
That's the catchphrase of old Uncle Ben
If you missed it, don't worry, they'll say the line
Again, and again, and again!"
A Portmanteau of anvil and delicious, anvilicious describes a writer's and/or director's use of an artistic element, be it line of dialogue, visual motif or plot point, to so unsubtly convey a particular message that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head. The term anvilicious thus qualifies as Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
"Heavy-handed" for the new millennium. Extreme polar opposite of subtlety.
Frequently, the element becomes anvilicious through unnecessary repetition, but true masters can achieve anviliciousness with a single stroke. The easiest way to be anvilicious is through simple cause-and-effect; someone will do something the writers consider "bad" and then something bad happens as a direct result. If the writers prefer not to show the direct consequences of whatever they're crusading for or against, a common alternative is to have a character presented as completely "centred", "unbiased", and "grounded" testify. Surely if this character agrees with something, it must be the right thing to do.
Common in kids' shows, since they're supposedly less aware of subtle nuances.
If the work goes beyond anvilicious into hectoring lectures, then it has become an Author Filibuster. Note that some works are openly intended to hammer home points, and are essentially teaching material in literary form: fairy tales, religious works, and position papers of all sorts may be heavy-handed, but that doesn't make them anvilicious. To achieve that distinction, the reader has to experience the sense that the author is foisting opinions, in the guise of telling you a supposedly entertaining story — and doing it clumsily enough that it becomes uncomfortable or irritating. Similarly, it is not anvilicious only because you disagree with any inherent message.
Which leads us to the deep question: Should authors try to make their Aesops subtle? Or do anvilicious Aesops actually have a good side, i.e. the fact that people immediately see what the author is trying to do with them? There used to be a trope called "Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped", suggesting that at least some are good uses. However, this distinction created the problematic implication that if an anvil didn't "need" to be dropped, then the Aesop was automatically bad, and vice versa. This is not true (Tropes Are Tools, after all), and while it is more likely that you'll find the moral to be good if you agree with it, it's still possible to think that the lack of subtlety hurts the presentation of the moral even if you find it worthwhile.
Remember, this page is about morals and messages that are presented without any subtlety, or at the very least, barely any at all. This is NOT about morals you think are bad or just generally poorly handled, regardless of whether or not they're as such because they are heavy-handed. And it is DEFINITELY NOT a place for you to complain about morals that you dislike.
Compare and contrast Propaganda Piece. See also "Lesson of the Day" Speech, Can't Get Away with Nuthin', Scare 'Em Straight, Glurge, Obviously Evil, Subtlety Failure, And That's Terrible. Black-and-White Morality often results in these kinds of Aesops. Contrast Accidental Aesop for when a work without an intended Aesop/anvil is seen as giving a valid lesson, and Alternate Aesop Interpretation for when audiences see a different lesson than the intended Aesop/anvil.
Not to be confused with the literal Anvil on Head.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
- The Avengers: Some controversy has arisen over a scene in Uncanny Avengers where Havok urges people to not refer to him as a mutant, stating that he abhors the "m-word" and wants people to just recognize that we're all human. Given that mutants are historically positioned as a not-so-subtle metaphor for minorities and LGBT individuals, this has understandably ruffled some feathers, especially since the writer is a straight white guy.
- The graphic novel As the World Burns slams home its belief that all forms of "going green" are complete BS and that renouncing all forms of modern life and returning to the wild is the only way to save the planet.
- And then there's Batman: Fortunate Son, in which Batman has a nigh-psychotic hatred of rock music (particularly punk) because some time in the past, he saw an Expy version of Sid Vicious killing Expy-Nancy Spungen. This leads to the memorable line "Punk is nothing but death and crime... and the rage of a beast!" As crazy as it may seem, the comic actually seems to support Batman's attitude by setting him against Robin, who comes off as Too Dumb to Live because he refuses to believe that his favorite rocker could be a criminal just because he makes enjoyable music. On top of that, the villain (said rocker's manager) did it because he wanted to martyr the guy in order to boost record sales, and ends up falling off a tall building and gets impaled on a cross-shaped fence. What makes this all the more interesting is that the book is fixated on pounding an anvilicious 1950s-style "Rock And Roll Music Is Evil And Will Kill Everyone You've Ever Loved" message in an apparently straight-faced and serious fashion despite being published in 1999.
- Garth Ennis's The Boys will constantly hit you over the head with how superheroes are bad (Especially Marvel superheroes!) but also how good the U.S. Military complex is. Many have gone to nickname the Author Tract as "Garth Ennising" as he is very prone to this trope.
- Evangelical tracts are overt teaching materials by nature (as their purpose is to convert people), but Jack Chick manages to make some of the others look almost subtle, in his merciless attempts to batter home points in a fashion a four-year-old would find obvious.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: An Italian Donald Duck comic from 2013 featuring the Junior Woodchucks features an unsubtle Green Aesop: Huey, Dewey and Louie, exploring an underground, notice some gas pipes and mention how in Duckburg there are less and less of them since they started using more enviroment-friendly energy sources. Then they stop for a panel and ask the readers themselves why aren't they doing the same in real life in the most guilt-inducing way possible.
- Dog Man (Dav Pilkey): Later books are not all too subtle about the "love redeems" message.
- EC Comics: A fair amount of stories are spectacularly unsubtle; "Judgment Day" in particular. A robot civilization with clear different castes for robots with orange casing and robots with blue casing being evaluated for whether or not it's worthy to join The Federation falls short, the two castes mirror "Separate but Equal" very closely, and at the end we see that the evaluator is black.
- In Foreskin Man
, the morality of each individual character is based entirely on an argument for or against circumcision. All the heroes are anti-circumcision "intactivists" while the villains are essentially Captain Planet's Eco-Villains if instead of polluting, they had an obsession with destroying every foreskin in the world. The way that the characters in the story act in the name of circumcision is universally camp and over-the-top, despite orbiting around real-life arguments.
- Harley Quinn Fartacular: Silent Butt Deadly:
- The comic is not subtle about its girl power message, frequently condemning writers from the olden times for their outdated views on women, and also having Harley and Ivy converse about not giving into the patriarchy in the midst of one fight.
- There's nothing wrong with farting, it's something everything does. Harley and Ivy discuss this in one of the first panels of the book and it is reiterated again and again because Harley can't stop her flatulence. At one point they even tie it into a sexism aesop by pointing out that it's socially accepted when men do it, but not women.
- The 1970's Green Lantern/Green Arrow (co-starring Black Canary) series, touching on issues such as xenophobia, racism and drugs, all in a highly unsubtle fashion.
- Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist has a rather grating premise of the title character dealing with unrepentant misogynists, who make up pretty much all of the comic's male characters, and being treated as in the right for assaulting, killing or castrating them.
- Invincible: Rape is bad. End of story. It doesn't matter whether if it's a man doing it, or woman. Both are equally depraved and the victim, no matter the gender, is going to be scarred for life.
- Marvel's delightful Free Comic Book Day offering Iron Man/Thor features Corrupt Corporate Executives with mustache twirling dialogue such as these gems, played 100% straight:
Publicity Representative: Living on Earth is expensive and dangerous! There are pandemic diseases, oppressive laws, and poor people that refuse to be controlled.Extremely Evil Executive: We're elite! We are powerful! Who cares about the rest of them? We are incredibly rich! We have more rights than you!
- The Mighty Thor: A common criticism of Thor (2014) is how heavy handed the feminism is, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the fight between Thor and the Destroyer. Odinson (the original Thor) calls on all the women he suspected of being Thor (which apparently includes every woman he's ever met) to help in the fight when Frigga questions how they'll stop it. Frigga proceeds to shout what may as well be, "girl power!" Many readers also noted that there are no men among the group, even though it would've been pretty easy for Odinson to round some up while finding the Amazon Army, and felt the feminist series even more Anvilicous, at best, and sexist at worst.
- Steve Ditko's Mr. A tales are this trope personified. Characters who think they're in the grey area of morality keep telling themselves they're not fully evil because they're doing a few bad things, Mr. A continuously delivers long-winded speeches about how there's only good and evil while reminding victims that he has no remorse for the fate of evildoers.
- Friends Forever Issue 14 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was about as subtle as having someone roll the magazine up, smack you across the face with it, and yell "DON'T BE RACIST!". Making things worse was that the actual story came with a good dose of the same racist message the moral was against: it was written to address the moral of Dragon Quest which the author felt had a toxic message regarding race
◊, but fans felt the comic unfortunately carried the exact same message
◊.
- While no particular side in the war is implicated as the bad guy in Pride of Baghdad, the hits in the face as hard as it can with the message that War Is Hell. With the suffering of adorable animals.
- Captain America: Sam Wilson might as well be named "Right-wingers are bad: The Comic", whose subtle leanings can be summed up with Red Skull
◊ as a Donald Trump Expy. The Secret Empire event takes this one up a notch by having the first issue of Sam Wilson in the event have Sam encounter two white people who unironically use the "fake news" bit to describe HYDRA.
- Spider-Man: Follow any work involving Spider-Man. Mainstream comic book, alternate universe comic books, films, animated series, whatever. From the beginning or from some arbitrary point of your convenience. It won't take very long (if it doesn't happen right away) that you will read a story with the aesop that "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". Decades have passed since Amazing Fantasy #15, and the comics still enforce that aesop.
- Parodied in The Superior Foes of Spider-Man, where Shocker keeps giving a kid he meets morals like "stay in school and don't do drugs". Note that Shocker is a supervillain.
- Superman: Early Superman stories basically saw our hero as a leaping anvil. The formula went like this: someone was doing something bad (profiteering off a war, running a corrupt orphanage or mining operation, etc.) and Superman came in to either give them a taste of what they were doing (making him join the war, trapping him in a collapsing mine) or just giving them a taste of his fist or some such. This was more like a fantasy escape for readers riding on the wave of Roosevelt's New Deal, who were fed up with society and just wished they could punch out all the corrupt rich and powerful people who they blamed for society's ills, specifically The Great Depression.
- What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?, an issue of Superman that satirized the comic team The Authority and their violent approach to crime fighting. It's basically a long Take That! at anti-heroes as a whole, but specifically those that kill as if a natural (even fun) part of saving the day and making the world safe. It also doesn't help that the villain is basically Devil Boner crossed with John Lydon.
- Unnatural (2016): Seemingly not a chapter goes by without the characters talking to each other about how terrible racial, gender, or orientation-based prejudice are. It's one thing to tell the audience such in a story, but this comic seems to only know how to have characters monologue about it.
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): One Golden Age issue has a kid cheat on a test, without even realizing it since it was his tutor that cheated by stealing the test to have the kid study the exact answers, and the fallout endangers the lives of all the students in his class and nearly gets him killed. The opening blurb did at least warn readers that this would be the case.
- Wonder Woman (2006): Gail Simone mocked the tendency for the character to be depicted with this in mind in her run on the book; Wonder Woman sees a movie based on herself and is embarrassed to discover that it depicts her as a Straw Feminist who constantly gives Narm-filled rants about the superiority of women.
- X-Men: The series can become this under bad writers. Yes, bigotry is bad, but you don't exactly see the government building giant killer robots to murder black people.
- Young Justice (1998): When Arrowette's school psychologist is brutally killed by gun violence, she explodes at a pro-gun rights Congressman who tries to blame it on violent video games and comic books. Therefore, the gun control message also doubles as an attack against Moral Guardians. In the official DC forums at the time, the writer Peter David mentioned that few readers picked up on the third anvil he dropped, that the enraged Arrowette apparently had no problems at all hurting people with her own weapons of choice during this story. It didn't help that the psychologist was killed by an abusive ex-boyfriend, not school or gang violence which made the "Guns are bad" message seem very forced (What would Arrowette have done if the psychologist was murdered by being stabbed or strangled?). Not to mention that on occasion, David put in his own views on gun control into the book (this being one such instance) that he was protective of, which led to a flame war on his forums once which was started when David himself sarcastically dismissed a fan who had criticized one such use of the heavyhandedness of this message in a book which the fan had already stated was good otherwise.
- It's not uncommon for political cartoons to have a simple message with each side, country, ideology or issue explicitly labeled. However, this does not necessarily mean the cartoon is of low quality: in most cases it's done to avoid ambiguity or at least the kind of miscomprehension that leads to angry letters to the editor.
- Bill Watterson admitted that the Green Aesop in a Calvin and Hobbes story where Calvin and Hobbes took a trip to Mars was "pretty heavy-handed."
- Still, his unpublished political-style cartoons on his anti-commercialist views
need to be seen to be believed. Watterson was under constant pressure to sell out during the original run Calvin and Hobbes, something that embittered him quite a lot.
- An in-universe example is Calvin's story "The Dad Who Lived to Regret Being Mean to His Kid", which he asks his dad to read to him.
- Still, his unpublished political-style cartoons on his anti-commercialist views
- Sometimes Mutts doesn't have a joke. Instead there's an ad for some save-the-animals cause, one that doesn't even feature the regular cast of the strip. It's like if the last five minutes of Seinfeld were replaced with a PETA infomercial.
- Hey, Nemi-readers? Being cruel to animals is bad, okay? Got that? Too bad, because we're gonna repeat it a hundred times anyway.
- Mallard Fillmore wants you to know that liberals are bad, bad, stupid, stupid, bad, bad people. And they're stupid and bad, MMKAY?
- And Ted Rall wants you to know the same thing, except about conservatives.
- Same goes for Tom Tomorrow. Many of his cartoons don't even contain jokes, they're just quoting something stupid a Republican politician or Fox News host said (or a strawman approximation thereof), or an offensive part of GOP policy, with an optional riff on why it's stupid.
- Spoofed in one Bloom County arc where Milo has a nightmare about being a cartoonist with a black-hooded Torture Technician as his "boss", punishing him for typos and the like. After he wakes up, he starts to deliver a speech about how great is is that we have cartoonists, only for Opus to walk in with a level glare on his face and say "Oh, just stop."
- On multiple occasions, Bloom Country would let the anvils drop. One strip in particular was a parody of Star Trek, and basically ranted about the shrinking amount of space available to newspaper comics.
- Doonesbury is so heavy with some of its political commentary that some newspapers put it on the editorial page.
- Though Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams is known off the comics page for all sorts of controversial opinions these days, historically the strip was often criticized for only having one message: “management is bad.” Some early strips can be quite heavy-handed about hunting and eating meat, of all things, as Adams is a passionate vegetarian.
- Li'l Abner: The strip was quite shameless about hammering out Al Capp's various views. This got worse as Al aged and became more aggressively conservative, which led to the strip's sharp decline in popularity.
- The Big Finish Doctor Who audio The Last is ridiculously anvilicious in its anti-war message. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with statements like "Money that should have gone to space exploration went to develop more weapons" and "She should have known dropping bombs is wrong, that war is wrong".
- During World War II, many radio shows devoted some time to explaining and/or promoting various wartime programs (rationing, War Bond drives, etc). Most of them were less than subtle about it. Such as this infamous poster
◊.
- Eclipse Phase: basically, yay transhumanism and anarchy. Let's put it this way: the main non-transhumanist power bloc is a ruthless military junta verging on The Dictatorship.
- When Racial Holy War isn't trying to explain how it's played (and sometimes, even while it's doing that), it's bashing you over the skull with its message about how white supremacy is good and every other race is evil and needs to be wiped out. The backstory in the opening describes how racial diversity is an Ancient Conspiracy run by Jews which led to the world being ruined, the descriptions of the enemy types are a list of stereotypes and claims that white people are better than them, and the Medic class heals people by reading racist tracts. It's so heavy-handed that it would be easy to read as a parody, if it wasn't for the fact that its creator actually runs a cult that genuinely espouses those beliefs.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse has always had ecological subtext, given that you're basically Gaia's superpowered children fighting against an evil corporation of polluters, but some writers handle it worse than others. In The Silver Record's prologue, for example, the plot stops for an entire paragraph just so the reader can be informed that everyone who lives in the modern world is a heartless, egocentric bastard.
But y’see, science is a double-edged razor. It provides us with better ways to feed ourselves, protect ourselves, and move from place to place, but it also breeds isolation and a “me-first” mentality. When people — Garou included — don’t feel like they have to struggle to survive, they get soft and selfish. After a while, everyone starts feeling like the lead in their own personal movie. Everyone and everything else in the world becomes supporting cast and background material. At that point, nothing is good unless it enriches you. Unless it makes your life safer, more comfortable, more fun. Don’t shake your head, you know I’m right! After a while, nothing in this world matters unless it somehow makes you feel better! Now multiply that by the amount of people in the world today, square it by the economies of nations, and subtract any sort of feeling of community or family. Our family tree is dying — literally! — because we don’t feel or feed its roots any longer.
- & Juliet's messages about gender politics and empowerment are not exactly subtle, with Anne directing her speech about the genderqueer May's rights directly to the audience. And it's supposed to be a (tongue firmly in cheek) follow-up to Romeo and Juliet!
- Parodied/played for laughs in Avenue Q. "The Money Song" starts with an over-the-top Anvilicious moral on charity and being generous... then halfway through the song, everybody runs into the audience asking for money.
- The truly Anvilicious narrator in Blood Brothers not only shows up to highlight every moment of foreshadowing in the musical but also appears at the end to let any terminally inattentive audience members know what the message was.
- Henrik Ibsen dropped some heavy anvils in his play Brand. The title character is a notorious carrier and tosser of anvils all the way, and one scene, showing a starving and freezing mother with a child begging for clothes and shelter on Christmas Eve, is anvilicious in spades. The anvil dropped is so heavy it actually kills off one of the lead characters in-play (Agnes, the wife of Brand).
- Hair sure drops a few about friendship, racism, and The Vietnam War.
- South Pacific more or less takes its anti-racism message and fires it out of a cannon into the audience. Repeatedly, and with prejudice. This is the entire point of the show. Rodgers and Hammerstein were asked to take the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught", which is even more on-the-nose with its message than the rest of the show, out entirely because it was thought to be too anvilicious; Hammerstein replied, "If you cut that song, you cut the whole musical."
- The Toxic Avenger, based on the campy movie of the same name, could be a hilarious hour of nothing but New Jersey jokes, which it is in some places, but eventually it gets bogged down by its need to hammer "Pollution BAD!" into the audience. Emphasis on hammer.
- West Side Story: Maria's closing speech has her chew out both the Jets and the Sharks for their hatred, and how it has led to Tony's death.
- Young Frankenstein's musical adaptation is similar to the example of Toxic Avenger stage adaptation; compared to the movie the sexual humor is a lot more heavy-handed.
- The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty: Near the end of "The Hungry Lamb" chapter where Liang and Sui realize that the Swine Demon is their common enemy, the story really wants to hammer the idea that desperate times can cause the aphorism of "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer". Specifically, the famine made Liang and Sui individually suffer even though the Swine Demon spent the same time in a life of prosperity. Liang would also lampshade how the Swine Demon has an extravagant palace in Luoyang even if other areas are in the middle of a crisis, or that the imposed grain taxes made life harder for the poor.
- Paper Perjury isn't at all subtle about how bad gentrification is. Much of it consists of characters complaining about high rents and rising home prices, but the biggest example comes when it turns out that the main villain's Freudian Excuse was his family being forced from their apartment.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies: "The end justifies the means" is a bad philosophy! Like, really bad! At the point that the guy constantly professing it is the culprit of the third case, in case that wasn't already obvious. Also, the Power of Friendship and emotions are good.
- Parodied in part 6 of 50 Ways to Die in Minecraft. Death #42 is "Owning a Small Web Site Without Net Neutrality being Enforced", shown by a small building labeled "MCBLOXBLOGS.COM" being crushed under a larger Verizon building. Death #43 is "Witnessing a Failed Attempt at Subtlety", which involves someone who watched the bit immediately prior being crushed by an anvil with "NET NEUTRALITY IS GOOD!!!" printed on it in red block letters.
- Lucky Day Forever: A population of short, brown people who live in a part of town that looks like your typical post-Soviet city and even speak Polish [?] are exploited by the aptly named White society as cheap labor and spare parts.
- The animated short Sometimes You're a Caterpillar
is intended to teach audiences about how not everyone is as privileged as they might be. The story itself was effective enough in its execution, but quickly drops the pretense to deliver it in no uncertain terms, then hastily wraps up the plot.
- Yellow Cake
is loaded with anvils since it's an allegory of the evils of imperialism and ends with a "Reason You Suck" Speech, You Bastard!.
- Acception: While the message of acceptance despite race, gender and sexuality is a main theme of the story, the comic does tend to get a little preachy at points. For example, there's a plot point about a trans girl who gets bullied over it. The kid who does it got called out and ended up having to go to counseling as a result. But despite said kid later apologizing for it, he had to be humiliated further by getting his mother involved after he had apologized. Most readers thought that kinda goes against the message this series wants to convey. Sure, the guy was a jerk but that didn't make the victim look any better.
- Viciously mocked with the "Final Thoughts" in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Almost every single moral given is completely irrelevant to the story's content and gets comically derailed in some fashion.
- Bittersweet Candy Bowl, BEING GAY IS A-OKAY!
- Possibly, David's
finding Tess attractive in no uncertain terms.
- Possibly, David's
- Most strips of Blobby 'n Friends are heavy-handed on lessons about LGBT+ rights, bodily autonomy, and other social issues.
- The B-Movie Comic drops the anvil.
- The Comics I Don't Understand site
has a special tag for anvilicious comics.
- Tim Buckley's self insert into this
Ctrl+Alt+Del strip, where he rants at Jack Thompson. Also contains the irony that Tim is threatening Jack Thompson for saying that gamers are violent and that his video game obsessed main character performs acts of extreme violence on a regular basis (not to mention that his little spiel ends with the phrase "don't fuck with us") — which is a weird reference to Fight Club.
- Cursed Princess Club: Pretty much anything regarding the "Princels". They are portrayed with about as much subtlety and nuance as that name implies.
- Dominic Deegan drops numerous anvils of "intolerance is bad!" We know this because everyone who acts intolerantly is usually portrayed as irredeemably evil, not to mention the fact that something horrible will probably happen to them before the end of the arc.
- The anvil is lightened by some of the reasons for the cultural conflict between Callan and the orc tribes being very obviously irreconcilable: on the human side the knights are oppressive, violent, and have the actual authority to make legally binding rulings. On the orc side, necromancy is considered a normal magical practice and rape is a standard legal tool for compelling compliance. Dominic's family's wealthy, powerful, and generally privileged perspective is the viewpoint of the comic, and the reader is seeing how he feels about the situation.
- El Goonish Shive has a particularly painful anvil dropped in an oddly familiar explanation of how religion works on the Uryuom homeworld.
- Existential Comics' blunt force anticapitalism and disdain for anything resembling mainstream economics can make many strips difficult to enjoy for a lot of people
- Irregular Webcomic! decide to drop the anvil of Be Careful What You Wish For in this
strip. Intentionally, with the link to this page.
- The autobiographical Joe vs. Elan School goes into detail about the near-constant abuse that its author endured during his three years at the titular school, as well as the PTSD he dealt with after he got out. The comic frequently highlights the systematic issues and policies that allow facilities like Elan School to operate unimpeded, and consistently argues heavily against sending children to those kinds of places.
- Least I Could Do: A story arc that blatantly compares George W. Bush to Emperor Palpatine...published in 2011, three years after Bush left office.
- Also, did you know that Sohmer doesn't think very favorably of Christianity? He paints with a subtle brush. Seriously, we get it
- Also, did you know that Sohmer doesn't think very favorably of Christianity? He paints with a subtle brush. Seriously, we get it
- Loving Reaper is rather unflinching in teaching people lessons about animal neglect, abuse, and cruelty at the hands of humans, and destruction of the environment. The author even appends strips with a brief explanation of the context behind it.
- While Chris is usually pretty good about it, Misfile has a few strips
that make it more than clear that Ash's character is supposed to be read as a trans boy, and that everything he goes through is supposed to drive home lesson about accepting trans people, except for the ones that are supposed to drive home lesson about accepting gay people.
- Miss Guillotine: The comic's overarching messages are impossible to miss: bullying does permanent damage to the victims and has long-lasting and far-reaching consequences even if you don't think it's a big deal. People will behave immorally when they aren't held accountable for their actions and are given a pass just because of their status.
- Made fun of in this
Nip and Tuck comic. Nip, a B-movie writer/star, talks about why he does not do romance in his movies. He explains how bad Hollywood romance plots are. He mentions My Fair Lady and The Taming of the Shrew and how a girl with nothing wrong with her is run through a "Magic Makeover Machine" which is supposed to end up with the hero seeing her true inner beauty. The illustration that accompanies the talk shows a simple caricature of a woman getting smashed by a hydraulic press with the word "AESOP" written on it.
- This
Nodwick storyline. Yes, Mr. Williams, we all know Microsoft is doing all that. Stop rubbing it in and switch to ReactOS
already!
- Strip 1068
of The Order of the Stick has a rather ham-fisted message of women holding back their accomplishments in the presence of male co-workers.
- Pastel Defender Heliotrope was rather unsubtle to readers with ideas of the oppression of women and sexual identities and evils of religion. To make sure ALL the bases were covered, JDR reveals in the ending that the entire thing was started because some robots wanted to ask permission to do we're-not-sure-what but no one was around to ask. Just to make sure that she's striking out against anti-piracy legislation in the most Anvilicious way possible.
- Invoked and lampshaded in Planet of Hats, when Kirk literally drops an anvil while delivering a lesson in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
".
- Rain has at least one character giving an extended monologue about acceptance and issues up to twice in almost every chapter.
- Sandra and Woo used to be pretty blunt with its anti-animal cruelty and pro-environmentalist messages. It also had one chapter that was fairly anvillicious about the very, very obscure and specific message of anti-people-who-think-diabetics-injecting-insulin-are-doing-drugs.
- Shortpacked! consistently does this with feminism and other issues Willis is passionate about.
- Sinfest: While the comic was always full of political humor, around 2011 the plots and characters became secondary to the messages the author wanted to convey. At first, it was about the dangers of men, third-wave feminism, sex positivity, sex workers, and the patriarchy then it evolved to fear-mongering about trans people. Around 2019 the comic took on more reactionary views, and many strips focused on the dangers of "wokeness", vaccines, the surveillance state, and internet policing. The Late 2023/Early 2024 is when things went south as The webcomics started having references to conspiracy theories involving Israel and the Jews, and That began a short time after the Israel-Hamas war erupted.
- Sly Cooper: Thief of Virtue: Jack Lupus becomes a mouthpiece for the self-determination Aesop of the story halfway through the chapters “Welcome to the Jungle” and "Wrath of the Wolf King" and starts hammering it in, especially during scenes at Interpol HQ
and at a diner
he brought Drake into the point that it comes off as objectivist, even reactionary, depending on how it's interpreted.
- Subnormality is incredibly guilty of this. In almost every strip.
- Lampshaded/parodied here
in Tally Ho. With an actual anvil no less.
- Cracked
- From David Wong:
- 5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)
: The pursuit of things like fame and wealth aren't helpful. Friendship, love, and altruism are where it's at.
- 10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On
: Just because you're in the right (or you think you're in the right) about something, doesn't mean you need to be a dick about it.
- What Is The Monkeysphere?
. An article which can be resumed as "how to build empathy and understanding with other human beings". It sums it up by talking about Osama bin Laden:
- 5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)
"Now, the truth is that bin Laden is as deserving of a bullet in the head as the four-color image on some redneck's T-shirt. But what you've got to realize is this: we're the caricature on his T-shirt."- 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying
explains why people are so angry at the rich. It's not because the poor are envious; it's because the rich are hypocrites and distant from the masses. Also: any well-off person in the modern world who honestly believes that they've never gotten any help from anyone is completely delusional. Civilized society wouldn't exist if people didn't help each other.
- 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person
shows that what the world really cares about are results. At the same time, it also tells the reader to stop making excuses for why their life sucks, and go DO something.
- How The Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World
: Success doesn't happen at the rate that movies lead people to believe. The game is a lot bigger than you think you know, and if you think you know, then I don't think you know.
- 6 Ways to Keep Terrorists From Ruining the World
: Written in response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France in January 2015, it examines the most typical (and more importantly, harmful) reactions to terrorist attacks.
- 5 Helpful Answers to Society's Most Uncomfortable Questions
: Even though the white men of today are not at fault for the racism and sexism of the past, all that sexism and racism still has an effect on all of us today that is far bigger than we think (especially since society had to be forced into accepting women and people of color), and it's our responsibility to make things better.
- How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
says that the reason so many bought into Donald Trump's promises to "Make America Great Again" is that, for most of the Flyover Country, America really isn't great for them. Small towns can't recover from poverty as easily as cities can. The gap between rural and urban life is far bigger than most people realize. Their legitimate problems — significantly lower living standards, fewer work opportunities, and soaring depression rates — as well as their values of family, faith, hard work, and being self-sufficient are ignored in favor of writing them off as good-for-nothing rednecks. It also points out that Trump and his supporters, despite giving others every reason to brush them off as ignorant and destructive, aren't that different from the people the other side celebrates elsewhere (namely the negligence on the warts of various icons as long as they are within their ideology).
- The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You in School
drops no less than ten anvils:
10. Ladies, learn how to spot a pickup artist before they can succeed.9. Porn is a terrible way to learn about sex.8. The only practical/safe self-defense is learning how to run away if someone threatens you.7. There are certain things a person living on their own needs to know how to do.6. The oft-forgotten key to success is randomly meeting the right people and not pissing them off.5. Those "all-natural" cures in the grocery aisle are BS.4. Losing weight takes work. A LOT of work. Seriously.3. Learn how to cook — it's important.2. Talk radio is a terrible source of news information.1. Life is hard and you will die one day.- John Cheese in general writes a lot about being a recovering alcoholic and how much of a struggle it's been. He repeatedly — and to great effect — points out that it's not alcohol that makes you an alcoholic, it's that addiction in your brain, and he also points out that you're never truly "cured" from it. A powerful message. But not the only one from him:
- 5 Reasons Life Really Does Get Better
: The world isn't as bad as you think. When you get older, you actually have the power to do something about it.
- 5 Common Anti-Internet Arguments that are statistically bullshit
: In the face of internet censorship, it's good to remember these points.
- "5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor"
: The article explains, in brutal clarity, how poverty is a self-enforcing cycle that manages to claw back any gains those trapped in it make. A required reading if you buy into any of the various bits of mythology on poverty, like the poor being lazy.
- "5 terrible things you can't stop your children from doing"
: parents can't control their kids indefinitely. The most you can do is educate them and recognize that they will'' make their own choices.
- 5 Reasons Life Really Does Get Better
- Christina H's "8 Tiny Things That Stopped Suicides
": Yes, depressed people often build up a wall around them. Yes, breaking down that wall can be extremely difficult. But sometimes, all it takes to get started is a small crack in the wall, courtesy of a friendly phone call, a hug, or something else.
- One of her articles named "The Completely Selfish Reason You Should Help People
", Christina pointed out Enlightened Self-Interest as a common ground to lines between naivete idealism and nihilistic inactivity. Rather than ranting or volunteering out of ego, sometimes actually supporting the bigger picture (namely charity organization and civil activities) to fulfill their own sense of good along with making actual progress.
- One of her articles named "The Completely Selfish Reason You Should Help People
- Gladstone's article, NDAA: The Biggest Election Issue No One's Talking About
, explains one of the most important but least discussed issues: the President having the ability to indefinitely detain Americans without a trial.
- Another one of Gladstone's articles, 4 Things Both Atheists and Believers Need to Stop Saying
, points out several arguments that only make religious people and atheists seem bad. It also manages to do so without offending either the religious or the atheistic.
- Another one of Gladstone's articles, 4 Things Both Atheists and Believers Need to Stop Saying
- The "Why The Cops Won't Help You When You're Getting Stabbed
" video and "Cops Won't Help You: 7 Things I Saw as a Real Slasher Victim
" article gives a reality check to hero wannabes. The video details the story of a man who was stabbed multiple times by a spree killer while the police didn't do anything but take credit for his actions. After talking about his failed attempts to sue the NYPD for this, he explains the many flaws of trying to be a hero.
1. The risk of death isn't worth looking cool in the news or to other people. When you get hit for the first time, your plan will fall apart in milliseconds due to the sheer panic of the situation. You will also die of blood loss if you don't get immediate medical attention.2. If you are stabbed but the attacker lets go without pulling out the knife. Don't pull out the knife like it didn't phase you. If you do this, you will bleed out much faster and get closer to death. Leave the knife in for a chance of survival.3. If you survive, you'll be in and out of the hospital for a while. Which can be costly depending on where you live, and they won't always check for possible side effects (i.e hepatitis or HIV).4. The police won't always be able to help you and bystanders may not back you up.5. You won't always get credit for heroism. Someone else may get the credit or it can be a matter of public opinion, since your story might not be as believable as another.- Robert Evans's 5 Reasons Horrible Dictators Always Catch Us Off Guard
discredit the notions, especially based on pop culture, about authoritarian leaders; many of them are shown to be manipulative, self-justifying, willful, and sane enough to assume and eventually display their power rather than being shallow psychopaths who obtained their power through a populace too idiotic to avoid letting an obviously evil leader get into power.
- While the Why Idiocracy Would Actually Be A Utopia?
is more of an Alternative Character Interpretation of the movie's universe, Sowen pointed out on the movie's bias towards impoverished people as a threat to their society due to lack of education while ignoring wealthy people whose wealth and privilege masking their own shortfalls in intellect and competence, arrogant people who refuse to admit their own flaws, racism, sexism, and classism (the last part being emphasized to point out the movie's unintentional meta-Irony) being the general factor and issues on ills of society.
- "The West Wing Was A Useless Fairy Tale
" criticizes The West Wing's overly-idealistic depiction of American politics as a world where all the leaders act in good faith and simply have different ideas of how to serve the common good, instead of a cutthroat world where some leaders aren't actually interested in that and are more than willing to sabotage others in order to expand their power, arguing that this idealism left the Democratic Party disinclined to question their opponents' interests, which allowed the victory of Donald Trump to take place.
- From David Wong:
- The Onion:
- Klingon Speakers Now Outnumber Navajo Speakers
Seeing as this is The Onion, the anvilicious message is basically lampshading the trope, by mocking serious news reports on the problems. It's in dire need of pointing out, remembering the Bangladesh incident
. It should also be noted that there about 50 Klingon speakers (at the most) and about 170,000 Navajo speakers, thanks to revitalization efforts.
- "Political Cartoon Even More Boring And Confusing Than Issue
" in which nobody can understand an Anvilicious comic strip.
- The Onion is often anvilicious non-ironically. For example: "Future U.S. History Students: 'It's Pretty Embarrassing How Long You Guys Took To Legalize Gay Marriage'
".
- Klingon Speakers Now Outnumber Navajo Speakers
- The Babylon Bee is about as subtle with its right-wing politics as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is with its left-wing politics. Progressives are near universally shown as virtue signalers (with even a joke
about how they’d support literal Nazis if said Nazis agreed with their beliefs).
- It's not uncommon for the second-to-last paragraph of a The Hard Times article to end with the quoted "expert" forgoing any attempt at humor and plainly stating what the reader should take away from it; for example, "Three Unarmed Civilians Shot After Cop Plays Area 51 Arcade Game
" finishes on the note that the officer would not realistically experience any consequences for his behavior, and "Gaming The System: Aging Millennial With Three Jobs Eligible For Food Stamps
" has the fictitious financial expert bluntly say that financial exploitation of the working class is unavoidable under capitalism.
- Parodied in the ClickHole video, This Video Seems Silly, But It Makes a Good Point
, featuring goofy music, a dancing dinosaur and the phrase RACISM IS BAD.
- SCP Foundation
- SCP-2112 has its safety classification listed as Keter, one of the highest possible, because it makes those who hear it love covers over all other creative pursuits. This is an obvious enough Take That! at cover bands and unoriginal artists, but then Project Research Manager Edvalds' statement on the matter spells the message out giant, that valuing nostalgia over innovation, taken too far, could lead to the stagnation and decay of the human culture, become a planet of people who follow the "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" meme.
Edvalds: "Some have questioned why SCP-2112 warrants classification as Keter. It is true that SCP-2112 poses no direct threat to human life or the continued existence of the human race; were every person susceptible to SCP-2112 infection to be infected, it would likely not result in a single fatality. What it does present, however, is a severe existential threat to the entirety of human culture, the arts, and all forms of creative work whatsoever. Man is a wonderfully creative animal and has developed a myriad of ways of expressing his thoughts and emotions — through poetry, dance, film, the written word, theatre, painting, sculpture, video games, even internet memes. We run the risk of every one of these mediums — every single last one of them — disappearing from our common experience, forever, in favor of thousands and millions of mediocre everymen performing the exact same songs over and over again."
- SCP-5403, which is about an anomalous site that keeps constant surveillance on the Foundation so that it can spew tasteless shipping art, contains an extended diatribe on why using topics like relationship drama, abuse, and other forms of trauma as something that is cute, funny, or titillating is wrong and insulting to people who have lived through those issues for real. Dr. Laraske eventually explains in detail just how nerve-wracking a seemingly-harmless operation is to her subordinates, citing a researcher who experienced SCP-2678 (the Vorehole) and learned 5403 recorded the whole thing, and when the anomaly is seemingly neutralized, it reactivates one last time to write a 4.2K-word fanfic where Laraske is extensively brutalized for 5403's pleasure as a final display of how utterly callous and wretched its obsessions really are despite having the mind of a dumb teenager. Which also ties into the overall message - just because Hanlon's Razor easily applies to modern insensitive depictions of serious topics doesn't mean they're any less tasteless and hurtful.
- SCP-2112 has its safety classification listed as Keter, one of the highest possible, because it makes those who hear it love covers over all other creative pursuits. This is an obvious enough Take That! at cover bands and unoriginal artists, but then Project Research Manager Edvalds' statement on the matter spells the message out giant, that valuing nostalgia over innovation, taken too far, could lead to the stagnation and decay of the human culture, become a planet of people who follow the "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" meme.
- 2084 (Part 1,
and Part 2
(NSFW) The message, being about what happens when copyright law goes horribly right, isn't exactly subtle about its message. The story concerns 2 people, one into WAM, trying to deal with a dystopia where copyright is abused to the point where you can't basically do anything without an iPad Expy, and do anything unless you pay hefty royalties to the creator. Granted, this was written after SOPA and PIPA occurred and failed to pass, but the unrealistic description of future copyright law can come off as jarring.
- brentalfloss in Tetris WITH LYRICS
.
- "So, I was trying to communicate that women, uh, enjoy Tetris a lot. Is that clear?
- CLW Entertainment: The Doraemon fandub episode "TV & Disc Do's And Don't's"
repeats the moral "don't watch too much TV" ad nauseam, unlike the original Japanese version which is less repetitive.
- Brad Jones reviewed
Rock: It's Your Decision on DVD-R Hell, a little-seen TV movie produced by fundamentalist Christians about how rock is evil and how it'll cause you to go to Hell. It doesn't merely lob anvils, it ties them to cruise missiles and fires those at you. After the main character of the movie talks about how people at rock concerts didn't just sit quietly and listen, they got up and danced, like the music was controlling them; Jones jokes that the movie's aesop is that emotions are bad and if you dance to music, laugh at comedy acts, or cry at funerals, you'll go to Hell.
- A Downfall parody, The Antic Menace condemns human greed in its fourth episode
, via a quote by Charlie Chaplin.
- Mario Party DS Anti Piracy's Grand Finale incorporates an Author Filibuster featuring the victim of the bizarre chase turning into an angel to deliver a Digital Piracy Is Okay message. Given the generally comedic nature of the finale, it's possible that it too is being Played for Laughs.
- The Nostalgia Critic
- If an innocent child is getting mistreated in a movie, he will more often than not stop the review for a long rant about it. Nice enough, but then you remember that the character is supposed to have been badly abused as a kid. It's almost poignant in a sense.
- In his The Legend of the Titanic review, he makes it clear, several times, that what the film did (outright deny the deaths of hundreds of people in favor of a "SAVE THE WHALES" aesop) is completely disrespectful to those who died on the Titanic.
- He says over and over again that just because something is a kid's movie, doesn't mean it has to be worthless or have no effort put into it. Depending on how much he suffers in an episode, this can vary in desperation.
- Relating to that, non-stop loud music, sound, or talking is annoying and takes away from building a kid's appreciation for building up atmosphere.
- The Moulin Rouge! review has "Even if I don't like the film, maybe you do, and neither of us are definitely wrong" as well as "Guilty Pleasures are nothing to be ashamed of."
- The Critic's favorite episode of The Simpsons is "Bart Gets an F", which involves Bart needing to pass a test to avoid having to repeat the fourth grade. Bart buckles down, studies harder... and still fails. The Critic praises the episode for teaching a Hard Truth Aesop that many shows are afraid to touch: that you can try your hardest and still fail.
- In his review of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Critic is puzzled by the positive comments from people who loved the film despite all the stuff he said about it and the narrator explains that the Critic shouldn't force his opinions on others and that "everyone is different like every flake of snow".
- Which is quickly dismissed as idiocy by the Critic.
- His review of The Cat in the Hat (2003) has the message that market research is not the be-all and end-all of entertainment. The masses don't always know what they want, and if studios keep pandering to their comfort zones, then they never will.
- Similarly to that, his review of The Lorax (2012) included the message that "fad is only one letter away from fade", showing that just doing what's popular for the moment will result in a lackluster product that is quickly forgotten.
- His overall premise is reminding viewers how every decade has their share of lackluster works.
- His video "Top 11 GOOD Things in the Star Wars Prequels" states that even if people think that a director's work is bad, it still deserves credit when it does something right.
- His review of Alice in Wonderland (2010) has the message that even good directors and writers will create bad stuff sometimes, and that part of being a creator is taking risks, even if they don't always pay off. Those creators shouldn't be glorified as someone who can do no wrong, nor should they be reduced to the punchline of a joke because of one flop in a career full of successes.
- "I'll Be Home For Christmas"
- There are better ways to solve your problem with a person, even if you hate them you should still treat them kindly and hospitably. Screaming and yelling at them until they change will only contribute to the problem as you'll never know when they'll finally listen to you.
- If you want someone to change for the better, you should lead by example by proving that you're able to change as well.
- One good deed doesn't undo two bad ones, especially when one of those good deeds is something you should have already been doing. People won't tolerate a bad person just because they're capable of doing one good deed once in a while.
- The Critic's discussion on the ending of The Graduate does explain an alternate opinion on the ending. You shouldn't rush your decisions or make them on rebellious impulses because you can be stuck with the irreparable consequences.
Nostalgia Critic: It's always best to slowly figure out what you want rather than rush into something you're unsure about, because fighting too quickly for your freedom can result in making your prison bars even stronger.- Kim Possible: Having a movie that's supposed to inspire and empower people isn't new, but making it a movie's sole defining trait that holds it together will result in the final product being lackluster and forgettable. As empowering as Kim Possible is, it means that should the theme fail then its bad writing and lack of entertaining elements will be its downfall because the movie made empowerment the only thing that held it together to begin with. Creators need a balance of theme, story, and entertainment to make their final product relateable, long-lasting and memorable. It should appeal to everyone and shouldn't be made to pander to only a fraction of the target audience.
Nostalgia Critic: Kim Possible was a fun, clever show that allowed kids, both boys and girls, to imagine themselves fighting hilarious supervillains, with tongue-in-cheek humor and likeable characters, no more, no less. This feels like it's trying to be sensitive, and empowering, and standing up to the status quo, but when you go in with that intention first, rather than telling a good story with good characters, it backfires. Kim Possible was an empowering show because it didn't tell a story about a girl who was a hero, it told a story about a hero who was a girl. And it never drew attention to it, it just kind of did its own thing. It had fun entertaining everybody who watched it, no need to play to a particular gender or age. Anyone could watch it and get something enjoyable out of it. This just has that bad Disney Channel movie feel to it, where it's more about trying to get across a message, not because it's ethical, but because it's popular. I'm not saying that was the intention or the idea, I'm just saying that's what it feels like. Well, they're missing what made Kim Possible popular then, because it wasn't trying to be a trailblazer, it was just trying to be fun, which there is very little of here. Simply put, this movie may think it's all that, but it's not.- The discussion and the eventual review of the 2020 remake of Mulan deconstructs near-flawless leading females as supposedly empowering. The Critic repeatedly points out that these types of characters are not only unrelatable but they display a very toxic lesson to the audience: "Be born perfect and convince the world they're wrong". The critic believes that having a woman show vulnerability and struggle makes them relatable and long-lasting, it can also inspire the audience to be better people. Claiming that women are naturally perfect and that society is always to blame when it doesn't accommodate you is sexist in itself, as the leads are still being objectified by only being portrayed as flawless bastions of virtue. The Critic sincerely believes that women can be portrayed as more than just flawless leads, misunderstood villains, or misunderstood heroes.
The Critic: "Like I said, changes are welcomed, but this isn't what Mulan's struggles were about. She didn't know where she belonged, she had to find out through risk, pain, sacrifice, and determination, astonishing everyone, including herself. Here, she's already a Marvel superhero, because apparently, she has really good chi. Well, that'll be an interesting journey, going from flawless to stupidly flawless. Yeah, can you guess what the moral is? It's the same moral if you're female in a Disney live-action remake, "Be born perfect and convince the world they're wrong.""- In the movie Frozen II, Nostalgia Critic praises Disney for pulling off some ballsy move at the climax, but became furious when it was subverted. The lesson here is that it is necessary for films to take risks, but only if they stick to it, so the impact will be felt. Subverting the risk by showing no consequences of their actions will cause the viewers to be kept in their imagination and be unwilling to face the harsh reality, where bold choices are common in every day life.
- Philosophy Tube:
- Played for Laughs with Sir Nigel Piss, who is a very blatant Straw Hypocrite who makes judgements about how a different society "has never had a secular enlightment" for (insert reason here), followed by a statement displaying the very trait he accused the other society of having.
- The Adeleide segment in Violence & Protest and its allegory describing the escapades of a person who provokes a twitter mob for a controversial tweet doesn't leave any room for ambiguity when said person is named Baronness Plantation Warrcrimes.
- Screen Rant Pitch Meetings:
- The creator, Ryan George, doesn't like the Disney live action remakes very much. During the pitch meeting for Aladdin (2019), the Producer, who otherwise enthusiastically goes along with whatever the Screenwriter pitches regardless of its flaws, briefly gets passed the Smart Ball and asks why they're remaking a beloved animated movie. He points out that at best, they could make a remake that's as good as the original, and adds that film technology hasn't advanced nearly enough to justify remaking it, only caving in when the Screenwriter says, "Because money?". The series doesn't shy away from making fun of the subjects of the pitch meetings, but it's rarely this blunt about it.
- In general, the worse a movie or TV show is, the less subtle the series is about criticizing its flaws. In the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides pitch meeting, the Producer flat out states he has no reason to care about the central conflict of the story, and the Screenwriter agrees with him. Even the Screenwriter doesn't care about the romantic subplot between the missionary and the mermaid.
- There's a Running Gag where - when faced with works that include unfortunate implications, usually of men in power abusing ttheir authority, either of the characters will pointedly reference the sexual harassment in Horrible Hollywood and the other one will respond "me too". The series is also not especially subtle about other material that can come off as racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise problematic in hindsight.
- One episode of Nash's Classic Doctor Who Reviews series featured a graphic of MESSAGE falling on him when he examines the anti-Margaret Thatcher theme in The Happiness Patrol. At the end as the Doctor explains how wrong the villain is the MESSAGE returns to beat him about the head.
- Practically every child has had to attend an assembly at their school about how drugs and alcohol will ruin their life. In some health classes, it's not uncommon to have a "speaker" come and show the students pictures of an STD infection.
- Russell Brand's "parody" of Parklife
is about as subtle about corporate greed and political corruption as using a chainsaw to trim threads. Filled with obvious Take Thats against UKIP, Starbucks, and David Cameron, it seems to paint Brand as a Straw Liberal. Worse still, it's not even funny.
- Benjamin Franklin's "Join, or Die
", a wood relief warning about the possible fate of the American colonies if they don't start working together.
- Mr. T, in every incarnation, is anvilicious to the point of becoming a running joke, thanks in no small part to the ironic humor of a large violent macho man screaming at you things a meek female kindergarten teacher would normally tell you. This resulted in a favorite satirically jumbled line from SNL: "If you believe in yourself, eat all your school, stay in milk, drink your teeth, don't do sleep, and get eight hours of drugs, you can get work!"
The weird thing about Mr. T is that he means all of it; the man who made a career out of screaming and hitting things is a big ol' Momma's Boy who loves kids and wants to use his image to help them. In the '80s he performed in a video called "Mr. T's Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool," a series of vignettes encouraging self-confidence and good decision making that is so anvilicious the videotape would make a pothole if you dropped it in the street. Unlike most celebrities doing pre-teen educational/self-help/anti-drug videos in the '80s, Mr. T was not ordered to do this as the community service portion of a drug sentencing; he co-wrote and produced the thing of his own volition. That's because Mr. T don't give ya no jibber-jabber. He tells it like it is.- Parodied in a fake Mr. T PSA
on Key & Peele, where all the anvils he throws down are about him.
- Parodied in a fake Mr. T PSA
- During the 2011 Superbowl, Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas took a moment during the halftime show to tell Obama to reform the school systems.
- One Scottish "well-meaning but comically futile campaign to make children take adult things seriously" educational curriculum involves one lesson showing teenagers how being immature about sex is bad, mmkay, which begins with splitting the class into groups and asking them to write down all the different terms for penises, sex, vaginas, homosexuality, and contraceptives, without fear of punishment. These are then read out by the teacher. The intention is to engage the class and make them realize how they buy into sexist or immature attitudes.
- The 1st Amendment auditing/Cop Watcher communities thrive on this trope. With cameras and cellphones they go to public places(city halls, libraries, post offices, police departments etc etc etc) and monitor the police in attempt to expose political corruption, infringement of peoples rights and police brutality and post it on Youtube and other platform. Mostly in the U.S, though there auditors in Canada and Great Britain.
