Values Dissonance/Resonance Cleanup

Atavism - A tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral

Edited by badtothebaritone on Jun 2nd 2023 at 5:03:15 AM

I mean, can you really call it "reversing" if it's still a very common mindset and status quo in a lot of places? I mean, I'd agree that these things are outdated, but technically speaking they're not because they're still commonplace and popular.

My point is basically that, if we're going to factor in conservative America for this example, it throws our other examples into question not because of "Atavism" but because it's proclaiming certain values as being the "true" modern values, and discounting the people who disagree.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 2nd 2023 at 6:07:54 AM

I mean, I wasn't being sarcastic - if there's no set definition of 'values' then there's literally no justification for this page even existing. Like, to go to the full hyperbolic extreme, why do we list Values Dissonance for something like The Turner Diaries that's targeted at literal Nazis, but not for all the thousands of works that feature values dissonant from those of Nazis?

(I actually don't know if we do list it for The Turner Diaries because there's no way I'm ever clicking on that page, but you get my point.)

Edited by nrjxll on Jun 2nd 2023 at 5:42:44 AM

Regardless of what the example actually is, I think there is probably enough of a consensus for it to not count as an example of Values Dissonance specifically, so should I go ahead and cut it?

Edited by Tylerbear12 on Jun 2nd 2023 at 8:42:51 AM

Am I hearing that a Trope Talk thread to address the general issue might be in order?

Edited by badtothebaritone on Jun 2nd 2023 at 12:22:52 PM

Maybe?

From YMMV.One Hundred Years Of Solitude:

• Values Dissonance: Among other things, such as Colonel Aureliano Buendia marrying the literal child that is Remedios, the Romani characters are referred to exclusively as gypsies, which is nowadays considered an outright slur.
  • The spanish word "Gitano", is a case of this in Real Life. While sharing the same roots than the word "Gypsy", it doesn't share its negative connotations and is used by Spanish speaking Romani to refer to themselves.
  • Pilar Ternera seducing (and getting pregnant by) a teenaged José Arcadio.

There are many problems with this example, but the one I want to talk about concerns "Gypsy vs. Gitano". Is "Gitano" really not considered a slur? If it is not, what should I do, cut it?

I really dont know I am a native Spanish Speaker but not Romani so I cant say for sure.

30 Rock has Values Dissonance examples despite the oldest episodes of the series only being 17 years old. Even still, the first one doesn't really work (you cannot tell me that the Show Within a Show on 30 Rock was "prestige television") and the second one's a ZCE.

I hope no one minds me asking, but can I get a little more feedback on these Rugrats examples I brought up on the previous page?

"Prestige TV" has nothing to do with values. I said to cut both of them.

None of those examples were considered acceptable at the time (the second one even admits it was controversial). As it turns out, Rugrats has more black comedy than people (myself included) remember. I said cut it all out.

Alright, I have removed the Rugrats examples.

Both of them should be cut, but the second one could have some merit if somebody who can expand appears.

About, the "Gitano" thing, I'm from the country where the novel was written, and while the term may have become a bit more controversial since the book was published, I don't think you can say it's an "outright slur"; an official institution used the term as recently as September of 2021 and didn't gained any controversy for it, and my mom personally knows some Roma people from Irish descend who usually refer to themselves as "Gitanos" rather than "Romani" for cultural reasons. The example may have a point about the term being somewhat controversial (but I'm not even fully sure of that), but certainly it's exagerating how controversial.

Code Lyoko S 1 E 9 has this:

• Values Dissonance: The teacher's insistence on keeping the students' cellphones comes off as almost Lethally Stupid these days, but back when this episode was made (2003), cellphones in class was a much more hot button topic than it is today, with schools outright banning kids from even bringing a cellphone into the building.

I don't think this is an example since phones still get confiscated if they are used in class while the teacher is speaking today. Even though most students have phones these days, teachers usually still forbid them during class still.

On Power Rangers Time Force

• Values Dissonance: The show's handling institutionalized racism against mutants was considered revolutionary for the franchise in the 2000s but would be ripped apart if it came out in the 2010s or a decade after that. Despite having a rather valid Freudian Excuse for hating humans, most mutants on the show are written as your standard Monster of the Week who just wants to wreak havoc. Even Ransik, one of the few mutants given any real depth, is mostly portrayed as a power-hungry terrorist who, as was pointed out by Linkara, shows no real interest in actually making a better life for his fellow mutants. Making things worse is the fact that the Rangers are police officers who never really question society's treatment of their enemies. Given that state-sanctioned violence against marginalized groups has gotten a great deal of attention during the 2010s and onwards, the Rangers may look much less heroic in the eyes of some viewers.
• Values Resonance: "Trip Takes a Stand" has become one of the most relevant moments in Power Rangers history, especially in the 2010s, because of it's allegory for race-based violence involving law enforcement. Even though the victim of the incident in question is a mutant instead of a human, the message is still very clear.

Is it just me or do these two entries contradict each other?

I would need more context for the values resonance one to decide

I agree. It sounds like an exaggeration.

It's important to remember that all the mutants in the series are established from the beginning as criminals taken from a Cryo-Prison, so it makes sense that they are all bad. If I remember correctly, they only talk about mutants being mistreated during Ransik's backstory, and then they don't talk about it anymore. Even then, in the same episode, Jen mentions that they tried to help him, but he turned them all down. I can't help but feel that this looks more like a Unfortunate Implications example.

EDIT: Exactly. Not a good sign.

Edited by SoyValdo7 on Jun 14th 2023 at 6:49:51 AM

But Unfortunate Implications is a can of worms now.

This example on Dilbert is misuse, since it appears to be talking about the humor resonating more with an individual person over time, not retaining value despite cultural shifts. I can see it being rewritten to concern how the business critiques that it presents remain relevant, but I don't think I have the information to do that. I had a phase where I liked 90s Dilbert, but stopped engaging with it at all in 2016.

• Values Resonance: It's the sort of humor that gets funnier and starts making sense (sometimes a bit too close for comfort) when the reader gets older and enters the workforce; even older strips still feel painfully relevant, proving that mundane and often nonsensical office banality is a long-lasting concept.

I agree that example seems like misuse.

Also I feel like culture is shifting away from cubicle work, what with more virtual work popping up and more work-from-home pushes.

I'm going through a troper with an obvious agenda edit history nd I found this example they cut on YMMV.Transmetropolitan

• Values Dissonance:
  • This series was written relatively early in the gay rights movement, and while all sorts of depravity of various kinds is commonplace in the City, it's almost entirely cishet depravity. There are a grand total of three gay characters in the story - one is an overseer of the History Reservations whose sexuality comes up in one line (out of four she has total), and two are the escapees from the Maoist China reservation who have no lines (or names, for that matter) and do nothing but make out on the street.

I'm not sure if this a valid example or if it should stay cut

I'm leaning on cutting it. A lot of media is still like that today.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jun 24th 2023 at 12:00:54 PM

Hey, I found this Values Dissonance entry on Into the Woods that I'm considering cutting and wanted to get more opinions:

• There's also the treatment of the Baker's Wife's 'infidelity' with Cinderella's Prince. It's treated as a consensual tryst, even though the prince seduces her and she doesn't say yes. Given the class and power imbalance between them (as well as the prince's established characterization as a womaniser), it's unlikely she would have been in a position to turn him down even if she wanted to. Cinderella indeed hears of the prince's actions and doesn't tell the Baker to spare his feelings so he won't know his wife cheated on him; with greater awareness of sexual politics, a modern viewer is less likely to find too much wrongdoing on the wife's part.

The issue is that it's built into the story that the Baker's Wife is attracted to the Prince from the moment they lock eyes during Act I - she spends "Agony" hiding behind a rock admiring "two princes, each more handsome than the other", she spends the entirety of two different songs with Cinderella trying to make her talk more about the Prince instead of the rest of the ball, and even when she has her love song with the Baker, she conspicuously compliments him with the exact same words the Prince used to describe himself in the conversation she overheard - basically, this isn't just "he makes a move and she doesn't say no", it's baked into the character that she's attracted to the Prince in every scene they share, so even with the power imbalance it's clearly meant to be consensual. Can I cut it with that logic or does the entry still hold up and I'm just missing the point?

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Jul 2nd 2023 at 6:19:32 AM

Yeah, the Baker's Wife is objectively into the prince. That's the entire point of "Very Nice Prince" — she's trying to live vicariously through Cinderella, and gets frustrated when Cinderella admits that she doesn't actually know how she feels about the dance or the prince. Following that, she has to seriously debate with herself on if she should continue to pursue the prince or stay loyal to the Baker. It wasn't just a random nonconsensual fling in the woods; she didn't outright say yes, but everything about her actions before and after imply that she was into the idea and did NOT feel uncomfortable or violated afterward.