Line #23 Main/Detournement


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2	[[caption-width-right:159:[[BlatantLies Smokey says...]]]]
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4	Détournement ("rerouting" or "hijacking" in French) is a form of {{Parody}} in which existing material--especially advertising, {{Public Service Announcement}}s, {{Very Special Episode}}s and [[AnAesop Aesops]] of the more {{Anvilicious}} or paranoid sort--is co-opted or repurposed for a message different from (or better yet, ''completely opposite'' to) the one it was originally intended to give.
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6	The Trope Namer is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International Situationist International]] movement, a French Marxist movement focused on the effects of mass alienation through cultural control. They asserted that people within a mass culture were manipulated by a constant mass-media / government / "religion of spectacle" proposed by Guy Debord in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle "Society of the Spectacle."]] Detournement was one way of bringing modern art into politics, since they rejected any 20th century art that removed itself from the politics of its time.
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8	Not to be confused with {{Denouement}}. See also GagDub and GagSub.
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10	!!Examples:
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14	[[folder: {{Film}}]]
15	* Teaser material for the movie ''Film/MeanGirls'' involves [=PSAs=] about the grave issues of teenage life, with a mean twist:
16	--> '''Gretchen:''' Even in fancy countries like the United States and England, ''seven'' out of ten girls have a negative body image.
17	--> '''Regina:''' Who cares? Six of those girls are right.
18	* [[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321715/ ''Le grand Détournement'']] is a 72 minute-long French film made of extracts of many Warner Bros. films. The story is more or less a parody of ''Film/CitizenKane'', in which two journalists investigate why Georges Abitbol, "the classiest man on Earth", said ''monde de merde'' before dying. The alternative title ''La classe américaine'' means that this movie is also a tribute to the American films that director Creator/MichelHazanavicius watched in his youth (those films "taught" him how to make a movie). The cast of this film includes Creator/JohnWayne, Creator/BurtLancaster, Creator/DustinHoffman, Creator/RobertRedford, Creator/PaulNewman, Creator/OrsonWelles, Creator/LanaTurner, Creator/HenryFonda, Creator/RobertMitchum, Creator/CharlesBronson, [[Creator/JimmyStewart James Stewart]], Music/ElvisPresley, Music/FrankSinatra, Creator/SpencerTracy, Creator/LaurenBacall, [[Music/{{DeanMartin}} Dino]], and Creator/ClarkGable.
19	* Rather understandably, the films of Guy Debord, the founder of the Situationist International.
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22	[[folder: LiveActionTV]]
23	* ''Series/{{The Boys\|2019}}'': In "Cherry", Translucent is being held prisoner in an abandoned restaurant, and Hughie Campbell sees a poster showing a baby covered in spaghetti sauce and the title ''Keep Your Hands Clean''. At first it looks like he will wash his hands of this mess and do a runner like Translucent is trying to convince him to do, but it actually inspires him to turn Translucent into LudicrousGibs, likely because it reminded him of his own experience being splattered by his girlfriend who was accidentally killed by another superhero.
24	* Any MTV interviews handed over to Music/WeirdAlYankovic for his "Al TV" specials get cut-and-pasted into absolutely bozo exchanges that make the celebrities in them look like complete idiots or lunatics.
25	** Old educational films were edited into wacky shorts for ''Series/TheWeirdAlShow'' as well.
26	** In a similar format, [=MTV2=] UK's "Ginger Bloke" shorts, where MTV interviews are cut-and-pasted to have the Ginger Bloke mocking them to their faces, or otherwise bizarre exchanges.
27	** ''Series/TheSoup'' does this as well, with results like Music/MileyCyrus being portrayed as a vampire.
28	* This is half the purpose of ''Series/TheDailyShow'' and ''Series/TheColbertReport''. More ''The Colbert Report''. Jon Stewart has said in interviews that he and his crew try very hard not to distort the message of anything they put on air unless it is clearly intended to be farcical.
29	** In general, when ''The Daily Show'' wanted to undercut something on political grounds (as opposed to when it was simply incomprehensible), they used a variation of this trope: [[StartMyOwn making their own "version"]], and [[StylisticSuck doing it very poorly]].
30	* Sometimes happened in ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', especially when it was on Creator/ComedyCentral.
31	* ''Series/NotTheNineOClockNews''
32	** They did this with the rather threatening British television licence PSA campaign using the slogan "Get a TV licence - it's cheaper than a fine"; their parody showed Creator/TheBBC instead staging plane crashes for people that didn't pay their licence fee and then having their houses bulldozed, with the slogan "Get a TV licence -- it's cheaper than a funeral".
33	** They were also fond of mucking about with news footage: for instance the Queen inspecting soldiers on a Commonwealth visit being presented as her trying to identify the man who stole her handbag from a police line-up.
34	* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. In "Beauty & the Beasts" a road safety poster behind Buffy says ''Most Women Aren't Attracted To Dead Guys'', a VisualPun referring to Buffy's vampire boyfriend Angel.
35	* ''Series/DoctorWho''. In "Oxygen", the MonsterOfTheWeek are artificially-intelligent spacesuits which kill anyone they can get their gloves on. Bill Potts gives a bitter laugh on seeing a poster: LOOK AFTER YOUR SMARTSUIT AND IT WILL LOOK AFTER YOU.
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38	[[folder: WebAnimation]]
39	* The infamous WebVideo/GIJoePSAs take on the AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle shorts from ''Franchise/GIJoe'', where the sound is overdubbed with bewildering dialogue and a [[BrokenAesop Broken]] or completely absent {{Aesop}}.
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42	[[folder: WebOriginal]]
43	* This often happens with ''ComicBook/ChickTracts'' - a somewhat popular pursuit is to take one and replace the dialogue so that it gives the exact opposite message, the original message in even more {{anvilicious}} terms, or [[http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=135 something completely different]].
44	* The webcomic ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'', which uses stills from the ''Star Wars'' films to tell a story of a group of tabletop gamers improvising the films' plots. It tells a story as wildly different from the original films as possible, while still being constrained to actual screenshots.
45	* The Snuggie Cult adverts all over Website/YouTube.
46	%%* Occasionally, YoutubePoop.
47	* Photoshop Phriday on Website/SomethingAwful.
48	* 4chan makes an online industry of taking comics, especially ones intended to instruct the young, and rewrite the dialogue. [[NotSafeForWork Be warned...]]
49	* French WebVideo/{{Mozinor}}, who often pays homage to aforementioned movie "Le Grand Détournement". [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IauYuPExXZE Hugh!Salut!]]
50	* Some of the earliest viral videos on Website/YouTube -- arguably what put the site on the map -- were the ones that simply edited select shots from movies into fake trailers that made them out to be [[GenreShift a completely different kind of film]], like the one that made ''Film/TheShining'' look like a family comedy.
51	* One DrugsAreBad segment from ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' got repurposed and inverted into [[http://stardrugs.ytmnd.com/ this]] Website/{{YTMND}}.
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54	[[folder: WesternAnimation]]
55	* ''WesternAnimation/SpaceGhostCoastToCoast'' rearranged whatever his guests said to make it look like everyone was as crazy as WesternAnimation/SpaceGhost. It's safe to say that Ghost Planet, no, that entire [[TheVerse Universe]], is {{Cloudcuckooland}}.
56	* The climax of the early WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck short ''Daffy Duck in Hollywood'' has Daffy creating an insanely goofy movie by editing newsreel clips -- actually live-action Warner Bros. stock footage -- together and giving them absurd voiceovers/soundtracks. For instance, a zoo lion proclaims "Motion pictures are your best entertainment!" and jitterbug music underscores an elegant waltz. Some might say that Daffy Duck made the first YouTubePoop.
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Context Main / Detournement