Examples Bordering on Testosterone Poisoning? NEW CLOCK: Rated M For Manly

I was strolling around the wiki and stumbled across Rated M for Manly, where I wondered how do we precisely draw the line between this and Testosterone Poisoning. The impression I get is that it covers both dumb manliness to works with "manly" (dramatics traditionally appealing to men) elements. The article notes that it's "played seriously" rather than for laughs.

It's rather weird that we lump works as different as Ashita No Joe or Vagabond with Gurren Lagann (which has an enormous portion of nattery materials referencing shades and drills) or Cracked's Max Fightmaster. To draw a parallel with the concept of "awesome": there's "awesome" like Hannibal's strategy at the Battle of Cannae, there's "awesome" like a ninja T-Rex wrestling Jimmy Page.

Maybe it's meant to be a wide trope, but I just thought that probably it can be more specific. As it is it seems like a rather vague concept that can be used to pimp certain works.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:21:16 AM by Catalogue

There is definitely a lot of gushing and a lot of natter. Of the examples that don't a huge amount don't even have text. I'm inclined to remove those.

edit: The Real Life section has to go. Nothing in that section is suitably over the top.

TO more directly address what you said, yes it is a broad trope. However, there needs to be a distinction between works that generally appeal to males and works with gravelly voiced hard drinking badasses that blow everything up.

edited 5th Aug '11 12:49:13 PM by FlyingV

Bump.

So, the only difference between these two is Played for Laughs versus Played for Drama, or vice versa?

If so, I don't see why we need both, instead of a playing with page. I would say merge and keep one of the names as a redirect... I think Rated M for Manly is the better name, myself, but...

Unless it's a bigger difference?

edited 23rd Aug '11 6:52:43 PM by USAF713

You bring up a good point. Are there any other tropes that are distinguished this way?

Juggling Loaded Guns is a Played for Laughs version of the other gun saftey tropes.

That's a specific form of that trope, though. This is almost the exact same thing, except one was being played straight and one was being played ironically.

I don't know, I don't think we'd lose anything significant by merging them and noting that, yes, this can and has been parodied...

Edit: Oh, so it's not just juggling guns. Well, I would probably make the same case there, although the unintended version is more the author just failing at research...

edited 23rd Aug '11 8:13:24 PM by USAF713

The author doesn't have to fail at research, it can lead to I Just Shot Marvin in the Face, which is always taken seriously.

Played for Laughs vs Played for Drama is just a concise way of comparing the two. Its more nunanced than that. Rated M for Manly is supposed to be the Spear Counter Part to Chick Flick. Badasses blowing stuff up and beating each other up, but its supposed to be serious and within reason. NOT over the top.

An example is Cowboy Bebop. Its about mercenaries and Mafia, guns and explosions, Miss Fanservice but none of its ridiculous. Give the setting its realistic.

Testostrone Poisoning is a parody. Its not trying to appeal to the male demographic, its trying to be ''funny'. THIS is over the top. Gurren Lagann, 'mannlyness that distorts reality' belongs there, not in this trope.

I recommend an example clean up and tonning down the description. 'Extreme manlyness' to 'manly'

Huh... based on the names, I would've put that the other way around

The Kamia character from Gurren Lagann would use the line Rated M for Manly, and the occasions I check out a Rated M for Money video game usually feels like it could be the same thing. Both are ridiculous to me, but that is YMMW, and so is funny.

What about naming the so-called "realistic" one Guy Flick, as a Spear Counterpart to Chick Flick, since that's what you said it is?

This has come up several times before. The tropes are exactly identical in premise as played straight versus for comedy is not a distinction and I can't think of any example of one that wouldn't fit the other trope. Anyone who is looking to play "manliness" to the extreme is likely knowing exactly what they are invoking. "I aint got time to bleed," for example.

If we were to repurpose a name (generally a bad idea due to likelihood of misuse, unless the name is an existing term that needs clarification) Rated M For Manly should be wildly redefined to make the "Guy Flick" premise clear.

edited 25th Aug '11 12:39:19 AM by KJMackley

Yeah, I don't see a difference between the two either: a merge would make sense.

Guy Flick for Rated M for Manly is something I can get behind. If I was looking for a guy flick I wouldn't like a movie that made fun of guy flicks. I will again suggest rewriting Rated M for Manly to make this clear. That would halt missue. A note on both pages would help

This was the impression I had, but if true it apparently needs a rewrite.

And if not true, then it really needs a rewrite if not getting chopped up.

If nothing else, a merge would make sense because of how often the two get confused. It'd be much easier if we just had one over-the-top manliness page, and do a soft split on said page to note whether or not it was played serious.

But how easy is it to tell that? Some can't tell of Duke Nukem is a parody or played straight.

Well, it doesn't help in Duke's case that he's been played both ways (the pre-3D entries were much more parodic than later ones). My guess is that you'd have to split up the examples to be per entry in the series.

Which is why merging would simplify it.

We should still have a Guy Flick trope, though it would probably be easier to start from scratch in the YKTTW. When I looked at the examples in Rated M for Manly, a lot of them sounded over the top.

That is partially a result of most of the examples being poorly written. Natter and "Oh my God how come nobody's mentioned [X] yet".

Really? In that case we might not need YKTTW.

Sorry, I was inactive for a while.

So, there is a near-consensus interpretation that Rated M for Manly is when "excessive manliness" is played straight, and Testosterone Poisoning is when it is used ironically/as a parody. This is clearer, but:

• How do we determine whether it is used as a parody?
• How do we determine whether it is excessive? Many of the examples are not exactly that over the top.
• If one of it was meant as a Spear Counterpart to Chick Flick, do we actually need over the topness as a criterion?

We don't need over the topness for this trope. If we remove that criteron, than the tropes are pushed far enough apart to avoid confusion.

What kind of distinction do you propose?

Hmmm. Seems to me it's easier to split it to "excessive manliness" and "guy flicks", but the latter is a bit broad...

Didn't read through this, but I wanted to point out, pretty much every advertising example is just plain deadpan parody.