-->"''If you don't foward this e-mail, that's OK. Mommy says you're a mean heartless person who doesn't care about a poor little boy with only a head. She says that she hopes that you stew in the raw pit of your own guilt-ridden stomach. What kind of wretched person are you that you can't take five lousy minutes to forward this to all your friends so that they can feel guilt and shame for the rest of their day, and then maybe help a poor, bodiless nine-year-old boy?''"
-->-- Taken from the Snopes.com entry, [[http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/burlap.asp "Sad Sack"]]

Glurge (a term which can be used to describe one story or applied to the genre as a whole) is the body of inspirational tales which conceal much darker meanings than the [[AnAesop uplifting moral lessons]] they purport to offer, and which [[BrokenAesop undermine their messages]] by [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory fabricating and distorting historical fact]] in the guise of offering "true stories."

Glurge often contains such heart-tugging elements as [[TastesLikeDiabetes sad-eyed puppies, sweet-faced children, angels, dying mothers,]] [[ReligionIsMagic or miraculous rescues brought about by prayer.]] These stories are meant to be parables for modern times but fall far short of the mark.

The term is specific to [[http://www.snopes.com Snopes.com]], coined in 1998. Already in its short lifespan it has reached across the Internet and has appeared in the print media a number of times, and it may well soon make the final breakthrough by appearing in dictionaries as a bona fide entry. The word was invented by Patricia Chapin, a member of the urban legends discussion mailing list run in conjunction with the site. At a loss for words to describe the retching sensation this then-unnamed category of stories subjected her to, she fashioned a word that simultaneously named the genre and described its effect.

Glurge sometimes contains a menacing subtext of fatalism or xenophobia. In such examples, happiness and success are linked to following the message's religious or social beliefs -- education, hard work, and achievement are irrelevant or subversive. People ''not'' members of the favored group may be portrayed as sinister and untrustworthy, and the deaths or misery of such people ignored or even celebrated if it brings one of them to accept the beliefs of the missive.

''This entry was taken with permission from the [[http://www.snopes.com Snopes.com]] [[http://www.snopes.com/info/glossary.asp Glossary]].''

Not to be confused with TastesLikeDiabetes, though that is a common feature of such stories. Some GuiltTrip commercials may also qualify as {{Glurge}}. Believe it or not, some people are {{Glurge Addict}}s.
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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* Many "lesbian" movies [[TheUnfairSex make the guys total and complete scumbags/rapists]] in order to accentuate how "pure" women are with each other. This has the added effect of adding to the perception that [[HetIsEw lesbianism]] [[RapeAndSwitch is the result]] of "[[BrokenBird broken]]" sexual relations with men, and the presence of a "real," decent man would have resulted in things being different.
** Which is neatly averted in ''TippingTheVelvet'', in which all the men are decent and generous and the only villains are female.
** Well there was the boyfriend of the main character's lover who put down her claims the two women were in love as childish female sentimentality. Of course the ex-lover didn't have much to say.
* {{Ferngully}} piles on every {{Anvilicious}} [[GreenAesop environmental Aesop]] known to man...and accidentally subverts it by making the most likeable and memorable character (in TheMovie at least) the [[EvilIsCool villainous, demonic spirit of pollution]].
* Almost any "inspirational" movie about a teacher, especially of the SaveOurStudents type, actually implies:
** A teacher can reach all students just by caring. Caring means not having a life at all.
** All the other teachers those students ever had just didn't care enough.
** The school system doesn't need discipline, funding, national standards, or any actual improvements. It just needs teachers who care more.
*** [[TheAreasOfMyExpertise Teacher v. Unruly class; both learn lessons.]]
*** It's especially poignant and "inspirational" if the students are from gang-ridden ghettos, and the teacher is white. The teacher's ability to "overcome racial differences" to "reach the kids" is hailed as something amazing and not at all racist, as most of the other teachers in the school are often black, Hispanic, or other non-white. ''Dangerous Minds'' is an example. It can all get a bit [[RudyardKipling "White Man's Burden."]]
*** [[SouthPark How do I reach these keeds?]]
** ''ToSirWithLove'', however, avoids this very well. Possibly because it's a true story.
** Lean On Me also avoided falling into the typical trap, mainly by stressing discipline and control as the only effective methods of instruction.
* The makers of ''Pumpkin'' were trying to parody Glurge. Instead, they just ended up making a very Glurge-filled movie that wasn't absurd enough to be funny.
* ''SimonBirch'' is an infamous example of {{Glurge}} as the product of AdaptationDecay.
** ''A Prayer for Owen Meany'', the book it was based on, was pretty damn glurgy to begin with.
** [[YourMileageMayVary YMMV]] This troper was a kid when he watched the movie, and the ending was, if a tad unbelievable, pretty damn {{TearJerker}}y. That being said: Why was the baseball fatal; and why did it take so damn long to actually hit her?
*** [[CompletelyMissingThePoint Actually,]] ''A Prayer for Owen Meany'' was a {{Deconstruction}} of glurgey stories that abuse DeathByNewberyMedal.
* Parodied in ''TropicThunder'' with the [[ShowWithinAShow Film Within A Film]] ''Simple Jack'', a movie about a mentally-retarded farmhand meant obviously as an OscarBait role for actor Tugg Speedman. The movie becomes a total bomb since, as Kirk Lazarus puts it Tugg went "Full Retard", playing the character as genuinely retarded rather than merely InspirationallyDisadvantaged like [[TheRainman Dustin Hoffman]] in ''{{Rainman}}'', TheFool like ''ForrestGump'' or [[Main/ChanceTheGardener Peter Sellers]] in ''BeingThere'' and noting Sean Penn's peformance in ''I Am Sam'' as an example of why you don't do so.
* Michael Jackson went from TastesLikeDiabetes to this with ''Ghosts'', one of his responses to accusations that his affection for children hid unsavory motives. It uses the framework of a black-and-white horror movie. An evil white mayor (played by Jackson) leads a TorchesAndPitchforks mob on the supernatural Michael just because he was sharing ghost stories with some local boys. What results is a parade of NightmareFuel to drive the mayor away, and it [[http://archive.salon.com/ent/tv/diary/2001/10/31/jacko/index.html has been argued]] that Michael is the real villain even though the idea is that he's the hero who teaches us AnAesop about not picking on others who are different -- talk about UnfortunateImplications!

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* Some of the earliest children's books published in English were stories meant for Puritan children. They primarily were stories about children who did nothing but pray and work, and finally had the "good fortune" to [[TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth die young before they could commit any sins that would have gotten them cast into Hell.]] [[NightmareFuel "Wasn't that a nice story? Sleep tight!"]]
** Parodied in ''TheAreasOfMyExpertise'' with The Six Oaths of the Virtuous Child, which are more [[CreepyChild creepy]] than inspiring.
---> - Today shall not be wasted. I shall rise before the sun, so that I may then watch my family as they slumber, with intent, waiting eyes.\\
- I shall honor my mother today, and I shall tell Father he is powerful.\\
- Today I shall be clean. I shall not touch my teeth, knowing that the oils of my skin shall cause them to disintegrate. I shall instead hone them with a good steel twice after prayers.\\
- I shall be a faithful child, and [[ScienceIsBad I shall ever make science my enemy.]] Also eels.\\
- At day, I shall perform my chores and duties happily, and if I see an eel, I shall kill it before it may speak to me seductively of its lazy life on lazy [[MisplacedWildlife river bottoms]].\\
- At night, I shall dream of more labor, and in my sleep I shall smile with sharpened teeth, knowing that today has not been wasted.
** Mark Twain wrote two stories parodying these: "The Good Little Boy", in which the title character's life ambition is to be the star of a Sunday School book, and "The Bad Little Boy", in which the title character misbehaves and karma utterly fails to inflict ironic punishments.
* In his stand up routine, David Cross savages the book ''Promises to Keep: Daily Devotions for Men of Integrity'' for being full of Glurge and [[FamilyUnfriendlyAesop Warped Aesops]].
* If you've ever read any story by HansChristianAndersen, the patron saint of {{Glurge}}, you have been exposed to it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* Pick an edition of ''AfterSchoolSpecial''.
* Viewers of ''SeventhHeaven'' are force-fed Christian morals like a baby.
** Although, oddly enough, Christ Himself [[JesusTaboo is almost never mentioned]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Multi-media ]]

* While they're certainly not ''all'' guilty of it, more than one film strip on the dangers of drugs has [[DrugsAreBad fallen into this]].
** [=PSAs=]. Not Even Once.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music ]]

* The song ''Christmas Shoes'' definitely qualifies. We'll let [[http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=25047 Patton Oswalt]] speak for this one. It's so infamous that even Christian Radio stations are opting to stay away from this these days.
** There's an AlternateCharacterInterpretation that posits the kid is a StreetUrchin playing on the heartstrings of his marks in order to scam them.
** Speaking of Christmas, Glurge seems to be the steak and potatoes of all the Christmas movies that -coincidentally?- nobody seems to remember. A stellar example: the all but forgotten Disney movie "One Magic Christmas". It is a... ''loose'' reimagining of "It's a Wonderful Life", sort of. And it sits uncomfortably between this trope, {{Narm}}, TastesLikeDiabetes, IneptAesop, DeusAngstMachina, and NightmareFuel (the latter especially due to the violent MoodWhiplash). Bonus points for having many of the same UnfortunateImplications as "The Christmas Shoes," as pointed out by Patton Oswalt above: [[spoiler:"[[GodIsEvil What a horrible]] [[SwearingDiscressionShot f***ing]] [[GodIsEvil God!!!]]"]]. The whole things seems like it was ''designed'' to scar children for life.
** Hard 'N Phirm wrote an over-the-top response song to ''Christmas Shoes'' called ''She Named The Pony Jesus'', in which a guy steals a horse from a fair to give to his ridiculously ailing daughter. [[spoiler: The song ends with the horse trampling the girl and running away.]]
---> "Can I have a pony, Jesus\\
your humble servant begs\\
you see my little girl breathes through a tube\\
and has a wheelchair for her legs\\
I'm not asking you to fix her spine\\
or uncollapse her lung\\
but I know she'd thank you for that pony\\
if she had a working tongue...\\
I know that horse won't stop her tremors\\
or reattach her nose\\
but I know she'd hop right on that pony\\
if she could move her shriveled toes"

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Jack Chick and his notorious {{Chick Tract}}s. Also stellar examples of ScareEmStraight. In this case, "scare 'em straight to [[TheFaceless Giant Faceless Jesus]] and his [[GivingSomeoneThePointerFinger Pointing Finger of Doom]]..."
* Spam, chain letters and faxlore by the thousands. Snopes has an [[http://www.snopes.com/glurge/glurge.asp entire section dedicated to examples of these]], with well over one hundred entries, and yet even that barely dips into the endless well of schmaltz, bathos and [[UnfortunateImplications unexamined assumptions]] that winds up in people's inboxes daily.
** Parodied on CuteOverload!, in which the storyteller gets confused by the sequence of events in the pictures, leading to a very LostAesop.
* Some of the crazy stuff people come out with on [[http://fstdt.com Fundies Say The Darnedest Things]] are pretty glurgy. Thanks to PoesLaw, it's very hard to tell if this is actually serious or not. Example:
-->"After four years, our cancer warrior Alice has left her earthly bounds and gone to heaven, where her body is healthy again, where the wind can blow through her hair, and where she can finally ride a horse on the beach and swim with dolphins. She was embraced in heaven by all the inspiring teens and children with cancer she met along the way." My question to atheists is: if her parents asked you for your true beliefs, would you really take that away from them? Would you really tell them that their daughter was just unlucky, and suffered heroically for years only to go out like a candle and be nothing more than dirt in the ground?
* While [[http://cats.about.com/library/guest/ucfeature25a.htm this story]] is probably more closely based on a real story than other examples, it doesn't make things [[TastesLikeDiabetes taste any less]] {{Glurge}}-y. Also, instead of inspiring this dog-owner to make a stand, it merely depressed her for a week.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* ''CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers''
** Arguably, that's what makes it ''[[NarmCharm funny]]''.
* Parodied in FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends: in one episode, this is how Mac is able to tell which of the Bloos is his true best friend. The one that made the heart-filled speech at the end? He wasn't the real one, since [[{{Jerkass}} Bloo would never say or admit something like that]].

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