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alt title(s): Inept Aesop "Now, we're not trying to indoctrinate you. Well, we are, but we're not succeeding."
A deep, rich source of Narm. This is when a Very Serious Aesop is undermined because it is presented by a show that just cannot handle it well.
This is especially common in children's shows. There are many, many cases where a well-meaning show for children tries to explain a newsworthy issue, but (often because of the normal tone of the show) the characters just usually end up way out of their comfort zone and the message often goes way over the poor kids' heads.
To be fair, any attempt to tackle serious subject matter honestly is problematic when the Moral Guardians are watching. You often end up with children being warned about something dangerous — but exactly why that something is dangerous is often never explained (sometimes this can be Paranoia Fuel). You see, it's hard to tell kids "don't play with power tools because you might get killed" when you can't say die. Likewise, gun safety is an improbable issue to address when everyone somehow has lasers, and drug abuse isn't easy to deal with when you can't quantify why you shouldn't use drugs.
This is very different from a Broken Aesop. Broken Aesops are lessons undermined by the action within the show (e.g., "Be nice to people who are different from you. Now, let's go back to fighting monsters!")
Don't confuse this with a Family Unfriendly Aesop either, because Clueless Aesops actually often are accepted lessons, but presented so clumsily as to accidentally come across as Family Unfriendly. This is more about context and/or execution than the validity of the Aesop itself. The hallmark of the Clueless Aesop is that the lesson normally would be an entirely straightforward Aesop. It's just that the lesson is handled in such a compressed time, in a manner that is so laughable (or offensive), or is presented in such an out-there or age-inappropriate show that it ends up looking Warped. The typical reaction is Dont Shoot The Message.
Compare Space Whale Aesop. See also some examples of And Knowing Is Half The Battle, Truffaut Was Right, and You Can Panic Now. Drugs Are Bad and Too Smart For Strangers are especially prone to this.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Skipping over the Broken Aesop aspects of it, even if Elfen Lied hadn't ended the manga by killing ten thousand diclonius infants it's very hard to take the equality, friendship, goodwill towards cute horned girls, etc. Aesop well when the entire series is people violently killing each other for poorly explained reasons. And by "people", that means the good guys, except Kouta.
- Yeah, it doesn't matter how much pathos you've front-loaded into a character's backstory, there are only so many innocent people that character can violently tear apart before many viewers just stop sympathizing altogether.
- Gundam Wing due to the fact that they can't even make up it's mind what level of pacifism to take. People constantly talk about how total pacifism is the only way to peace, while showing that only by creating a defense force can peace be mantained. Then the series ends with the Gundam pilots ditching their giant robots, only to need them again when the Barton foundation takes over the Earth in about 20 minutes showing how idiotic total pacifism is, then they destroy the Gundams anyway.
- Except, that, you know, it kind of did know what it was saying. The point was that peace isn't something a small group of people brings, but something that everybody has to work towards. And as for pacifism, that was resolved in The Movie with the Literal Pacifist female lead openly stating that sometimes you have to fight for what you believe.
- It's actually very much in line with standard Gundam franchise practice: "War sucks. Believe us, watch a fifty-episode season that shows just how much war sucks." Gundam Wing is just a tad more hypocritical than usual. Even then, it's one of the more optimistic installments of the Gundam franchise.
Comic Books
- Little Dot had an issue featuring the title character's Uncle Smoke, who likes to smoke. His obsession culminates with him taking a big smoke from a large pipe that's really a building decoration. He's taken to skywriting now. Seriously, look at it
 .
Film
- The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was an attempt to turn a line of trading cards, which were deliberately intended to be violent and thoroughly disgusting, into an Aesop about appreciating those creatures who look different. It worked out about as well as you'd expect throwing an Aesop into a film based on Garbage Pail Kids would. Bonus points for its being a Broken Aesop: the titular characters are just as ugly on the inside — but hey, they sure sang a catchy song about teamwork, right?
- In Krippendorf's Tribe (1998), an anthropologist creates a fictitious lost New Guinea tribe using his family members to cover-up for his mis-use of grant moneys. So, apparently, Touchstone (owned by Disney) wants us to think that lying is a fun group activity that can bring a family close together. Bonus lesson: it's OK to secretly videotape yourself and your ladyfriend having sex, then show the video to the whole world, she'll forgive you.
- Obviously this movie was made by Tristan. Except for the sex part. That was probably Duke.
- ...remember, kids, this is the same company that made a generation believe that lemmings regularly committed suicide.
Literature
Live Action Television
Music
- "If Everyone Cared..." is Nickleback's spectacularly non-specific, crowd-pleasing, inoffensive protest song. It warrants a mention here, because the whole thing is Chad Kroeger whining about how much better the world would be if, like, nobody ever had to be sad and stuff. Yeah.
- "We'd see the day/when nobody died." Nobody, Nickleback? Like, for any reason?
- To be fair, I've long suspects all diseases only hurt people because they are jackasses that don't care.
Video Games
- It is hard to take Tales Of Symphonia's "Discrimination and genocide are wrong" seriously when it is paired with the Power Of Friendship, in the same damn scene. Wait. Someone needs to be told that genocide is wrong? Someone is obviously doing things horribly wrong.
- Actually, the racism is bad thing is treated in a more self-explanatory light (plus Japan has a history of racism and genocide in its...history that it's only just recently begun to acknowledge). The main Aesop has more to do with the Cycle of Revenge caused by said genocide being bad.
- The "racism is bad" Aesop of ghoul-human interactions in Fallout 3 might have worked better if there weren't a constant concern about feral ghouls that really are brain-eating monsters, or so many other ghouls certain that they were no longer human. Especially since the sentient ghouls kill a whole tower full of mostly peace-loving humans.
Three Dog (At the end of a "public service announcement" about being nice to ghouls): Oh, one other thing. Those feral ghouls who live in the deep, dark underground? They are basically mindless zombies, so kill as many as you damn well please. Thanks for listening, children!
- The only time you hear about this is in Tenpenny Tower, and everyone inside it is obviously racist towards ghouls. It's entirely possible that they are just wrong. The gunning all of them down for no reason part still isn't justified.
- The Ghoul-racism was horrible in Tenpenny Tower but it was definitely justified as the residents of Tenpenny are murdered by the ghouls when you choose the Pro-Ghoul (allow the ghouls to slaughter everyone) or Diplomatic options.
- This troper isn't even sure that this could be considered justified in hindsight. Neither the player (regardless of choice) nor the Tenpenny Tower citizens had any way of knowing this would happen. Also, the ghouls in Megaton and the Ghoul-only city of Underworld never do anything remotely like what happens in Tenpenny Tower.
Western Animation
- Family Guy in general, since its Dead Baby Comedy status makes taking any aesop it offers seriously near-impossible.
- "Arthur's Big Hit" from Arthur has the perfectly acceptable Aesop "hitting is always wrong". Said Aesop is lost when the viewer empathizes with Arthur's frustration that DW won't leave his goddammed plane alone, despite being told not to touch it repeatedly, and when it appears she gets off scot-free ("We'll deal with her appropriately." Yeah, right) while Arthur is subjected to the over-the-top consequences, including Karmic Retribution.
- Anvilicious as it could be at times, Captain Planet sometimes went in over its head. It gave us the following stellar examples:
- The infamous "If It's Doomsday, It Must Be Belfast" episode, which was meant to promote world peace. What it managed to do instead was become the single most offensive example of both the Oireland trope and The Troubles trope, making the struggle between Catholics and Protestants look like The Jets against The Sharks. Highlights can be seen here. (And the comments. Dear God, the comments.)
- Even better, while the titular subplot is far better known, this episode also had the team attempt to solve the Israeli/Palestine conflict. With Ma-Ti. Yeah really.
- While not as Ripped From The Headlines as the other episodes, we must not forget the time that the Planeteers went back in time to battle Adolf Hitler. It's hard to talk about how racism is bad when the good Cap equates his hate with pollution (it cripples him just as effectively, cause hate cancels out heart, naturally).
- The Mind Pollution episode. Linka gets hooked on a fictional drug called "Bliss" that has instantaneous addictive properties. Since the nuances of real drug addiction are drawn out and complicated, everyone who used Bliss just got turned into a mindless zombie.
- "Teers In the Hood" for the waffles!
- All this, and not one mention of the AIDS episode...
- "Also, Hitler...was a dork."
- Maybe not as infamous as the other examples here, but certainly one of the strangest And Knowing Is Half The Battle segments (and not just for this particular show) asked the kids watching to curb overpopulation and the various problems it can cause by promising to have only three or less children when they grow up.
- Of course if watching Captain Planet is enough to convince you not to have more than three kids then maybe your stupid ass shouldn't have any.
- The infamous Saturday morning special Cartoon All Stars To The Rescue tried to deal with the dangers of marijuana — by wasting a perfectly good Massive Multiplayer Crossover and having beloved children's cartoon characters spew quaint little platitudes about how drugs are bad. And marijuana users are apparently angry, semi-violent hoodlums a la Reefer Madness. When that cartoon was broadcast in prime time in Italy, it was preceded by an 'insanely long' and 'insanely boring' message by the then-Prime Minister.
- American children were treated to a similarly anvilicious message from Bush, Sr.
- And Aussie kids got one from Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Kind of funny in retrospect, as he's the Prime Minister celebrated for downing a yard of ale in eleven seconds when he was younger (making it into the Guinness Book of records), so you have to wonder what else he got up to back then. But then, this is Australia, where you're looked upon as weird if you don't like to get smashed at least occasionally.
- The Flintstone Kids "Just Say No (to drugs, of course)!" prime time special. It could almost be the type specimen of the Clueless Aesop. Crazy inaccurate information. A whole new set of characters introduced during this episode. Radical changes made to a main character because she started hanging out with the new characters. The latter two elements were used just to deliver the Aesop and none of them were ever acknowledged after this one episode. And, oh yeah, the bizarre sight of the slapstick-prone Flintstones characters talking about drugs. Top the whole thing off with a bonus, killer hilarity in hindsight or Funny Aneurysm Moment: Michael Jackstone.
- Reverse Funny Aneurysm: "It tastes gooood, like a-- *click click* cigarette shoooould!!"
- The special also failed to make drugs look any worse than smoking. Apart from being unable to win a race that he apparently usually wins, the drug dealer kid's biggest problem is that he'll be taken to the police station, after which his parents will come to pick him up and yell at him. Let's repeat that. The kid (named Smokey for extra Anvilicious points) was arrested for drug possession and they're actually going to allow his parents to stop by and take him home that same day. And his actual punishment will be his parents yelling at him. So if you do drugs, the worst you can expect is that your parents will yell at you.
- Lorca from Dragon Tales is a magical dragon who lives in a Magical Land with Unicorns and wizards and magic everywhere. Oh, and he's in a wheelchair. So the little kids watching this fantasy cartoon where children have wonderful adventures in a Magical Land can learn that disabled people are just like you and me. Even when they are dragons in wheelchairs.
- Lorca's disability is really more of a Plot Hole for the adults in the room than anything. The message gets through to the show's target audience pretty easily.
- The English dub of Sailor Moon added "Sailor Says" portions to the first season; to be "educational", DiC tried to add an Aesop to the end of the show no matter how it fit, or didn't. A favorite was "Queen Beryl did a bad thing when she destroyed the Moon Kingdom and you will destroy Earth too if you pollute!"
- Sonic the Hedgehog, "Sonic Says," "Bad Touching." The big problem with this, and other episode tags and PSAs like it, is that shows in the Animation Age Ghetto were allowed and even encouraged to warn against sexual molestation, but were forbidden to define it. They could tell kids to tell parents or the cops about "bad touching," but they couldn't say what sorts of touching are bad.
- Even worse is this Sonic Sez, which attempts to teach a respectable Aesop ("Only dial 9-1-1 in a real emergency"), but Sonic inadvertently tells kids that "If you're being attacked by people who mean you harm, calling 9-1-1 would be a dumb joke."
- Maybe 9-1-1 is a joke in Mobius too? (Wrong continuity, I know.)
- I get what it's trying to say- Sonic could and did easily handle those guys- but any kids watching most definately couldn't.
- Those who, as a young, impressionable children in the 80s, saw those PS As about child abuse that didn't bother to explain what abuse was, and was barely stopped from calling it over early bedtimes could be confused.
Web Original
- The difficulty of this trope was parodied in The Onion article Talking To Your Child About The WTC Attack, which encouraged parents to give a no-holds barred explanation of the world history leading up to the World Trade Tower attacks in order to answer why this bad scary thing happened.
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