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Darkness Induced Audience Apathy
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Meaningful conflict is the soul of drama.
Quick Definition: "When the audience finds the story lacking in dramatic tension because they cannot support any faction."
Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy occurs when the soul of drama has died from an overdose of Darker And Edgier and is now stretched out on the autopsy table, staring blankly into the eyes of the coroner with all the elegance one expected from Calvin Klein during the 'heroin chic' days.
Dispensing with metaphors, Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy occurs when there is no meaningful conflict in the first place because all sides are abhorrently, equally evil. As such, consumers of media affected by Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy tend to approach conflict between parties or factions with remarkable indifference; because no matter who wins, the universe will still suck. (And while it would be really nice to see them all lose, it ain't going to happen.)
This is basically the emotional result of Black And Black Morality. Because the conflict between the equally evils is essentially meaningless, there is no dramatic tension. Maybe one Eldritch Abomination eats you in a slightly less painful manner than the other one, but either way, you're still screwed. You can't support any factions or hold on to any ideals after this effect has set in. All you can do is sit agape as the writers apparently attempt to outdo themselves at making the setting even worse and more unpleasant and more nihilistic to the point where the media is as monotone-miserable as Joy Division.
Humans perceive things by differentiation and similarity (both of which only have meaning in relation to each other). For instance, a square of white paper sticks out more against a background of black paper than it would on a background of equally white paper. The same applies to ethics; the horror one feels towards evil only exists because of the affection one feels towards the good. When there is no moral differentiation within the world of the story, dramatic tension is the casualty because you just cannot care.
For games, this trope has its advantages. It allows people to choose sides with no interest other than the technical interest of playing one side or the other. Eastern Front games set in World War II are popular among wargamers, partly because there were interesting displays of tactical skill. But partly it was because of Evil Versus Evil and therefore the player could be on either side without feeling awkward. In this situation, the tension is derived not so much from the plot itself ("which side will win?") but rather from the competition between the players.
A variant is basically when Shoot The Shaggy Dog meets True Art Is Too Angsty; a story is simply too bleak, angsty and without hope for the audience to really care what happens.
Because this trope has to do with audience reactions to material (see Audience Reaction Tropes), Your Mileage May Vary on particular examples.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Ergo Proxy can, in its early stages, fall victim to this trope. Near the beginning of the series, there were a few moral dilemmas stemming from black and black morality. Stop the Proxy that's loose in Romdo and the fascist government regains total control over the city. Don't stop the Proxy and it'll continue a murder spree.
- By the end of Code Geass, a world war breaks out between two factions trying to create identical oppressive worldwide dictatorships. After this, the trope is subverted: after Lelouch conquers the world, he oppresses it to make sure every single person in it will hate him, and then commits public Suicide By Cop, ending the tyranny and marking the first step to world peace. It was his plan all along.
- Desert Punk, albeit a comic series falls into this. Almost every single character is a massive Jerk Ass, and the few exceptions never prosper in this world. By the middle of the series, it's quite clear that none of the three major characters have a Hidden Heart Of Gold. Pretty much summing things up is the comment by the Lemony Narrator in the last episode in respect to the After The End setting, which is to the effect that "With people like this, it doesn't matter if humanity goes extinct."
Comic Books
Films
- In The Matrix Trilogy, the backstory has it that the Matrix is the latest of a series of virtual realities, of which the first failed because it was an inversion of this; Heaven Is A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens and indeed the first Matrix was so perfect that humans did not believe it to be real. The second Matrix played this trope straight, being a nightmare world, and failed because humans would not believe it either. Since The Matrix itself was basically direct-to-brain television and the pod-humans were the audience, you could metaphorically say the second Matrix failed because the pod-born suffered Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy.
- Wait, what? The second Matrix is the one Neo inhabits. Where is it mentioned there was a Nightmare Version that was rejected like the first?
- In the Reloaded sequel, the creator of the Matrix said he remade the 1st perfect Matrix to the 2nd hellish, Humans Are Bastards design. He, the Architect, also said "...this is the 6th version." In the first movie, Agent Smith only said the Matrix was remade, not whether it was the 2nd design or not.
- Being John Malkovich suffers from this; all the main characters are, at the very least, horrifically selfish human beings who don't really care who gets hurt in pursuit of their various wants. The only remotely sympathetic character in the movie is John Malkovich himself, and that's mostly because he's more of a plot device than an actual character.
- Fridge Logic extends this beyond the main characters to everyone in the world. If a single person with any kind of conscience were to discover the portal (and quite a few people have found out about it by the end, including someone who learns that his best friend has been trapped inside his own head for years), basically the entire plot would fall apart.
Literature
Alice:I like the Walrus best because you see he was a LITTLE sorry for the poor oysters.
Tweedledee:He ate more than the Carpenter, though. You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.
Alice:That was mean! Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.
Tweedledum: But he ate as many as he could get.
Alice: Well! They were BOTH very unpleasant characters—
- Deliberately used in The Sound And The Fury: the first brother is severely mentally handicapped, and although hard to hate, his section of the book (written from his perspective) is so confusing that it's impossible to identify with him. The second brother is completely insane and lusts after his own sister, so you really want to turn away from him. The third brother already has turned away from turned away, and narrates in a completely comprehensible style, so at first you like him, but then he's a total Jerk Ass who hates everyone around him. The only sympathetic characters are the ones who never get to narrate.
- While Blood And Chocolate is by many standards a good book, it suffers from this twice over. On a larger scale, Humans Are Bastards who hate and fear werewolves, while werewolves sometimes provide very good reason why humans hate and fear them. On a smaller scale, any of seven or eight different characters, including the main character and both love interests, could be argued to be the most repulsive character in the book for one reason or another, and of the two characters who're most likeable one's a Straw Feminist who's not treated very seriously and the other gets eviscerated by a supposed friend. The silver lining is that the werewolf female lead and human primary love interest could balance each other out—except that humans really can't trust werewolves, so he winds up trying to kill her.
- The Great Gatsby. While not actually dark (at least not to today's audiences), it is worth mentioning because all the main characters have no redeeming traits whatsoever. The only apparently decent guy is the one who shoots the titular Gatsby for screwing his wife. This was the entire point of the book, but there is such a thing as too much symbolism. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote most of the novel while drinking heavily, and it shows.
- The narrator isn't bad. Then again, he isn't a major character.
- All of the characters are flawed, and they all have redeeming qualities. Gatsby's redeeming quality is the entire focus of the book: his willingness to sacrifice for what he believes in. Daisy isn't really a character, so she can hardly be factored in to the equation: she's basically reduced to an object by Gatsby's idolization of her. She doesn't have character traits. Tom is a child; he's irresponsible, not malicious. Myrtle is needy, not evil. Just because the hero isn't perfect doesn't mean it's a case of Darkness Induced Audience Apathy.
Musicals
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 is an obvious example, to the point where the original name of this trope was "The Warhammer 40K Effect". Evil Versus Evil is an explicit cornerstone of the setting and as such quite a few people find the series hard to form a serious emotional attachment to. Of course, one could simply buy the books, games and toys to see how the writers have been working out new ways to make things yet more unpleasant, but that would be an act of viewing the series as a Stealth Parody of itself rather than taking it seriously.
- Warhammer 40000 also very, very subtly subverts the trope by having as a lone, infinitesimally small speck of goodness, the Space Wolves, who although are not perfect by any means, seem to be the one group of people that can, on some occasions, act compassionately (specifically, by going to war against the Inquisition in order to save an innocent world from Exterminatus). They are the defiant rebels of the Imperium (insofar as much as such a thing is possible) and their current chapter leader is so well known for his compassion towards the weak that he is not feared but truly admired. The Space Wolves are the closest thing to any non-evil alignment that 40k ever gets, though the Ultramarines, Soul Drinkers (some of them, anyway) and Salamanders aren't too bad, either.
- Even the Eldar can display a noble side. Consider Taldeer, or Eldrad (codex rather than memetic version), or the Dire Avengers.
- The Tau, at least at the early stages of their introduction to the 40k universe, were arguably an aversion as well. This did not last.
- Additionally, 40k's novels are typically focused on small individual groups, in order to frame a meaningful conflict and hence avert this trope. They also tend to be Lighter And Softer. The imperial guard tends to be depicted in a rather humane way too, especially in the novels. Notable examples of this includes Gaunts Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!) in which the titular commissars are pictured as actually caring for their soldiers instead of being the typical Jerk Ass commissars we usually see.
- Just about all 40k novels present more admirable heroes than you would expect from the setting. Indeed, some go up to Incorruptible Pure Pureness.
- Basically this trope name was changed because this is a very controversial example.
- This is to some extent deliberate, to let the fans choose their preferred army based on which one appeals to them the most.
- The World Of Darkness suffers/ed from this. It would take a long time to explain all the details, but suffice it to say when the only sure way to paint the player's monster race and their factions in any sort of positive light is by fighting Complete Monsters, it can become easy to disconnect emotionally from the drama.
- Which may explain Changeling The Lost's unexpected popularity- the characters are still primarily human, they still have human emotions and human wonder at what's going on, and they still react to things in human ways- and they're all working together against The Fair Folk, apart from the occasional political divide and occasional madman.
- Promethean The Created is also probably called the most optimistic line for averting this, as the player characters and race are desperately trying To Become Human.
- GURPS is too diverse a system to fall into this generally, but several of its Alternate Earth settings fell into this for gamers; most notably, Reich-5 was retooled into a new villain for crosstime campaigns because your options there consisted of "Nazis, Nazified Americans, Imperial Japanese, and the inevitably doomed resistance". Reich-2 was this in-story for Americans after the British signed a truce with the Nazis—no one much cared whether Hitler or Stalin won the war.
Western Animation
- The South Park episode Douche and Turd involves Stan suffering a case of this, refusing to support either side in a school election owing to the fact that one is (quite literally) a giant douche and the other is a turd sandwich.
Real Life
- Arguably, this is a prominent cause of political apathy in the United States. A significant number of Americans will not vote because they cannot find anything appealing about any candidate and thus believe no matter who wins, they're screwed anyway. This same apathy occurs in pretty much all representative democracies with a party system. Politics, after all, is fundamentally about compromise.
- Not only the USA, mind you. In some latinamerican countries, the situation is very much similiar, and even a bit worse.
- It's almost election time in Costa Rica, the choices are: Righy Wing, Extreme Right Wing, and Center lading to Right Wing with very little chance. One of the candidates even began to advertise himself as "El Menos Malo", "The Least Bad"
- France had the choice between incompetent good and competent evil. Two years later, the media are under tighter presidential control, there are projects about an Internet censorship law, and a civil rights protection commission is being nerfed — and you still can't tell which side was elected, can you?
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