Objective or Subjective?: Informed Attractiveness

Maybe I'm reading this trope wrong but this trope reads like "This character isn't as beautiful as the show hypes them up to be", which unless the piece of work is selfaware of that "fact", then shouldn't this trope have YMMV banner.

Objectively an example when explicitly stated to be used as such in-universe. Either subjective or ambiguous otherwise.

Yeah, you are reading it wrong.

Attractiveness is subjective, so what makes somebody an example here is if the character is explicitly seen by the other characters as stunningly attractive when the actor isn't significantly more attractive than the other actors. ... Again, this is not about how unattractive you subjectively believe certain stars to be. This is specifically for instances where they can't live up to being as exceptionally attractive as the characters say they are, typically seen when the actor in question is no more attractive or notable than the rest of the cast... As a matter of fact, nearly every woman in Hollywood is this to somebody, no matter how "classically attractive".

The trope is about the fact that absolute beauty is subjective, yet works treat certain good looking characters as objectively the most beautiful according to everyone in-universe.

It's not like:

• "Come on, Alice is totally plain, why do the characters pretend that she is gorgeous?"

• "Come on, everyone else in the film is also a reasonably good-looking hollywood actress, even if Alice happens to match your preferences, but there is no way that everyone on earth would agree that she is Aphrodite incarnate!

edited 9th Mar '11 8:03:30 AM by EternalSeptember

That still reads the an audience reaction. Who get to decide whether or not Alice isn't that much more attractive than the rest of the ensemble?

The fact, that as you noticed, absolute beauty is subjective. In Real Life, there is no such thing as "Aphrodite incarnate", so all cases of trying to pass a woman as "clearly the most beautiful ever" are using a trope rather than stating a true fact.

As long as there are no obvious weight issues, skin lesions, asymmetry exaggerated sizes of facial features involved, we can objectively state that a character isn't exactly ugly. In fact, many Personal Appearance Tropes are founded on the basis that we can tell apart ugly from not ugly.

Beyond that, our standards of beauty depend on things like hair color preferences, hot vs. cute preferences, teen vs. twenties vs. thirties age preferences, etc.

Show me the picture of one woman you consider the most beautiful, and someone in this thread will disagree about it.

(By the way, you are using "Audience Reactions" wrong: An Audience Reaction is "objectively not present in the work at all", like Hatedom. This is a trope about writers writing the script to portray a character as something, it is a trope, that can be in the story, the question is whether or not it is always objectively there, or it is a Subjective Trope )

edited 9th Mar '11 9:57:21 AM by EternalSeptember

The trope isn't so much about audience dissonance as it is about sketchy writing, that's why it's a companion trope to Informed Ability. The degree the audience dissonance can be is up for debate, but the idea that one individual is supremely attractive above everyone else is a part of the writing. Poor casting can make the trope stand out more, but the trope itself exists without opinion involved.

There was some debate on an example from The Dark Knight where Rachel Dawes was listed because the two heroes were chasing after her and the Joker singled her out at a party, along with a complaint about Maggie Gyllenhaal in general. Just because someone is a focus of attention doesn't always equal "cause she's hot" and when paying close attention at the party the Joker doesn't single her out because he finds her pretty, she stood up to him and he started feigning attraction to creep her out. That made it not an example of the trope.

Eternal September is making this sound like it needs a rename, and also making it sound a lot like World's Most Beautiful Woman.

If there's no objective standard for beauty I'm not exactly sure why there'd be one for ugliness as well. There's a consensus but there's nothing inheritance unattractive about a deformity.

Why would there be a debate to begin with? Three characters attractive to the same character, none of which made hyperbolic statement about her appearance, and two of the which have strong emotional ties to that character.

I'm not sure how that makes it anymore objective. Informed Ability works as an objective trope because the ability or skill reference is never used in the story. While it is true that the idea that one individual is supremely attractive above everyone else is a part of the writing, whether or not you agree with that plot point is still YMMV.

^ The actual example focused almost exclusively on the idea that the Joker picked her out of the crowd, where models and such formed the background extras. Paying close attention it was made clear it wasn't the Joker paying attention to her beauty. That's what happens with a lot of example in tropes, Manipulative Editing can make anything fit a trope and stick around if people don't know any different.

That wasn't my intention, I just used one exaggerated example, most of them don't have to be that literally "the most beautiful ever"

For example, here is this one:

• Princess Leia in Star Wars. Luke gushes "she's beautiful" upon seeing her for the first time in a grainly, miniature hologram.

It's not literally stated that she is "the most beautiful", there aren't even any other women, but the creators used this trope, by casting a reasonably good looking Hollywood actress, and then informing us with this line that even his incredibly low quality recording is supposed to leave you stunned.

Does the work inform us that a woman is outstandingly beautiful? If yes, it is an example of this trope. If no, it isn't. Which part of that is subjective?

Also, Informed Ability can work on the same principle as this trope, it doesn't always have to be off-screen. For example if a character is supposed to be an amazing singer, and when his voice is shown to be as good as you would expect from any singer, but we are told that it is "AMAZING", that uses this trope

So, do you think that Gonk is subjective?

Yeah, that's clearly a bad example, but apparently due to a misunderstanding the work, not from misunderstanding the trope, so it's not something that we can fix here. If the Joker would have commented that Rachel is outstandingly beautiful, it would be this trope.

edited 10th Mar '11 10:43:45 AM by EternalSeptember

I disagree with Leia being listed as an example, but for a different reason: First, Luke is the only one who comments on her beauty, and second, his comment isn't included to make us think Leia is stunningly beautiful as much as it is to underline how young and inexperienced Luke is. Han and Obi-wan, both men who have had a lot more experience with women presumably, don't say anything about her beauty.

edited 10th Mar '11 1:33:10 PM by Madrugada

Examples like Order Of The Stick ("Yes, we know they're all stick figures, but Elan's prettier than the other stick figures. Just go with it") and Paper Mario (where it's a running gag that Mario of all people is regarded as the hottest man in the Mushroom Kingdom, even after directly contradicting it with statements that, yes, Mario's still just chubby little plumber dude.) seem to indicate that this trope can occur with little to no audience response. I think that, instead of framing it as "the character isn't as attractive as the writers are saying they are", we could tweak the wording to say "The writers are singling out this one character as significantly more attractive than other characters, even though other characters don't look much different from them." At the very least, it'll reduce the "Well, I don't think [popular actor/actress] is hot, so ha!" entries.

edited 23rd Jul '11 6:27:11 PM by Sparkysharps

Bump, well Hollywood Homely has a YMMV banner and this is supposed to be the contrasting trope so this should probably have a YMMV banner.

This isn't really subjective though. It's when a character has their attractiveness gushed over in media. That's an objective fact. Twilight's treatment of that Ted guy would be a good example. The author rants at length about how gorgeous he is.

Yea but it's up to the viewer to decide whether or not all of that gushing is warranted.

I think we can probably cut the bit about what the viewer thinks about the gushing. It's not really important to the fact that the author is informing you this person is attractive rather than letting you make up your own mind.

I'm not understanding. I've never read the novels but I think that Twilight novel is written from Bella's POV, some of them or something like that. So isn't just say "Bella find Edward extremely attractive"?

edited 23rd Jul '11 7:04:15 PM by captainpat

The trope is "The work informs us that this character is attractive rather than letting the audience react to them." It doesn't matter if that happens through a character or not. Just that it's done.

edited 23rd Jul '11 7:05:39 PM by shimaspawn

Yea, so how do you do that? The moment the audience sees or gets a description of the character, they can decide for themselves just how attractive said character is.

But the audience doesn't matter at all. What they decide be it to side with the author or not doesn't matter. All that matters is that they are informed that a character is supposed to be attractive by the work itself.

So ANY character that has In-Universe attractiveness.

Any character that we are told is attractive In-Universe by the narrative. Just looks and body language don't count. We need to be told.

Alright, how exactly would this work for non-literature?

Dialogue or voice over narration pointing out a character is attractive rather than just people reacting to them as attractive.

Your definition is a lot different than the trope description, most of the examples and playing with page which basically seem to describe this trope as a character who doesn't live up to being as exceptionally attractive as the story makes them out to be.