HoMM Fan
I'd say that's fair, as the latter two basically dip into being real person troping.
The sole exception could be for when those RL people influence media directly (ie: the Milli Vanilli episode of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! being cast in a totally different light after their whole scandal).
"Grandmaster Combat, son!"
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Yeah, like I said back at the cleanup thread I do think examples about random cons and stuff are a bit off-mission. We don't need to collect every controversy.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
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I’m not sold on cutting Politicians, as examples like Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton are instructive on how they’re portrayed in media and 10 years should largely stave off the worst of ROCEJ risks. As for events, I’m willing to consider cutting those, since their pop culture relevance is minimal and it’s likely the only way we don’t have to list the suggestion that incited the need for this thread. Though, I’m personally still open to a Content Warning Labelnote.
Also, pop culture relevance is a decent barometer for being OBC valid, but it’s probably not the good to be the only valid one either, as it would probably be too narrow and force large amounts of cuts across the board.
Edited by DDRMASTERM on Nov 5th 2022 at 8:57:46 AM
Goku Black
I'm going to bring up. I do not understand why we're having detailed discussions on age old dictators (this stuff is THEIR LEGACY. Their is nothing to overshadow) or We're supposed to media site. As in what happens in media? Instead we have stuff like this? Alot of this stuff is so obscure that I would be genuinely shocked if anyone knew if unless you were a history buff.
- Diarmait Mac Murchada, former king of Leinster, would’ve become an almost obscure figure in the medieval period of Ireland’s history... if it wasn’t for the fact that he sought aid from King Henry II of England to recover his kingdom, which kickstarted the Anglo-Normans’ successful invasion of Ireland. Centuries later, Diarmait’s remembered by the Irish by the unflattering nickname Diarmaid na nGall ("Irish for “The Foreigner Diarmait") as a traitor responsible for causing his people’s oppression and the destruction of their culture under eight hundred years of English rule
- Pope Alexander VI is more remembered for allegedly admitting to fathering several children by his mistresses, his papacy being widely regarded as one of the worst of all time, and his family, the infamous Borgias, being the poster child for nepotism and libertinism than the fact that he was a Pope at all. Most people are now familiar with him as the Big Bad of Assassin's Creed II or his portrayal by Jeremy Irons in The Borgias, if they're at all familiar with him, cementing how far his legacy has fallen.
Than their is this stuff which seems like it's weirdly getting into personal history of people.
- John Edwards, former U.S. Senator from North Carolina and two-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is best known for committing political suicide by having an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter (a filmmaker hired to work for his 2008 presidential campaign) and fathering an illegitimate child with her. While adulterous politicians are nothing new, the fact that this happened while his wife Elizabeth was dying of breast cancer turned him into a pariah.
- Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French politician and the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is infamous for his involvement in several financial and sexual scandals. The most well-known of these scandals was an incident in 2011 where a hotel maid accused him of trying to rape her while he was staying at the Sofitel New York Hotel. While the charges were dismissed, there are still people who believe him to be a sexual predator.
- British MP John Profumo will forever be known for a sex scandal known as the Profumo affair. In the early 1960s, Profumo, at the time Harold Macmillan's Secretary of State for War, was engaged in a sexual relationship with a 19-year-old would-be model named Christine Keeler. To add to the grievances, Keeler was simultaneously involved with a Soviet naval attaché named Yevgeny Ivanov, which meant there was a possible security risk involved. When the scandal broke in 1963, Profumo resigned from the government and Parliament. The repercussions of the scandal were a contributing factor to Macmillan's.
The places folder in particular comes off as just cruel. Like how Tenefrie, Bophal, Moeny are apparently ever going to be known for their disasters.
Edited by miraculous on Nov 5th 2022 at 4:38:40 AM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
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For reference, here's the original TLP
if it's at all relevant. I agree that we should chop off all the "politician had a scandal!" examples, along with the "place" examples. I also agree with making this media/media creator-specific.
As for what to do with "this is how the media portrays X" and how to document that, assuming we even can, maybe those would be Useful Notes material if enough works reference them? Or am I wrong? Like, if multiple works constantly references X event or X scandal, maybe a Useful Notes page could better explain it? At least then the UN page would be used for something relevant to media and media analysis unlike a lot of UN pages. I could be dead wrong though. I do agree that it's worth documenting, I just wonder how.
Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 5th 2022 at 9:41:38 AM
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I'm fine with excluding politicians because most politicians have some controversy attached to them. It's very rare for some political figure to be universally loved.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And yeah, if a controversy does affect how the politician is portrayed in the media, we can add a paragraph to their Useful Notes page.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Politicians also attract examples that just list every controversy made in their career, which isn't just missing the point, but also claiming that their political career overshadowed... their political career.
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If we’re cutting sections from the RL page, wouldn’t that be a question for the Real Life Section Maintenance Thread/Crowner?
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
We're not cutting anything right now, but even if we were, cutting examples from those sections can be done without taking it to that thread since misuse is misuse regardless of if the trope is NRLEP.
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I'm fine with a pruning of misuse or unnecessary examples, though I'd stand by saying that if we want to do away the section entirely, then that should go to the Real Life Crowner. But here's a rundown of the Places examples, and what I'd personally say on their validity In bold as is tradition with these things:
- Guyana is a South American nation that just happened to be the place where Jim Jones and his cult, the People's Temple, relocated, later committing mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. Cut, it's an infamous event but most people who know of the event are unlikely to think of the nation it occurred in aside from "some place in South America".
- The Mandalay Bay Hotel is now primarily known for being the location where a man shot 58 people dead and injured 500 others at a country music festival. The hotel, however, was one of the most iconic resorts in Las Vegas before the shooting, so it's well-known enough to avoid being known exclusively for the shooting, even if that is still its primary claim to fame. Cut, it's a famous Vegas hotel long before the event and the example even admits its own dubiousness.
- Few people who live outside of the St. Louis area know anything about the suburb of Ferguson outside of being the city where racial riots erupted after a black man was shot dead by a white police officer. There's probably a case to this one, but I'll leave that to further discussion.
- The small town of Money, Mississippi would likely be almost completely unknown outside its immediate vicinity if not for its distinction of being where black teenager Emmett Till was kidnapped and tortured to death by two white men. The high publicity of the crime and the perpetrators' acquittal became a major rallying cry for the Civil Rights Movement, and it lingers in the American consciousness to this day as one of the go-to examples of both a Miscarriage of Justice and anti-black racism in America, drowning out everything else about the town and anything done by anyone else from it. Cut, Emmett Till's case is very well known as a horrible miscarriage of justice but the town where it happened not so much.
- Theresienbad, a swimming pool complex in Vienna, is best known as the place where a ten-year-old boy was raped by an Iraqi refugee who claimed he was motivated by sexual frustration, which sparked a long legal battle and a series of fierce debates about European immigration policies. This crime is often cited as a contributing factor to a rise in anti-refugee sentiment in Austria, and to a lesser extent, across Europe as a whole. Case in point: the Wikipedia article about the rape is significantly longer and more detailed than the article about the complex itself. Leaning towards cut, this seems like a flash in the pan in a broader debate more than anything
- Sun City, a casino resort near Rustenburg, South Africa, was less known in The '80s for its luxurious trappings and more for being a cultural faultline during The Apartheid Era. South Africa was the target of a major diplomatic and cultural boycott over its racial segregation laws, and the cultural half of that boycott extended to holding concerts at South African venues like Sun City. Steven Van Zandt and forty-eight major pop acts collaborated on a song entitled "Sun City" pledging to never perform there, and Queen landed themselves on a United Nations blacklist when they did.note Billy Joel also performed at Sun City, but got one over on his white hosts by prominently featuring black musicians on stage with him. Performing at the resort became less of an issue after apartheid was ended in the early '90s. I don't know about this personally, but leaning towards cut since it was more about performing in Apartheid South Africa at all that was the problem more than the location.
- Columbine High School in Colorado, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida (and by extension, the towns of Newtown and Parkland, where the latter two are locatednote ) are all primarily known for being the sites of deadly mass shootings. In fact, Columbine's reputation has become so unshakeable that, 20 years after the shooting took place, there have been talks about tearing down the school. Probably valid, but whether it's worth keeping might warrant further discussion
- The Cincinnati Zoo is best known for two things. One is a 2016 incident where a gorilla named Harambe was shot to protect a young boy who had fallen into the gorilla enclosure, sparking debates about whether zoo officials made the right call that rage to this day as well as a number of ambiguously ironic memes eulogizing Harambe. The other is the fact that the last passenger pigeon died there over 100 years previously. Cut, Harambe was a big meme that far outgrew any association with Cincinatti and the former, sad it may be, is likely too obscure a fact these days to be of merit.
- The village of Skokie, Illinois will probably be best known for their attempts to prevent a neo-Nazi rally from happening in 1977 (they had a majority-Jewish population at the time, including some who survived the Holocaust). Skokie lost the case on First Amendment grounds, but the rally ultimately never happened. The controversy ultimately inspired the "Illinois Nazis" in The Blues Brothers. Probably cut, or else we might end up with a long list of controversial Neo-Nazi rally locations.
- Tiananmen Square is one of the most famous locations in China and has a rich history. But, for most people living in democracies, the first thing that comes to mind hearing that name is the 1989 protests that were violently stamped out by the Chinese military. The governing Communist Party of China, who are very aware of this, have thus gone great lengths to suppress all knowledge of the event within their borders. Full disclaimer: I added this one, so I'm naturally biased in its favor. That said, I'll still vouch for it, especially since the Dictatorial Chinese government so badly wants to erase it from people's memory.
- Whenever a new disease is named after the place it originated, and that disease later rises to widespread prominence, the place it was named after will inevitably be hit by this trope. Examples of such places include Lyme, Connecticut, the Ebola River in the Congo, and the Zika Forest in Uganda, Hendra, Australia. While the virus that caused the COVID-19 Pandemic was deliberately not named after the location where the outbreak originated in an attempt to avoid a similar stigma developing (after the World Health Organization established a guideline in 2015 specifically with that end), the city of Wuhan has ended up falling into this trope (at least outside of China), and the trend of geographic-based names resulted in people maliciously giving the virus various Chinese-based nicknames anyway. General Example, so either cut or give each their own bullet.
- The English village of Piltdown would be almost entirely unknown if not for the Piltdown Man, one of the most infamous paleontological hoaxes in history. Few people know anything else about the town, including what county it's in. Maybe valid, but likely verges on too obscure.
- Molenbeek-Saint-Jean (more commonly known as just "Molenbeek") is one of 19 municipalities in Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Outside of Belgium, this municipality gained international attention as the base of Islamist terrorists during the mid-2010s. Most notably, it was linked to the Brussels ISIS terror cell who carried out large-scale terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 (130 killed) and Brussels in March 2016 (32 killed). Additionally, Molenbeek is one of Europe's most infamous 'no-go zones'. This came up last year and was left alone because we as (mostly) Americans weren't best equipped to rule on its validity. Might be another "Flash-in-the-pan" of a broader discussion to warrant a cut, but please chime in if you're from Europe.
- Bob Jones University, a private Evangelical Christian college in Greenville, South Carolina, has become associated with their racist treatment of African-Americans; they didn't allow them to become students until 1971, and even then, they were not allowed to be in relationships with the white students. This ultimately got Bob Jones into trouble with the IRS, who wanted the college defunded due to their racist policies, leading to a decades-long court battle that ended with the courts siding in Bob Jones' favor in 1983. This war between church and state is seen as the beginning of the politicization of religion in America, influencing the rise of the Christian Right movement and the Republican Party turning the abortion debate into a wedge issue. Although Bob Jones did eventually get rid of their anti-miscegenation policy, they only did so in 2007, making the university's racist past still fresh in the minds of the public. Maybe valid, but as a Religious college it might warrant a cut out of ROCEJ concerns.
- Hathras will forever be associated in the public conscience outside of India with the particularly horrifying rape of a young Dalit woman in 2020, and the equally horrifying cover-up thereof. Probably cut, that's horrific, but most probably have forgotten about the event, let alone the city it occurred at.
- The Watergate Hotel is at least as well-known for being the setting of Richard Nixon's infamous scandal that ended him as a public figure as being a hotel, to the point that "-gate" would go on to become a suffix used in the names of controversies. It named a trope, that speaks for itself.
- Despite being part of a transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Great Spa Towns of Europe", the French resort town of Vichy is largely known for being the capital of a pro-Axis puppet state in France. To this day, the word "Vichy" is a byword for collaboration with oppressive, expansionist regimes, including naming the trope Vichy Earth. Valid, everything about this is true.
- Little St. James, part of the Virgin Islands, is forever infamous for being the private property of Jeffrey Epstein and the alleged site of many sex crimes by him and his associates, to the point of being maliciously nicknamed "Pedophile Island". Cut, Epstein is infamous, but most people probably couldn't name the island it happened at.
- The small rural town of Skidmore, Missouri is only known to outsiders as the site of the unsolved murder of Ken McElroy and the gruesome murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, leading it to have the nickname "the creepiest small town in America". Probably cut, seems a bit like an advertisement for an obscure place, but I could be wrong.
- Pulaski, Tennessee is best known as the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, a reputation it has struggled to move past for decades. Ditto Stone Mountain, Georgia, where the second, more powerful iteration of the Klan was born. (That Martin Luther King had called it out in a speech definitely doesn’t help.) Oddly, the actual mountain is now a state park, and the town? Demographically, it's 75% black. Probably cut, the KKK is infamous and few would be know about the locations they were founded.
- Also in Tennessee, the town of Erwin is best known for an incident in 1916 where an elephant was hanged for murder after killing her handler. Likely to atone for this, the town since then has held numerous events to support elephant conservation. Probably cut, seems a bit too obscure to merit listing these days.
- The city of Zanesville, Ohio is now largely known for the "Exotic Animal Massacre", in which Terry Thompson let all his animals loose before killing himself, forcing the sheriff's department to use live ammunition in a populated area to kill animals and being seen by members of the community as a free trophy hunt. Possibly keep, that seems like a particularly crazy isolated event, but also raises questions of being too obscure.
- Apalachin, which is not far from Binghamton, New York, is known for hosting a Criminal Convention of The Mafia in late 1957. More than 100 mobsters came to talk about the growing drug trade and a spate of mob hits in New Yorknote , but it became a major debacle when a curious state trooper noticed the expensive cars parked on mob boss Joe Barbara's ranch. Many mafiosi bailed out, but more than 60 of them were captured, including Vito Genovese, who was blamed for hosting the event in such an open location. While the arrests were quashed on appeal and the mafiosi claimed they were paying tribute to a not-so-sick Barbara, the event was humiliating as it exposed them to outside scrutiny for the first time. Bugged phone calls between mafiosi revealed that Barbara was leery about hosting a mob summit at his home due to ongoing legal troubles. The stress from Apalachin and a drastic loss in his personal wealth caused Barbara to really die of a heart attack in 1959. Probably cut, I don't see a compelling case that it's still strongly associated with the mafia.
- Bhopal, India was the former capital of Bhopal State and is known for its numerous lakes. It was also was the site of an enormous chemical spill in 1984 (the second-worst industrial accident in history, after Chernobyl) that now bears its name and has been indelibly associated with the city. To this day, it is still dealing with pollution, long-term health and economic effects of the disaster, though it also has numerous positive traits that its association with the catastrophe has blotted out - including being declared the most environmentally-friendly major city in India in the 21st century. This came up as a case of the cruelty listing place can entail, and I'm inclined to agree as it's otherwise a valid example.
- The Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, California, is a noted comedy club where comedians like Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Dave Chappelle, and David Letterman have performed over the years. But to many people, the Laugh Factory is infamous for being the site of Michael Richards's November 2006 show, where he shouted the N-word at some Black hecklers. As Chappelle said in a 2013 show, "Every time I see this backdrop, I think about Kramer fucking up.". That's a big YIKES from me, but its validity is very questionable.
- Tenerife, one of the islands in the Canaries, is a popular tourist destination for many travellers. It also happens to be the site of the deadliest accident ever in commercial aviation history, when two Boeing 747s collided on the runway of Los Rodeos airportnote in March 1977, causing the deaths of 583 passengers and crew. Probably cut, it's a horrific accident, but likely too obscure a location.
- The town of Charkhi Dadri in India was completely unknown until November 1996, when a Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 crashed into a Saudia Boeing 747 above the town, killing all 349 people on both planes in the world's deadliest mid-air collision. Probably cut, similar to above.
- Lockerbie, a small town in southwestern Scotland, came to international attention in December 1988 after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, when the wreckage of the plane crashed in the town and killed 11 residents in addition to the 259 people killed on the flight. Probably cut, much like the last two.
- Montoursville was an unknown Pennsylvania town until the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996. The town then got international attention when it was found that a group of sixteen students from Montoursville High School and five adult chaperones on a school-sponsored trip to France were among the passengers killed on the flight. Like the previous three, probably cut.
That's all for the places, feel free to discuss or dispute these. But I won't lie, the value of this folder remains pretty minimal, especially since some of the few valid examples in my opinion raise questions of if they're too cruel.
Edited by DDRMASTERM on Nov 6th 2022 at 7:49:01 AM
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
I think the Real Life should at least be limited to things that could be well-known for other things besides the controversy. You can't really overshadow obscurity.
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And remember that it has to be controversial. "The World Trade Center is overshadowed by its collapse during the 9/11 attacks" isn't OBC because there's no controversy.
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The idea of differentiating “Overshadowed By Controversy” from “Overshadowed By Tragedy” is an interesting one worth considering. Would provide a way to cut the ones that were criticized for being cruel.
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Doesn't Distanced from Current Events cover stuff that got changed due to tragedies? Maybe not the same as "overshadowed" but very similar.
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Sometimes yes, but not always. Bhopal, India came up because it’s a prime example of the cruelty of the folder because it’s indisputably known primarily for the horrific toxic gas leak that killed thousands.
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
I figured. I don't know how an Overshadowed By Tragedy item would work out though—seems like a magnet for potentially insensitive entries.
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I didn’t mean to suggest it as a new trope, I agree that’s a bad idea. I was just bringing that difference up as a compelling basis for pruning the more problematic places examples. Tragedies by themselves aren’t really controversies because there’s rarely any debate about them.
Edited by DDRMASTERM on Nov 7th 2022 at 10:07:13 AM
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Oh OK. Missed the context there. I apologize.
Anyway I still think OBC should be limited to media and media creators—with information affecting how politicians, places, etc. are portrayed in media moved to Useful Notes if applicable.
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It's been a bit. Should we do a wick check now?
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I’m not going to stop you.
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
Alright, I'll dump a possible link here —>Sandbox.Overshadowed By Controversy Wick Check
When I get time, I may work on it.
EDIT: Started it. Can't check wicks yet as I will be somewhat busy today.
Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 11th 2022 at 11:58:16 AM
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I went ahead and made cuts to all but the examples I was comfortably confident with keeping in the places folder. I might do a personal rundown of other folders down the line, and the discussion of if we delete the folder entirely is still a fair one.
In the Overshadowed by Controversy Thread
it has been brought up that the trope is subject to frequent misuse and off-mission entries. Before deciding if the trope should be taken to TRS, it was suggested that this be discussed in Trope Talk first. It has been suggested that the trope be limited to media and media creators, cutting entries related to politics and real world leaders.
Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?