean it feels kinda silly but holy shit it’s such a real life thing. Many people are much better at identifying issues than solutions.
“I can’t believe you convinced me that we shouldn’t be letting corporations pollute the planet! I’m never falling for that again!”
The most interesting villains are objectively correct in their reason for acting but their methods are monstrous because they lost perspective.
A good example is the military antagonists in The Rock, where the military guys have decided that threatening terrorism is the only way to get benefits for vets and some of them decide to actually follow through with it. They were justifiably angry about something valid, but went too far.
Evil just to be evil is rarely engaging.
Kind of like how the Suffragettes were objectively correct and had to blow men up to create change because otherwise they would simply have been written off as hysterical women.
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Anytime the moral is to not get angry about something that’s perfectly reasonable to be angry about
The inciting incident in Elmo in Grouchland will forever be scarred into my brain.
So tired of seeing revenge killing movies in Hollywood. As long as someone is truly evil and does something unforgivable in the 1st act, the “hero” is then justified in slaughtering like 100+ random people in a dark hallway in the 2nd act. I think it’s the only sort of violence we’re okay with anymore. Any other type of violence people might have a problem, but because it’s done in the name of revenge for a dead wife/dog/kidnapped daughter, that’s now been whitewashed as “good wholesome revenge killing.” Or something.
The Last of Us 2 Could’ve been good, but they did this and tried to have the “killing is bad actually” moral at the same time and pissed everyone off.
Is it better when the hero decides at the last minute to spare the life of the villain so they “don’t become like them” or is it worse?
If the hero also spares the life of the 100+ randoms, it’s better.
But killing them and sparing the life of the super evil villain, is much much worse.
At least in my opinion.
Thank you! Henching is an undeservedly maligned profession.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a take on it, where the 100+ are at least arguably spared and the villain is actually killed at the end, completing the revenge. At least once.
Kind of related, the stories where the protagonist slaughters dozens of people just to get to the antagonist and then let them live because they had a change of heart.
Like bro, you just killed 50 people to get to this guy and now you’re just gonna change your mind at the last minute?!? The proles can’t even catch a break in hero stories.
I don’t know if this is still a thing, but I feel there was a surge of media in the 90s and 00s telling us:
If you’re not popular at school, all you have to do is cut your hair, get contacts, and buy the same expensive clothes as everyone else, THEN you’ll finally be happy.
She’s soooo ugly, she has glasses and a pony tail!
She has paint on her overalls!
They’ve got money for war, but can’t feed the poor. Best they can do is spend ten times what they would spend to feed them to torture the poor more.
I mean the worst thing you could do with poor people is feed them. Why would you want to perpetuate their suffering?
Now unless you’re ALSO talking about housing them, giving them healthcare and education? Okay, let’s do it.
Let’s not be like a guy named Dennis or Fadi on the YouTube who go out and exploit homeless for clicks and merch sales by giving them 10 star buffets y’all… maybe once a week.
Character who hates being X suddenly realizes being X is helpful actually when something very contrived and unlikely happens.
I hate it when they come up with something to help with someone’s disability, but it’s thrown out because the disability “is what makes them special”
to be fair, some in the disabled community live this way. they like refuse to accept solutions to their disabilities and see it as cultural destruction when such available solutions are embraced.
big problem in the deaf community w/ the advent of cochlear implants and the advancement of that tech, because they see deafness as a unique and defining feature of themselves they want to pass on to their children.
Is it really a problem though?
Let people live the way they want to live, it’s not even hard
yes it is, because in this example the deaf folks what to prevent their children from hearing.
people don’t want to let others make their own choices or live their lives, they want to force them to live their lives as they would.
i agree with your sentiment but the issue is people don’t want to let other people live the way they want to live because they see other people’s choices as hostile to themselves.
