Posted on by Abe Austin

Prepared to Fail- Convenient Plot Devices

Movie Tropes)

A movie trope is a recurring plot element that is seen across many different titles. They are a quick and easy way for a writer to reuse patterns that have worked before, and a movie that is full of them is considered lazy and unoriginal.

Tropes provide easy answers to moments of necessary transformation. One common transformation in movies is where the villain needs to gain knowledge to foil the hero’s plan. Another is where the hero has the upper hand, but then that dynamic is flipped, putting the villain in the position of power. In both of these cases, the hero and his allies have something important, knowledge or power, and there needs to be a way for the villain to take that from them.

Common tropes to quickly achieve both of these transformations are to have the villain torture a member of the hero’s group, or to threaten the loved ones of the hero.

You can see this in Pan’s Labyrinth, where Captain Vidal tortures a member of the Spanish Maquis to extract the location of the rebel group. You can see this in Gladiator, where Commodus threatens Lucilla’s son to get her to divulge the plot to overthrow him. And these tropes show up again and again in many, many other stories.

These serve as a narrative shorthand, but what sort of message do they send to society when used so constantly?

A Different Story)

The truth is that torture and threats to loved ones have been used throughout history to try and break the convictions of real people. Early Christian families were burned at the stake, or had their bodies mangled, rather than deny their fealty to their Lord. I’m not saying that such firmness of character is common, or that all of us would hold up under that pressure, but I do think it is important to recognize that the way movies portray such moments as an already foregone conclusion is untruthful.

Whether I could withstand torture or threats to my loved ones, I do not know, but it is good for me to remember that with God people have been able to endure these things and more. Rather than let these fictions poison me with the notion that everyone has a limit on their faithfulness, I’d rather be encouraged by true stories that show that the determination of the soul can be immeasurable.

Tomorrow I’ll conclude this little study by looking at two more examples of conviction and those that surrender them and those that hold on to them.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Prepared to Fail- Common Patterns

I recently concluded a study related to false moral dilemmas, where I sought to dispel the notion that there might ever be a time where we have to make a morally compromising choice. I asserted that there are always the options for finding an outside-the-box moral solution, or the ability to refused to engage with the situation entirely and still keep one’s conscience intact.

As I did this study, I started to notice something else, something that I was going to write about then and there, but I realized it warranted a study all its own. It is a theme that is even larger and broader, something that false moral dilemmas is but a subset of. What I have noticed is that our Western culture and media seem to be preparing us to give up on our ideals when certain triggers are met. Not only the false moral dilemmas that I already explored, but any time that there is a threat of torture or harm to a loved one.

Usually when either of these occur in our modern stories, the victim gives in to what the villains want. Obviously, it serves a narrative purpose to have a way for the villains to obtain their desire at certain points of the story, but the fact that it so commonly comes as a result of these specific methods is very interesting. We may view these sorts of stories passively, but each time we see the pattern repeated it is as if our minds are rehearsing that trigger and response, training itself to make the same surrender if we ever face the same sort of opposition.

In my next post I will examine these movie tropes of how the hero is forced to surrender his ideals, and what the long-term effects of repeated exposure to this pattern might spell for us. I’ll see you there.