This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
It Just Bugs Me! when fandoms try to impose this trope on everything, even when it's pointlessly depressing and inappropriate. No, not everything is going to be 'realistic' and angsty like in Real Life; it's called fiction for a reason. When did depressing become the normal mindset?
Mr Death: A-Freaking-men. At the risk of bitching, why the hell can't people just accept a happy ending? ICO isn't any better of a game if you think that Ico and Yorda both die (in fact, then it's worse), Final Fantasy VI isn't more artful if the world ends, and Rinoa turning into Ultimecia ruins the point of the game.
Fuck that. I'm sorry, but this pisses me the hell off when pretentious jackasses insist that a game or a movie has to be sad in spite of all the available evidence.
Dalek Kan Noladti: How do you add an alt title? I want to christen this page "Whedonitis" like the pre-crash trope.
Tanto: I feel like this should be in Fan-Speak rather than plain ol' Tropes.
Solandra: You're probably right; I thought there should be a more specific category to put this under, but couldn't think of it.
Morgan Wick: This should probably contain exceptions that contest the critics' mindset. But the first two examples I can think of are Dr. Strangelove and Annie Hall and the former is actually rather harrowing, and I haven't seen the latter or would even know if it would qualify.
Solandra: I haven't seen Annie Hall either, but isn't Dr. Strangelove a black comedy? Not exactly angsty, but has the ultimate Downer Ending complete with the most ironic choice of music ever. It's A Wonderful Life might be an exception, though some critics dismiss it as too corny.
Maggoty Anne: Dr. Strangelove is a Black Comedy, which means it can't have a Downer Ending. The "sad" bits are what make it funny. And the ironic music is rather fitting for what is probably the most ironic movie ever made.
Morgan Wick: I think IAWL just suffers from "emperor's new clothes" syndrome. It's almost a perfect example of the stuff that starts the entry, and I was looking for stuff that "contest[s] the critics' mindset" - that is, shows that "true art" doesn't have to be angsty. The entry says "Only drama can effectively explore the fragility of human life, the crushing agony of love and regret, and other life-defining themes (including tragic childhoods)." So I was looking for something that did that without going the same route as all the stuff this entry is talking about.
Solandra: What about upbeat, light-hearted films that succeed because they don't have an ounce of angst in them? Singin' in the Rain would be the perfect example. Other exceptions would be...(thinks long and hard) Er, I think I'll let others think up more exceptions.
Red Shoe: I was gonna say "What this trope really needs is a "Goofus" paragraph." But instead, I just wrote one. Sorry if it's not good enough.
Solandra: Wow, you've read the Highlights magazine? (I just flip through them for something to read at the dentist's office. Really.) That was actually an unintentional reference — I just picked the first noble-sounding name that sprung to my mind — but it produced Made Of Win nonetheless. Great paragraph!
Morgan Wick: I want to load it up with trope links as much as the "Gallant" paragraph, but there were a lot of near-misses for which I thought there might be a trope but didn't quite know the names to.
Scrounge: I blame Evangelion. I don't know why, but it definitely seems like it's part of the problem. How far back does this go, though? Citizen Kane? Hamlet?
William Wide Web: Oedipus Rex, at least.
Red Shoe: The title of this article is fine, but if anyone efer decides it's not, I think Art Of Darkness would rock.
Morgan Wick: Your Strangely Relevant News Item of the Day is this
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- No longer online. Anyone remember what it was about? —Document N
Don Quigleone: Shouldn't examples be given? I think Death of a Salesman should qualify, though it was more written with an agenda than with the purpose of garnering praise, also should angsty works that written with a view ofbeing angsty and not getting critical acclaim but end up getting it because of aforementioned angst count as a subversion? Or maybe only non angsty works that garner critical acclaim should count, arguably the first books in the harry potter series managed to get critical acclaim without being angst.
Solandra: Am I the only one who thinks that the article is getting a tad unwieldy? Cutting out the later portion of the article and preserving it here, until someone figures out how to condense it:
"Of course, not all critics use angst as a benchmark for quality, but the obvious angsty undertones in nearly all critically-acclaimed works say otherwise. This often leads non-critics to believe that a work must be filled with Shakespearean dialogue Shakespearean dialogue and ennui to be a critical success, and avoid them.
This is not to say that great works of art and drama haven't arisen out of despairing and bleak situations, or that angst doesn't have its place; far from it. However, the mindset that great works can only arise out of such situations is on its face patently absurd. If art is a reflection of life, then great works of art can (and probably should) also provide a reflection of the good, beautiful and life-affirming bits as well as the bleak, hopeless ones, and it would only be someone who was cynical (or pretentious) to a truly absurd degree who would deny that these moments don't exist in the first place. An overly pessimistic or bleak mindset is just as wrong-headed and unrealistic as an overly optimistic one.
This trope may be caused by the persistent and widely-held belief that angst is inevitably more 'Realistic' than is really plausible. This trope may explain why many people view lighthearted Disney adaptations of classic stories that ended in tragedy (such as Snow White and The Little Mermaid) as Adaptation Decay rather than Adaptation Distillation. The inverse of this is when highbrow critics dismiss popular works because they automatically assume that non-critics are the lowest common denominator, only interested in popcorn movies and lightweight reading. If it's not angsty, it's not True Art, and the mob are supposedly suckers for not buying into it.
Overly-angsty "True Art" can be, at best, unrealistically bleak or depressing to engage with. A saturation of Crapsack World storylines can demoralise an audience, especially where negative images are heightened by the power of the medium and by artistry. At worst, it can be shameless and cynical exercise in exploitation, parading suffering, pain and loss as a fashionable affectation and a way to make money. Angsty True Artists are rarely concerned about any ill effects of their work. If the matter is raised, the usual defence centers on "artistic freedom".
This trope is the main reason The Stoic Aloof Big Brother, Badass Longcoat Anti-Hero, and Dark Action Girl easily become the Ensemble Dark Horse and dominate Fan Fiction. Also the reasoning behind Death by Newbery Medal, and the prompting behind much Oscar Bait material. This is also the logic behind most of Marvel and DC's recent Crisis Crossovers, which are loaded down with rape and angst and despair to disguise the fact that they're still about people in brightly-colored spandex punching each other. When writers of a formerly humorous or less realistic series fall prey to this, Cerebus Syndrome can result. If not handled carefully, the result is often a lot of Wangst, and if the writer should go way too far in trying to make their characters miserable, there's a better than average chance of a Deus Angst Machina. This trope also keeps Diabolus ex Machina gainfully employed. See also Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
The roots of this probably lie in the poetry of the early 19th century Romantics, the first gothics. Then came Modern Art (which likes to pretend that all "true art" had to be ugly because aesthetic is a sin), and Postmodernism, which pervaded the 1990s, and everyone dressed in black to show how edgy they were, and it seemed that every other character in literature, comics or movies was a dark, angsty, emo drug-abuser, until that itself became a tired cliché.
A lot of material produced in Japan is particularly prone to this, especially with paranormal stories involving women as main characters. The land of the rising sun has a nasty habit of believing women aren't much in terms of being useful at all, and like to end a show that has a strong female role model with a Downer Ending to end all Downer Endings. Take Go Nagai's Devilman Lady for example, in which the main character has to absorb the souls of 70% of the Devil Beast Syndrome-afflicted humans in the world, including her girlfriend/roommate to become powerful enough to stop her boss, the Antichrist, from killing all of humanity. Or the adaptation of Witchblade in which the main character, a single mother, ends up having to kill herself to prevent her from turning into a monstrous demon that would cause The End of the World as We Know It and leave her daughter all alone with no idea where she went.
All too often, the claim that "True Art is Angsty" becomes a artistic pretext for hacks who desperately want to prove how vanguard they are. It's paint-by-numbers angst. As a result, this trope seems to have developed a Three Chords and the Truth-style backlash in which certain people refuse to watch anything with any angst in it at all, and any characters who shows signs of depression is immediately labled as "emo" and "angsty". Whilst this approach might not be entirely advisable, given the truly absurd lengths that some creators go in pursuit of this ideal, can you blame them?"
Prfnoff: Put some of those paragraphs back in. (What I mean is that I replaced them myself.) I agree that it was a bit too long.
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Tangent128: If the Goofus/Gallient paragraphs are going to be cut out, at least preserve them here. (Though personally I'd advise keeping them. They add to the page flavor.)
From the article:
"Quicktip: Tragedy equals depth."
- Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater
"Remember that pine woods are just as real as pigsties, and a darn sight pleasanter to be in."
- Mr. Carpenter, speaking for author L.M. Montgomery in Emily Climbs
Gallant grows up in a happy and loving family who teaches him the Aesops of honesty, loyalty, charity, etc. At 16, Gallant has become the biggest, baddest dragon slayer ever and is sent by King Exposition to slay the biggest, baddest dragon holding Princess Torso hostage. Gallant slays the dragon in one stroke and rescues Torso. It takes them two seconds to fall in love, Gallant finds out he's the long-lost prince of the kingdom, and they live happily ev—Blech!
A simplistic story like that will be no more than a fluffy bedtime story. Why? There's no drama or tension to captivate the audience. Drama is the backbone of any non-Gag Series, and well-written development and arcs are often indicators of a show worth watching. If that drama can be effectively blended with some comedy or romance, that's even better.
...
Some authors and producers prefer to please the audience instead of critics. But others prefer to see a medal on their book cover or hear their name announced on the awards podium, and create controversial and/or tragic works that they know critics look for. Sure, the excess drama may not be able to attract a mainstream audience, but, to highbrow critics, most Viewers Are Morons, only interested in popcorn movies and lightweight reading.
Goofus is the child of an emotionally distant father and a neglectful mother. At the age of 16, he falls in with a rough crowd with whom he starts committing minor crimes, but one fateful night, robbing a store goes awry, and the store owner lies dead. Goofus and his friends must go into hiding, where the tension makes them turn on each other, causing Goofus to slowly discover that his friends are nothing more than a bunch of jerks. He's rescued by a kindly old man, who promptly dies at the hands of the biggest, baddest dragon, but on his deathbed, he charges Goofus to take up his sword and slay the dragon, rescuing the beautiful Torso. Painfully, Goofus must learn to trust and care about others before he slays the dragon in one stroke, but not until after he's badly scarred. It takes Goofus and Torso seconds to fall in love, but he leaves her on a suitably dramatic hilltop, as he must travel alone down life's lonely road, to atone for the sins of his youth. Also, somewhere along the way, his puppy dies. Horribly.
<end>
May i ask why my example was removed? i thought it was pretty good
Professor Thascales: I liked it too.
Prfnoff: Removed this example, which somehow wound up here instead of on Crowning Moment Of Awesome:
- The Mobile Suit Gundam series has lots of this in it's various shows. Zeta Gundam is one of the main ones for this with the ending where Kamille manages to defeat Scirocco by slamming the Zeta Gundam into the cockpit of The O which in it's self is a Crowning moment of awesome for Kamille. However though Scirocco uses his Newtype powers to basically mind fuck Kamille that makes him a vegetable in ZZ Gundam just before he dies. Scirocco's crippling of Kamille's mind was his Crowning moment of Awesome.
Wellington: I made a lot of stylistic cuts and edits to trim down length. In addition, as the opening paragraphs used the word "bleak" something like five or six times, I switched that up a little.
I cut this:
- Try to find any award-winning or critically acclaimed work that doesn't have some degree of angst in it. Go on. I dare you. True, most of them aren't all angst since their creators recognized that angst isn't the make-all, end-all of quality, but the factor of angst in artistic quality is pretty much unavoidable.
... because the reasoning is dubious, and doesn't really get at what this trope's about. It's not about the fact that unremittingly sunny, angst-free works don't get critical acclaim; that's more True Art Is Not Absurdly And Even Stultifyingly Cheerful. It's about the tendency of critics and creators to confuse gloominess with artistic merit.
What popular non-artsy works have no angst whatsoever in them? Even Bertie Wooster anguishes about the possibility of losing a good cook or being married off to someone unattractive.
(Also, the implicit suggestion in the phrase "since their creators recognized that angst isn't the make-all, end-all of quality" is possibly even more cynical than deliberate invocation of the trope itself. I mean, yes, it's cynical to write something with sad parts because you think a story needs sad parts to be art, but it's even more cynical to suggest that anybody who writes a story that isn't absolutely angst-free is doing it for the recognition.)
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Ry Senkari: They let you bring Nei back in Phantasy Star II. Granted, you had to jump through a bazillion hoops (for good reason, as it too would ruin the plotline of the game), but it still let gamers who didn't like angst have their non-canonical ending.
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Maggoty Anne: Should it be mentioned that the Radiohead song Paranoid Android is an excellent satire of this trope?
