Playing With / Straw Character

Basic Trope: A character with opposing political or social beliefs to the author is shown as a ridiculous extremist.

• Straight:
  • Alice is a Democrat. She's a whiny, marijuana-addicted Shameless Fanservice Girl who Does Not Like Men and thinks religion is for idiots. The whole party is implied to be like Alice.
  • Bob is a Republican. He's a bearded hillbilly who wants to send all the Mexicans back to Mexico, restrict women to homemaking, ban literature, restrict science, and institute a death penalty for homosexuality. The whole party is implied to be like Bob.
• Exaggerated:
  • Alice is a communist college student who spends every second of her screen time decrying capitalism, despite being very wealthy and not spending a nickel of her money to help the poor, is white but hates all white people, sees all Christians, and only Christians, as being The Fundamentalist, and calls for subjugating men to the rule of women. Her Democratic peers see her as a moderate milquetoast.
  • Bob is an inbred Klansman with an exaggerated Deep Southern accent and Nazi sympathies who spends every second of his screen time spouting extremely bigoted remarks about black people, women, LGBT+ people, Jews, Muslims, and atheists and uses the Bible to justify his actions, even though it’s obvious he’s never even read the Bible. His Republican peers see him as a moderate milquetoast.
  • All members of Alice and Bob’s respective parties are implied to be a literal Hive Mind.
• Downplayed:
  • Alice and Bob, while still displaying stereotypical traits of members of their respective parties and portrayed negatively, have some Hidden Depths to their characters past their politics and the author makes token attempts at giving them a fair portrayal.
  • Alice and Bob are implied to be outliers in more moderate, or at least more civil, groups.
  • Strawman Has a Point.
  • In the United States, most members of both major parties are stupid, unpleasant extremists. The show is about Alice, the only reasonable Democrat, and Bob, the only reasonable Republican.
  • Alice and Bob don't know that many people from other parties to themselves, and they start out assuming those people must have ludicrous beliefs, but with a lot of work, they make friends across the aisle.
  • Alice and Bob are in fact in the center, or well-informed, on most issues, but they have one or more Berserk Buttons that make them ridiculous extremists about something.
• Justified: Both Bob and Alice have only vague ideas of what conservatism, liberalism, and socialism are and they're both quite dumb, so they think that identification with some ideology means they must pursue the Lowest Common Denominator version thereof.
• Invoked:
  • Alice and Bob go to competing Strawman U's.
  • Alice and Bob don't pursue higher education at all, and they learn more about their respective political values from people who are already like the stereotypes of left and right.
• Exploited: Alice and Bob both find themselves vulnerable to the tropes Ironic Echo, Damned By a Fool's Praise, and Anti-Advice.
• Inverted:
  • The producer and main character are Republicans, but Alice, a Democrat, is portrayed as being levelheaded and intelligent or Affably Evil.
  • The producer and main character are Democrats, but Bob, a Republican, is portrayed as being levelheaded and intelligent or Affably Evil.
  • Alternatively, the main character is average in their political views, but Alice or Bob is portrayed as exceedingly intelligent and charming though extreme.
  • Instead of portraying Bob or Alice as a strawman, the writers create them as a steelman instead to prove that their arguments are better if they can have Bob or Alice overcome the steelman's argument.
• Subverted:
  • Alice seems like a crazy extremist Democrat, but she's a scheming Republican who's pretending to be a crazy Democrat to decrease support for the party.
  • Bob seems like a crazy extremist Republican, but he's a scheming Democrat who's pretending to be a crazy Republican to decrease support for the party.
  • Bob begins as a caricature of a Republican, and Alice as a caricature of a Democrat, but then they get Character Development.
• Double Subverted:
  • At least, that's what they told their respective superiors. They are the crazy extremists they seem to be, and they believe every word they say, as do the parties to which they belong.
  • Before long, Alice and Bob are Flanderized back into the nutcases they used to be.
• Parodied:
  • Alice's campaign speech is "DRUGS FOR ALL! LET'S KILL BABIES! OPEN THE BORDERS! I'M A DEMOCRAT! VOTE FOR ME!" Then she disappears into a cloud of blue smoke.
  • Bob's campaign speech is "DRUGS FOR NONE! LET'S KILL RACIAL MINORITIES! SEAL THE BORDERS! I'M A REPUBLICAN! VOTE FOR ME!" Then he disappears into a cloud of red smoke.
  • Alice is so far left and crazy, and Bob so far right and crazy, that they succumb to The Horseshoe Effect, until they realize to their horror that they agree with their ideological opposite and change their minds.
  • Alice is a straw that always faces left and Bob’s a straw that always faces right.
• Deconstructed:
  • Carla, a Democrat, tells The Hero that few Democrats are like Alice, and she just wants them to think otherwise. In fact, Carla and the other Democrats are so sick of Alice that they're seriously considering voting Republican in the next election to get rid of her.
  • Chris, a Republican, tells The Hero that few Republicans are like Bob, and he just wants them to think otherwise. In fact, Chris and the other Republicans are so sick of Bob that they're seriously considering voting Democratic in the next election to get rid of him.
  • The Extremist Was Right about something very important, whether it was Alice, Bob, or both. Unfortunately, they were ignored because most people didn't believe someone with extreme-left or extreme-right views could be correct. Alice and Bob use this event as a teachable moment about the Golden Mean Fallacy.
  • Meta example: Alice and/or Bob are Straw Characters, but unfortunately the writer accidentally gave them some surprisingly detailed and insightful arguments. Whoops!
• Reconstructed:
  • While their views are extreme, Alice and Bob are very charismatic and persuasive, and have the other members of their respective party convinced that they're good at what they do. The Republicans only oppose Alice because she's a Democrat, while the Democrats only oppose Bob because he's a Republican. No one notices just how extreme Alice and Bob are.
  • Chris and Carla are as committed to the same destructive, negative politics as Alice and Bob. Just because they're politer does not mean they're materially better.
  • Everyone else Didn't See That Coming, nor could they have.
    • Alternatively, Alice or Bob is only correct once, or about something of no importance to most people, or they're Right for the Wrong Reasons, or any combination thereof. Most of the time, it's safe to ignore or even reverse-engineer whatever they say to get to the truth.
  • Meta Example: That was just a mere fluke. Alice and/or Bob only had just one instance of making some surprisingly detailed and insightful arguments; Others are comically bizarre and idiotic Logical Fallacies.
• Zig-Zagged:
  • Alice and Bob switch party affiliation regularly, and they are very extreme with whatever party they're in just then. When they are Democrats, they're crazy Democrats, and when they're Republicans, they're crazy Republicans.
  • Alice and Bob give voice to political views that the writers associate with one party or another in the text of the show. Depending on the issue at hand, their views run the gamut from ridiculous to sensible.
• Averted:
  • There is no politics in the work.
  • All the politicians or people with political opinions are realistic, and it's easy to imagine someone of their party supporting them.
  • Every party in the work is a Fictional Political Party that doesn't closely resemble any active parties in the country where it is set. Alternatively, they use In Name Only versions of parties that are active in that country.
  • There's No Party Given for anybody who is a member of any party.
  • The characters all belong to the same party, so members of other parties can take small comfort in not even being shown; at least they're not called stupid or evil.
• Enforced:
  • The producers are independents or members of third parties. They have to put Democrats and Republicans in their political drama due to either viewers' Small Reference Pools or just plain reality, but they don't want the audience to sympathize with any of them, so they make them straw, extreme crazy people.
  • The Republican producers want Democrats in their political drama, but they don't want the audience to sympathize with the Democrats, so they make them straw, extreme crazy people.
  • The Democratic producers want Republicans in their political drama, but they don't want the audience to sympathize with the Republicans, so they make them straw, extreme crazy people.
• Implied: Alice, Bob, or both complain that they're dreading Thanksgiving because the other will start with their crazy opinions.
• Played for Laughs:
  • Alice's opinions are as far left as you can possibly go, so much that she's laughable, and she obviously has no idea what she is talking about.
  • Bob's opinions are as far right as you can possibly go, so much that he's laughable, and he obviously has no idea what he is talking about.
• Played for Drama: Bob and Alice are dating, but the time comes when the oppositional extremism of their views makes it just too hard for them to talk to each other. They break up.
• Played for Horror: Alice and Bob will kill anyone with opinions that differ from theirs.
• Lampshaded:
  • "Oh, Alice. She's so crazy, it's hard to believe she's even, like, a real Democrat."
  • "Oh, Bob. He's so crazy, it's hard to believe he's even, like, a real Republican."
• Defied:
  • Alice or Bob realizes that everyone hates them because of how extreme, wrong, and unpleasant they are, so they moderate their own views.
  • Alice or Bob says something that sounds too extreme for anybody to believe. The show cuts away to a Real-Person Cameo by the scriptwriter, who reads from a contemporary document endorsed by the real party, which uses the same words the character just said. The writer adds a deadpan "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer.

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Typical Straw Character, only wants to go back to the main page and not click the links elsewhere.

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