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Accidental Aesop: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Aesop's beast fables do not teach us to be wise or honest or kind. They simply show us what will happen if we dick around with talking animals.''
|'''Peter Chiykowski,''' ''[http://rockpapercynic.com/strips/2009-03-06.jpg Rock, Paper, Cynic]''}}
When a writer intends to simply write a piece of fiction without [[An Aesop]] but someone [[Misaimed Fandom|reads something into their work that they didn't intend]]. This can also happen when the creator did intend [[An Aesop]], but the one people pick up is completely off tack from the one they intended.
This seems to stem from some people always assuming [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]], which leads to them gasping "[[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]]" when you tell them as such. This also generally requires the [[Word of God]] to clear things
Like [[Misaimed Fandom]] (where readers fail to catch the moral or satire intended by an author), an
See also: [[An Aesop]], [[Broken Aesop]], [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]], [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]], and [[Death of the Author]]. Occasionally these unintended Aesops have [[Unfortunate Implications]]. However, [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]; just because a text wasn't ''intended'' to be a commentary doesn't mean it can't work perfectly well as one.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* At first, ''[[Gunslinger Girl]]'''s disturbing depiction of the horrors and abuses its innocent little girl protagonists faced and how their lives were completely destroyed was lauded by many fans as a brutal [[Deconstruction]] of the lolicon genre and/or a commentary on the use of [[Child Soldiers]]. Nope. Turns out it's straight-up [[Author Appeal]]. Many of the more subversive elements and [[Fan Disservice]] of the early part of the series were apparently to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience and probably weren't even the creator's idea. As time went on and the series' popularity grew, the creator gained [[Protection From Editors]], and it became decidedly more [[Fan Service]]-y and disturbing for totally different reasons.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] claimed to despise allegory, which didn't stop people seeing the One Ring in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' as an allegory for the atomic bomb. The key difficulty with this and any other theory that takes ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' as an allegory for [[World War II]]: the major plot details were planned out well before the war even started. Also, as Tolkien himself noted, if it ''had'' been about [[World War II]], they would have ''[[Downer Ending|used]]'' the Ring.
** But not [[World War
** This is why Tolkien made such a distinction between ''allegory'' and ''applicability''. You can ''apply'' as many meanings as you like; you just can't presume to [[God Never Said That|put them in the author's mouth]].
** It's also a very popular theory that Gandalf was an allegory for Jesus, as he died while fighting against sin for the good of his fellow man (and hobbits, dwarves, and elves), only to be resurrected in a "pure" form. This was specifically denied by Tolkien in a letter, who considered it offensive, and said Gandalf's death and resurrection were as relatively unimportant as Lazarus' beside that of Christ.
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*** To clarify, in the story, the narrator eventually gives in to trying the green eggs and ham. The message appears to be more positive, as in, it's good to try new things and it's ok to admit you changed your mind instead of being stuck in your original opinion.
* When [[Tom Clancy]] wrote ''[[Rainbow Six]]'', it was almost certainly intended as an [[Author Tract]] against environmentalists, especially the extremist fringe. But the only way he could make them into a credible threat was by putting them in charge of a [[Mega Corp|mega-corporation]] with near-limitless resources and political influence. Since anyone with extremist views could have done what they did with the resources they had, this turns the story into an Aesop about the dangers of corporate power, which is almost certainly not what Clancy had in mind given the strong conservative tone of his works...
* ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'' is almost universally interpreted to be about government censorship on literature being used to control the population. As late as the 1980s, Bradbury himself stated that the book is about censorship. In his old age, however, Bradbury has come out insisting that [[Flip-Flop of God|he'd always intended]] the book to be about [https://web.archive.org/web/20131106001211/http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/ how crappy television is]. Critics have wisely chosen to ignore Bradbury's assertions, and a UCLA class drove him from the room by telling him to his face that [[Death of the Author|he's simply wrong about his own book]].
** In all fairness the [[New Media Are Evil]] vibe comes across very strongly throughout the novel, perhaps it's just a question of where different people see the emphasis...
* The eighteenth century critic Thomas Rhymer said that there seemed to be two possible Aesops in ''[[Othello]]': either [[Values Dissonance|"Don't elope with blackamoors"]] or else "Take better care of your laundry." (The latter being a reference to Desdemona's handkerchief, which convinces [[Too Dumb to Live|Othello]] that his wife is cheating on him.)
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The series finale of ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* The ''[[Bones]]'' episode "The He in the She" featured a transgender woman killed while swimming {{spoiler|by the jealous ex-wife of her lover}}, with a subplot about her life as a male preacher and her estranged son. Booth took away an Aesop about the transforming love of God and the way it can heal people's souls. Temperance concluded that the [[Aesop]] was "always swim with a buddy".
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Unquiet Dead" was perceived in some quarters as an attack on immigration (since the episode features aliens who come to Earth on the pretense of finding a new home after their planet was blown up, but are actually attempting to invade), even though the subtext was entirely unintentional.
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== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* Charles M. Schulz's ''[[Peanuts]]'', due to its popularity and long run, often ran into this [[Trope]]:
** Schulz said he only created the [[It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown|Great Pumpkin]] as a fun idea: "What if someone believed in a Hallowe'en Santa Claus?" Many saw Linus's efforts as a mockery of the foolishness of religious people, but Schulz himself was quite religious, at least in the early years.
** There's a strip where Linus asks Lucy about what would happen if a baby was in heaven waiting to be born but its parents decided that they didn't want any more children. Lucy points out his theological and scientific ignorance. It was meant to be a parody of people who ask really weird hypothetical questions, but people on both sides of the abortion debate seized on it as proof that Schulz supported them and asked him if they could have permission to reprint it in their literature. He said no.
** In an anthology, 1960s letters written to Schulz about his new African-American character Franklin are reprinted; because he was introduced during the [[Civil Rights Movement]], people assumed Schulz was trying to make some sort of statement. No, he said. Franklin's just black by coincidence.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* The racist FPS ''[[Ethnic Cleansing]]'', as well as its [[Spiritual Successor
** Alternatively: if these are the best games that the racists can come up with, then they clearly have no idea what they are doing, and shouldn't even be trusted to run a newspaper route.
* [[Word of God]] is that the Aesop of ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' is that humans cannot live up to their ideals and thus any attempt to realize [[Utopia]] will fail. However, the first game was seen as an attack on [[Ayn Rand]] and the philosophy of [[Objectivism]]. This was unintentional; Ken Levine is a libertarian who sympathizes with Objectivism even if he has his disagreements with it. Since the release of the sequel (which attacked collectivism), the intended aesop has become much clearer.
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** YMMV, since the player's own architecture may well be just as grand. . .
*** Because the game is just THAT open ended, it's very possible that quite a few accidental Aesops my just pop up at any time. Another easy one could be that creepers are taken as a representation that all work is transitory, here one point and gone the next, or that some people just can't accept what you have built.
* The original Japanese script of ''[[SaGa 2]]'' involved a smuggling ring of illegal opium in Edo. The 1991 official English localization could not mention such drugs, so changed opium to "bananas". An NPC [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this by asking why bananas have to be illegal in the first place. It's obvious to most players that criminalizing bananas is silly, and the sheer organized crime involved might not exist without a legal ban on bananas. In the [[Truth in Television|real world]], this is an increasingly vocal argument against the [[Drugs Are Bad|War on Drugs]], especially after a 2011 [[United Nations]] commission declared the international War on Drugs to be a costly, violent
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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** "The Mysterious Mare Do-Well" was also problematic in that it came across to some fans as effectively saying, "It's totally okay to go behind your friends' backs, show them up and sabotage them if they act in a way that you don't like," as opposed to, you know, just talking to them about it like friends." The message the episode was supposed to have about how one shouldn't be boastful or a gloryhog is completely lost because, firstly, the Great and Powerful Trixie showed this lesson far more effectively and, secondly, because the other ponies ''do'' boast and brag about how awesome Mare Do-Well is and gladly receive accolades and talk up all their own successes. So, ultimately, the episode just comes across as the ponies being smug and hypocritical and contradicting the friendship message central to the show.
** In ''Winter Wrap-Up'', Twilight searches in vain for a way to help with the town's winter cleanup activities, but only comes into her own when she realizes everyone else needs organization and management (which are her specialties). The obvious aesop is that you should play to your own strengths rather than trying to fill anyone else's shoes, but some interpreted it as saying that the "elite" (Twilight, in this case, being from Canterlot) have to boss around the stupid common folk because they're too pathetic to do it themselves. Much like ''Feeling Pinkie Keen'', the people who saw this aesop didn't do so to agree with it, but apparently just so they could be outraged by it.
* An episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' had [[Granola Girl|Lisa]] taking part in a competition wherein the other team cheated (by using glow sticks, expressly against the rules) and won. She spends the rest of the episode appealing to progressively higher authorities until finally then-President Clinton himself overturns the results. The Aesop in this case is pretty explicitly spelled out: if things don't go your way, you can always whine to someone until they do. Thing is, it was clearly meant to be a [[Spoof Aesop]]; Marge points out that it's not a good moral to take away from this, and Clinton simply replies that he's not a very good president. Be that as it may, "Calmly and logically appeal to authority figures when faced with an injustice" isn't really that bad a moral.
* Parodied in-story in ''[[South Park]]'' episode "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs," the kids decide to write the most offensive book ever written, which to their surprise becomes an instant bestseller, even though people can't stop throwing up when they read it. Almost immediately, people start reading political messages in the story, only for others to angrily insist that the book says ''the exact opposite.'' The kids, who only wanted to be offensive, find this all very annoying.
* ''[[Family Guy]]'' every single time it tries to be pro-gay rights. One episode was pushing for gay marriage where the couple trying to get married was a human and ''a dog.'' A dog that acts like every [[Camp Gay]] stereotype you can imagine. Oh, and a deleted scene near the end shows that the person he's getting married to doesn't even speak English and doesn't know what's going on, with another character (Stewie) commenting in English that the human is going to be raped. The episode is supposed to be pro-gay rights but it instead comes off as "Gay people have sex with dogs, forcibly marry other people for their bodies and WILL RAPE YOU." You couldn't have messed that up even more if you ''tried.''
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[[Category:YMMV Trope]]
[[Category:Unexpected Reactions to This Index]]
[[Category:Accidental Aesop]]▼
[[Category:Accidental Trope]]
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