Values Dissonance/Resonance Cleanup

Because as we all know, having a place where a minority community can gather is racist I guess, and racism was okay when the episode was made too.

Sorry, couldnt resist.

There is an undertone of suburban racism in the way that the exclusivity in Tentacle Acres is enforced (for instance, a guard tells SpongeBob that "your kind isn't allowed here" and almost immediately prepares to attack him), but it definitely feels more like actual satire than trivializing a serious issue.

From YMMV.Instant Star:

• Values Dissonance: Jude and Tommy's relationship isn't looked back at too fondly nowadays, considering their Unresolved Sexual Tension started when Jude was 15 and Tommy was well into his twenties, culminating on a kiss on her 16th birthday. Even in Canada where the age of consent is 16, this would've raised concern as Tommy was a mentor to Jude. In fairness, the show does acknowledge this several times and after the kiss, Tommy is disgusted with himself and puts a hard limit on any progression of their romance as to not ruin their working relationship. The series finale has them separated by Jude focusing on her career, but it's still enough that the show isn't as fondly remembered as Degrassi: The Next Generation.

The example mentions that the serie was aware that this was polarizing and tried to address it in the plot. I don't like this because it demonstrates that this type of relationship hasn't changed much in the eyes of the public, it as divisive now as it was in the past. The example had recently been edited, so I decided to Google it to learn more about the serie. I saw an article that referred to the finale as "controversial" and stated that fans of Degrassi: The Next Generation at the time didn't like this serie because of this particular relationship.

I think it would be better to change the example to Overshadowed by Controversy. Thoughts?

Yeah, I am starting to realize tropers just immediately use this trope for just about any sort of controversy on an old piece of media. They dont understand the "There must be an actual dissonance in values for there to be a Values Dissonance."

From The Wizard of Oz.

• The Wizard tells that Tin Man that what matters regarding love isn't how much you love, but how much you are loved by others. This strikes many today as unsettlingly conformist, particularly jarring for a film which otherwise embraces the sort of people who aren't widely appreciated. Although what the Wizard undoubtedly means is "how much love you earn with your kindness," not "how much you please others by fitting in."

The bolded sentence was just added, so does that mean we can remove the example?

Yeah, adding that paragraph completely disqualifies the example. The original example itself seems like a stretch to take the most cynical reading. I agreet that it should be cut.

The example summed up as a generic "love is the answer" message that many works (even in these days) have because it is one hundred percent non-controversial. Cut it.

The last sentence gives me the impression he was actually discussing a message that isn't controversial, so I agree with cutting it.

This is on Bibleman under Values Dissonance:

• Both Bibleman's team and his nemeses' have robots—fully sentient A.I.s—to help them out. The problem is that UNICE (Universal Networking Intelligence Computing Entity) happily spreads the word of the Lord while LUCI (Link to Underhanded Computer Influences) is quite against it. Now, when only humans are involved this is no problem, but LUCI quite understandably isn't terribly happy about following God's will because robots don't have souls! So whenever they face off UNICE, chipper as can be, tries to convince LUCI that it is a worthless pile of scrap with no higher purpose in life than to teach humans to accept Christ into their lives, and that its dreams of living independently of humans are evil.

I'm... Honestly not even sure what this is even trying to say...

Edited by fragglelover on Jul 24th 2023 at 1:31:24 PM

Maybe you can move it to What Measure Is a Non-Human?, since robots count for that. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to be an example of Values Dissonance.

Edited by SoyValdo7 on Jul 26th 2023 at 8:21:59 AM

That sounds like it would fit better under Unintentionally Sympathetic

Some entries I doubt on The Golden Girls.

• The "Mother's Day" story about Rose helping a pensioner sneak past the police to go see her dead daughter's grave in a town neighbouring St. Olaf might have seemed heartwarming back then and maybe to some people now, but Rose effectively kidnapped an old lady and lied to law enforcement who had come to bring her back to her care facility. (Clearly there's a reason she's living in a care facility.)
  • Similarly, there's an episode where Sophia illegally takes her friend out of a lower-tier nursing home to live with her. Even though she also did it for sympathetic reasons, she was clearly incapable of taking care of her, let alone herself (and unlike the previous example, we see that her friend is partially senile, even accidentally breaking a lamp and crying to Sophia "I don't know this place!")

These just sound like Artistic License – Law / Fridge Horror. Kidnapping wasn't more normalized back then.

• In one episode, Blanche's younger brother Clayton comes out as gay and leaves to let her take in the surprising news. Blanche initially has a hard time believing it, but comes to embrace it when she goes to meet Clayton in what she incorrectly assumes to be a gay bar. Although it's Played for Laughs and may be considered a case of Innocently Insensitive, Blanche proclaims she'd be proud to have any one of them date her brother only to have one of them say he'd rather date her, to which she exclaims "I converted one!" Given all the controversy to come out about the psychologically harmful effects of gay conversion therapy, this line may be a tad contentious for some.
  • Speaking of conversion, in the episode in which Dorothy and Blanche are Mistaken for Gay, a man comes to take Blanche out, insisting, "You're only like this because you haven't been with a real man." To this day, many people have this offensive belief regarding homosexuality.

I'm not quite sure on these, as they indeed might be more controversial jokes today, but they were both depicted as wrong or bad, albeit due to Mistaken for Gay reasons. The show never implied Cure Your Gays was a real thing and in fact countered the argument in the same episode.

• One episode had Rose telling one of her St. Olaf stories about how some creepy soda jerk in her town used to arrange the scoops of her ice cream sundaes in a sexually suggestive manner. Even though her story took place in the 1940s, and she couldn't tell her father since by the time he got there the evidence would have melted (which begs the question of why not just tell the little bastard's boss), if he were to do that nowadays, he would have been fired and possibly arrested/fined for lewd behavior^note as some jurisdictions consider something like that to be a form of indecent exposure or at the very least labeled a pervert and unlikely to find other employment due to his preceding reputation.

This was depicted as wrong, albeit as dark comedy. The reason he didn't get fired/arrested is because it's a throwaway joke on a sitcom, plus not all perverts today even get in trouble for this sort of thing.

• "The Case of the Libertine Belle" has Blanche get framed for murder while attending a murder-mystery weekend at the Maltese Falcon Club, and the real culprit pull a gun on Dorothy before being restrained by police... until it's revealed that the entire scenario was set up by the club without Blanche or Dorothy's knowledge. If this happened today, the club would probably get sued out of existence for the emotional trauma they put Blanche and Dorothy through.

Would this not have also happened in the 80s/90s? Sounds like just sitcom Rule of Funny to me.

None of these sound like examples, not even the second one.

Cut them.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/Precious

I have ask just what the hell is this? Is this implying incest and pedophilia were ok at one point?

Values Dissonance: During an emotional breakdown to her teacher, Precious reveals that her father Carl wants to marry her. Precious retorts that "it ain't even legal!"

Edited by AegisP on Jul 31st 2023 at 10:57:48 AM

Yeah, cut that with a vengeance.

A charitable interpretation is that this is just a poor way of acknowledging that her complaint is about the legality of it instead of the morality of it, but either way it doesn't make sense.

Drunken Master

• Values Dissonance:
  • From the first movie, Fei-Hong making up his own feminine fighting style in lieu of failing to master the Lady Ho part of Eight Drunken Gods, cooks up some bullshit moves like one called "Flirty Widow Waves Farewell To Her Lover". Ooooookay.

Im not quite sure what this example is going for

Cut it

Yeah I don't know what that's saying, cut.

I'm guessing that it's calling his fighting moves sexist (or transphobic in the "dur hur, guy acts like a lady, funny" sense). But yeah, needs a better description.

This is on The Simpsons S2 E21 "Three Men and a Comic Book":

Values Dissonance: Mrs. Glick – perhaps a parody of some elderly people who hold on to values of decades before – considers the 50 cents she pays Bart (for a week of backbreaking yard chores) very generous.

Given that the episode treats this as ridiculous (from what I can tell by looking through the recap page), I don't think this is an example...

I'm not sure it'd be an example even if the episode didn't treat it as ridiculous...

Yeah, that's a deliberate example since Mrs. Glick is so old she thinks 50 cents is enough of a payment for Bart and he's pretty angry about the whole thing. It's not even Deliberate Values Dissonance, since it's not really about "values", just more of a joke about her not understanding inflation. I support cutting the entry.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Aug 4th 2023 at 12:11:01 PM

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

• Values Dissonance
  • Adult Martha isn't much better. Her many, many provocative outfits and lustful attitude were already considered Fetish Retardant when the film was first released (her first scene alone has her rapid-firing from a canon that causes her to jiggle around a lot while wearing a stripperiffic Santa-themed hoop skirt and bustier), but like the above, having such blatant female objectification and explicit sexuality in a family movie would greatly upset people concerned with the effect of both on children.

Firstly, in case you're confused by the opening sentence and the "but like the above" part, this comes after a point about young Martha, which I do consider an example.

But getting to the point in question. I don't think it's realy fair to accuse a film of "female objectification", just because a female character wears (supposedly) "sexy" outfits, especially considering she's the ONLY female to do this. Also, Martha does a personality beyond "lustful". Besides, sexy outfits do still appear in kids films today. Just look at Elsa.

Yes, I agree. This is still happening today, so it doesn't count.