Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Difference between revisions

[[File:family-unfriendly-aesop_6661.gif|link=Calvin and Hobbes|frame| The other moral is "[[False Dichotomy|Logical fallacies]] work."]]

Due to [[Values Dissonance]], a moral that is family unfriendly in one culture may be very family friendly in another, especially morals about social mores or civil rights. This list is for morals that were family unfriendly even for the culture that they were written in. A prime target for [[Anvilicious|dropping anvils ]].

'''Note:''' Just because something happens in a story, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]]. Before adding an example to this list, think about whether the example is actually preaching a moral, or if it is simply telling a story to entertain (i.e. a [[Downer Ending]] does not mean it is trying to teach a lesson that life is pointless). If it's not the point of a story, it's not [[An Aesop]]. An unusual moral also doesn't count if it's played for laughs ([[Spoof Aesop]]). If it started out as a good moral, but was broken, that falls under [[Broken Aesop]]. If most people would've considered it a good moral when the work was made but society's moved on since, it's [[Values Dissonance]]. If you are drawing absurd conclusions from a story which doesn't have a moral, take it to [[Warp That Aesop (Darth Wiki)|Warp That Aesop]] on [[Darth Wiki]]. All in all, try to keep presumptuousness to a minimum in interpreting what the story's message is.

* ''[[Pet Shop of Horrors]]'' is based entirely on this, due to the dubious morality of the Pet Shop owner, Count D. While he maintains that he is only giving humanity what they deserve, a good heart is no guarantee of a good outcome -- several of the Count's shadier customers escape unscathed from their deals with the Count, while softer-hearted clients can be "punished" for a minor character flaw. Even if a character undergoes a positive change through being with their pet, such as developing a sense of compassion, they often fall victim to a [[Cruel Twist Ending|tragic twist]]. This may be because he wasn't human - his character reads like one of [[The Fair Folk]], so expect [[Values Dissonance]], because their morality [[Blue and Orange Morality|isn't anything like our own]].

* "Honesty is the Best Policy" is one of the [[Stock Aesops]] -- face it, how many shows have you seen where [[Snowball Lie|a little lie leads to bigger ones]], and [[Hilarity Ensues]]? So it's a bit surprising that ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' has one episode [[Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped|drop an anvil]] that little white lies are justified if lives are on the line.

* The moral of ''[[The Irresponsible Captain Tylor]]'' as a ''series'' can be taken 2 ways: 1) Being an individual in a conformist society will lead to extreme success, or 2) Rigid military discipline is actively bad for winning wars, and treating it like a joke will make everything better. The former is a [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] for the Japanese, and the latter is one for Americans.

* This is a bit of a mix of [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] and [[Broken Aesop]], but the moral of ''[[Birds of Prey]]: The Battle Within'', the arc from issues 76 to 85, appears to be the fairly stock aesop of "You should accept your friends for who they are and not try to change them," except that what Oracle was trying to change about Huntress is her tendency to kill people. In the end, Oracle apologizes to Huntress, and, in the ''Dead of Winter'' story arc (issues 104-108), actually tells Huntress to use deadly force against the [[Secret Six]] if she thinks it appropriate, possibly making this the [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] that sometimes killing people is a good idea, and very headbangerish as well. Oracle is a Bat for heaven's sake. The one unwavering thing about the Bat Family is that "thou shalt not kill" is mandatory.

** As a metaphor for evil, it suggests [[Always Chaotic Evil|evil is an overriding character trait]] that outweighs self-interest and survival and [[Reformed but Rejected|one should not trust in an evil person]] trying to pull a [[Heel Face Turn]].

* ''[[The Ugly Duckling]]'' has many of these. One seems to be that, if people bully you for being different don't worry. Deep down you are superior to all of them. In addition, it's wrong to bully people for being ugly -- not because it's cruel, but because they may actually be [[Beautiful All Along]].

** ''[[Cobra]]'' takes it further with the notion that policemen should always shoot first and never ask questions because all criminals, without exception, are [[Ax Crazy]] [[Nietzsche Wannabe|Nietzsche Wannabes]] who will constantly murder innocents [[For the Evulz]] until they're killed, and due process only allows them to get off scott-free.

** In reality, the Batman franchise as a whole has a [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]]: a single vigilante who is outside of the law, or any form of regulation aside from what he imposes on himself, going around beating people to a pulp is what people really need, because [[Police Are Useless|the police are too corrupt and incompetent to do anything right.]] Due process of the law is unnecessary. Especially if you're a rich white guy.

* Subverted with ''[[Wall Street]]''; Gecko's "greed is good" speech was mistaken for the movie's [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]], but only by viewers who were [[Misaimed Fandom|missing the point]]; the point was simply to show that Gecko was an [[Wicked Cultured|eloquent villain]], but a villain nonetheless.

* Jane Elliot's "Bluest Eye" documentaries have skewed rather horribly in this direction. Elliott was the teacher who one day stuck her brown-eyed kids in collars and forbade them recess because blue-eyed kids were smarter -- intending to demonstrate how easily racism took hold. One of the more recent films she's done, ''The Stolen Eye,'' is set in Australia. Really winning moments include the fun part where she dismisses the idea that blue-eyed Greeks could possibly be treated less well than blue-eyed Northern Europeans, the bit where she congratulates a Holocaust survivor on how [[Completely Missing the Point|lucky]] she is not to be visibly dark-skinned -- and also, [[Broken Aesop|more topically]], the many moments where she excruciatingly brow-beats people of Aboriginal descent into being cruel to the blue-eyed folk, actually ''forcing'' them to enact her disturbing Aesop of "Oh, everyone will be slighting and cruel to those who are degraded by authority figures. You ''should'' fear minorities, white people. Because they're waiting for their chance. ''They want to do this to you.''"

* In the famous science fiction short story "The Cold Equations," the moral is "life is fundamentally unfair." This moral was a very deliberate Family Unfriendly Aesop, serving as a [[Deconstruction]] of stories where the day is always saved somehow, all too often by [[Contrived Coincidence|Contrived Coincidences]] or [[Applied Phlebotinum]]. However, [http://home.tiac.net/~cri_d/cri/1999/coldeq.html some people] were not impressed, feeling that the writer created a [[Idiot Plot|very contrived situation]] riddled with [[The Cold Equations/Headscratchers|logic holes]] to justify the Aesop.

* ''Perelandra'', the second book of the ''[[Literature/Space|Space]]'' trilogy by [[C. S. Lewis]]. The plot of the book is that the planet Venus is in the "Adam and Eve" phase and the devil has sent his agent -- a man named Professor Weston -- to corrupt "Eve." The angels send a man named Elwin Ransom to make sure that Tinidril chooses wisely. In the end, good triumphs over evil, but in an unexpected way: {{spoiler|Ransom kills Weston and drops his body into a volcano.}}

* The Roger McGough poem ''Badgers and Goodgers'', in which badgers are portrayed as an [[Always Chaotic Evil]] species, while their cousins, the goodgers, are [[Always Lawful Good]]. When a series of natural disasters hits the forest (culminating in a [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|'Great Jazz Revival']]), the greedy, selfish baders are able to survive through their scheming and hoarding, while the compassionate goodgers feel compelled to help the other forest denizens and starve themselves to extinction because they're unable to care for themselves. In a [[Bittersweet Ending]], Pan the animal spirit anoints the black fur of the badgers with white, in memory of their cousins, and gets them to renounce their selfish ways.

** Even more fun is ''Morgan Morning'', which features a cute little brown foal who disobeys his mother and consequently falls down a cliff. His mother and the rest of the herd can't help him, so they sadly go graze somewhere else -- explicitly [[Nightmare Fuel|leaving him there to die alone]]. The little pony lies weeping at the bottom of the cliff when a disembodied voice tells him that if he'll agree never ever to see his (also brown) mother again, he can live (why does this need to be mentioned? He was already never going to see her again). He makes the bargain and "is reborn/to live -- maybe die -- a unicorn!" Leaving the reader with three questions:

*** [[Fridge Logic|Wait]] -- verbally eschewing or recanting his brown pony family allows him to pass for a [[Fantastic Racism|magical white pony]] as long as he doesn't try to have contact with brown ponies, even though he can totally go see them now, because he's better than them and they might revert him to his old inferior ways? ''Are you kidding me?''

** Emma is still hurting after being dumped by her boyfriend Sean, so she starts purposely getting him in trouble -- from ratting him and his friends out when they steal from a diner, to ratting to the principal that he stole her dad's laptop (an accusation later proved to be correct). Later, Emma learns that she should just move on and leave Sean alone, despite his misdeeds so the moral is "no matter how horrible somebody is to you, tattling on them is worse."

** Bitter [[Goth]] girl Ellie has to learn to trust people again after her boyfriend abandons her and sticks her with the rent. Specifically, she learns to trust both her new roommate -- a recently reformed schoolyard bully who wants to gamble with their rent money -- and her mother, a recovering alcoholic who once burned their house down in a drunken stupor. Both of them turn out to be ''completely'' trustworthy. This is on the extreme idealistic end of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]], so idealistic that it can feel like "take candy from strangers."

** Some people might think episode 3 of season 10 had the message [["It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It"]]: Declan is trying to reunite with Holly J (they're on a break after disagreement on money issues) and he pulls off all the stops trying to get her alone. They end up having sex -- but Holly J at first verbally says "No" and "No, we shouldn't be doing this" but then later ends up kissing him and they initiate sex. At the end of the episode, Holly J clearly says to Declan (who is utterly disgusted with himself and nearly flees Toronto after finding out Holly J felt pressured to have sex) "I don't think you raped me." There is already a [[Broken Base]] on how the show handled this topic, some saying it [[Degrassi]] basically excused rape and others sayings they accurately portrayed the blurred lines in between date rape and regretted sex. Degrassi always tried to look at controversial topics in a realistic way. Compare this with the Paige storyline, wherein she's date-raped at a party, presses charges, and the guy is acquitted due to "lack of evidence," despite the judge's commendation of Paige's bravery in taking the case to trial. It's supposed to be open for debate and dialogue.

* Similarly, almost every episode of ''[[Radio Free Roscoe]]'' has the moral that [[Adults Are Useless]], so teens should defy and disobey them whenever possible. What makes it even more interesting is that it's always played as an [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|idealistic]] moral -- not "adults will always screw you over," but "disobey adults and everything will turn out happy." An example: In "The Boxer," the [[Jerkass]] principal is serving as a substitute history teacher on the Boxer Rebellion, which he knows nothing about. So his lectures are biased, inaccurate, and a bit racist... and in response, one of his students ''corrects every one of his errors, out loud, in front of the class.'' By the end of the episode, the principal and the student are teaming up to teach a better lesson. In a less idealistic show, the principal would have arbitrarily slapped the kid down with his authority.

*** Alternately, if we're to accept the "respect the beliefs of others" bit Henry Rollins says at the end, the episode's [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] simply becomes the following: "Even if a person's beliefs are patently ridiculous by any rational standards whatsoever, even if those beliefs prompt that person to murder her child to uphold them, you should respect those beliefs -- because they're beliefs, and sometimes those can be true whether the believer knows it or not." Yeah, ''[[Night Visions]]'' doesn't allow itself much wiggle room on the unfriendliness factor of its aesops.

* There's an old story about ''[[Sesame Street]]'' back when Snuffleupagus was portrayed as just Big Bird's imaginary friend that nobody ever believed him about. Apparently, there was some sort of [[Real Life]] scandal with a group of kids at a pre-school who tried to come forward about being abused (possibly sexually, IIRC) but weren't believed at first. When the Sesame Street writer's heard about the ordeal these kids had gone through trying to get someone to listen, they took a look at the potential [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] they had going with nobody ever believing Big Bird ("Don't bother trying to convince adults, they won't believe you") and decided to make Snuffy real and had the other characters meet him and apologize to Big Bird for doubting earlier.

* From ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'': After Guinevere is [[Mistaken for Cheating]], Arthur banishes her from Camelot and becomes engaged to [[Replacement Love Interest|Princess Mithian]] on the rebound. The writers decided to [[Subverted Trope|subvert audience expectations]] by presenting Mithian not as an [[Alpha Bitch]] or a [[Spoiled Brat]], but as [[Purity Sue|lovely princess]] who impresses everyone with her beauty, immediately integrates herself into Camelot's court, effortlessly charms everyone she meets, [[Tomboy Princess|enjoys hunting and shooting]], becomes genuinely fond of Arthur, and even goes so far [[Nice to the Waiter|as to personally seek out Merlin's approval]]. The idea was presumably to present Arthur with a difficult [[Moral Dilemma]] between marrying Mithian ([[Relationship Sue|the perfect match]]) and seeking out Guinevere ([[Official Couple|his true love]]). The set-up worked a little ''too'' well considering many viewers ended up believing that Mithian would have made a much better wife and queen than Guinevere. <ref>Of course, it's hard to separate this from the [[Die for Our Ship]] mentality that surrounds Guinevere.</ref> This led to [[Moral Dissonance]], as Arthur eventually sends Mithian back to her own kingdom with a consolation prize of the disputed lands, a decision which could have easily led to war had [[Woman Scorned|Mithian not been gracious in defeat]]. The aesop was meant to be "follow your heart", but given the fact that Arthur was risking his kingdom by breaking the engagement ''and'' had essentially [[Jerkass|been stringing Mithian along for an extended period of time]] in an attempt to get over his feelings for Guinevere, it instead felt like "do whatever you have to do to be happy, regardless of any consequences and no matter how many people you have to hurt."

** The "wish I could prove I love you" line may be him saying, when he says 'I love you' to her, it's because he actually loves her, and she shouldn't always force him to prove this (Or at least, to go to ridiculous lengths to do so). Plus, looking at the 'when you are older' line in context within the ''game'', then it could be seen as, rather than a romance between two adults, a romance between two teenagers who don't entirely understand romantic love. Hence, it's more of a 'I love you, I really do, believe me when I say so'. Given the last bridge, 'whatever lies beyond this morning is a little later on', and 'regardless of heartaches, the future doesn't scare me at all; nothing's like before', you could almost interpret "Simple and Clean" as being about a young couple having sex for the first time; he did so because genuinely loves her, she loves him too, and she's worried that he's only with her for the sex, but by the end of the song, she's clued in that he really does care about her, meaning we could also possibly interpret it as a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]], rather than a [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]].

* The Crystals' "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" was controversial due to its seeming [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] that [[Domestic Abuse]] is okay when the woman deserves it for cheating, and in fact is a man's way of showing that he cares. It was based on a true story about the songwriters' young babysitter, and was apparently meant to document that victims of abuse sometimes feel that way, not to actually ''support'' that view, but still carries [[Unfortunate Implications]]. Even at the time of release (the early sixties) it was quickly pulled due to negative public reaction. Surprisingly it's gotten a lot of modern covers or lyrical shout outs, seemingly specifically ''because'' the lyrics are fairly ripe for [[The Cover Changes the Meaning]].

* Jim Croce's "You Don't Mess Around With Jim." Big Jim Walker hustled Slim McCoy in a pool game, taking all Slim's money, so Slim followed him to Chicago, murdered him, and is highly respected for this. At no point does the song say Jim ''cheated'' -- he was just a more skilled pool player than he at first pretended to be. In other words, the moral is: being a sore loser and stealing back the money that was fairly won from you is cool if you get away with it.

* One of the most ridiculous examples is the ''[[Captain Planet and the Planeteers]]'' episode "Wheeler's Ark": The Planeteers have developed a habit of picking up injured and endangered animals on their missions and bringing them back to Hope Island. Gaia, naturally, finally tells them this is impractical and orders them to take them all back. Fat chance -- they just pick up ''more'' at every location, all while Wheeler tries to tell them this is bad idea. Instead of the others learning what could have been a perfectly valid [[Green Aesop]] about how you shouldn't take exotic species out of their natural habitat, Wheeler just learns "If you don't want to take a wild wolf pup home with you, you're a heartless jerk."