TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Bit of an argument about a trope example.

Go To

Malchus Since: Jan, 2001
#1: Feb 3rd 2011 at 5:43:37 PM

I'm putting this here to prevent something from continuing into an outright Edit War.

In the Film/Hellboy page, I and Sean Murray I are having a disagreement on the following example:

  • Humans Are Morons: Also in the second film, human civilization apparently just forgot about a treaty they made with mythical races to not impede on their territories. Prince Nuada takes serious offense to how forgetful we have been.

Now, I don't think that's an example of the trope. Humans Are Morons is supposed to be how some deep flaw about human nature or behavior makes it act stupid in a way that is actively detrimental for itself and/or gets exploited by some outside force.

However, the aforementioned treaty was forged between ancient humans and the mythical side from a time so long gone it outdates most human civilizations considered ancient (as shown in the whole auction thing of ancient artifacts at the beginning of Hellboy II). It is really human stupid for most people in the modern age to be completely unaware of some ancient treaty?

How many remember exactly every detail of the Thirty Years' War then? Every little treaty, or even just every detail of the major Treaty of Westphalia? That's only about 4 centuries ago. How many remember the four treaties between Rome and Carthage? The treaty after the Battle of Kadesh by the Egyptian and Hittite Empires? How many remember it aside from historians working on those specialized areas for years?

The forgetting seems more due to humans not being as ridiculously long-lived as ancient civilizations, not from any major flaw. Human civilizations come and go, and many things associated with those civilizations disappear with them. Unless all of us not being accomplished historians is a fault that makes us unbearably stupid. At best it seems that the example is more of Values Dissonance and We Are as Mayflies.

edited 3rd Feb '11 5:48:27 PM by Malchus

Yeah, that avatar's a 'Shop of my real face.
SilentReverence adopting kitteh from 3 tiles right 1 tile up Since: Jan, 2010
adopting kitteh
#2: Feb 3rd 2011 at 6:02:27 PM

We not having that long a life, or memory, would have been easily solved with things that we aooarently invented for ourselves, like you know, oral tradition, then written books, the internet, international treaties and the such. We do keep so-called biblical books, no matter that apparentely their contents have been misinterpreted recursively across the ages, but the bottom line is that they are there. There is no particular reason why each civilization that "comes and goes" can not take part of their building blocks from the recorded history of their predecessors.

I haven't seen the movie, but if at the time of signing the treaty humans did understood its importance, then it fits this trope, as it talks more in the lines of "Humanity is Moron". If you are agreeing to, as a species, not touch territory X, you would at least use common sense that dictates that you should let your progenie know about it...

edited 3rd Feb '11 6:03:55 PM by SilentReverence

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?
Madrugada Since: Jan, 2001
#3: Feb 3rd 2011 at 6:29:50 PM

The definitions of Humans Are Morons:

Humans Are Morons shows that, when compared to other civilizations in works of Speculative Fiction, humans are nowhere near as technologically advanced; are incapable of understanding such civilizations as being any different than the most generic Sci-Fi stories; are very gullible or insanely superstitious; constantly have more astounding lapses in judgment than a more sensible being could possibly tolerate; are far more primitive than realized (possibly even more savage-like than realized); and are completely oblivious to all of this.

It's not just "Humans do dumb things". It's "Humans are stupid compared to other civilizations".

So, do we have all the necessary elements?

  • Another civilization to compare humans to?
    • Yes, in the "Mythical races"

  • Are the humans presented as being stupid by comparison to them?
    • I don't know. But I'd say that that's the crux of the matter, and I'd also say that the answer hinges on "did the humans who made the treaty make a reasonable effort to make sure that the information wasn't lost, or did they just assume that it would be remembered?"

And on the question of what's reasonable, is it reasonable for us to store important information in the best way that we know how, or are we obliged to try to guess what's going to take its place and store it that way?

edited 3rd Feb '11 6:31:44 PM by Madrugada

Deboss I see the Awesomeness. from Awesomeville Texas Since: Aug, 2009
I see the Awesomeness.
#4: Feb 3rd 2011 at 8:28:45 PM

The specific example, I'm leaning toward no. The guy is mostly just an uptight jackass.

Fight smart, not fair.
Malchus Since: Jan, 2001
#5: Feb 3rd 2011 at 8:34:26 PM

We do keep so-called biblical books, no matter that apparentely their contents have been misinterpreted recursively across the ages, but the bottom line is that they are there. There is no particular reason why each civilization that "comes and goes" can not take part of their building blocks from the recorded history of their predecessors.

But those Biblical books are not the sum total of all human history, nor do they contain everything about the civilizations of the people that wrote them. A lot of knowledge about older civilizations is still incomplete because a lot of what record-keeping existed crumbled across the ages. Just because civilizations make records and attempt to keep them does not mean the records stand the test of time. A lot of the ancient documents we've found are a small portion of the records that survived since most got destroyed or decayed some way or another. This is true for civilizations from the early CE years, never mind those from the BCE eras.

The time when humans and mythical creatures in Hellboy actively mingled and coexisted is far old than most ancient civilizations. Even if it had the best document keeping and recording available, that's no guarantee that many of its old documents would be lost. It certainly hasn't helped real life human civilizations. Many old civilizations had massive libraries and achived, yet only a fraction of their content has survived. Even the records we have deciphered that were set in stone are still a fraction of what used to exist since most of those were decayed/destroyed by weathering, erosion, and natural cataclysms.

A treaty, in the end, is just one document. So what if they tried their best to keep it recorded for all time. A lot of the records which were supposed to last "forever" are now only a heavily-decayed mere shadow of what they were. A lot of those that survived survived more out of luck than anything. Ask any historian, since that point is one of their largest frustrations.

That's one of the things most people don't comprehend about the difficulty of ascertaining history. Just because a few things have survived from it doesn't mean everything has survived, and that if it didn't the civilization that didn't ensure it was incompetent. That's simply unfair. Time and again people bemoan the loss of highly-important artifacts and documents from real life that have been lost to the sands of time. Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair and all that.

As mentioned by Madrugada, the first part of the trope may hold, but the second part is not as clear-cut. There is never a definite part of the movie where the humans realize that they lost the record of the ancient treaty. There's never an exact mention of exactly how it was lost, either.

At this point, there's as much chance of it being lost simply to sheer historical decay and much as it would have been through negligent record keeping. The movie never outright states how the humans became unaware of the treaty. It does make clear that most humans don't even know mythical creatures exist anymore because they've hidden themselves for so long, and they only really came back to public knowledge when Hellboy decided to say screw it to all the secrecy and out himself to the media.

The "breaking" of the treaty as perceived by Nuada is the human civilization expanding, and how are they supposed to know that the territory they're expanding into isn't theirs when those that own it prefer to stay hidden and not interact? That's like a hermit who never leaves his fores cave or whatever to talk to people complaining about hikers "invading" his territory when they don't even know he's there because he never shows himself. Are the hikers are supposed to be idiots for that?

There's never a clear-cut explanation in the film of whether it was unilateral the humans' fault or the mythological creatures' fault.

tl;dr version:

If they lost the treaty due to historical decay, then that's a force beyond human control and they can't be held responsible for it. As such, not an example of Humans Are Morons. If they lost it through negligent record keeping, then it is. The movie never makes it clear how the modern humans don't know about the ancient treaty, so it cannot be an example unless it outright states that they willfully ignored the treaty or didn't bother recording it properly.

edited 3rd Feb '11 10:29:58 PM by Malchus

Yeah, that avatar's a 'Shop of my real face.
troacctid (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#6: Feb 5th 2011 at 3:44:32 PM

Is there any discussion within the work of humans being stupid?

If not, you can compromise by listing it as an Audience Reaction on the YMMV tab. Or it can go on the Just Bugs Me or Fridge Logic page.

edited 5th Feb '11 3:45:20 PM by troacctid

Malchus Since: Jan, 2001
#7: Feb 5th 2011 at 4:41:28 PM

There's plenty of discussion about how Humans Are Bastards, which is why I didn't dispute that, but no definite discussion on how humans were inferior or whatever. Even Prince Nuada's rantings were more on how the humans were assholes for destroying the natural and mythical worlds rather than how they were idiots.

Yeah, that avatar's a 'Shop of my real face.
Add Post

Total posts: 7
Top