Discussion Main / DoNotDoThisCoolThing

Moved the below example here: This whole thing sounds like the rant of some right-wing nutjob with a crush on Jessup, who I've never heard described as someone other than a psycho. Santiago is never revealed to be "a screw-up and a burden on his unit", and the reason the whole problem was created in the first place was because Jessup refused to provide a transfer to Santiago, who was aware that he was not physically fit enough to serve in his current position, hence why he kept trying to get transferred out of the place. It's also asinine to suggest that a character "loses all sympathy" when the guilt of their actions (caused by following Jessup's orders) drives them to suicide.

It's also worth noting that a small minority of people feeling this way does NOT fit this trope; the movie's audience should be overwhelmingly in favor of such an opinion for it to qualify.

• A Few Good Men isn't a war film, but it is a military movie that falls victim to this trope on account of issues related to war. The point of the film is to show that even service members who are Just Following Orders have an obligation to question those orders when they go too far and tries to portray Colonel Jessup as bad in this vein for ordering the Code Red on PFC Santiago. Yet the film falls headfirst into Strawman Has a Point. While Jessup is wrong for lying about the incident and leaving Downey and Dawson to take the fall, when he finally does confess, he gives a very good argument in defense of his actions. He explains how the purpose of militaries is to fight wars, and they need to be as prepared and ready as possible to fight them, and how Santiago was hindering this preparation. The credibility of his argument is given a huge boost by the fact that he's a naval academy graduate, a Vietnam veteran, a highly decorated senior officer, and just comes off as an all-around badass (the fact that he's played by Jack Nicholson definitely helps), so he probably knows what's he's doing in this matter. The film's argument is hurt by how it tries to portray Santiago as a sympathetic character on account of his having a heart condition; it ultimately fails because it reveals him to be a screw-up and a burden on his unit. Plus the message is further hurt by trying to portray Lt. Col. Markinson as a sympathetic character who opposes Jessup's actions, feels incredibly guilty over Santiago's death, and appears to want to try to rectify this mistake, yet he loses a ton (if not all) of that sympathy when he's Driven to Suicide before testifying in court, hence clearly failing to rectify it.

Edited by Darkmane Tyler Durden is my bitch.

This trope has been turned YMMV per TRS.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Okay, just as an open question: Is it just me, or does this entire trope seem kind of pointless? The definition is "no advocacy piece opposing something can be 100% effective", which while true seems kind of useless as a conclusion. If *every* ( or nearly every ) piece of fiction for which the trope could apply, it does apply, is it really a trope?

The only way I can see a piece of fiction realistically avoiding this trope is by not containing an advocacy aesop at all. Otherwise, its either effective fiction ( and thus this trope is in effect, since its desirable enough to be worth experiencing ), or its ineffective fiction ( and thus this trope is in effect because no one cares, or are actively inspired to the opposite in spite ).

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I think one could argue that Confessions of a Shopaholic is a Stealth Cigarette Commercial. It's not so much that the viewers reject the Aesop as that the filmmakers appear to.

There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney

Truffaut? OK, but: where does - if he does - Truffaut say these things about war-movies? The only reference I found is in Roger Ebert, Awake in the dark. Forty years of reviews, essays, and interviews, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 157 (review of Platoon): "It was Francois Truffaut who said that it's not possible to make an anti-war movie, because all war movies, with their energy and sense of adventure, end up making combat look like fun". So: is it a Rogert Ebert's trope or a Truffaut's one?

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I'm not understanding the Watchmen example. It's not clear what the cool thing is supposed to be:

• Watchmen has landed in this trope because of Misaimed Fandom. Many people thought it was a conventional hero vs. villain story, only Darker and Edgier. For instance, Rorschach's violent tendencies were copied by Dark Age "antiheroes" to make them equally badass. Moore and Gibbons made Rorschach a dirt poor homophobe raised with a prostitute for a mother, the Comedian a rapist who can't even connect with his own daughter, and a certain brilliant plan be rejected by a Physical God. Nonetheless, comics to this very day emulate it.

So, is this about what comics should not do? Do not emulate this comic because they are trying to show how not to make comics? Were they hoping that Watchmen would make no money to prove their message of how terrible it is to make comics in that style? Or is it something to do with not being a superhero?

It makes sense to run an ad to try to stop people from abusing drugs, but would anyone ever run an ad to show the horrors of badly made ads? Whatever you do, don't emulate this ad; we really should never have even made it.

I don't see how any of the family guy examples follow this trope, should we take them out?

"What you do is put it in you mouth, and let the meat slide down your throat-hole!"

Which war movie has a scene where "our side" (I assume Americans, but not certain) gets napalmed by their own planes, and when two guys are trying to lift one fallen man to get him to safety, his calf muscle comes right off the bone like so much cooked turkey?

Even live footage of the Holocaust never horrified me as much as that single image.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

I must contest the paragraph about the D.A.R.E. program. When I went through it in fifth grade (it was a regular feature for approximately a semester), the police officer stressed that recreational drug use was most definitely uncommon among people of our age group. As one might expect, most of the students didn't enjoy the sessions, but that had no relation to the information itself. (Personally, I was receptive to D.A.R.E. sessions because they preempted gym class.)

"But Go-wuh, it's mah play!" —Gore Vidal quoting Tennessee Williams

The District 9 example looks iffy to me. "People watch it for the action scenes and don't notice the message" isn't this trope. If the film made apartheid look good, there would be a point in putting it here.

Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

Are we allowed to do in-fiction examples, or is this specifically on the work itself?

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Took this out:

• Coccoon showed that old people are people to, and like to do all the things young people, and can do them—have sex, dance, swim, laugh, and play. But the old people in the movie had been given some Phlebotinum to make them young again despite their unchanged outward appearance, and are contrasted with all the other old people, who still act like stereotypical old people.

That's more a case of Broken Aesop.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

There are way too many "aversions" in the example list....

There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney Hide / Show Replies

Removed this:

• The Warriors attempts to make the life of a street gang look nasty, brutish and short, emphasized by the song "In The City" over the credits. But the cult following of the movie only seems to care about how badass the gangs were.

Only one scene, the run-in with the prom kids, has any attempt to show gang life in a possible negative light. Even in that scene, our hero Swan stares back at the middle-class kids with unapologetic pride and restrains Glory from feeling embarrassed for herself. If anything, the film is a celebration of its fantasy version of New York gang life as a throw-back to ancient warrior cultures.

Moved the stuff about ultra-conservatives to the discussion page: it seems rather flame-baitish.

• The new ultra-conservative Christian backlash against hugging is an example of this. They go out of their way to point out how what makes it "sexual" in their minds is it involves the crotches touching.
  • Oh, come on, you've gotta be making that up.
  • Umm... this troper is a conservative Christian who has never, ever heard of anything even remotely resembling this. From what I've seen hugging is a normal form of greeting at churches. I suspect someone is being less than honest here.
  • Ahem...

I moved V For Vendetta from the main article: this text doesn't appear to address how V For Vendetta is an example of "Dont' Do This Cool Thing''.

• Similarly the V For Vendetta comic, where V represents anarchy and the Norsefire regime represents fascism—neither is really "the good guys". V does some pretty heinous things and some of the members of the regime are decent people working for an evil government.
  • V For Vendetta is a hard fit for this trope, given Alan Moore's Author Filibuster at for political Anarchism as the only legitimate system for society that comes at the end of the book. Give the above points about V's actions, this seems like more of a Broken Aesop or Family-Unfriendly Aesop.