This is the official thread for Values Dissonance, Deliberate Values Dissonance, Fair for Its Day, and Values Resonance. A 20-year waiting period has been placed on the “values” tropes, due to various misuse and shoehorning.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 5th 2023 at 9:07:15 AM
My view may have been too America centric. I'm fine with a cut as I'm clearly out voted.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallHey, I think that this has been brought up before, but I'm not sure. This is on Animaniacs:
- A possible reason why the Buttons and Mindy sketches are so disliked by modern fans and why they don't appear in the reboot (aside from a cameo). The physical and psychological dangers of child neglect are taken a lot more seriously today then they were in the 90s. There's also the mistreatment Buttons gets from his owners, which can be seen as animal abuse, so the sketches come off as offensive today.
From James and the Giant Peach:
- Values Dissonance: The word "ass" is thrown around as an insult occasionally, especially by the Centipede. Nowadays it's considered quite derogatory (although very tame compared to other swears), and is often considered unsuitable in children's books in the modern age.
I'm not sure "ass is a swear word" counts, as I think if anything its undergoing Get Thee to a Nunnery.
"Ass" is perhaps one of the most mild of swearwords. I learned it in the 2nd grade
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI went back through the Calvin and Hobbes VD cleanup section, and was able to salvage two examples (the one about girls not playing baseball and the one with Calvin's Indian costume), since we agreed those two worked. If you can find any others worth keeping, let me know because I'm gonna send it to the cut list soon.
I'd like to bring up this example on YMMV.Straight Outta Lynwood:
- Values Dissonance: Parodying the lawsuit against Mc Donald's in the Liebeck v. Mc Donald's case? These days when the case is recounted it's more sympathetic to the 79 year old woman who needed skin grafts for third degree burns instead of the large corporation that had recieved complaints about their coffee temperature before.
For context, this example is referring to the song "I'll Sue Ya", from "Weird Al" Yankovic's 2006 album Straight Outta Lynwood. The song is about suing companies and people for random reasons - apparently, many of the lyrics were based on real lawsuits (the annotations here
describe what lawsuits are being referenced). One lyric of the song has the narrator mention suing Starbucks due to spilling a frappuccino in his lap, with the mention that "it was cold", which does seem like it could be a reference to Liebeck v. McDonald's.
I guess I could see where this example is coming from for the reasons mentioned, but there are some problems with this entry. Notably, Values Dissonance has a 20-year waiting period - Straight Outta Lynwood was released 17 years ago as of this writing.
I feel like the fact that it's not old enough to count as VD is already grounds for cutting it (as well as how the entry is pretty much a Partial-Context Example - it lists what the lawsuit is, but doesn't mention anything about what song it's parodied in), but would a rewritten version of this example potentially count in 2026?
Cold turkey's getting stale. Tonight I'm eating crow.I think, regardless of time period or culture, people will always side with a 79 year old woman with third degree burns
The only reason that case was ever seen as silly or mockworthy is because the exact details were obscure. Which as far as I understand was the result of an intentional disinformation campaign
So regardless of the recency issue, I don't think this has anything at all to do with values
Edited by Khoshekh6 on Dec 4th 2023 at 3:31:14 AM
Right, people mocked it because they didn't know how the woman suffered. The story was just corrupted into "she's a stupid woman who sued because her drink was hot".
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallThat's understandable. I know the case is definitely looked at in a more sympathetic light these days, but I can absolutely see why it doesn't count as Values Dissonance since - as mentioned - it's less about a changing of values and having a lot more to do with people knowing the actual facts of the case.
I'll be removing it with a link to this thread.
Cold turkey's getting stale. Tonight I'm eating crow.That's not it either. The situation was always harsh; people just ignored the facts (or were mislead by propaganda)
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallThis was just added to Elf (and yes, the waiting period is up).
- Values Dissonance:
- While Buddy's Accidental Pervert scene of him singing with Jovie while, unbeknownst to him, is naked in the shower can get a pass on Buddy just being that naive and socially inept, it would be a lot harder to downplay Jovie's discomfort at the assumption that someone was preying on her in an age where sexual misconduct is taken far more seriously.
- In her first scene, Deb is overheard talking on the phone with someone who wants her to help declaw their cats. In the years since this movie came out, declawing has come to be seen as a form of animal abuse, as it requires mutilating a cat's topmost phalanges (the equivalent of cutting off the tips of a human's fingers so their nails stop growing) and would not be discussed so passively, either in a movie or real life.
The first one feels wrong to me. The film doesn't "downplay" Jovie's discomfort (she's understandably pretty horrified to see Buddy there) and Buddy's portrayed in the wrong for it, even if he didn't have any perverted intent.
Here's a Values Resonance entry from the page for South Park:
- In "Trapper Keeper", Garrison's "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards Rosie O'Donnell remains relevant thanks to America's escalation into extreme partisanship. The fact that this is about a kindergarten class' election for class president was also depressingly accurate of how some voters behave, as exemplified by the explosive reactions from the losing parties in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
- "Half the kids in the class didn't vote for your nephew, so what about them? You don't give a crap about them because they're not on your side! People like you preach tolerance and open-mindedness all the time, but when it comes to Middle America, you think we're all evil and stupid country yokels who need your political enlightenment!"
I think that plotline in general might count, but Garrison's speech is more about defending people from a specific part of the country and it actually makes the opposite point since it suggests the average voter wouldn't act irrationally. Should the entry be reworded?
Edited by Javertshark13 on Dec 6th 2023 at 12:53:31 PM
EDIT: I think I misunderstood the entry's point, but still agree that it's not entirely a correct reading and is even fairly confusingly worded.
It's a Resonance entry (should specify that) and starts seeming like it's saying "Garrison's speech about election winners treating the people who didn't vote for them like crap is valid and resonant"... but then in the second half seems to be saying that he's in the wrong and embodying the way people throw petulant hissy fits when their party loses an election. Maybe I'm just not brushed up enough on how the plot of that episode unfolds but it seems like a muddled and contradictory mess of an entry honestly.
Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Dec 6th 2023 at 8:37:49 AM
IIRC, the episode was a Take That! at the reaction to the whole Bush/Gore ballot fiasco and Garrison is meant to be in the right here, criticizing zealous Gore voters who contested the Bush outcome... I think.
That said the tone of the entry specifically referring to the 2016 and 2020 elections does kind of put me off, as it implies caring strongly about the outcome of those elections at all was wrong, which feels like a different point than the speech is making.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.I think the references to the speech should just be cut because it's just calling out celebrities for getting involved in politics. Saying people don't need "enlightenment" sounds like it's saying that they would accept the election results and don't need any outside influence to do so, which is the opposite of what the entry is claiming.
Edited by Javertshark13 on Dec 6th 2023 at 2:00:40 PM

I think so. "Family comes first" isn't exclusive to Mexico or even Latin America. It is a widely held belief around the globe.
Valdo