Elephant in the Living Room: Difference between revisions
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== Literature ==
* A fairly common interpretation of [[King Arthur]]'s actions in ''[[Le Morte d'Arthur
** ''[[The Once and Future King]]'' is more explicit about King Arthur knowing about the affair but staying silent. There are some very good scenes with the three of them carefully not mentioning it.
* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'': Stephenie Meyer invoked this when a fan asked why Bella never seemed to menstruate, then got pregnant with demon spawn after having sex once. Or if she did menstruate, why didn't her vampire boyfriend eat her? The author seemed to be disgusted by the entire idea, though some people still thinks the question was an excellent point.
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** To a lesser extent, Shawn Ogg's parentage is this. His father is publicly accepted to be Sobriety Ogg. The only problem with this idea is that Sobriety Ogg died some ten years before Shawn was born. Most people avoid the issue (probably out of fear of [[Beware the Nice Ones|Nanny]]) and are quick to silence outsiders who try to mention it.
** Death himself is visible to all inhabitants of the Discworld, but he is so frightening in his appearance that most people desperately attempt to not notice anything strange about him to preserve their sanity, even when having a conversation with him.
** Dwarves don't identify themselves as male or female and never even discuss in public that there are female dwarves. When the more progressive Ankh-Morpork dwarves start ignoring this taboo, it takes multiple books to avoid a civil war, until {{spoiler|they get a civil war anyway}}.
** There's also the Librarian of Unseen University, who is an orangutan due to a magical accident. People found it odd at first but now barely think about it. It's been said that if someone told the staff that there was an ape on campus they'd go ask the Librarian if he'd seen it.
* [[Kim Newman]]'s novel ''[[The Quorum]]'' follows on from his short story "Organ Donors", and references it a few times, including the characters of private investigator Sally Rhodes (and her child, conceived in "Organ Donors") and Derek Leech, satanic media magnate who uses black magic to advance his cause. Sally discovers Leech's nature in "Organ Donors" but has forgotten by ''[[The Quorum]]'': Newman admitted there's no reason for this beyond it breaking the story.
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* A more serious example can be found in ''[[Invisible Man (novel)|Invisible Man]]'', in which characters do their very best not to bring up the subject of race relations.
* The [[Ernest Hemingway|Hemingway]] short story "Hills Like White Elephants" follows a couple talking at a train station, with the man attempting to convince the woman to have an abortion. The actual nature of the operation he's pressing, however, and the reason for it are conspicuously never mentioned.
* Heartbreakingly [[Played for Drama]] in ''[[The World According
* The old variation in which the elephant-in-the-living-room analogy is used in reference to the obviousness of drug addiction/alcoholism is addressed in two different books of ''[[The Dark Tower]]''. In one [[Stephen King]] says that the reaction loved ones of the addiction have upon discovering the elephant (addiction) was there is usually, "Oh, I'm sorry, was that an ''elephant''? It was there when I moved in! I always assumed it was part of the ''furniture''!" In the other King makes perhaps the most brilliantly apt and perfect analogy of the matter ever (and I say this as a former addict): that the reason the addict himself/herself doesn't see the "elephant in the living room" is because this elephant isn't just any ordinary elephant; it is like The Shadow in that it has the hypnotic super-ability to cloud men's minds so as to appear invisible to them.
* In a brief scene in the first ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'' book, the existence of the Judeo-Christian God is treated like this. All that [[Our Centaurs Are Different|Chiron]] is willing to say is that it's a "metaphysical" debate and that the existence of the Olympians is a "much smaller matter".
* The presence of the Judeo-Christian God and His Son Jesus Christ are treated like this by the Only Light subsect in the [[Left Behind]] book ''Kingdom Come'', when people in the Millennial Kingdom would have to be complete idiots to ever think They don't exist.
* In the ''[[Dragaera]]'' series, Dragaerans who are the offspring of two or more Houses are the objects of prejudice, pity, or mistrust by the vast majority of the Empire's nobility, who regard such inter-House miscegenation with contempt and disgust. Yet nobody ''ever'' mentions that Sethra Lavode's facial features exhibit the very distinctive traits of both the Dragon and the Dzur Houses, probably because Sethra scares the mother-loving crap out of everyone.
* ''[[In Death]]'': Roarke finds out in ''Divided In Death'' that [[Homeland Security Organization]] was monitoring Richard Troy, Eve's father. They knew that she was with him, and that he was raping her, but they sat back and did nothing. Roarke tells Eve that he intends to hunt them down and make them pay for this. Eve wants him to leave it alone. So they try to ignore it and focus on other matters. Later, he brings it up, and Eve can only think "Here it was. The big glowing elephant in the room that she hoped to ignore. And it was trumpeting."
* In Sharon Creech's ''The Wanderer'', Sophie is blacking out any and all notions that
== Live-Action TV ==
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== Newspaper Comics ==
* Parodied by ''[[Pearls Before Swine]]'' in one [
{{quote|'''Rat:''' You know, every time someone discusses these issues, they always like to conveniently avoid the elephant in the room.
'''Goat:''' You mean Social Security?
'''Rat:''' I mean the elephant in the room.
'''Tiny (the elephant):''' I like to discuss issues, too. }}
* In ''[[Alley Oop]],'' the character Oscar Boom went straight so many decades ago that many current readers weren't aware that he started out as a crook, and that he had never gone to trial or served jail time for his crimes. Recent{{when}} storylines have finally addressed this.
* ''[[F Minus]]'' illustrated a [https://web.archive.org/web/20090219003408/http://comics.com/f_minus/2009-02-15 literal example].
* A literal one from ''[[The Far Side]]'', in which a detective accuses [[The Butler Did It|the butler]] of goreing and trampling the victim, ignoring the elephant in a trenchcoat next to him.
* A ''[[New Yorker]]'' panel featured an elephant lying on a psychologist's couch, complaining, "I'm right there in the room, and nobody notices me."
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* Say you're among the children in a particularly-nasty divorce and you live with your mom/dad and not the other. The other parent comes to stay the night after a long drive to pick you all up and take you to their house for the summer. Both of your parents have to at least pretend to be nice. The elephant is tap-dancing and playing a tuba. While defecating on your couch.
* It is said that after [[The Wave]] occurred, it was so scarring that no one at the school even talked about it for three years.
* The Ryugyong Hotel was possibly the most literal example of this trope. Made in [[North Korea]], it was said when it was completed it would be the largest hotel in the world. However, after spending an obscene amount of money on it (2% of the nations entire GDP) construction stopped and the government pretended it didn't exist, even though it dominates the [https://web.archive.org/web/20120507221938/http://obviousmag.org/archives/uploads/2009/09092901_blog.uncovering.org_ryugyong.jpg skyline of the city]. Construction has been picked up by an Egyptian company who wants to make it the first cell tower in the nation, now they happily talk about the achievement it will be.
{{reflist}}
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