Values Dissonance/Resonance Cleanup

This is the official thread for Values Dissonance, Deliberate Values Dissonance, Fair for Its Day, and Values Resonance. A 20-year waiting period has been placed on the “values” tropes, due to various misuse and shoehorning.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 5th 2023 at 9:07:15 AM

YMMV.The Simpsons S 4 E 15 I Love Lisa

• Values Dissonance: Chief Wiggum gives Ralph some advice to get a girl that isn't interested in him (in this case Lisa), telling him he must insist until she gives in. While this is indicated to be wrong in the episode itself, such a comment nowadays would be seen as encouraging stalking or harassment, and would be treated as an outright villainous action instead of some well-intentioned but bad advice.

Is this really an example though? It feels like it reads "bad thing isn't treated as bad enough in the 90's"

YMMV.Diary Of A Wimpy Kid:

• Values Dissonance: Greg being humiliated for accidentally entering the women's restroom in Rodrick Rules becomes more controversial to modern viewers considering how much of a taboo subject "Bathroom Panic" has become since 2016.
• Values Resonance: Chris Carney winning the anti-smoking poster contest, yet smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is more relevant due to the vaping controversy.

Thoughts?

Those are both nonsense. They don't really explain anything.

What was the consensus on including examples of Values Dissonance that don't fall under the waiting period because they rely on different standards of countries, rather than time periods? Like "Bob's behavior is seen as acceptable in Country A, but deemed immature in Country B."

Was the 20-year waiting period decided by any chance on July 7th? Cause I can't find heads or tails of when or where it was decided. I'm not arguing against it, I'm just wondering where the decision is.

If it's still bad advice in the narrative then I'd say it doesn't really count.

Big no on that first one because the entire point of the "bathroom panic" controversy is that trans women are not men entering the women's room, and there's no indications of transphobia in that scene. The second point also doesn't really hold up; more kids are vaping than smoking, but most of them aren't doing legitimate anti-vaping campaigns.

I think only the time period dissonance requires a waiting period; dissonance between countries at the same time period seems okay.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 25th 2020 at 9:36:11 AM

I'm still waiting on an answer for the example I presented.

It was decided on the No Recent Examples thread, and it's currently listed on the page with a waiting period of 20 years.

So those examples should be cut, since the first book came out in 2007.

I'd say cut that example. Wiggum was supposed to be giving bad advice in that scene, and the episode shows that Lisa really didn't appreciate Ralph's continued attempts to be her boyfriend after she told him she wasn't interested.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Jul 25th 2020 at 6:39:43 AM

From YMMV.The Nostalgia Critic. The first episode came out in 2007 so all the time-period related ones have to go, but I'm curious about the cultural dissonance examples.

• Values Dissonance:
  • Aside from the bigger problems in the Sailor Moon review, he snides that Serena is “your typical blonde Japanese girl”. While not mentioning the show, “white blonde” Japanese characters have been discussed.
  • Being a more secular country than America, UK viewers are often confused by the lampshading that the Santa Christ concept is apparently offensive blasphemy when they see it as a harmless joke.
  • Another UK based one: in his review of Garfield the critic gets upset and offended that John would put Garfield outside. The phenomenon of cats being strictly house pets is much less common in the UK (thanks to no declawing and lack of animals dangerous to cats) where it's often seen as cruel not to let your cat go outside regularly.
  • As mentioned under Author's Saving Throw, the critic used to use a lot of derogatory gay jokes and language (calling something bad or weak "gay" etc.). In the last few years this has become way less accepted than it was, to the extent it can feel quite jarring to go back and watch an early video only to hear Doug asking who "gayed up his Nintendo games?!"
  • Not to mention he used to repeatedly make fun of He-Man for being Ambiguously Gay. This looks incredibly uncomfortable in today's homophobia aware society.
  • The first "Hottest Women" list, with perving over fourteen year old girls (though he'd do that again), stalking jokes, and when he's finding Harley Quinn sexy, relating to the Joker instead of her. Doug's tried to apologize for some of it, with his next (for acknowledged Money, Dear Boy reasons) two Hottest Women lists talking more about personalities than looks, and when Critic talks about "Mad Love" a few years later, praises the Joker/Harley relationship for being such a relatable depiction of Domestic Abuse.
  • In the first few years he used "retarded" a lot, and his "even the mentally ill aren't that stupid" line in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is pretty wince-worthy. Later on there was a lot more succint explanations on what mental illness felt like, which for obvious reasons disabled/ill fans related to more (though casual ableism and portraying psychotic behavior/breakdowns for comedy is still a recurring trend).

This example on YMMV.Metroid Samus Returns has been on there for a good while. I knew there was something off about it, but I never really bothered with it until I thought about it again.

• Values Resonance: The Metroid series always prided itself on Samus' status as a supreme asskicking female protagonist who was never prone to You Go, Girl! moments or deference to male authority figures until Metroid: Other M. With the rise of strong, independent heroines in mainstream media^note such as in Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Wonder Woman (2017), 2017 was a very good time for Samus Returns to resurrect the franchise and make a point of how strong, independent and empowering Samus is as a character, all while treating her gender as a mere afterthought rather than something that defined her character and role.

Yea this looks like misuse. It's supposed to be the values of an old work being better valued today, but it looks like its just gushing about having powerful women in video games today, something that is not new by any stretch of the imagination.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 25th 2020 at 12:27:34 PM

A lot of that just sounds like "Doug used a joke that people wouldn't think is funny today".

I cut most of the "bad joke" examples anyway because they're all too recent. Any thoughts on the culture-based entries? The first entry in particular, since it relies on a now-dead link and doesn't explain the relevance of Japanese culture contrasted from American perception. I'm also suspicious of the second entry because I haven't even seen a lot of American viewers take offense at Santa Christ.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 25th 2020 at 11:45:59 AM

This is on Lady and the Tramp:

• Jim Dear's wild excitement about the fact that his newborn child is a boy isn't exactly politically correct by modern feminist standards. The 2019 version remedies this by making the baby a girl and replacing Jim's "It's a boy!" ecstasy with him gushing about how beautiful she is.

Apparently, being excited about your baby boy is now sexist for enforcing the patriarchy.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 25th 2020 at 12:57:16 PM

Is he wildly thankful that he had a son specifically and not a girl? Otherwise it just sounds like a parent being excited to learn their baby's sex.

...That's some Straw Feminist parody shit, what the hell? Did people actually care that much that Tramp had the audacity, the balls, to be happy he had a son? Or is this just another example of something being pointlessly over-corrected?

Either way though, what the fuck

I think the Garfield example can stay, since there is a significant divide the US and UK over whether letting cats roam around outside is considered safe or not.

I think the Santa Christ example can stay, since the UK is a more secular country than the States. Although, I forget if the show itself ever called Santa Christ blasphemous or not.

I found an archived version of the page cited by the Sailor Moon example, but I'm not really sure what point it adds for the entry. I think the original joke the Critic was making was about how rare a blonde Japanese person is, and the article is about how hair color doesn't equate to ethnicity in Anime? But the article is more about how Americans think Anime characters look white, which I don't think was Doug's point? I know that review got a lot of flack, but it's been ages since I last saw it.

I'd say cut the Sailor Moon entry just to make sure.

Speaking as an American, I never had issue with Santa Christ.

...Then again, I'm also an Atheist.

The entry and another entry on the page (Offending the Creator's Own) suggests they got flak from Christians about Santa Christ, which I've personally never seen but probably did happen at some point. There are one or two moments where Santa Christ gets called blasphemous in the show (the Son of the Mask review) but the entry seems to suggest it's about the dissonance in fan reaction.

It was actually referring to Lady's owners' child, but the point does remain that it seems a bit off...

I've removed the Lady and the Tramp example, linking here in the edit reason.

Edited by fragglelover on Jul 27th 2020 at 12:11:39 PM

There's a weird bit on YMMV.Polandball that doesn't seem to fit into cultural or time differences, but more about the differences between certain website cultures?

• Values Dissonance: The users and comics on Facebook Polandball are highly prone to unironic ultra nationalism, while Reddit Polandball users tend to mock and parody such tendencies. Poe's Law indeed.

^ ...Poe's Law? Misaimed Fandom?

The same basic concept is explained in more depth under Broken Base and Poe's Law.

X Many: Samus Returns is a remake of Metroid II for the Game Boy. And Samus wasn't exactly billed as an ass-kicking female in official Nintendo media in her early days. In fact, she was like most video game characters: she didn't have a personality or backstory at all, and you wouldn't have known her gender at all unless you beat the first game within a certain amount of time, or could afford to see it in a magazine.

Yeah, there's more than a bit of historical revisionism there. It is nice that Samus wasn't a wishy-washy twit in her last game, but that example really overstates the case in many ways.

P.S. Samus Returns also sold very poorly. Probably not as bad as Other M, but it wasn't a financial success.

Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab on Jul 31st 2020 at 3:54:41 AM