Misused: Irony As She Is Cast

The description of Irony as She Is Cast is solidly about an unskilled character being played by a known talented actor, and this contrast is recognized by the fan (it's part of the role's appeal). However, my wick check found that this is being misused for any time a character contrasts their performer.

In the "correct" category I also included other skills like driving or martial arts, although the description is limited to performing arts. (There were also 'inversions' listed where the actor is untalented while their character is talented; those are listed as misuse.)

Irony as She Is Cast Wick Check

Notably, very few examples mentioned that the actor is known for the skill their character is bad at.

Statistics:

1. Correct (character is talented and their actor is not): 15/52: 28.8%
2. Misuse (character contrasts their actor in some other way): 22/52: 42.3%
3. Other misuse: 10/52: 19.2%
4. Other/ZCE: 5/52: 9.6%

Types of misuse:

• A bigot is played by a member of a marginalized group (A Jewish actor plays a Nazi, a gay man plays a homophobe)
• Character's personality or interests contrasts that of their actor (an alcoholic plays a teetotaler, someone with a fear of snakes plays a snake charmer)

Other misuse:

• Contrasts that are so stretchy I don't believe they would have ever come up in the casting process (eg. character is a soulmate, the actor does not believe in them)
• Misplaced Casting Gag entries (character's current role contrasts their previous one)
• Examples that say the performer's talents were underutilized (eg. they only sang one song) but not that the in-universe singing is bad.

Suggested solution/s:

• I think this is because the name is much broader than the trope is: "irony as she is cast" can mean any way the casting is ironic. We could broaden the trope to include all those entries, although I'm iffy of incorporating too much of the actors' personal lives. Those child-bearing examples are weird, for one.
• If the original meaning is meaningful enough to be a subtrope, those examples can be split off.
• Remove the aspect of the actor being known for the skill their character is bad at, since the correct examples don’t mention it anyway.

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 5th 2021 at 9:56:22 AM

Sorry for the wait, ~Synchronicity. We got a thread cleared away, so opened for discussion.

Eesh, yeah, the childbearing examples need to go. Apparently tropers are unaware that acting means pretending to be someone you're not. The nationality ones are also iffy.

I agree that the name is overly broad. Expansion is one idea, but it might be better to split the examples into new tropes.

1. An actor known for their skill in performing arts or technical matters plays a character who is incompetent in same (the current definition).
2. A member of a marginalised group plays a character who oppresses that group.
3. An outspoken actor plays a character with opposite political positions
4. An actor's traits contrast sharply with those of their character

1 and 2 are pretty sharp; 3 and 4 are a bit fuzzier but probably workable.

If this idea gets enough support, I could see turning Irony as She Is Cast into a supertrope or a disambig, with subtropes like "Talented Actor, Incompetent Character".

Honestly, that name's a lot clearer.

As for the marginalized version: Oppressed Plays Oppressor?

Edited by Berrenta on Apr 16th 2021 at 5:40:44 AM

Expand + rename + cleanup. Do not split.

1-2 are workable as an expanded "ironic casting" supertrope. Probably 3 as well. Items under 4 are hardly worthy of the trivia category (behind the scenes creator stuff) unless there're Word of God statements backing them up.

Questions and comments:

1. When a Jewish actor plays Hitler and it's an intentional choice, it would be Casting Gag although there is irony in the casting, right?
2. Must I assume that Hollywood Tone-Deaf and Bad "Bad Acting" are subtropes of Irony as She Is Cast specifically for poor singing and acting jobs in-universe?
   • If so, why is Irony as She Is Cast Trivia while its subtropes and Casting Gag are proper tropes?
3. "Talented Actor, Incompetent Character" would be a much better name than Irony as She Is Cast which sounds too broad for what it wants to cover.

Edited by eroock on Apr 17th 2021 at 3:51:43 AM

Yes, I think so.

I don't think so, because Hollywood Tone-Deaf and Bad "Bad Acting" are about the 'stock' ways to show Stylistic Suck (akin to Terrible Artist in drawn media); they have nothing to do with the actual skill of the performer. Eg. in the quote for Hollywood Tone-Deaf, the actress for Kate Nasim Pedrad is not a singer, but her character demonstrates being bad at singing by being off-key and all over the place. And the image of Bad "Bad Acting" shows that it can happen when there are no actors involved. They can overlap though as in the Detective Conan example in the wick check.

Scrolling through the old thread that reaffirmed Casting Gag being not-trivia... is Irony as She Is Cast ("different background from actor") analogous to Actor-Shared Background? Or is the intentional irony more important to the trivia-trope?

Actually, can we even assume intent when it comes to this? Actors are all to some degree 'talented', most have at least half-decent singing voices just from being in the industry for some time. Contrast these two 'correct' examples:

1. Trivia.Detective Conan: ": Hollywood Tone-Deaf Conan's Japanese voice actress is the lead singer in the J-pop band Two-MIX."
2. Trivia.Touched By An Angel: "Roma Downey can sing. Monica, her character, cannot."

The former definitely seems intentional, or at least there is 'irony', since she's a lead singer and everything. However, I don't know who Roma Downey is but her wikipedia page doesn't say any history or career in music. Is there any contrast in that?

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 17th 2021 at 9:39:46 AM

TL;DR Why is Casting Gag trivia? I would say Irony as She Is Cast and Actor-Shared Background and are analogous. Irony as She Is Cast seems to be the inverse.

Edited by Tabs on Apr 17th 2021 at 9:07:25 AM

Ah, my bad — this post sums it up

Thanks! Didn't mean to sound dismissive.

A reason to support keeping the "character bad at thing, actor good at thing" (+rename) is that this is probably the most easily noticed. We can assume the majority of examples were intentional since their resumés/credits are available and the casting director ought to know. "Opera singer with a 30-year career and a dozen awards cast as raspy-voiced amateur": great, that has to be 100% intentional. "Actor who smokes plays a character who campaigns against smoking" is more questionable. And "He's a Leo" is I don't have a stronger word for "questionable".

A stronger word I can think of for the Leo bit is "purely irrelevant".

...wait, that's two words. But yeah, it's still counting as definite misuse.

Edited by Berrenta on Apr 19th 2021 at 9:53:10 AM

Back to the two examples I cited though; I definitely agree that intent can be inferred from making Conan tone deaf while his VA is a JPOP singer. But the Touched by an Angel example I am less sure of since it doesn't cite any professional experience or fame in the field.

I am definitely thinking now that "Talented Actor, Incompetent Character" can stand on its own thing. But can the others? (all names tbd)

• "Minority Actor, Bigoted Character"?
• "Actor has opposite beliefs to character"?

Do these have ROCEJ concerns, or go too far in troping actors' personal lives? "Bob Does Not Like Guns, his actor has repeatedly advocated against gun control laws"? The Boys (2019) is one work where the irony of a Jewish actress playing a neo-Nazi was mentioned behind the scenes, but it's not like minorities can't be fascist bigots IRL.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 19th 2021 at 10:55:41 AM

Isn't "Actor's beliefs differ from character" just "Acting", as in, Exactly What It Says on the Tin? While an actor might decline a project because they cannot in good conscience support its message, portraying a character... is rather orthagonal.

I think the Trivia.Touched By An Angel example doesn't have enough evidence/context. If we were doing cleanup, I'd comment out the entry or ask the fact checking thread.

Also doubting a "beliefs" split. It also does feel like we're looking too closely at people's personal lives. I'm seeing a future where it has "character thinks the world is flat and actor does not" and "character loves Timbits while actor doesn't".

Could cases like "wouldn't it be funny if the character played by me, a Tim Hortons endorser, hated Timbits" go in Actor-Inspired Element if the actor confirms it?

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 20th 2021 at 9:07:46 AM

I think this one can work (as Trivia) if they're playing a character bigoted against their own identity. So, for example, a Jew playing a Nazi, or a Chinese person playing a Japanese imperialist, or a gay person playing a homophobe would count. An Apache playing a Nazi probably would not count, because to my knowledge the Nazis were OK with Native Americans. Likewise, a Jew playing a Gentile who isn't portrayed as racist, or a gay person playing a heterosexual who is not homophobic, would not count, because that's just acting. A Jew playing a homophobe would also not count unless that Jew was themselves gay.

Yeah, I don't feel too strongly about this one, I was just thinking about how examples might split.

I would say it can work if the actor is particularly outspoken and the narrative expects us to agree with the character.

So, for example a Christian playing an atheist in a Christian movie would not count, because you need to have someone play the character. An atheist playing a Christian in a Christian movie might count.

There are some edge cases. For example, Miracle on 34th Street is a charming family movie about how wonderful Christmas is and a little girl coming to accept that Santa is real and embrace the Christmas spirit. In the 1994 version, said girl is played by Mara Wilson, who is Jewish and did not celebrate Christmas as a child. Would that count?

The name is definetely a problem. It's like calling The Scrappy "Hated Character". It's a lot broader than it should be.

So we have two big solutions:

1. Rename the Trope. Perhaps to Talented Actor Untalented Character? That isn't that good, but it's a lot clearer.

Pros: Trope is clear and consise, people know what they're getting into.

Cons: We'd need a huge cleanup.

2. Change the Trope definition to be broader.

Pros: No cleanup, Trope can attract more wicks.

Cons: How can we make it so that it doesn't overlap with Casting Gag?

Edited by DookieIdiotNimrod on Apr 20th 2021 at 2:58:53 PM

^ How to make it broader without overlapping it with Casting Gag?

It is not like Judaism and Christianity are polar opposites, so this is probably more akin to the Fake Nationality sub-trivias (Fake Religion). I don't personally think they are all that triviaworthy, but they exist.

FWIW,

Would be a midsized cleanup, not something cripplingly large.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 20th 2021 at 2:07:17 PM

One week bump. How are these for crowner options?

• Expand the trope. If this option is upvoted a separate crowner will be done to finalize what to expand it to, if downvoted the scope of the trope ("talented actor, untalented character") remains the same.
• Rename the trope

Or should we do all the expansion options in one crowner?

Yeah. How about making each "Expand to" its own thing. I can see issues with including too little on a crowner.

There's also the "splitting off the original meaning into its own trope" option...but that would only make sense if the trope was expanded already. I'm also unsure about the rename; if the trope were expanded we wouldn't need to rename it. I think we can decide on those after we decide on the actual scope.

So for crowner 1:

• Expand Irony as She Is Cast to allow "bigoted character, minority actor" examples (mutually exclusive with not expanding)
• Expand Irony as She Is Cast to allow "actor has opposite personal or political beliefs to character" examples (mutually exclusive with not expanding)
• Don't expand; keep the scope of Irony as She Is Cast as "talented actor, untalented character" (mutually exclusive with expanding)

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 27th 2021 at 1:09:18 PM

That works.