Rename (alt titles crowner 5/10): Everybody Remembers The Stripper

The page Everybody Remembers the Stripper has problems. It has a long list of examples, but most of them are simply tropers pointing out a scene they found sexy. Basically, it has become an arbitrary list of sex and nudity in fiction. Well, it's hardly the first trope to become a "list of things somebody finds hot" either.

I think it would really help to either limit this to in-universe examples, or to remove the examples entirely. Thoughts please?

Me, I'd prefer cutting it. I know we catalogue audience reactions, but this specific audience reaction doesn't seem worth keeping.

I'm aware this is just my personal opinion, though. An Example Sectionectomy might be a good idea.

Hmmm, this is just asking for Trope Decay.

Not sure what should be done.

Is this even a Troper Tales of memorable sexy scenes or is this more of a Just for Fun Warp That Summary page? Because really - who thinks of Ripley stripping as the most memorable scene from Alien? Or remembers Black Swan as being "something about ballet"?

Some of these entries are openly ironic ("See, that's the thing. V for Vendetta wasn't about a lesbian. It was about Natalie Portman's panty shot") but it's hard to tell the difference.

edited 20th Mar '12 6:31:52 AM by Routerie

Nothing wrong with the page that a good pruning wouldn't fix.

I think the real problem is, a while ago, someone went through and "de-natterfied" a lot of the entries into horribly generic forms. That seemed to encourage the "I thought this scene was sexy" entries as oppoesed to the "the first thing I think of is skin" entries.

Did a bit of pruning. Anyone more familiar with anime and manga want to tackle that section?

Honestly, I think there is a perfectly reasonable objective trope here related to Distracted by the Sexy, where a character gets distracted by something else and causing them to miss the important details (sometimes invoked with Show Some Leg). Making it a YMMV trope with examples is just asking for editor opinion and not actual general audience opinion.

That is a trope, but as you say, it's Distracted by the Sexy. It has nothing to do with this page, which only covers audience reactions to fanservice.

If we're going to prune the page rather than cut it, should we begin by removing all examples written with respect to someone yet to see the movie? Stuff like "If early hype was to be believed," "behind the scenes example" and "before it even began filming"? And stuff like The Seven Year Itch, The Unborn and Hounddog, which are about media coverage or Sex Sells rather than the film itself? And things like "the attractive cast" or "this girl dressed as a princess throughout" which aren't about specific fanservice scenes?

I would argue The Seven Year Itch and Hounddog would crossover with Sex Sells, rather than belong exclusively to it. Agreed with the rest, though.

edited 20th Mar '12 7:18:41 PM by Freezer

Wow. I just read some of the examples, and I've gotta say... this article sucks. It's literally just a bunch of people saying "hey, remember that scene from movie X where Y gets naked? That was the best part!" or worse, "it was the only memorable thing about the movie!" I don't think it's salvageable; it's not really the kind of thing that warrants an article even if the examples didn't suck. Simply put, this page needs to die.

I say it's a legit reaction, but should only list In-Universe examples.

Or we could expand it beyond the fanservice scenes.

I think there is a trope here... barely. What I see is that this is a Fanservice trope, where the specific form of fanservice is the insertion of a memorable character or scene, one that logically follows the events of the story but is not dramatically necessary. I think that could be fairly high on the objectivity scale. What I'm going to do right now is look for existing tropes that would be related to such a refinement of the definition.

Looking at the Fanservice index, I see the following tropes that would appear to be clear subtropes:

• Bathtub Scene
• The Item Number
• Ms. Fanservice
• Mr. Fanservice
• Shower Scene
• Wet Sari Scene
• You Can Leave Your Hat On

edited 20th Mar '12 10:17:54 PM by pawsplay

We should also distinguish Memorable Fanservice, if we want to list that at all, from Overshadowed by Controversy. The preteen rape scene from Hounddog wasn't fanservice, and the rape scene from Evil Dead didn't even make the final cut. Brokeback Mountain was sex but not fanservice (the camera did not actually show anything) and Blame It On Rio claims the memorable bit was not the fanservice itself but the actress's age.

What about a general trope about a minor part of a work overshadowing the whole?

Yes.

As in yes you agree, or we already have such a trope?

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:27:36 PM by DragonQuestZ

I've never seen a trope like that. Making a more general trope might be a good idea.

I like the idea of a more general trope. For one thing, I'd rather not showcase the scene from Hounddog in an unnecessarily specific subtrope, for instance.

I'm pretty sure Everybody Remembers the Stripper is not supposed Everybody Remembers The Stripper And Absolutely Nothing Else. Having other memorable scenes definitely shouldn't disqualify something. I think it should qualify even if the stripper scene wasn't even really fanservicey but was there for a different reason, like that terrifying cat lady/pole dancer in Star Trek III The Search For Spock.

Being shocking or particularly memorable is a good reason for the stripper to stick out. I think it would also help if the stripper wasn't important to the rest of the plot or was even completely extraneous, but people like that part of the movie anyway because it's fun. On the IP discussion thread, I brought up the example of the one in The Great Mouse Detective, which I think fits this trope perfectly. It shocks you because it's a kid's movie, you like it because the song is fun, and it serves no purpose whatsoever except maybe so Dawson will be Distracted by the Sexy for a while. The scene is even discussed on the page summary on This Very Wiki, complete with a link to the video.

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:45:22 PM by condottiera

I consider the Great Mouse Detective a weak example, because I didn't find the scene memorable, and similar scenes are found in many Disney movies ("He's a Tramp But I Love Him" springs to mind).

@Dragon Quest Z: We have several "Everyone Remembers X" tropes, but they mostly concern spoilers and plot points, It Was His Sled, All There Is To Know About The Crying Game and the like. "Stripper" is the only like trope that covers fanservice.

^ The latter is about fanservice but those tropes are otherwise pretty distinct... IWHS is "was a spoiler, but now well-known" (e.g. Vader is Luke's father), ATITNATCG is "the only part of the work people remember" (e.g. soylent green is people), and ERTS is "fanservice is the most memorable part of a work" (e.g. Sharon Stone's leg-uncross-cross in Basic Instinct).

edited 23rd Mar '12 4:41:20 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Huh... always thought this trope was something like Never Live It Down, the fanservice-specific series version.

edited 23rd Mar '12 4:40:14 PM by Servbot

That description also applies to But You Screw One Goat and Never Live It Down, which as I understand can apply to both in-universe and audience reaction instances.

As per the past several posts, it's safe to say that we already have a number of tropes concerning in-universe variants such things. This trope (just like that other one) is about popular perceptions regarding a work.

edit: just cleaned up the Anime section a little. I may have been slightly lenient on account of having discovered several of these works thanks to this effect, along with a couple others

edited 24th Mar '12 6:01:14 PM by EnragedFilia

I would suggest that if you've not seen Basic Instinct in a decade, the one thing you'll remember of it was Sharon Stone uncrossing her legs.