We should cut this.: What The Hell Hero.Real Life

Really.

Fight smart, not fair.

A trope involving moral issues having a real life section? What could possibly be wrong with that?

Nuke it with extreme prejudice - Permanent Red Link Club level prejudice. One of the most blatant troll bait pieces I've seen... and I haven't even clicked the link.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Hmm, I did look at it, out of morbid curiousity, and I was actually pleasantly surprised. A small handful of examples, none of them all that controversial, and very little natter. The George Washington and My Lai examples in particular seemed to have generated less debate and arguing than I would have expected.

I was expecting to post a me-too to the "nuke it from orbit" suggestion, but actually, I'm going neutral on this one.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Some of the examples are of RL people giving other RL people What the Hell, Hero? reactions (rather than us giving the reaction), so those examples don't strike me as being a problem insofar that they're not our subjective opinion, at least.

Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)

The examples:

• The infamous Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but finished up after six days after one of Dr. Zimbardo's grad students took one look at the project and what it had resulted in and chewed him out over it. Zimbardo later noted that, of all the participants (on the 'guard' side at least) and other observers who had been brought in, she was the first to raise any kind of moral objection about it. The study provided clear evidence for one of the most influential theories of institutional aggression, but still.
  • The grad student who stopped the experiment, Christina Maslach, married Dr. Zimbardo.
  • More concerning is that the original hypothesis of the experiment was that 'Germans are more likely to commit atrocities under the orders of authority.' (to paraphrase). If you suggested this sort of stuff today they'd throw you out of the profession.
  • To be fair to the other observers they saw it when it was earlier in the experiment when thinkings were only starting to get bad.

Good example: one of the researcher's associates chewed him out over it. All the sub-bullets are Natter, though.

• At the end of The American Revolution, George Washington had to give a What The Hell, Hero? speech to his entire officer corps. The Congress had not paid them in months, and they doubted Congress ever would ... unless they marched on Philadelphia. Washington's speech, part Dare To Be Badass, part It Has Been an Honor, and part guilt trip was classic, and the conspiracy to establish a military dictatorship collapsed.
  • He probably should have also delivered a What The Hell speech to Congress as well. Not paying the corps for months on end is inexcusable and the corps are perfectly justified in how they felt.

Good Example, but the sub-bullet is Natter.

• Lane Kiffin brought hope to the Tennessee Volunteer football program, only to leave them after one year. The riot on campus was... inspiring...
  • And now he's caught even more flak for using Orange Pride as a front for his illicit recruiting practices.

Unclear: Who is Lane Kiffin, what did he do, and how is this a WTHH moment? Who called him out on whatever he did?

• J. Edgar Hoover of all people was against Franklin D Roosevelt's decision to place Japanese-Americans in internment camps. For background, Hoover was something of a racist.
  • There's a line between being a racist and losing the moral highground to the institution that gave us Unit 731

As written, it's Even Evil Has Standards; there's no mention of him actually confronting FDR and WTHH requires an actual confrontation, not just personal disapproval. The sub-bullet is Natter.

• "In any county, in any state of these United States, the District Attorney's office will always contest the release of a convicted prisoner (even if due to exoneration by new evidence)."

That's both factually incorrect (They don't always contest it), and not an example. Who is getting the scolding? Who is delivering it? Where is the WTHH moment?

• "The No Gun Ri Massacre during the Korean War and the the My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War, in which US troops intentionally, and brutally, killed large numbers of civilians.
  • The My Lai victims were all woman, infants and children, and elderly. Many were raped, tortured, shot or locked in huts that were set afire. The brutality was so horrifying some soldiers refused to participate,and one eventually shot himself out of guilt . A scout helicopter witnessed the massacre from above, causing the pilot and crew to land and attempt to rescue as many people as they could (likely thinking this trope the whole time). They later received medals for their heroics. Only one person was prosecuted and given a life sentence, but that ended up getting reduced to only a few months.
  • The helicopter crew, lead by Hugh Thompson remain the only soldiers to receive medals for threatening to open fire on their own side.

All of that, and the WTHH is hidden in the third-level bullet point.

• The Drudge Report gave details of Prince Harry's military service in Afghanistan. This forced him to end his tour of duty early. The Ministry of Defense pointed out, in remarkably restrained tones, that they publicity endangered everyone around Harry, as well as Harry himself. It probably says something about Britain that those facts were listed in precisely that order.

Good example.

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So: seven examples.

Three don't seem to have a WTHH moment, or at least, don't mention it,

One that has a WTHH moment but it isn't mentioned until a second-level sub-bullet,

Two that are good examples, but Nattered up,

One that's good, with no Natter.

edited 4th Sep '11 6:49:25 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

So, then, should the page be kept and the bad examples simply deleted? As long as we limited it to Real Life people calling other Real Life people out, the examples are correct and not a problem, but the page is still natter-bait by its very nature.

Lane Kiffin is a college football coach, and he's theoretically being called out by the fanbase of the team that he coached for one year for, well, ditching them after only one year for a better job. Sounds like it was written by a bitter fan, to be honest - coaches and players that leave like that always get a poor reception when they return to their former haunts, and it's more than a little hypocritical. More fans would do the same thing in the same position than they'd care to admit.

Even with the examples capable of being cleaned up, though, here's my issue - we dance a very thin line when we allow Real Life figures to be called hero or villain. One person would look at those examples and say that each are an example of What the Hell, Hero?... and another would look at them and say that they're all examples of Even Evil Has Standards. And I would be just as quick to vote for a nuke/permalock on a Real Life section of the latter (which specifically says "No real life examples" on it).

Whether or not any given example is just, I feel like it looks like the wiki passes a value judgment on those. I don't like it; it makes me feel uncomfortable that we start actually gauging real-world morality rather than noting morality in a work itself. I think it's better off to wash our hands of it all.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Only because of those who mistake this for Moral Dissonance. WTHH is about the hero being called out; it's just frequently mistaken for being about them doing something to be called out on.

edited 4th Sep '11 5:35:19 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

I agree that calling real life figures "hero" or "villain" isn't a good idea, but are we necessarily doing that here? After all, What the Hell, Hero? can occur (or at least has some examples where it occurs) to characters who aren't necessarily heroes per se.

I wouldn't object to cutting this page, though.

edited 4th Sep '11 9:07:26 PM by nrjxll

Yeah, we are. It specifically says that this trope is for heroic characters getting called out. It's not just in the name, it's in the description (similarly, Even Evil Has Standards requires a villain by default).

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Personally I think we need a broader Calling The Man Out on stuff they have done trope for those not clearly defined as hero or villain.

edited 4th Sep '11 9:17:18 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

And we may want a separate TRS thread for misuse of WTHH - I think I occasionally see it used as a troper meme to comment on characters' actions, which is a double dose of no-no.

It does look like this trope needs some fixing and a supertrope. I'm fine with cutting this page now - if we really want to keep these examples, they can go on the morality-neutral supertrope, assuming one is needed.