Fair for Its Day: Difference between revisions

You've come across something that seems like a huge load of [[Values Dissonance]]. It seems laden with, say, a [[Rose-Tinted Narrative]] or a [[Historical Hero Upgrade]] or [[Historical Villain Upgrade|Villain Upgrade]].

 

 

This doesn't automatically make the work immune from criticism: something less dissonant than its contemporaries can still be pretty darn dissonant, and while it might certainly be unfair to hold a work to current standards of acceptability... well, those will always be the standards that matter most to the modern viewer. Oftentimes, though, a little research will show that something cringe-worthy or laughable today is also something worthy of applause for what it stood for. This is because a given author is often working under [[Culture Police|a system of rigid censorship]] that decrees even ''mild'' criticism of the status quo to be going a little too far; attempting to depict something that would be thought of as normal today would have ''really'' been pushing one's luck. (In other words, here [[Failure Is the Only Option|Failure Was The Only Option]].) It's arguably all for the best in the end, of course, because a work that's only a ''little'' culturally subversive is infinitely more likely to escape bowdlerization and earn public acclaim than one that goes all the way, thus ensuring its relevance - or at least survival - into the present day.