You want to have An Aesop about something that we should avoid at all costs. Trouble is, just by showing it in lavish detail, you end up undermining your message by showing just how damn appealing it is.
The French film director François Truffaut once said that there is no such thing as an anti-war movie because it will invariably look exciting up on screen. This phenomenon is often referred to by Moral Guardians or other critical people as "glamorizing" the vice in question.
Sometimes this is actually done on purpose, as a way of Getting Crap Past the Radar.
This trope is easier to fall into when a piece of media aims for a realistic portrayal of why people get lured into things like smoking, doing drugs, fighting awesome action sequences, etc than it is for a straight up propaganda piece against those things (where-in it would boggle the mind why anyone ever even tries those nasty things). If you gloss over the very real appeal, you end up with a piece that nobody is going to believe when you get to the DOWNSIDES of these things. The trick is finding the balance between getting the audience to understand the appeal and understanding why these things are bad. If the negative aspects don't come across as outweighing the appeal, this trope comes into effect.
A sub-trope of Broken Aesop. Sometimes the result of Accidental Aesop or Alternate Aesop Interpretation. Can overlap with Clueless Aesop or Family Unfriendly Aesop. Sometimes a Spoof Aesop may attempt to show this works.
Often leads to a Misaimed Fandom, Unfortunate Implications, Sympathy for the Devil, Rooting for the Empire, No Such Thing As Bad Publicity, and Springtime for Hitler.
But Not Too Evil is sometimes invoked in an attempt to prevent this trope. Also sometimes the result of Poe's Law or Strawman Has a Point.
Examples
open/close all folders
General
Junk food is one of those things that it is hard to have An Aesop about because of how colorful and tasty it always looks. Any diet commercial will backfire horribly if they show the foods you shouldn't be eating and say that you shouldn't be eating them.
British TV chef Jamie Oliver tried to avert this by showing people their weekly intake of junk food all dumped together into a huge unappetizing mess. As Charlie Brooker pointed out, the resulting message was "don't eat your food that way".
Dara O'Briain mocked this one as well, talking about Gillian McKeith's tendency to show people a table covered in all the crap they shoveled down their throats over the course of the week - and noted that the looks on their faces tended to be a mixture of pride and lust.
Ineptly done Anti Poopsocking features have a high chance of being one of these. In an attempt to limit peoples' gameplay rewards sharply drop after a certain amount of time. The hope is that instead of the player spending four hours a day on a game they only spend two after they realize that the third and fourth hours don't give much of a reward. This leads to some particularly dedicated players increasing gameplay time to SIX (or more) hours in order to keep up.
Any piece of anti-smoking propaganda where the smoker actually looks pretty hot with a cigarette in his or her mouth.
Recently, there has been discontent among some (such as the writer of this article) that so many historical dramas released utilize the Holocaust as a backdrop (one could cynically suggest because Holocaust films are prime Oscar Bait). Some have expressed worries that people are being desensitized to the Holocaust, and that one day it would become that somewhat nasty thing that they keep making movies about.
Manohla Dargis: But [The Reader] is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.
Almost any video game that tries to remind us that violence is wrong. OK, here's your Godslayer Blade, Shootemup 6000 and a ridiculously complicated combat system that you must learn in order to see the story. Oh, and don't kill people, unlike the villain.
plastickiwi's submission: Wait... so you're telling me people download and burn their own DVDs... for free?
Teen Pregnancy. Shows like Teen Mom, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and 16 and Pregnant do little to discourage it. The cameras step into the house of a teenage girl whose life was ended by pregnancy only to find that, somehow, her life goes on. It's harder to fear something with which you've become more familiar. It doesn't help that most of the "struggling teen mothers" portrayed in many of these media are rich white girls who don't have to get jobs or miss out on school or social events to take care of their baby, and can often still get a guy (whether or not he's the father of their child) to go out with them.
Taking it further, there's almost inevitably- especially in documentary versions- a statement somewhere about how- at least in her own estimation- she's become twice the person she was and how it's really matured her, and how one just doesn't know what love is 'til one is a mother. Yeah, kids, don't do it!
Anti-consumerism or anti-materialism messages can easily fall into this. The story often has to show all the things that people shouldn't waste their money on or shouldn't define themselves by, and it's extremely difficult to portray these things without them looking cool. This goes double when the message is aimed at kids.
This happens a lot in Christmas works that try to reinforce the true meaning of the holiday, about family, about giving to the less fortunate, and how it's better to give than to receive, which is then undermined by showing all the awesome presents we shouldn't be so focused on getting.
Advertising
The UK government attempted to steer kids off drugs in The Eighties with a series of TV advertisements featuring emaciated youths in dingy surroundings. The kids in question are reputed to have thought they looked really cool. It doesn't help this was during the second wave of Goth pop music! If only they had known "heroin chic" was an existing underground fashion trend waiting to break into the mainstream.
An advertisement to show the danger of anorexia shows a naked, cadaverous-looking young woman◊ (Warning — a confronting image). However, while non-anorexics might be disgusted by the sight (but it's not like they were going to suddenly become anorexic anyway), young anorexics looked up to this icon as a goal to reach, or blamed themselves "look at her, I couldn't even go as far as she did!" It also gave grounds for denial: "I'm not (my child isn't) anorexic, look, I don't (he/she doesn't) look nearly as bad as that!"
One of the worst advertisements ever was a magazine ad, "An Unfair Comparison Between the Javelin and the Mustang." And boy, was it unfair: anyone could look at the huge, detailed photos of each car and see the Mustang was more attractive and better designed. Which worked out badly for the makers of the Javelin, who placed the ad.
There was a series of PSAs aired by The BBC in 2007 warning against the dangers of excessive drinking, by showing people being ostracized and called names after getting massively drunk. It backfired: little did they knew, that telling your friends all the crazy antics you did while drunk makes you look so cool.
This upbeat commercial for Gofer Cakes, a fictitious snack cake akin to Ding Dongs. Aimed at children and teens, it is a PSA for The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports; the kids in the ad end up all sloppy and lazy from eating too much junk food. Unfortunately, many ads for real junk food work along similar principles — the real ones try to say "this food is so tasty that it's worth being anti-social over!" The comments on the PSA confirm that the satire element went over most kids' heads, and seems to have turned a lot of youngsters on to Gofer Cakes.
Anime and Manga
The Black Cat anime took great pains to try to show the viewers that the way of life of an assassin was wrong, and that people who have pacifist ideals are, in the end, stronger. However, all this effort was undermined when Train was shown to be infinitely cooler and stronger when he was working for Chronos. His sleek black clothes complete with an awesome Black Cloak, the way he managed to effortlessly defeat every single person who ever stepped in his way, and the way he tended to remain calm and collected all made him seem like he was much better off before he became a pacifist. After he becomes a pacifist, he constantly ends up having to be saved by others, wangsts and throws temper tantrums, and wears clothes that aren't nearly as cool. One can understand why Creed goes to such lengths to make him go back to being the way he was when he was an assassin...
Most entries into the Gundam metaseries are meant to have an anti-war message - and many, especially those by Yoshiyuki Tomino do a decent job of depicting how war can utterly ruin people's lives. At the same time, it has beautiful, brightly coloured weapons of mass destruction that move with the grace and artistry of the Bolshoi, plenty of Magnificent Bastard villains you can't help but admire, gorgeouscostumes on the forces of dangerous space-fascists, and perhaps worst of all, some of the protagonists actually find some kind of meaning to their lives through the war that they may not have had without it.
Dan, the protagonist of Basquash!, succeeds at this within the show itself. He wants to destroy the popular sport "Big Foot Basketball" (Basketball... with giant robots!) because of a personal vendetta but also because the sport is really lame (the player robots move sluggishly, use basic moves and tend to fall down; the broadcast has to spice it up with special effects to interest people). Dan manages to obtain a Big Foot and crashes a public game, showing off real moves... then gets arrested and put away in juvie for a year. He's convinced he's "killed" BFB, only to find, on his release, his stunt showed that you can do kickass moves with a robot, thus making the game more popular than ever! He's not happy.
The original Astro Boy story "The Greatest Robot on Earth" attempted to have an anti-war message while still being a shonen fighting robots series.
The original manga of Ghost in the Shell carries often painfully apparent warnings about the consequences of unchecked accumulation power among not just government offices—including Section 9 itself—as well as commercial interests and, thanks to cybernetics, individuals themselves. The television series caries this further, demonstrating what happens when technology advances at a faster pace the law can hope to keep up with. And yet, the Major and her comrades come off as supremely professional and awesome, even as they consciously abuse the powers vested in them by the state.
The manga of Dominion Tank Police comes right and says it: any society that not just uses tanks to police itself, but feels as though it has no other option, has crossed a line from which there is probably no easy return. Masamune Shirow acknowledged that he made the mini-tank Bonaparte deliberately smaller and cuter than practical as a concession to the misery of having tanks driving around, trying to establish some semblance of order.
The Aesop was something along the lines of "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide." Not a good aesop to use when your main readers are nerds, and a consist of Liberal kids who love freedom, Conservative kids who distrust the government, and Libertarians who REALLY distrust the government at that.
The Invisibles attempts a subversion—it shows us memorably exciting action sequences, and then gives us equally memorable depictions of the suffering inherent in that flashy violence, most notably a Day in the Limelight showing us the sad life of one Mook.
Powers goes for something similar. Many of the characters have rather cavalier attitudes towards violence, indulging in black humor, but on-screen violence can be very uncomfortable and jarring despite (or because of) the cartoony art style. Word Of God has it that Bendis and Oeming want viewers to be faced with something unpleasant and ugly when characters get violent. Despite all that, the darkness of it can be compelling because Powers relies on a grim-and-gritty, street-level view of supers as its driving premise. If the whole work is Darker and Edgier, then showing that the violence is dark and edgy is not necessarily gonna work.
This was very much the reason for crime comics in the 1950s, particularly EC Comics. This got them (and American comics in general) busted and led to the Comics Code being imposed.
In Batman #1, Catwoman's debut, Batman had Robin fight a bunch of unarmed crooks to see how tough they really were without their guns. Robin trounces them with ease, leaving one of the crooks to say "If only I had my gun!" Batman breaks the fourth wall to point out that the readers shouldn't emulate crooks. Sadly, the aesop and the story were probably over shadowed because the comic book also introduced The Joker, one of the most popular, and psychotic, comic book characters of all time.
Watchmen has landed in this trope because of Misaimed Fandom. Many people thought it was a conventional hero vs. villain story, only Darker and Edgier. For instance, Rorschach's violent tendencies were copied by Dark Age "antiheroes" to make them equally badass. Moore and Gibbons made Rorschach a dirt poor homophobe raised with a prostitute for a mother, the Comedian a rapist who can't even connect with his own daughter, and a certain brilliant plan be rejected by a Physical God. Nonetheless, comics to this very day emulate it.
DC Comics' war books were often gritty, dark, and featured tortured protagonists (especially those written by actual veterans, such as Joe Kubert and Robert Kanigher). They often ended with the sign-off, "MAKE WAR NO MORE!" But they were and are exciting adventure stories.
In general, the antics in the tracts often send the unintended message of "God is a dick who will send even good people to hell for not accepting my religion, meanwhile serial killers who do get off with no punishment." "You can kill as many people and steal and burn as many things as you want, if you accept Jesus right before death, you'll be marked as a good person and thus won't have to face any consequences."
Depending on the tracts, he'll even make the devils funny or sufficiently clever to provide comic relief... until the Big Boring White Guy In The Sky throws them into hell in the last panel
The notorious "Dark Dungeons" made roleplaying out to be an exciting life-or-death scenario that introduced real occultism and gave players fabulous supernatural powers that they can use to brainwash their parents to... gasp... buying them stuff. More than a few roleplayers love the tract and it has been parodied and affectionately referred to in innumerable ways among the subculture.
In his anti-Catholic tracts, he shows very little downside to being one of those dastardly papists, since they seem to have nothing but crazy sex parties, oodles of cash and secretly run the world.
The Contract: Feel free to make a deal with the devil; you won't have to hold up your end.
Wounded Children: You should do what a demon tells you. No, really. When some people attack Brian, the demon tells David to help him. Brian dies because he didn't..
Lisa◊: It's okay to gang rape your children repeatedly as long as you accept Jesus and ask His forgiveness. The trauma will go away, just like the herpes. Children aren't even traumatized unless they're abused for more than several months. No one will even raise their voice to you when your victims out you as a child molester. It's normal for girls to bee abused by older relatives. Also, a real man provides for his family instead of relying on his woman, and disturbing this natural order is likely to cause resentment, frustration and rape.
A lot of fundamentalist messages in general can be boiled down to "feel free to indulge your darkest desires because you're probably going to Hell anyway", especially when Hell is depicted as a place where you can carry on doing this for all eternity.
Fan Fiction
Tiberium Wars tends to depict intense, action-packed battles that nonetheless also contains a rather deep-down moral that War Is Hell. Some reviewers picked up on this, while others simply read it for the visceral combat.
Poké Wars depicts the gritty, brutal, gory and just nasty side of war and there is a fairly obvious War Is Hell message. Unfortunately, few of the reviewers notice this, instead choosing to focus on the dazzling fight scenes.
Film-War
"Anti-war" war films in general tend to have this problem. The old line is, "Soldiers love anti-war movies, but never the way the maker wants". It is possible to for a movie to be anti-war, but it's not likely if it has action scenes that obey the Rule of Drama.
At the time Platoon came out, Roger Ebert opened his print review by mentioning the Truffaut quote and adding that "If Truffaut had lived to see Platoon, the best film of 1986, he might have wanted to modify his opinion." Since this film has encouraged people to recruit, apparently not.
Apocalypse Now.Francis Ford Coppola tried to make an anti-war movie. What do people remember? Attack Helicopters coming in over the beach to the sounds of Ride of the Valkyries — kickass!
The author of the novel Das Boot complained that the movie, grim as it was, undermined his anti-war perspective by being too engaging.
Dr. Strangelove has a strong anti-war, anti-military message . . . but the scenes of Major Kong and his bomber crew are pure awesome. SAC crews (that is, people who fly bombers) were some of the biggest fans of the movie.
Glory managed to make most of the fighting unglamorous, save the final film shot of the 54th getting close to the inner sanctum of Fort Wagner. Unfortunately, the movie is pro-war. The message of the movie is that anyone who wants to fight for their country should be allowed to.
Full Metal Jacket drove director Stanley Kubrick crazy because of this trope. He wanted to make his idea of an objective anti-war film. He got viewers who enjoyed things like the heli gunner shooting civilians. R. Lee's Ermey's role as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman helped shape their opinion.
Inglourious Basterdslampshades this in a subtle, creepy way: there is a scene where Germans are watching a Nazi propaganda movie about a German sniper who killed massive numbers of Allied troops while behind enemy lines. They are laughing and enjoying themselves watching people from our side get slaughtered. While you're laughing and enjoying yourself watching people from their side get slaughtered.
Jarhead starts like this, then focuses on the tedium of life in the Marine Corps, a lot of sitting around and waiting, punctuated with occasional moment of Everything Trying to Kill You.
Saving Private Ryan falls victim to this trope, partly because of Misaimed Fandom who have no personal war experience watching the visceral first 30 minutes for the violence, but also because of the increasingly melodramatic last half of the film, where the "pacifist" character temporarily freezes up, only to kill the assailant later, and the main characters sacrifice themselves one after another in Rambo like fashion to rescue one man.
Starship Troopers The film is antiwar/anti-militarist, intended to be a parody of the fascist elements in our society, but many viewers couldn't see past all the cool bug killing scenes or the co-ed shower scene. Even for the viewers who are paying attention, the message is further hampered by Poe's Law. There are obvious spoofs of the Federation propaganda, but the rest of the movie is easy to take seriously because it suggests that the Show Within a Show is understating the Federation's case.
Considering the book's portrayal of the Federation, it's unsurprising. Heinlein intended the book to portray the positives of civic duty, necessities of war and capital punishment, etc. This led Heinlein to be accused of fascism, among other things. The movie's creators decided to remake it as a Take That against militarism and fascism, but by even superficially sticking to the book, they made the 'evil, fascist government' look awesome.
Except at the end of the sequel, when a recruiter calls a newborn male infant "new meat for the grinder."
Avatar is another Apocalypse Now and Jarhead to some - the marines are very obviously committing war crimes, but that didn't stop some people from enjoying that.
Film-Gangster
History has demonstrated time and time again that this trope could easily be called "Mobsters Love Mob Movies":
The Godfather, as stylized and operatic as it was, was meant to be about the horrors of the mob. Instead, it kicked off a new generation of fascination with organized crime and even inspired actual mobsters to model themselves after it.
Goodfellas was intended in a way to be the anti-Godfather. It was based on a true story and portrayed most mobsters as uneducated, crude, petty, sociopathic, and oftentimes downright incompetent and brutal. But it would up having the same cultural effect as The Godfather anyhow. The gangster that Robert De Niro's character was based on was reportedly thrilled such a great actor was portraying him, and kept trying to get in touch with DeNiro from prison to give him pointers. Similarly, the real Henry Hill wrecked his witness protection because he couldn't resist bragging about the movie.
This one might have been partially because of the weird mixed messages the movie was sending. While the mob characters were usually portrayed as not so bright, unnecessarily violent, what have you, but Henry Hill's own comments at the end of the movie make it very clear that he wishes he was still in the life, and one would go as far as to say that getting caught is the only thing he regrets about being a gangster at all.
Scarface. Even though the entire film was set up to show that Tony's destruction was inevitable. Even though he ends up losing or killing everyone and everything he cares about. Even though he ends up floating in his own fountain, it's hard to watch the movie and not want to be him. (Hence the video game in which you get to be him, and you get to survive and win).
Angels With Dirty Faces, a classic gangster film, suffers from this. It's intended to show gangsters in a negative light, but the lead gangster and one of the two main characters, Rocky Sullivan, steal the show and makes being a 1930s-era gangster look awesome. Even the ending, meant to show that gangsters weren't awesome, failed to do that for parts of the audience because it was also meant to show it In-Universe and the gangster did it for that exact reason, making it a Zero Approval Gambit and possibly a Senseless Sacrifice to the pro-gangster contingent.
Little Caesar attempts to show that hard, honest work will lead to success whilst crime does not pay. It makes the gangster cooler, more interesting, and more important than his straight-laced best friend.
Film-Others
American Beauty is a scathing indictment of suburbia with such gorgeous cinematography that it makes suburbs look, well, beautiful. Someone forgot that Beauty Equals Goodness.
American History X: The film's message is "racism is bad," but it portrays the opposite in some ways. Derek is portrayed as physically dominant over his adversaries, fiercely proud, and articulate about his beliefs. Derek and some of the other Nazis manage to make cogent arguments about race issues that are never refuted. With the exception of Fat Idiot Seth, the Neo-Nazis are never shown to be weak, stupid, or foolish. The Aryan Brotherhood in prison are villains, but they split with Derek over not being racist enough. There are numerous speeches, but barely any explanation of Derek's unrealistically neat 180 degree turn in prison. Ultimately the film ends with Derek's younger brother murdered in cold blood by a black youth. It's not hard to imagine neo-Nazis and other racists enjoying this film for unintended reasons.
Anti-drug Aesop movies tend to do this since many spend the first half detailing just how fabulous the wild and crazy world of drug-fueled parties are; it's hard to take it seriously when they conclude with "Drugs Are Bad. You shouldn't do drugs."
Christiane F is a sad case. Many youngsters got curious about drugs due to the picture movie.
Requiem for a Dream. Yeah, it ends badly for everyone, but the "Summer" section is a dizzying high.
Trainspotting. Renton and his friends have quite a lot of fun and hijinks in the early parts of the film. It's also pretty surprising how easily and cleanly Renton manages to turn his back on the life when he's finally had enough.
A Clockwork Orange features scenes of violence and rape intended to be morally repulsive, but actually inspired some real-life copycat crimes. In fact, one could argue that the movie's popularity rests almost entirely on its sensational aspects.
The Condemned. The Stone Cold Steve Austin star vehicle, revolves around a shady producer who arranges for death row inmates from around the world to be dropped in an island and forced to fight to the death while the "show" is broadcast onto the Net under the name "The Condemned", hence the movie's title. However, WWE Films made the bizarre decision to turn this into a moralist tale by having several characters berate the brutality and senseless violence of the show... all the while showering the audience with scene after scene of senseless brutality and sexual violence. To top it all off, it culminates with this quote: "All of us who watch... are we The Condemned?" (to which several critics replied "Yes. Yes we are.")
The message becomes even more puzzling when you consider how the WWE chose to market the film. The tagline was "10 people will fight, 9 will die. You get to watch."
Confessions of a Shopaholic spends so much time lovingly showing off gorgeous, high end fashion that it's a bit hard to take seriously its moral against irresponsible Conspicuous Consumption. A TV promo on TBS said over the end credits of Sex and the City says something like "Can't decide what to wear? Go see Confessions of a Shopaholic, now in theaters!"
Trying to make compulsive shopping look like the hip thing to do during a recession didn't help much either. Nor was turning the debt collector into a Designated Villain by making him a jerk.
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). In the final scene Edmond professes that his revenge was not worth the steep moral and physical price he paid to achieve it. On the other hand, we just spent two hours watching him enjoy every minute of his bloody revenge and it was awesome.
That's probably attributable to his line in the hospital, though - it makes his character actually have a concrete purpose.
The Joker: You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
Unlike most villains, he's also audaciously brave. He walks right into a meeting full of gangsters and kills the first person to come near him. Evil, sure, but takes a lot more courage than many of Batman's actions in the film, a lot of which involve hiding in the shadows.
Death Sentence pulls this off, and rather clunkily at that. The film is a beautifully shot ode to violent vigilante justice, that tries to speak against violent vigilante justice. It was made by the director of Saw. It doesn't come off right.
The ending makes that point debatable: although the protagonist's Roaring Rampage of Revenge was done in a somewhat glorified fashion, the ending doesn't suggest that he was proud of his actions when all was said and done. Given that the protagonist lost his wife and almost his youngest son after he went after the gang member that killed his oldest son during the movie's opening, he's left looking emotionally defeated, full of sorrow and remorse.
To say nothing of its Spiritual Predecessor, Death Wish, which glorified vigilante killing to the point of making several sequels, and turning actor Charles Manson into a cinema action hero icon for decades to come. For better or worse, [author] Brian Garfield absolutely loathed the movie adaptation of Death Wish for this reason, while being relatively satisfied with how Death Sentence turned out.
District 9 was intended to be an allegory of the South African Apartheid era and a film with an anti-racism message. However, a lot of people seem to remember it mostly for the action scenes and forget that there was a message entirely. It doesn't help that the vast majority of the aliens actually are unintelligent, dangerously violent brutes.
It had the same problem as many sci-fi/ fantasy aseops. The situation was one where the xenophobia was justified. All those things, plus being gun runners and being able to out breed humans.
Downfall depicts Hitler as a sadistic, delusional madman. Other top Nazis are just as bad. The war effort is denounced as a pointless waste, as untrained conscripts are being sent to die in a clearly hopeless struggle. Nevertheless, many neo-Nazis praised the film for depicting Hitler in a positive light, and for showing the tenacity and loyalty of the German people.
Fahrenheit 451. François Truffaut himself directed a film adaptation of the novel which is about an anti-book dystopia. The film makes a world without written words look attractive even as our protagonist rebels against it. In fact the book also does this to some extent, aided by an intelligent, charismatic Well-Intentioned Extremist villain.
Fatherland shows a Europe where Germany won World War II. It is prosperous, clean and green, with posters advertising a concert with "Die Beatles" on the walls. Europe seems to be doing quite well, now without half of its economy ruined by communism. While German rule eventually falls because the American president refuses to sign a peace agreement, so that the strain from the continued war against the remnants of the Soviet Union somehow brings down the whole empire, it certainly doesn't look like a doom-and-gloom world to live in.
Curious, because the book did a much better job of painting the Nazi Empire as place you could probably live with but would much rather be here - not East Germany, not today's world - but had a different and less black and white ending.
Fight Club: Your Mileage May Vary on whether the film was really meant to be an anti-consumerist tirade, or a condemnation of the people holding these views. But if the latter, it sure made their lifestyle seem fun and cool.
G. I. Jane tries to make the argument that militaries should be completely gender integrated, including allowing women into spec ops. While it doesn't glorify sexism it does manage to make completely the opposite point and show exactly why militaries are not ready for this during what is arguably the film's most powerful scene; the POW training scene. Lt. O'Neil is being brutally beaten up by Master Chief Urgaylein front of the other trainees to get information from them and even starts to cut off her pants as if he's about to rape her. O'Neil bravely refuses to break and demands that her comrades do not either. The problem? During this scene, the other trainees are clearly about to crack and start giving out information, and look at and make comments to Argyle like he's a real prick, yet, as he points out, he is saving their lives. This is just an exercise, so there are great limits as to what Argyle is allowed to do. If this scenario was real, a female spec ops troop would be used in the same way, and there would be no limits as to what her captors would be allowed to do, and they would probably not hesitate to do even more brutal things to her, including raping her, most likely causing the male troops to crack, give out vital info, and subsequently be killed themselves.
Heat. The actions of the criminals are proposed as the reason the Bank robbers fought to the death during the North Hollywood Bank Robbery in 1997, rather than escaping.
I Spit on Your Grave. All those extended rape sequences, just to say that rape is bad? Roger Ebert noted to his horror that some of the audience members at the screening he attended actually cheered on the rapists.
Johnny Dangerously a gangster movie parody pokes fun at this with a deliberate Broken Aesop. The title character uses his life story to convince a young puppy thief that "crime doesn't pay"... and then has him hop in his expensive car with his beautiful gangster's moll wife and confess to the audience "OK, maybe it pays a little."
Jurassic Park. The novel was intended as a warning about the dangers of playing God and tampering with nature. But let's face it. When it was adapted to film, thanks to improved special effects of the time and an epic score from John Williams, how many people walked out of the theater after seeing it thinking, "Awesome! I wish we could bring dinosaurs back to life! Get cracking, scientists. Increase dinosaur DNA research!"
Kidulthood: the scene where Trife and his friends get revenge on school bully Sam is a favorite with fans of the film who often comment how cool what they do is despite their actions leading to Trifes death
That isn't entirely a straight example though, since the aim of the movie was to point out that the media is fascinated with serial killers. That it ended up contributing to said media isn't unexpected.
The novel of The Running Man was intended as a warning as to what happens when society goes too far in thinking that violence is entertainment. The nation's most popular show is one where contestants compete for their lives and will be killed legally live on television nationwide. Yet, in the film version, it ends up making this evil show look pretty damn cool and entertaining. A show where Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on gladiators trying to kill him? What's so bad about that?
Saturday Night Fever portrays the protagonist's disco lifestyle as shallow, violent and ultimately pointless. It didn't stop millions of new fans from being drawn into disco culture after watching the movie.
Discussed in the 1934 film Search for Beauty, in which the publishers of a health magazine, realizing that Sex Sells, starts publishing steamy romance stories with "just enough morals to sneak them through the mails."
The Sex and the City movie ostensibly had a message about how we shouldn't let labels (both in the designer sense and for relationships) determine how to live life — Carrie gets married in a label-less vintage dress in the end. But the rest of the movie is a love letter to designer labels and fashions, with a practically orgiastic scene of Carrie trying on designer wedding dresses.
U.K. Film critic Mark Kermode backed up our sentiments in his podcast review of this movie.
"The film has the gall to shove handbags down your throat for 120 minutes and then turn around and say "Hey, we aren't just handbags, you know."
Super Size Me. Morgan Spurlock's documentary exposing the evils of junk food ... Mmmm, burgers.
The first supersized meal was rather unappealing though, between a large hair found in the parfait and Spurlock vomiting spectacularly as he tried to force down the burger.
Semi-lampshaded, too: When describing the rules of his experiment (summary: nothing but McDonald's, and always supersized if the cashier asks), he even describes it as "every eight-year-old's dream".
The Terminator series was intended as a warning that technology will eventually destroy humanity. While it does if a good job of showing a future Crapsack World, the problem comes with the robots who cause the apocalypse and want to wipe out humanity. They're AWESOME. The T-800's, T-1000's, TX's, HK's, and others; ask someone if they think it would be cool if these existed in real life or if they want their own. What do you think their response will be?
Some critics believe there's one thing worse than a "torture porn" film - a film that tries to make a point about torture porn by focusing on long, drawn-out, salacious shots of human suffering, such as Funny Games or Untraceable. "Oh, Jesus, look upon the sensationalization of violence and despair, HERE HAVE A MAN BEING BOILED TO DEATH IN BATTERY ACID."
Pink Floyd'sRock OperaThe Wall, both in movie and in music form, depicts an unstable rock star named "Pink" who builds a metaphorical wall around himself to defend himself against things that emotionally hurt him. He then becomes insane, delusional, "comfortably numb" and consumed with anger and fear as he gradually cuts himself from society. Onstage, he turns his concert into an almost Neo-Nazi rally, leading his "Hammers" to destroy the city and terrorize all those that Pink mistrusts. Although this is meant to show the horrors of shutting yourself off from the world and becoming antisocial and paranoid, many true Neo-Nazi groups were formed around the "Hammers", based on the film The Wall and Gerald Scarfe's Deranged Animation depicting literal marching hammers smashing things and people to pieces.
Further Misaimed Fandom involves interpretations of Pink's frustrations with women, particularly Pink's unfaithful wife, which is depicted in the animations as shrewish and snake-like.
Keep your fingers crossed for the upcoming Hunger Games movies; the books themselves already have a sizeable Misaimed Fandom of teenagers who think it would be so cool to fight in the Hunger Games. (And who hated Mockingjay.) Like an anti-war movie, Suzanne Collins' work carries a message against something that is a dreadful, scarring experience yet deeply visually compelling on-screen. (That's kind of the whole point... but putting it into a visual medium could undermine it hard.) This troper feels the moviemakers' best chance is to lampshade this with repeated images of TV cameras and of viewers watching the deaths from their living rooms.
The Trouble With Junk Food. All the candy they learned was bad for you was so colorful!
The Bad Dream, which was about how being an obsessive fanboy and having a Gotta Catch Them All mentality for all the toys will lead to nightmares...somehow. But damn if those action figures didn't look cool.
Get the Gimmies, where we all genuinely wanted those toys, games, and candies that Brother and Sister acted like hellions in public in order to get.
Slaughterhouse-Five. Discussed in the early part. Vonnegut's war buddy's wife is pissed that our narrator is writing 'another war book'.
"You were just babies then. But you won't write it like that, will you? You'll write it like you were men, and you'll be played by men in the movie, and everyone will think it's wonderful and have more wars and send more babies off to die, like those babies [their children] upstairs."
It works out OK though. He promises her that it will be called Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade (which is indeed the full title of the book), and no one reading it gets any idea that war is good.
"I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that."
The scenes of sinful revelry and luxury (like the island of Acrasia) in The Faerie Queene are, to many, the most appealing parts of the work. This is largely due to Values Dissonance.
The entirety of the Warhammer 40K Black Library manages to both embody and avoid this trope. On the one hand, the wars depicted are brutal and utterly hellish, the enemies often terrifyingly twisted and sadistic, conditions are generally miserable, and the heroes are surrounded by murderers, thieves and other lowlifes - often in the form of a superior officer or the protagonist themself; but on the other hand, every novel has the hero and his band of fellow soldiers being epic BAMFs and generally acting like the epitome of what a soldier should be.
This can even be seen in stories where the protagonists are actually the bad guys in the wider 'verse, such as the Chaos Marines. You find yourself rooting for the protagonist even as the story tells you about the world of innocent humans that their race has invaded, enslaved, tortured or brutally slaughtered.
One of Disney's kiddie books featured Donald Duck eating a poorly balanced, junk-filled meal...that the mouth waters just in childhood memory of it.
John Milton's Paradise Lost has infamously run into this problem with its Misaimed Fandom. Satan is intended to be appealing, but Milton expects his readers will be mature enough to realize that underneath all his charisma, Satan is a small-minded, incestuous bully who picks on people smaller than him because he lost the fight against someone bigger than him. Sadly, Milton expected too much of his readers, and a lot of them just drool over Satan and think he's The Hero.
K.J Parker's Scavenger Trilogy and Parker's work generally. There's just so much detail and vivid fightin' action that the anti-violence message can be obscured at times.
The first series of Warrior Cats covers the early life of a "kittypet" as he struggles to fit into his Clan, overcoming all of the racism and prejudice he faces because of his background as he grows into a hero. Of course, in order for this to work, the majority of the cast has to express some racist sentiments, meaning a lot of the more popular characters twist this lesson into "racism is good".
The same could be said for the battles, which, combined with their irrational hatred for a pacifist character, doesn't just inspire reactions of "War is cool and pacifism is for pussies", but the occasional "Any book that doesn't contain as many gratuitous fight scenes as possible instantly sucks".
The latter lesson can probably be connected to their love of The Darkest Hour, the most violent book in the series. It is indeed one of the best books in the series, but not because it's the most violent.
Lolita. Oh dear lord, Lolita. The whole book was one big condemnation of pedophilia (even the pedophile can't stand his actions), and yet it's a Trope Namer for a fetish for underage girls.
It doesn't help that Humbert comes off as an overall nice guy despite his actions.
Well-known author and commentator John Derbyshire, for example, has written enviously about how misunderstood Humbert is, and how reading about him as a young man convinced him that it's only natural for grown men to be attracted to prepubescent girls, and darn the society that chastises them!
We may have made this one up. Japan most likely picked up the term from Russell Trainer's The Lolita Complex, and like the word hentai, it actually has worse connotations in their language. On the other hand Cracked.com knows the idea of millions of pedophiles worshiping a book grabs readers.
In an interview celebrating the launching of his most recent book, Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis recounted how many fans of his work would come up to him and say "You're the guy who wrote Less Than Zero, that's the book that made me want to live in L.A." Anyone who's read the book in question (or indeed anything by Ellis) will appreciate just how ridiculous this is.
One of his aims with Imperial Bedrooms was to respond to all the readers who perceived Clay as the hero in the first book, by emphasising far more his near-sociopathic narcissism. YMMV on how much it worked, although Ellis certainly shows him doing some horrific things, but gives him one or two very small Pet the Dog moments.
A weird borderline example in Interesting Times. Rincewind describing sticking fireworks up his nose is followed by a footnote saying Don't Try This at Home ... which goes on to describe official municipal firework displays in a way that makes it clear they're very boring.
Of course Terry Pratchett is on record as saying that if stupidity kills, then it's better if it kills the stupid first*
In the Mappe Of Lancre
. This could be a stealth joke on that.
Deliberately invoked by the entire Lesbian Pulp Erotica paperback market of the 1950s and 1960s. It was a cultural requirement that the lesbian characters end badly, either dying, getting imprisoned, or turning straight. However, the point was to sell lesbian erotica, so the "consequences" are always jammed in the last chapter, with the rest of the book glamorizing things as much as possible.
Anthony Horvath's book Richard Dawkins, Anthony Flew and Mother Theresa Go To Heaven is supposed to make Dawkins look like an arrogant Jerkass, while Flew and Theresa are supposed to be viewed as good. However, the way it's written, Theresa comes across as a pathetic sycophant and Flew like a doddering simpleton, while Dawkins sounds downright courageous and noble as he stands in defiance of this frankly unsympathetic deity. It doesn't help when Heaven is depicted as a place where everyone spends the rest of eternity unable to do anything except praise God, and that's supposed to be desirable.
Happens in-universe to a Nazi spy in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. He starts out reporting to his superiors about a dangerous series of American comic books, but his later reports become more or less reviews of his favorite comic book series.
Live Action Television
Then there is the case of 24, which might have led to soldiers in real life being too violent towards prisoners, especially the earlier seasons. Violence towards prisoners existed before, but the government originally backed this series. But when the hero routinely saves the world using questionable techniques in a glamorous fashion, when those techniques rarely backfired (the one person who lied to him that we know of, he shot), and when the scandals of Guantanamo Bay Delta Camp and Abu Gharib became public during the middle of the series' run, conclusions were drawn.
Although bigoted, Alf Garnett from Till Death Do Us Part was intended to be a figure of fun showing the stupidity of racism. He became a cult hero for misogynists and xenophobes.
The same goes for the show's loose American remake. All in the Family was, officially, intended to show that bigotry is bad, but Archie Bunker came across as a fairly fun, likable guy in spite of it. The more progressive "Meathead" often came across as self-righteous.
Mad Men purports to be about the 'dark side' of social conformism, corporate careerism, and white male privilege. The show demonstrates this by endlessly displaying hot naked women, acts of debauchery, plentiful alcohol, smoking without guilt, fabulous outfits, and snazzy Jet Age decor. Wait, there's a dark side to making tons of money and being able to tell people what to do?
Life on Mars, series one. The impression the viewer gets is that the first series of Life on Mars was written to paint Sam's contemporary attitudes as what the viewer was supposed to sympathise with, but the public response was overwhelmingly in favor of Gene Hunt's Good Old Ways. The second series and all of Ashes to Ashes was written accordingly.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a subtle anti-smoking message for the first season or two — every character who smoked either turned out to be a villain or died soon after they were introduced. But Spike, who started out as a villain, ended up being a regular and a well-liked character... who often smoked cigarettes. Sexily. Faith took up smoking in the last season.
The fourth season episode "Beer Bad" tried to show that beer was evil by turning anyone who drank it into cavemen. But the transformation ends up mostly positive for Buffy, who finally gets over being dumped after a one night stand because of it. The concept might be seen as parody, but the episode was written as a sincere grab for government anti-alcohol PSA dollars. (It didn't work.)
The show Manswers, on Spike TV, when talking about illicit drug use or other criminal activities or dangerous acts, will include a disclaimer to not do so. But if you do do it, you can laid, according to them.
Fox News, while more fiscally conservative than socially conservative, pays lip service to the Moral Guardians by doing stories on sexual perversion (especially on The O'Reilly Factor). But they punctuate these condemnations with lurid video clips and bring on nagging correspondents who are more amused than angry. Thirty years ago, much of what we see on Fox News would have never been shown on basic cable. No, not even CNN.
Most daytime Talk Shows are guilty of this, especially if the episode is about people (mostly attractive young women) scandalized to discover that someone had been secretly recording them. They then have no problem when they SHOW THE VIDEO ON NATIONAL TELEVISION so that you can see the evils that are in the world. As a bonus, you get to see exactly what the pervs next door were so interested in.
Even if they don't show the video, doing a story on it will guarantee that the number of people looking it up on the internet will skyrocket.
When CommunistRomania broadcast Dallas, the idea was that the people would be disgusted with the pettiness and decadence of capitalism. This was, in fact, part of the reason the series was created in the first place — you probably are supposed to be vaguely disgusted with the way the Ewings live. It didn't work in either country. What was seen was, "Ooh, shiny! I want!" In a few years, communism fell and the USA had a Misaimed Fandom for Wall Street.
Dollhouse: Turning people into objects is bad! Even when they're hot, attractive objects with blank stares and bare feet... oh hey, it's time to show Sierra getting raped again!
Please note that in both season finales, we find out that the Dollhouse tech destroyed the world. Anyone still on board with it after even that is dumb, in denial, or both.
Done intentionally on an episode of Community. The main characters put on an anti-drug show for a group of elementary school children, but they love Pierce's performance as "Drugs" so much it backfires. The situation is ultimately remedied by forcing Pierce to leave and replacing him with Chang. It ends up being a more effective portrait of addiction as a result, because the children loved drugs then drugs turned on them.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has come in for some criticism over this. The show focuses on the investigation of and effects of sexual-based crimes such as rape, sexual assault, child abuse, etc. The show usually goes out of its way to point out that these are horrific things with terrible effects, it has been accused of getting plenty of lurid and sensationalist entertainment value out of such offenses.
Many fans of The Wire tend to glamorize the gangsters of the show, talking about how cool they are, when the intent of the series is to provide a realistic view of the awful effects of crime and corruption in cities such as Baltimore.
Similarly, Breaking Bad has the same effect of showcasing the appealing aspects of the drug business, even when the bad parts are fueled with endless paranoia, and by contributing to the business in some form or fashion, you'll hurt so many different people along the way. And oh yeah, Drugs Are Bad. But boy is it tough not to reap the rewards of selling pure meth, ain't it?
The Sopranos was even MORE realistic and de-glamorized than Goodfellas. It lampshaded that mobsters love The Godfather and Goodfellas. Guess who loved it?? And many viewers who weren't gangsters also missed the point and saw Tony and crew as heroes and anyone who ratted on them as deserving of death.
In-universe example in Arrested Development when George Sr. is invited as a "Scared Straight" speaker to talk teens out of commiting crimes and going to jail. He accidentally picks the wrong Scared Straight tent and ends up talking to a group of gay teens who feel increasingly hornier at the thought of being locked up in a jail full of bad boys.
Music
Anti-war songs can have this problem. The message of the song may be about the awful aspects of war, but it may have either too subtle of a title or a catchy, positive or cool sounding beat, as well as Lyrical Dissonance to keep it from getting its message across. This goes double if it's a popular song that many of the listeners only know the chorus too without knowing any other of the lyrics, often leading to cases of Isn't It Ironic.
Black Sabbath. Many of their early lyrics dealt with the horrors of things like violence, war, Satan and so on. This has inspired legions of metal bands to write lyrics about how awesome these same things are.
Ozzy Osbourne's attempt to clarify this in a 2004 magazine interview didn't really work. He claimed that he and his bandmates "were the last hippie band. We were into peace." Disingenuous, no? After all, if they wanted to be seen as hippies, why didn't they perform "hippie-style" music?
In fact, a lot of heavy metal bands of note either treat these themes negatively, ironically or with a sort of horrified fascination; while a lot may seem like they glorify violence or death, it's often necessary to tune into the particular subcultural lens of heavy metal to understand them properly. Unfortunately, some of the fans (especially for bands that hit the mainstream) and more than a few of the bands don't seem to get this.
Megadeth's album "Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?" led to a rumor that the band members were Satanists or endorsed Satanism due to nearly half of the album being explicitly about Satanism. But all three songs detail horrific things happening to those who dabble in it. The songs stem from a bad experience that Dave Mustaine had with "black magic", where he put a hex on someone and was convinced it worked, plaguing him with guilt. After that incident, he tried to make songs warning against the dark arts, but they ended up so badass-sounding that the message was ignored.
Slayer "Angel of Death" is often called a pro-Holocaust song, but guitarist Kerry King notes that the lyrics are as brutal as they are to reflect the real horror of the Holocaust, not to glorify it. The band is not trying to glorify the Holocaust — but they're not trying to dispel it, either. They enjoy causing controversy.
Okay, this is where things get tricky. We've always been told that "human beings must never forget the Holocaust, lest it happen again." (One, as if there's any chance of anyone forgetting; two, are we actually supposed to believe that most of the planet's inhabitants harbor such capacity for carnage?) But whenever someone tries to incorporate the Holocaust into a work of art or a popular entertainment - in effect, trying to raise awareness about it - those same Moral Guardians criticize the act of making people think about the Holocaust, claiming that it's in "bad taste." (In short: "The Holocaust was bad. Let's not talk about it more than absolutely necessary. But it's always going to be necessary to do so.")
Bruce Springsteen's "Born In the USA" is about the issues faced by returning veterans of The Vietnam War. Because of the refrain, the subtle title, and its being one of the catchiest songs musically The Boss has ever done, it's constantly mistaken for an American patriotic song. It is frequently played at 4th of July events. US President Ronald Reagan — a president who had threatened Mutually Assured Destruction on the Russians — wanted to use it as his 1984 campaign theme.
Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" is about the draft bias of The Vietnam War — lower and middle class kids being sent to fight and die while rich kids get to stay home. This doesn't stop it from being extremely catchy, and many listeners don't really get more than the first couplet of the lyrics. It also gets mistaken for a patriotic song, thanks largely to the opening lines of "Some folks were born, made to wave the flag, ooh, the red, white, and blue".
Edwin Starr's "War". The lyrics denounce the act of war quite anviliciously, but it sounds like a good song to kick ass to. It was used in Rush Hour, Small Soldiers, and Agent Cody Banks 2.
Metallica, "For Whom the Bell Tolls". Despite being about the futility of war, it's a totally kick ass song that gets your adrenaline pumping.
Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is a sarcastic song that, if taken unironically, would send the message, "If you're a girl who follows the Rule Of Cooland likes a taken boy, it's okay to throw yourself at the guy and steal him away because you know he likes you back, and his girlfriend is 'like, so whatever.'" The video points out it's okay to humiliate said girlfriend because she's a nerdy girl with glasses. Lavigne's Word Of God points out how it's criticizing shallow boy-crazy girls who act like that. But the song doesn't make this clear; try telling it to the song's Misaimed Fandom.
The Dropkick Murphys cover of the old Irish anti war song "Johnny I hardly knew ya", when viewed on a particular AMV, makes one want to go to war.
The same tune was reused for "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", a song from the American Civil War that glorifies soldiers returning home from war.
Gangsta Rap. What was said above re: gangsters in film & television goes double for many gangsta-rap music videos. Even when the lyrics are explicitly about the dangers and harshness of street life, expect the videos to be full of images of diamond studded cars, gold jewelry everywhere, beautiful women, and champagne overflowing.
MTV and other "music" channels refuse to show any video with gunplay or shooting imagery regardless of context. This was particularly notable in the 1990s during the genre's rise to prominence (since they were airing more videos then).
This trope is deliberately invoked in Juvenile's song "Ha". The lyrics are a Take That against the glamour of rap excess (the chorus says, "You're a paper chaser, you got your block on fire, remaining a G until the moment you expire"), and in the video itself, the scenes are of poor and near-homeless residents living in housing projects in New Orleans...except during the chorus, when Juvenile and his crew visibly sing in front of expensive cars, stacks of money and visible jewellery.
Atmosphere has written a few songs attempting to address this issue too, including "Apple" which has a repeated refrain of "Just cause you're an MC doesn't mean you get to be an asshole" and "National Disgrace" which begins with the following dedication:
Peace to Rick James, Anna Nicole Smith, Bill Clinton and Motley Crue, and anyone else who has ever utilised their 15 minutes of fame to realise their true dreams of being an absolute jerk-off, just to keep the masses entertained. This goes out to learning from the mistakes of others.
Ricky Gervais. In one of his routines, he identifies the Broken Aesop inherent in a version of the children's folk tale The Lazy Mouse and the Industrious Mouse that he was told by his headmaster, at a school assembly. In the story, the Industrious Mouse labours long and hard to prepare himself for winter, whilst the Lazy Mouse bunks off and has fun. When winter comes, the Lazy Mouse has nothing, so goes to avail himself of the charity of the Industrious Mouse — who, after beginning a lecture about how the Lazy Mouse should have done his own preparing, suddenly turns around and invites him in to share. Gervais notes with exasperation that the moral is mangled from being "work hard and be prepared for the future" into becoming, in his words, "fuck around, do whatever you want and then scrounge off a do-gooder". He also notes that most of the pupils at that assembly took the latter aesop and "kept it up" for the entirety of their academic careers.
He also points out that, thanks to the Rule Of Three, the moral of the tale of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is not "never tell a lie", but rather "never tell the same lie twice."
Norm Mac Donald pointed out the problem addressed in anti-smoking ads mentioned above under "General" with showing the affect of smoking on organs.
MacDonald: My doctor tried to scare me out of smoking. He showed me a picture of a smoker's lung. Oh! It was gross and disgusting. Then he showed me a picture of a healthy person's lung. Oh! It was gross and disgusting!
Tabletop Games
Warhammer 40,000. Orignally intended as a parody of Darker and Edgier, the fans latched onto those aspects with such fervour the creators decided Sure, Why Not? and magnified those aspects until a new word (GRIMDARK) was invented to describe the result. Then, in typical WH40K fashion, It Got Worse when despite all factions being firmly established as thoroughly evil, the "Good" factions only so in comparison to their even more horrific enemies, there exist genuine supporters of almost everyone due to taking various elements of the fluff (at best heavy on the Unreliable Narrator and more commonly in-universe propaganda) completely seriously.
The two most glaring examples have to be the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard. To whit: the Space Marines are made up of (depending on the edition) everything from volunteers to inducted death row inmates, go through so much genetic, cybernetic and hypnotic conditioning that it's argued about whether or not they're even still considered human, they're conditioned to be unwaveringly loyal but at even more so to literally not feel fear or ever give up, so if they do something questionable they will go rogue and declare war on the entire Imperium rather than submit to due process, and for about 98% of the chapters out there, the average Imperial citizens, members of other military branches, hell even members of other Space Marine Chapters, consist at best of an excuse to always be at war and at worse a burden, distracting them from killing everything to which collateral damage isn't even a statistic to be counted; the Imperial Guard teaches you from day one that not only are you expendable, but you will die in service and your mission is to make your death mean something, it's better to follow an order and die horribly than disobey an order and avert utter catastrophe (for which more than one hero who has saved an entire planet has been summarily executed) and if you have a choice between saving a dozen wounded squadmates and bringing back one piece of semi-arcane technology you are LEGALLY OBLIGED to leave them to their fates to save the tech.
Then there's the Tau, an animesque culture whose army is based off of BFGs and Humongous Mecha. Their melee combatants are an allied race of brutal but more-or-less NobleSavages. They were introduced specifically because of an outcry that there were no good factions, only visibly horribly evil and implicitly horribly evil. THEY WERE THE GOOD GUYS. Then the rest of the fandom cried out they were TOO good, so now there's more and more hints that the Ethereals have pheromone-based hypnotic control over the entire Tau culture, the assimilated human worlds are usually subjected to internment camps and forced sterility, and the fact that they have next-to-no warp signature implies there may be something even more horrific about them, though we just don't know yet.
Theater
In Wicked, the "Dancing Through Life" song is meant to paint the singer as having the wrong idea about life in general; but it also seems to go out of its way to make his philosophy sound appealing.
'Dancing through Life' can be seen as a song about always and unconditionally being in the moment, rather than thinking about the future.
This is true of Ben Jonson's plays. Both Volpone and The Alchemist make fraud look fun, although in the former play harsh punishments are dished out to all the "villains" right at the end.
Video Games
Many would argue that the idea of an anti-war war game is even more inherently hypocritical than that of an anti-war movie. See, games are generally expected to be fun; if they're not fun, nobody will want to play them, let alone spend money on them. This means that if you make your game well, all the people playing it will find your profound messages about the futility and destruction of war to be significantly diluted by the fact that blowing shit up and killing Nazis/Russians/terrorists/aliens by the dozens is such a clearly enjoyable and gratifying activity. (If you don't make your game well, no one will hear your messages in the first place because no one will play the game.) Multiplayer games are particularly susceptible to this brand of hypocrisy, since there is little to no story to provide context to the action and the entire point of the game is to compete with and kill your opponents (and presumably have fun doing so). The Moral Dissonance created by this is cleverly satirized in this video.
There's a major but subtle difference between having a fun anti-war game and a fun pro-war game. Modern Warfare 2 is a GREAT example. Sure, it's full of badass moments and fun, but it also scares the crap out of you, kills the player and his unit with a nuke, and subjects you to getting burned alive.War Is Hell is in FULL effect, but it's still a great and fun game.
The conceptually similar Balance of Power, from 1985, also tried hard to portray nuclear armageddon as a bad thing. If the player failed to prevent war, the game ended abruptly with the text "You have ignited a nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure."
Unfortunately, it didn't reward success, either - your reward for shepherding the world through eight years of brinkmanship was a message stating "You have kept the peace". Maybe the real message was "Running a power bloc is difficult and unglamorous."
Max Payne does a pretty good job of getting its point across well, assuming that it's point is that a Roaring Rampage of Revenge is lots and lots of fun. If it's trying to be anti-violence, not so much.
Valkyria Chronicles: War Is Hell, everyone suffers, and the bad guys feel pain too. Except it's a strategy war game where the good guys are all adorable, everything is rendered with a soft, unthreatening watercolor filter, and half the fun of playing the game is watching your squad's Potentials activate and listening to the stuff they say as they turn enemy mooks into greasy stains on their darling cobbled streets.
Played straight by other gamers who cheerfully laughed while mowing down the civilians, because it's fun shooting NPCs who can't defend themselves. Subverted by some players who refuse to shoot any civilians and "fake" it by shooting over the civilians' heads (or, perhaps, by not shooting at all). Subverted differently by other players who, regardless of how they play the scene, find it a genuinely disturbing way of saying "This is where you're headed when you start believing morality is obsolete in the name of security." Then there's the people who just say "It's a game." and went through the level with some impatience for a challenge. Averted further by people who use any of the game's numerous opportunities to avoid and skip the level.
Though it's far, far less infamous than No Russian, there are some players who see General Shepherd as a total badass and don't understand why we're not supposed to root for him because of it.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance tries its damnedest to paint staying in Ivalice as a bad thing and Marche's desire to destroy it and bring back the real world as a good thing. Unfortunately, all the characters from "our world" that we see are better off in Ivalice, and the world itself is portrayed as a wonderland outside of the Jagds. Alternate Character Interpretation raised its head, and the result was "Marche the Omnicidal Maniac". (Supposedly this was less of a problem in the original Japanese, but even there the trope applies.)
Even the Jagds themselves could be an example of this. Towns where laws have no effect aren't really a bad thing when the law system is so incredibly anal that you can be arrested for using certain attacks or even dealing damage to monsters. Sure, your characters will be gone forever if you don't revive them by the end of a battle, but is whipping out a few Phoenix Downs before you finish off the enemy really that difficult?
Fridge Horror definitely applies. There you are, bleeding and struck down upon the ground, waiting for your party leader to use a Phoenix Down, to save your life. Unfortunately, he forgot to stock up before coming, leaving him no choice but to let you die.
It's the same debate that took place in The Matrix circles, and was implied in the films themselves. One realm is far less "desirable" than another realm whose existence the writers try to vilify, but the former realm is more "real" than the latter. Hence "real Crapsack World" versus "imaginary paradise."
It could be argued that the Metal Gear Solid series (particularly from MGS2 onward), which is heavy on anti-war messages in the plot, avoids this trope by making it possible (albeit extremely difficult) to complete each game without killing anybody (intentionally, at least). On the other hand, there's tons of cool-looking, stylized violence in the cutscenes and collectible weapons just begging to be used, and most of the non-mook characters (a.k.a. characters with names, faces, and distinct voices) talk about how Snake is an honorable warrior and, if they die, do so in glorious, noble and/or bombastic ways. So really, it still has it both ways.
Given the meta nature of the series, this kind of duality could be entirely deliberate.
Honestly, MGS mostly averts it: even if there are plenty of cool weapons to use, the act of killing mooks, even nameless and faceless, is never satisfying and somehow guilt-inspiring, so the player will tend to avoid it as much as possible.
Grand Theft Auto IV has plenty of anti-criminal motifs, it shows how crime and lust for money destroys the lives of opportunist gangsters and how it affects their friends and relatives. However, the missions involving murdering, stealing, and in general causing mayhem in the city, are done in such a way that instead of making crime repulsive, actually makes it look attractive and fun. The characters we encounter, though they are criminals, are often comedic and very likable and not like those we are afraid of in real life. And thus the game became very popular, being one of the best selling games of 2008 and it's still played by millions of gamers who seem not to get its anti-crime message.
Ace Combat insists often and firmly that War Is Hell. However, you play as an Ace Pilot, arguably the most glamorous combat role in existence, your arrival bringing hope to allies and sparking fear in enemies. Your distance from your targets means you never see in gory detail the aftermath of your passing and as a AFGNCAAP you are spared the direct effects of deaths in the family. All these combine to dull the effect of the message, not helped by the AnviliciousBroken Aesop.
Iji: A poster on the TV Tropes Fora stated "I like kicking the bugs to death" (though admittedly the player who said this hadn't gotten very far into the game).
Iji is actually much more successful at averting this than most games because it's completely possible to play through the game without killing anyone. Also, if you do kill everything in sight like a normal game, the dialogue will make you regret it unless you're very callous.
Then there's the MS Paint Forum Adventure adaptation, which takes a killer run of the game and plays it as Black Comedy mixed with Gurren Lagann-inspired awesomeness, complete with quotes and Iji being reinterpreted from a Reluctant WarriorWoobie to a Hot BloodedCaptain Ersatz of Simon. And the writer has stated he's played through thrice before and knows perfectly well it's supposed to be antiwar. To be fair, it was partly intended as a Reconstruction.
In a meta example, this is what led to Destroy All Humans! being made. Matt Harding pitched the idea because he was thoroughly fed up with making typical shoot-em-ups and proposed the exact opposite of the game he would like to make. Naturally, it was approved and Harding effectively sabotaged his career, which led to him quitting his job and making Where The Hell Is Matt. Not that we're complaining.
Saints Row 2 perhaps does an end run around this trope by avoiding the moralizing and continually plays up the fun and rewards of violent crime. Then the player character grinds a few rather sympathetic characters into the Moral Event Horizon, to demonstrate that he/she is every bit the vicious bastard the player is encouraged to be. Even some unsympathetic characters get terminated with much more cruelty than necessary. Then the game ends with a Designated Villain who has rather noble intentions, a practical plan for achieving his goal, and a good point.
Armored Core is what happens when you combine Ryosuke Takahashi with customizable robots, you play as a Psycho for Hire who works for all the wrong reasons (money and being the strongest) raven and in the latest installation puts you in a Giant Robot that emits harmful particles that kills the environment and indulge in some wholesome slaughter. Yet for some reason it feels so comfortable blowing up units in a nigh indestructible robot for that next part...
Cooking Mama, The Unauthorized PETA Edition shows Mama brutally killing and gruesomely preparing a turkey with cartoonish graphics. Game developer Raph Koster explains that his kids found it gleeful fun.
Even Nintendo apparently found it amusing, given that their response was to have Cooking Mama herself put out a press release complaining about it. It's like they said to themselves, "Nobody's going to get their message from it, we aren't going to worry."
Wings arguably subverts this; the game DOES use World War One for entertainment, but is stated to be dedicated to those who died in it, and also calls attention to the foolishness of various aspects of it.
Fable III has a morality system like the others. The system completely breaks when you are forced to raise funds to save civilians. The kingdom has 6.5 million people and they can be saved at the cost of one gold each (covenient). So that means if you give 10 gold to a begger it is a morally good act but if you put it into saving 10 lives it is morally netrual. The biggest problem comes when you can choose to build a brothel. The net profit will same 1.5 million people but it is considered immoral. Why is this relevent here? Because every load screen shows you the projected casualtys. Saving a comunity of hippys or 300 000 peoples lives? The whole section teaches that being a tyrant is the way to save your people... well that or buy every property in the kindom and rent them out which could be argued is also a form of ecconomic tyrany.
In Pokémon, both the games and the anime, treating Pokémon as tools is "wrong". The evil teams and the rivals all lose because they treated their Pokémon bad, you won because you WUUUUUV them. Except the best strategy is to dump all the crappy Pokémon you catch into the PC forever and push the ones you keep in your party to their limits. Sure, they get sad if they faint and they get happy if you use Potions on them...but Happiness is a mostly useless stat and unless you horribly suck as a trainer they will simply be happy enough as time passes. The "best" competitive players even breed new Pokémon to raise as weapons from the day they're hatched.(And throw the parents forever into the PC.)
Web Comics
Gunnerkrigg CourtGleefully used. Just look at those efficiently designed, finely crafted, aesthetically appealing savage tools of destruction... Tea in her fencing suit and wide smile objects to your unhealthy fascination with swords! Though it doubles as foreshadowing, as later "enjoy, but don't forget what it's about" became a good plot point.
Invoked in thisSomething Positive with Davan's response to a gang of Rocky Horror fans protesting a stage-play adaptation of Shock Treatment. "Think of every movie or video game someone else protested that you immediately went to check out. Now you're doing that for us."
Jason Love. "Warning◊" from Jason Love's cartoons.
Western Animation
Beavis And Butthead. Spoofed in the Season 4 episode, "Safe Driving" The boys watch a grisly driver's-ed film featuring two guys who seem to be grown-up versions of themselves. Naturally, they think it's cool and get into the same accident seconds after taking the wheel.
Family Guy does this occasionally, usually as a result of trying to balance its message while simultaneously making stereotypical jokes.
"You May Now Kiss the...uh, Guy Who Receives" pushes for gay marriage with Brian's gay cousin, Jasper, and Jasper's boyfriend wanting to tie the knot. The problem? The couple trying to get married is a human and a dog. Not only that but a dog that acts like every Camp Gay stereotype you can imagine. Oh, and a deleted scene near the end shows that Jasper's now husband doesn't even speak English and doesn't know what's going on with Stewie commenting in English that he is going to be raped. The episode is supposed to be pro-gay rights but it instead comes off as "Gay people have sex with dogs, forcibly marry other people for their bodies, and WILL RAPE YOU." On top of that, Brian takes Mayor West hostage to keep gay marriage from being outlawed, hence sending the message that gay rights supporters are radicals who will go to violent lengths to push through their agenda. That couldn't have been fucked up more if they tried.
"Family Gay" Peter gets experimented on with multiple drugs. One of the drugs makes him homosexual, apparently to convey the pro-gay-rights message that homosexuality is not a choice. Which would work fine, except for the fact that Peter chose to get injected with the drugs that turned him homosexual. Breaking it further, Peter almost instantly divorces Lois — because, you know, leaving your jobless housewife and three kids is TOTALLY okay as long as you're gay. And being gay also makes you want to bang ten people at once. It's compounded during one scene where Brian sends Peter off to "Gay Camp" in order to straighten him up for Lois' sake. She goes down there and delivers a heavy-handedwriter tract about how she can't just make Peter stop being gay. Which is great, except THEY USED DRUGS TO MAKE HIM GAY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
The same thing happens when the show tries to mock religion. Brian turns just about everything into an anti-theism rant, and gets openly pissed off at anybody who has any religious beliefs (mostly because religious people are intolerant). He is genuinely meant to be seen as the Only Sane Man. The problem is, Jesus and God are both characters in the show. Brian has met both of them. Anytime Brian mocks religion he's blindly ignoring what's clearly right in front of him
This tends to happen a lot with Brian's views. He ends up coming across as arrogant and self-righteous, which in turn portrays others who share his views the same way.
"420" tries to portray marijuana prohibition as a bad thing, but the episode unsuccessfully tries to juggle the "legalizing weed will have no negative consequences on society" aesop with "stoners are morons" jokes. For example, the scene where Brian states that ever since legalizing weed worker productivity is up over 100% doesn't really fare so well since only a scene a way we get Peter being so stoned all the time that he can't even set up a Cutaway Gag and instead shows a Long List of all the celebrities he hates.
Futurama spoofed this. Bender did a return-from-commercial gag where he stated the show does not support the "cool crime of robbery."
Bender (on TV): Try this, kids at home!
(on-screen subtitles): Don't try this, kids at home.
Home Movies Parodied in an episode where Brendon makes an educational video telling kids not to put marbles up their noses. The kids think the idea is cool, so...
Made even funnier because *everybody* who saw the film immediately tried to put marbles up their nose, even the teacher and Brendon's mom.
There's a similar situation in Little Men where Jo tells the children a story about a mother who warned her children not stick beans up their noses, prompting them to do just that. Jo says she stuck pebbles up her nose after hearing the story.
The Powerpuff Girls parodied this in the episode of "Mojo Jonesin'," where the mad genius chimp Mojo tempts a group of children with bootleg Chemical X which grants them superpowers. The first dose was free but to continue their addiction, they have to follow his orders. It's an obvious send-up of a don't-do-drugs episode complete with an ending when the kids decide to give up Chemical X and warn their classmates against "X abuse." Then another kid asks what it was like. "It was AWESOME!"
The Simpsons directly spoofed this trope: Lisa is shown a short film where rap stars in costume represent tooth decay: they stylishly and violently set about some giant teeth, rapping all the while. Lisa comments that while the film is against tooth decay it also kinda glamorises it.
Also parodied when Bart's class is shown a sex-ed video. "So now that we've shown you how it's done... don't do it."
In the episode where Bart is working for the Mafia and leaves at the end: "Sorry Fat Tony, I've learned that crime doesn't pay". Fat Tony replies "Yeah, maybe you're right" and then leaves in an expensive limo filled with women. His henchmen have their own limos.
South Park Another in-fiction example: In the episode "Pinkeye," when Mrs. Cartman sends her son to school dressed as Hitler, the principal shows him an educational film to scare him straight. However, the film consists solely of the message "Adolf Hitler was a very, very naughty man," followed by (untranslated) clips of his speeches and goose-stepping, saluting Nazis. There's no mention of anything evil he actually did. Cartman thinks the movie is "cool", to the point of seeing himself in place of Hitler in the video, and asks to see it again.
However, given Cartman's stated Anti-Semitism, he'd probably have thought it was even cooler had it been translated.
"Major Boobage": "Schoolchildren are often experimenting with dangerous ways to get high, like sniffing glue, or huffing paint, but they're all bad, m'kay...male cats, when they're marking their territory spray a concentrated urine to fend off other male cats, and that can get you really high...like really, really, high...probably shouldn't have told you that just now, m'kay? That was probably bad."
"Butt Out'' also parodied this but in the opposite way. An overly upbeat anti-smoking group called Butt Out, which incorporates elements of terrible dance and hip-hop into its routine, performs at the school. All the students think it's really lame and disturbing. At the end, Butt Out enthusiastically calls out "If you don't smoke, you can grow up to be just like us!" Directly after they say this, the boys start frantically smoking.
In "Sexual Healing," some of the kids ask what autoerotic asphyxiation is. The man they ask says he doesn't want to give them any ideas...but then describes it in detail, adding that it supposedly feels "really, really awesome." Three guesses how Kenny died in that episode.
"Kick A Ginger Day" is not something that should ever have been Defictionalized!
The Iron Giant tries to present the message that the use of weapons of mass destruction is wrong, and in fact, it was the Trope Namer for I Am Not a Gun. Problem is, when you represent weapons of mass destruction by a Humongous Mecha, it's hard not to make them look cool.
On Clone High, the Raisin Council invokes this trope by having Johnny Hardcore (Jack Black as an Ink Suit Actor) tell kids NOT to smoke raisins, or else they will become raisin-addicted cool rock stars like himself. Then they provide The Pusher to sell them raisins. The logical conclusion, of course, is a What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? anvilicious parody of Drugs Are Bad episodes.
Real Life
There was a case where some cops took some pictures of an accident scene and, without the family's consent, started showing them to kids, apparently wanting to Scare 'Em Straight. Instead, the kids thought they were cool and posted them on the internet. The family's attempts to get them taken them down have simply invoked the Streisand Effect.
Abstinence programs tend to fall prey to this as a result of trying to balance out the message of how evil and dirty pre-marital sex is with how great and wonderful sex is once you're married.
Part of the problem is that the "abstinence until marriage" preaching, when unmarried sex is the norm creates an issue in that teens think "this is BS, everyone has sex" and these programs also refuse to teach safe sex. Abstinence programs are too idealistic in their goals.
During the Cold War, several Eastern European resistance groups did this intentionally during the 60's to avoid government censorship. Instead of releasing propaganda directly, they distributed newspapers describing the treasonous publications their fine leaders had put down, refuted, or nipped in the bud. Of course, those publications were described in excruciating detail.
Content Warnings can have this effect. They're supposed to serve as warnings to parents about what's appropriate for kids, but it's impossible to stop the kids from seeing them, and all they think is, "If I'm not supposed to be exposed to it then it must be totally awesome." Indeed, back in The Nineties when the Parental Advisory warning on CDs was just becoming well-known, TV advertisements for rap albums would proudly flash the "Tipper Sticker" as a point of pride, and George Carlin even recorded an album titledParental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics.
The DARE anti-drug program. Many school kids in the US have probably had to sit through this at some point in their lives. Hilariously, there are multiple studies saying that DARE programs not only fail to decrease the rate of drug and alcohol use among the DARE participants, in some places the rates actually increase. There are different theories as to why this is. One is that it exposes drugs to kids at an earlier age. Another is that it makes drug use seem far more prevalent than it actually is, making kids think it's normal. Then, of course, when the participants get older and find out that some of the information given to them had been, at the very least, exaggerated in order to Scare 'Em Straight, they assume that allof it was, and decide to try out drugs.
The fact that their main message, resisting peer pressure, basically boils down to "everyone is doing drugs but you" doesn't exactly help.
With anti-drug ads, there's also the factor that applies to a Stealth Cigarette Commercial. That is, the ads are considered so stupid and lame, that people who watch them will want go use drugs simply out of spite.
And of course, you have the new anti-smoking commercial playing up all of the ways that smoking has been made to look cool. Uh...
There's also how describing the affects of certain drugs to kids doesn't exactly make them unappealing. "Marijuana makes you happy and makes thing funny. LSD and mushrooms makes you see bright colors and patterns. PCP turns you into Superman."
The Meese Report on pornography. The commission's conclusions on the harmful effects of porn were transparently determined by the prejudices of Edwin Meese et al. rather than actual analysis, while the report also included plenty of excerpts and juicy descriptions of otherwise hard-to-find material.
PETA wants to put a mural on the Mexican border fence to "warn" mexicans not to come to the US because they'll get fat from all the junk food and meat. The painting made the USA look like a Carnival-land made of candy and barbecues, turning the actual message into "Hey, we've got all the awesome delicious food you could ever want!" Yeah, that'll scare 'em away.
Not to mention that getting fatter is kind of a goal of most people in third world countries.
Prohibition. During the 1920's, when alcohol was outlawed in the US, some wineries would sell grape juice in wine bottles, and if you peeled off the label it had instructions on the back that basically said "don't follow these instructions or this grape juice will turn into wine".
According to some historians, the makers of Vine-Glo (a grape juice concentrate sold during Prohibition) sent demonstrators out to stores to show how easy it was to convert the block into refreshing and legal grape juice. Those demonstrators also showed exactly what you should not do, lest your grape juice "accidentally" turn into wine.
The Westboro Baptist Church. Since they've gone to such horrifying and sickening levels to preach their screed that homosexuality is wrong, they've probably gotten a lot of people who were previously on the fence to support gay rights so they won't be lumped in with them.
David Hume intentionally used this in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The opening and closing say that Cleanthes, the most orthodox proponent of religion, clearly wins the argument. In between those, he loses every point and the skeptical character of Philo carries the day.
This page has not been indexed. Please choose a satisfying and delicious index page to put it on.
