Eagleland and its soft split definitions

Continuing from an off-topic discussion that happened in the Is this tropeworthy/Chairs thread, as I felt this warranted its own discussion.

Eagleland was brought up in that discussion as essentially having multiple definitions in one. The article is soft-split into three categories:

• America the Beautiful, concerning positive portrayals/stereotypes of America,
• 'Murica the Boorish, concerning negative portrayals/stereotypes of America, and
• Mixed Flavor, concerning portrayals in the middle.

There was some disagreement about this though. I and some others thought a split into different tropes might be doable, but some others disagreed. Quoting petersohn:

For a more specific opinion on what I want to do, I will argue that while "stereotypes about the USA" might be tropeworthy, I think it might be more interesting/tropeworthy if, rather than simply troping general "stereotypes about the USA", we can trope the individual specific stereotypes themselves. I could see some general ideas there—we could have tropes about how Americans are seen as fat, seen as war-mongering/jingoistic/nationalistic, seen as lazy, and I'm sure we could have some positive or even mixed stereotypes as well. Just from the index we already have some tropes about some of these—"Ugly American" Stereotype, Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist, Americans Are Cowboys, etc. Maybe instead of splitting Eagleland up by soft-split, we could slowly split it into more specific stereotype tropes. If this isn't a good or workable idea I understand as well—I'm just throwing something out there to gauge opinions.

Regardless of what the best solutions is going forward (if we even need one at all), I feel this is worth further discussion. So, let's discuss.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on May 11th 2023 at 1:14:05 PM

The problem with hardsplitting Eagleland into types is particular is all the Mixed examples that will get caught in the lurch. I think Beautiful and Boorish are two extremes and a great many works fall in the middle — land of the free, home of the brave but egotistical and with a tendency for violence. So we'd end up with a lot of "this one has a boorish POTUS but the citizens are nice, where should it go"?

I'd rather undo the soft split and lump here.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 11th 2023 at 12:48:00 PM

Didn't think of undoing the soft split. Good point.

How would that be done? Would we need dual trips to the Trope Description and Soft Split cleanups, or could we do it here?

I can get behind that, especially since other tropes about stereotypical depictions of countries, such as Oireland, aren't split like this.

I think the point made in the Chairs thread was that "'Murica the Boorish" is a parody, or negative perspective on, "America the Beautiful", making them essentially different perspectives on the same stereotype.

That is true. Actually, that's another argument for undoing the soft split.

So, to repeat my earlier question, is this a job for the Soft Split thread, the Description thread, or both?

Mixed examples seem like chairs, though, if you are including portrayals of America that don't fit into any stereotype because they subtly show the good and the bad parts, then it feels at that point that the trope is just "America appears in a story".

Also, while we are at it, Strawman U is another trope about stereotypes that is soft split into several wildly different stereotypes. Should this get the same treatment?

Edited by molokai198 on May 17th 2023 at 3:27:36 PM

They are not "America appears in a story", they are "we mix and match stereotypes of America".

Take that back to the soft split thread. This thread is only about Eagleland.