Genre Deconstruction: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

The genre is basically boiled down to a set of tropes, conventions and a typical premise. All of these features are then played straight; without shying away from any unpleasant consequences and/or causes of these features. Basically, the heart of the genre is laid bare, warts and all. It is not solely done to denote how unpleasant a genre or trope is, but to break away from the clichés and stock themes said genre or trope has acquired.

 

 

Merely making a genre [[Darker and Edgier]] is not the same as deconstructing it. To deconstruct a genre, the ''essential elements'' of the genre must be clearly demonstrated and taken to their most logical conclusions, and this causality ''must be plausible''. If the [[Trope Maker]] or [[Trope Codifier]] deconstructs ''itself'' (or at least seems to), then you've got an [[Unbuilt Trope]].

 

Any example from [[Fanfic]] is to go in [[Deconstruction Fic]].

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{{examples}}

** Changed the mecha from an unfeeling mechanoid with unlimited energy that is easily repaired to a biological entity that bleeds, feels pain, needs an extension cord for power, and may even have a personality.

*** They even pull a [[Gender Flip]] on the three main protagonists. Shinji is a [[Shrinking Violet]], Asuka is [[Hot-Blooded]], and Rei is [[The Stoic]].

** In some ways, ''Eva'' resembles the early days of the [[Real Robot Genre]]. Shinji Ikari has quite a few similarities with [[Mobile Suit Gundam|Amuro Ray]], the most iconic mecha protagonist in anime history. While Amuro's relationship with his father is not nearly as bad as Shinji's, Amuro's father ''does'' go insane while building the RX-78 and due to his injuries in the first episode. Amuro is just as "whiny" as Shinji, but is forced to accept responsibilities in the military hierarchy and grows to maturity through that. Even his reaction to his accidental {{spoiler|killing of Lalah}} resembles Shinji's after {{spoiler|killing Kaworu}}.

* Later arcs notwithstanding, ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' can be seen as a deconstruction of the [[Jidai Geki]] genre. Being a [[Samurai]] isn't just a thing of honor and swordfighting for either your master, your beliefs, or other causes, and it leaves ''huge'' mental and social scars on those who survive it.

* The original ''[[Gundam]]'' series (parent of the [[Real Robot Genre]]) could count as a deconstruction of the [[Super Robot Genre]] too. To even begin to be able to pilot the Gundam, Amuro already had a strong background with electronics, and the Gundam's manual. His early battles shook him greatly, and Char kicked his ass easily in their early fights, despite being in the less advanced Zaku 2. Of course, in later Real Robot shows, the flavor of the [[Super Robot Genre]] would kick in...

** And that [[Super Robot Genre]] flavor that kicked in the later episodes of the show is itself a bitter deconstruction of the "loser mechs", as ''[[Gundam Sousei]]'' would point out.

* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'' deconstructs the [[Gaming and Sports Anime And Manga]] genre, taking the absurdity of elevating a ([[My Little Panzer|dangerous]]) children's card game to an international spectator sport and the method of deciding the fate of the universe [[Up to Eleven]] and past, not to mention the realistic effects this would have on the psyche of a kid.

* ''[[Hibiki no Mahou]]'' deconstructs the 'magic academy' setting. You can be a powerful mage, but using magic always comes with a price of some kind. It can be physical pain, such as healing someone at the cost of your own eyesight, or mental, such as losing your memories. The more you use magic, the more severe the sacrifice.

** Premise: fantasy monarchy is wonderful! Decon: except when it isn't. A filtering system gets rid of the worst cases, leaving the best ones as immortal enlightened despots, avoiding the succession problem. A kirin with contact with modern Japan snarks about possible democratic alternatives anyway.

* The anime version of ''[[School Days]]'' is a [[Deconstruction]] of the harem anime, as well as h-game adaptations and other [[Slice of Life]] romance series. The lead, after finally dating the sweet girl he's been lusting after for ages, finds that dating her feels more like work and less fun, so he pursues and has sex with one of the ''other'' girls who wanted him. Shortly after, he decides to sleep around, with no regard for the consequences and no desire to devote to a serious relationship. When the girl he first began cheating with {{spoiler|discovers she's almost sure to be pregnant and confronts him, he wants nothing more to do with her, and after everyone finds out not only did he knock her up, but refuses to take responsibility, the other girls refuse to have anything to do with ''him.''}} In the meantime, he's broken up with the first girl, but only after cheating on her for a ''long'' time. Said girl sinks into insanity and denial, especially since she knew he was cheating all along. {{spoiler|Desperate after finding all his girls left him, he gets back together with the first girl, and tells the pregnant girl to get an abortion after making out with the other girl in front of her. Said girl later comes to his apartment and brutally murders him, the ''first'' girl sees the body, brutally murders ''her,'' and then leaves in a boat, cradling the guy's severed head in her arms, [[Dissonant Serenity|with a creepy smile on her face.]]}}

** Also brings up the true implications of the [[Lovable Sex Maniac]] / [[Bromantic Foil]]. Makoto's best friend Taisuke is a spirited yet hopeless romantic, and his perverted antics and subsequent rejections are portrayed as zany comic relief for most of the show. But then after being turned down once again on the day of the school festival, he resorts to actually ''raping a girl'' via taking avantage of her [[Heroic BSOD|when she's at her lowest point]]; this not only throws the victim through the [[Despair Event Horizon]], but it shos the character archetype to be much less harmless than commonly assumed.

* ''[[Patlabor]]'' may be the ultimate deconstruction of the Mecha-genre: It has no superheroes nor supervillains and the mechas are plain and simply tools; the majority of them are used at construction sites and storages. They're anything but cool and if there's something even uncooler, that would be being a member of the Patlabor unit.

* Arguably, ''[[School Rumble]]'' seems to have started out as a deconstruction of a shonen love comedy by replacing the ditzy female protagonist we so often see with a badass male delinquent. The first two chapters make it pretty obvious. Another good example of this is when Eri walks in on Harima in the nude; usually its the other way around.

* ''[[Gantz]]'', at least for most of the first couple dozen chapters, was a deconstruction of [[First-Person Shooter]]-style video games. It showed just how bizarre and frightening it would be for someone actually ''in it'', including being teleported into an unknown area, and being forced to fight dangerous creatures [[Possession Implies Mastery|with weapons you've just picked up and have no practice with.]]

* [[Fate/stay night|Emiya Shirou's]] life story is a quite literally an embodiment of a deconstruction of [[Martyr Without a Cause]], [[Chronic Hero Syndrome]], and other related "hero" tropes.

{{quote|''' {{spoiler|Archer}}:''' There is nothing at the end of saving people.}}

* ''[[Toradora!]]'' deconstructs many of the character archetypes seen in typical [[Harem Anime]]. Most notably, Taiga basically answers the question of what kind of experiences could give a person a childish tsundere personality in real life: HUGE personal issues of the familiar kind, which also don't mesh well with the girl's own self-esteem problems.

* ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' deconstructs a number of things that were barely or not touched upon in the ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' canon, such as [[Adults Are Useless|the involvement of adults]], how the government would react to programs emerging into the real world as monsters, how those programs came about in the first place, what a world governed only by the doctrine of "survival of the fittest" would be like (namely, harsh and unforgiving), how frustrating it is to be the [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]], and [[Break the Cutie|what would happen to a Tamer]] if {{spoiler|their partner Digimon died.}} Later, the first arc of ''[[Digimon Savers]]'' could be seen as a deconstruction of part of the ending of ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'', specifically the part where everyone in the world got a partner Digimon - it deals with the idea of those of dishonest intent using their Digimon for crimes, something ''Adventure 02'' never even considered.

* ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' deconstructs the [[Save Our Students]] genre, especially the belief that students and teachers are natural enemies.

* [[Maria Holic]] is this to the [[Yuri Genre]], alternating between cruelly subverting and playfully mocking tropes associated with it through the wacky hijinks of the [[Genre Blind]] schoolgirl Kanako Miyamae and her "ideal girl" Mariya Shidou... who's actually a [[Villainous Crossdresser]].

 

== Comic Books ==

* [[Superhero]] comics had a huge wave of [[Deconstruction]] in the '80s and '90s, caused chiefly by two examples:

** Frank Miller's ''[[Batman|Batman: The Dark Knight Returns]]'' takes straightforward superhero action and makes it look absurd by having politics interfere. Batman's work becomes a tool for debates about "toughness on crime," while Superman's idealism makes him an easy dupe for the US government's plans for nuclear war. It also asked the question: "What sort of a man would dress up in a bat outfit and fight crime." The answer: "A man who isn't very pleasant or sane."

** Rorschach embodies morally absolutist vigilante [[Superhero]] characters like [[The Question]]. He is so morally absolutist that he will stop at nothing to enforce his view of justice and will commit heinous acts as a means to an end; ultimately it turns out he is a [[Nietzsche Wannabe]] with a [[Woobie]]-worthy past.

** Doctor Manhattan, a true superhuman with control over matter, the ability to teleport, see the future, see subatomic particles, and is so detached from the human condition that he is indifferent to human life, out and out saying "A dead body and a living body have the same number of particles, there's no difference".

** Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II, the most healthy individuals in the team, are driven not by moral ideals but by, respectively, [[Ascended Fanboy|fanboyism]] and [["Well Done, Son" Guy|a desire to follow in one's mother's footsteps]].

** And the rest of the superheroes are shown to have great flaws and the common prejudices of their time, many being racist, sexist, homophobic (and [[Armoured Closet Gay|hypocritical homosexuals]] themselves) and equally riddled with issues and neuroses.

* Deconstruction in comics is even older than that, dating at least back to the [[Bronze Age]]. In [[The Seventies]], DC came out with ''[[Green Lantern]]/[[Green Arrow]]'', in which the title characters do superhero stuff while at the same time, arguing about the morality and political implications. As a result, the more lawful [[Green Lantern]] and the more chaotic [[Green Arrow]] butted heads many, MANY times.

* Hell! You could even argue that it dates back to the [[Silver Age]]! When [[Stan Lee]] first pitched the idea of [[Spider-Man|a superhero with real life problems]] his editor replied "Don't you know what a superhero is?"

* The entire [[Marvel Comics]] Siege [[Metaplot|macro-crisis]] was a [[Deconstructor Fleet]] of the entire Marvel Comics universe, the [[Reed Richards Is Useless]] trope and the idea of the superhero in general. It first starts with Avengers Dissembled showing what happens when you entrust the world to a set few ultra powerful humans. It then goes into House of M, proving what happens if the super humans took over. [[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]] addressed the stupidity of having the government let walking A-bombs blow themselves up in New York everyday while simultaneously showing how said government control plans would fail. This is shown in the ''deliberate'' [[Flanderization]] of Captain America and Iron Man showing how both sides are pretty stupid. This was also exposited in the what if story arc when both sides find a balance and thus achieve peace. Dark Reign then deconstructed the entire "Lone Cop saves the world and get promoted" genre by showing exactly what would happen if said psychopaths were really appointed to such positions of power. Thor, Reed Richards and Iron Man's tenures as God, Guardian and Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in each of their individual story arcs show how each quest to "fix" the world leads to disaster. Then, the New Captain America saga had a deconstruction of the Sidekick. The idea of power and potential is again brought up in The Hood's recent story showing what happens if all the d-listers in the universe eventually got together and actually ''applied'' their powers, while the Current Mighty Avengers show how these super teams affect the political climate. The Illuminati is in itself a deconstruction of large hero collaborations (and how they lead to failure i.e. the [[Secret Invasion]]) and its counterpart "The Cabal" showed just how incapable a society of villains would be at functioning. All this is paralleled by the Annihilation series depicting exactly what kind of galaxy is filled with empires that invade and blow up planets on a daily basis and exactly how disillusioned it makes characters. Seeing {{spoiler|Black Bolt}} turn to insanity was just further reconfirmation of what a world Cosmic Marvel is. The Nova Corps pretty much deconstructed all Space Cop tropes with its nigh-omnipotent run band of non sanctioned super soldiers and exactly how that would affect any political situation. The Decimation arcs in X-Men show exactly how humans would react to mutants if the odds were evened. And The Secret arcs show how exactly what being a ''real'' spy means and all the details it entails. And finally, Siege shows the reconstruction reveling that after all this Heroes are still heroes no matter what.

* ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' starts out with slightly-darker takes on Victorian heroes, but the second volume shows them sinking really low under pressure (and the ugly sides of Victorian culture that they each represent). The third volume reconstructs them during its own deconstruction of 20th century heroes.

 

== Film ==

* [[Jidai Geki]] films underwent an increasingly cynical Deconstructionist phase during the 1960s that arguably led to the genre going out of vogue for a good deal of the 1970s:

** ''[[Yojimbo]]''

** ''The Sword of Doom''

** ''Hari-kiri''

** ''[[For a Few Dollars More]]''

*** [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?|"If you're gonna shoot, shoot.]] [[Talking Is a Free Action|Don't talk."]]

** ''Hang 'Em High''

** ''[[El Topo]]''

** ''Django''

** ''[[Unforgiven]]'' is a particularly sharp deconstruction westerns and even the [[Spaghetti Western|spaghetti westerns]] that Clint Eastwood himself starred in. The main character shows how an [[The Ace|ace gunfighter]] might have lived out his later years. His character progression also goes in reverse, unraveling into his former state to undo the character development he's acquired. Many standard conventions of westerns are subverted, including the quickdraw contest, the hooker with the heart of gold, and the triumphant ride into the sunset. The scenes with the dime novel author dedicated to exposing the falsehoods of the wild west mythos.

* ''[[The Truman Show]]'' is a deconstruction of [[Reality TV]]. Oddly enough, ''before'' (1998) the huge proliferation of Reality TV in the 2000s took place, although they had certainly existed for some time by then.

** ''[[Night Moves]]'' (1975) is another noir deconstruction. Gene Hackman plays Harry Moseby, a pro football player-turned-private investigator. He asks a lot of questions, but rarely gets straight or complete answers. He sees a lot of things, but they're usually obscured by distance or obstacles (such as windows or screen doors) or seen only on an incomplete filmstrip. He both literally and figuratively spins in circles during the movie, and ends (as does the audience) knowing who the bad guys were but not why any of it happened. On another level the film is a deconstruction of the entire idea of American masculinity in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era; Harry's glory days are behind him, and he does what he does not because he's any good at it, or because he particularly enjoys it, but because he simply doesn't know what else to do.

* [[M. Night Shyamalan]] presented a deconstruction of [[Superhero]] stories with ''[[Unbreakable]]''. The main character [[How Do I Shot Web?|has no idea about the nature of his powers or about how he should use them]].

** His [[Cowboy Cop]] attitude is scrutinized more ruthlessly and his interactions with his allies sometimes prove fatal for them.

** Bond movies have always had a tension in the character of Bond, between "flashy guy with clever lines, cool toys, and beautiful women", and "he's an assassin." ''[[Casino Royale]]'' and its sequel, ''[[Quantum of Solace]]'', push the dial almost all the way towards the "assassin" element, but it was present in most of the earlier Bond films (particularly the Timothy Dalton films).

* ''[[Battles Without Honor and Humanity]]'' (Jingi Naki Tatakai) is a deconstruction of the [[Yakuza]] films popular in Japan around the same time, which tended to portray the Yakuza as a chivalrous, honorable organization of [[Blood Brothers]]. In the film, besides the main character, they're money-grubbing, backstabbing, treacherous, and vicious. Every vow of brotherhood or loyalty has been violated and the time-honored traditions of the Yakuza seem ludicrous, outmoded, or just plain crazy. The name of the film demonstrates this -- "Jingi" is the term for the Yakuza code of honor.

* ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'' deconstructs Romance movies by having nearly the entire movie take place after the honeymoon period of a new relationship when things start to fall apart. In fact, the thesis of the movie is effectively "romance can be so horrible that you will want to have your memory erased {{spoiler|but when you add it all up, they're probably worth the angst}}".

* Park Chan-Wook's "Vengeance" trilogy, which includes ''[[Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance]]'', ''[[Oldboy]]'', and ''[[Sympathy for Lady Vengeance]]'' is very much a deconstruction of the revenge film. This is most true in the first film, in which all the violence committed only leads to further despair.

*** The movie is a double deconstruction as the 90's free spirit girl is shown to be just as one dimensional, in that she never really cares for anything, and only when she does can she be part of a fully realised world.

* Both ''[[The Long Goodbye]]'' and ''[[The Big Lebowski]]'' are deconstructions of film noir, specifically [[Raymond Chandler]]/[[Philip Marlowe]] stories, although ''Lebowski'' is also [[Deconstructive Parody|played for laughs]]. In both films, the protagonist is more or less a loser who lives by himself and comes to the wrong conclusion at the end of the case, but it's not a big deal since it never really mattered in the first place.

* Whereas ''[[Unforgiven]]'' was [[Clint Eastwood]]'s deconstruction of westerns, ''[[Gran Torino]]'', which came out about a decade and a half later, is his deconstruction of his other big genre, the [[Vigilante Man|urban vigilante film]].

* ''[[Gamer]]'' is a particularly nasty deconstruction of [[First-Person Shooter|First Person Shooters]] and [[Simulation Game|social simulators]] like ''[[The Sims]]'', with ''actual people'' being [[And I Must Scream|controlled by players as avatars for the games]].

** The "Society" game is a very sickening take on [[Rule 34]] and ''[[Second Life]]'' due to the above reason.

* ''[[Mighty Joe Young]]'' (at least the 1998 version) deconstructs ''[[King Kong]]''. The ape isn't an island-dwelling monster, but an otherwise normal African gorilla with extreme giantism. The female lead has more in common with Dian Fossey then the screaming damsel in distress of ''Kong''. And when Joe finally does go on his "rampage" it's because he's confronted with the poacher that killed his mother.

* ''[[Scanners]]'' sets up a fairly standard [[Hero's Journey]], as [[The Hero|Cameron Vale]], blessed with [[Psychic Powers]], is sent by wise old [[Mentor|Dr. Paul Ruth]] to defeat Ruth's former pupil, [[Big Bad|Darryl Revok]], who also has [[Psychic Powers]]. Vale befriends a [[White-Haired Pretty Girl]], Kim Obrist, who can help him infiltrate Revok's organization. Not unsurprisingly, it is revealed that both Cameron and Darryl are the two sons of Paul. With us so far? And then Darryl [[Lampshade Hanging|points out]] what kind of father would abandon his sons like that, and weaponize one against the other, and, indeed, [[Guinea Pig Family|would test a potentially dangerous new drug on his pregnant wife]], thus making Cameron and Darryl psychic in the first place. "[[Calling the Old Man Out|That was Daddy.]]" Also, the psychic stuff is [[Blessed with Suck|disgusting and creepy]]: scanning is presented not as a graceful and mystical power, but as a painful and unpleasant "[[Body Horror|merging of two nervous systems]]". The process is as unpleasant for the the person being scanned (who suffer from headaches and nosebleeds at best, and can have their hearts stopped and heads exploded at worst) and the scanners themselves who suffer severe social and psychological side effects from hearing other peoples thoughts (the main character starts the movie homeless, and another scanner murdered his family when he was a child). Ruth's dream of a scanner utopia turn out to be [[Not So Different]] from Revok's scanner-supremacy idea, as observed by Vale. Meanwhile, Cam and Kim never fall in love, as would be expected, because they're too scared for their lives.

* The 1991 film ''[[The Dark Backward]]'' contains an animated sequence that deconstructs the ''[[Tom and Jerry]]'' cartoons: Tom's [[Captain Ersatz]] gleefully pursues Jerry's, hatchet in hand, and then cuts him in half with it (guts spill); then Spike's [[Captain Ersatz]] appears and blows the cat's brains out (literally) with a shotgun. The main character's mother laughs out loudly at this scene.

* The 2008 movie ''[[JCVD]]'' is a deconstruction of Jean-Claude Van Damme himself, as an out-of-luck delusional actor as opposed to the real-life moderately successful actor. [[wikipedia:JCVD|Read the synopsis here.]]

* ''[[Saturday Night Fever]]'' harshly deconstruct America's hedonistic take on life in [[The Seventies]]. Sure, there were beautiful clothes, music, and lots of dancing, but there was a dark side to the life led by such people Tony and his friends. For example, Tony, who turns to hedonism as a way to cope with his own life as a low-class Brooklyn guy with a ''really'' [[Dysfunctional Family]], has no thought for the future (and the culture as a whole didn't either), and his friends are involved with [[Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll|drugs, drinking, and casual sex]] which does cause them huge problems.

* ''[[Scream (film)|Scream]]'', of course, was a deconstruction of the slasher horror film genre, with almost all of its characters being [[Genre Savvy]] and [[Discussed Trope|talking about what would happen next if this were a slasher film.]] This was done so successfully that "deconstructing the slasher genre" became a genre of its own.

* ''[[Troy]]'' deconstructed the [[Trojan War]].

* ''[[Seven Samurai]]'' deconstructed the samurai mythos. Samurai aren't allowed to change occupations so they sell their services or (like the bandits) resort to crime.

 

== Literature ==

** A huge amount of ''[[Don Quixote]]'' is also a reconstruction of the [[Chivalric Romance]] (bear in mind that the Don quotes whole excerpts from ''Amadis of Gaul'' and ''Orlando Furioso'' in places), after the genre was already old-fashioned, and half of the joke is a [[Take That]] against the contemporary [[Moral Guardians]] who believed that such tales were inappropriate and corrupting for proper young ladies... which is why the book is about how chivalric romances lead to the corruption of a fifty-year-old man. ''After'' everyone else had stopped caring. ''[[Don Quixote]]'' proceeded to spur a revival of the genre (part 2 was partially Cervantes' rebuttal to an insulting [[Fanfic]]) and became a tragic romantic figure for the remainder of Western history.

** ''Orlando Furioso'' was, itself, a deconstruction of the [[Knight in Shining Armour]]'s obsessive love for his lady. After Orlando finds out that Angelica has no interest in him and doesn't hold up to his impossibly high standards (i.e. she had premarital sex with a shepherd, and eventually gets married to a likable Arab guy), he basically [[Love Makes You Evil|turns into]] [[The Incredible Hulk]] and runs around killing innocent people.

** While we're on the topic of Dickens, There's also ''[[A Christmas Carol]]''. During Victorian times it was common to idealize "self made men" (capitalists) in the context of Social Darwinism. Dickens gave the world Ebenezer Scrooge, a "self made man" who got where he was through a combination of ruthlessness and greed, and whose wealth comes at the expense of his friends, family, and ultimately his own happiness, and is thus bitter, miserable, and on the verge of dying alone and unmissed. However the book also [[Zig-Zagging Trope|turns around and delves into]] [[Reconstruction]] by having the three spirits teach him the error of his ways, and thus he reforms and embraces what truly matters. Off course all this was unheard of at the time, which is why it's regarded as such a classic. [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny|Unfortunately its impact has been blunted by overexposure.]]

** Interestingly, the deconstruction for the most part comes only through the narration of the main characters, and the things that would happen off screen in comic books. When the characters actually speak, they still seem to speak in a classic way, spewing puns and unnecessarily narrating what they are doing out loud to basically no-one.

* ''[[Foucault's Pendulum]]'' deconstructs its genre by examining the motives people have for believing in conspiracy theories. These include the exertion of control through secrecy, a frustrated creative instinct, and the pathological desire to see every event as a symbol of something deeper instead of as itself. Ultimately, people who devote their lives to these theories are portrayed as fools who are too wrapped up in their own fantasies to realize that it is all utter nonsense.

* ''[[The Iron Dream]],'' an [[Alternate History]] [[Mockumentary]] essay about Adolf Hitler's career as a pulp [[Sci Fi]] illustrator turned author, is a deconstruction of the [[Heroic Fantasy]] genre and the Apocalypse fantasy, intended to show the creepy fascist aspects at its core. Look at some of the older [[Heroic Fantasy]] books, like the Lensmen Saga, where the protagonists gleefully commit genocide on a troublesome race of aliens, or the Conan books, where the titular character is described as "A beautiful Aryan warrior in a land over run by brown skin hoards" or the [[Gor]] serries, which is basically about how great it is to rape and dominate women. Add all this to the fact that [[Heroic Fantasy]] grew out of Victorian adventure (and all the [[Mighty Whitey|white man's burden]] inherent within) and you'll understand where this book is coming from.

* ''A Princess Worth Dying For'' by Sergei Lukyanenko presents a fairly standard [[Space Opera]] world with a few innovative technologies thrown in. The sequel, ''Planet that Doesn't Exist" proceeds to deconstruct the entire setting, revealing that {{spoiler|it was actually a result of a [[Gambit Roulette]] orchestrated by time-traveling humans from the future, who wanted to create thousands of planets worth of allies in a fight against an alien race that kept humanity from expanding out into space.}}

* ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'' deconstructs the [[Kids Wilderness Epic]], subverting [[Mighty Whitey]] and [[Noble Savage]].

** Stephenson's next novel ''[[The Diamond Age]]'' further deconstructs cyberpunk: it first introduces Bud, a typical [[Badass Longcoat]] cyberpunk protagonist...and then shows him to be an idiotic thug who is {{spoiler|executed in the first chapter}}.

* At around the same time as ''[[Snow Crash]]'' was written, two of [[Cyberpunk]]'s early proponents, [[William Gibson]] (author of, among others, the [[Unbuilt Trope|prototypical]] [[Cyberpunk]] book ''[[Neuromancer]])'' and Bruce Sterling (author of the [[Cyberpunk]] anthology ''Mirrorshades''), got together to write ''[[The Difference Engine]]'', which was meant to deconstruct [[Cyberpunk]] by taking all the [[Cyberpunk]] storylines and themes and putting them in a Victorian Context, the point being that the themes commonly associated with [[Cyberpunk]] where nothing ''new'', or even anything entirely ''fictional''. Instead they ended up giving birth to [[Steampunk|a new genre]].

* Balzac's ''Illusions Perdues'' is a particularly depressing deconstruction of the ''[[Coming of Age Story|Bildungsroman]]''.

* ''Incognita'' is a deconstruction of the courtly romances of the early 18th century, as it exposes just how shallow and stupid all the characters would have to be and how reliant the plot is on [[Contrived Coincidence]].

* [[Brandon Sanderson]] has said that he intended the background of the ''[[Mistborn]]'' trilogy as a deconstruction of [[High Fantasy]], in which [[The Hero]] fails his quest, and a thousand years later, the immortal [[Dark Lord]] rules the crumbling, devastated world as a god. After the first book, it also becomes a deconstruction of {{spoiler|what happens after the unlikely heroes defeat the [[Dark Lord]], and the difficulty of introducing freedom and establishing peace}}.

** As part of that, Sanderson also has a disturbing deconstruction of the use of prophecy in fantasy, which is almost always represented as being either good, or at least neutral. One of the characters fulfills an ancient prophecy, {{spoiler|only to find out that the prophecy was a lie propagated by a nihilistic god of destruction to enable its release. }}

* Sleeping Helena is a deconstruction of Sleeping Beauty. She is granted the gifts of music and dance and grace and beauty and so on and so forth, but these instead turn into obligations rather than gifts, each gift requiring her attention a bit each day. She also becomes a monster, torturing animals and willing to hurt and manipulate other people. "Why did no one think to grant her kindness?"

** {{spoiler|In addition, the curse of death was deconstructed as well, since the gift was not actually intended to kill her.}}

* The ''[[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]]'' novel ''The Crooked World'' by [[Steve Lyons]] is a deconstruction of ''[[Looney Tunes]]''-esque cartoons as the Doctor lands in a cartoon world and begins to influence its inhabitants' behaviors towards naturalism.

** And ''The Indestructable Man'' by Simon Messingham is a deconstruction of all Gerry Anderson's work, asking ''why'' Jeff Tracy founded the [[Thunderbirds]], what [[UFO|SHADO]] personnel would ''really'' be like (yes ''[[UFO]]'' was [[Darker and Edgier]] to being with, but Messingham takes it further), and how the ordinary people of the Supermarionation world might feel about so much money being channelled into [[Awesome but Impractical]] vehicles. Most notably, the titular Indestructable Man is a [[Captain Ersatz]] [[Captain Scarlet]] who feels [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul|detached from humanity]] and [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|wishes he was able to die]].

* ''Ring For Jeeves'' could be considered [[P. G. Wodehouse|PG Wodehouse]]'s deconstruction of his own stories. The usual romantic comedy character-relation tropes are there, but the world they live in is remarkably different. All of Wodehouse's stories take place in a world of eternal [[Genteel Interbellum Setting]], but ''Ring For Jeeves'' explores what would happen if time actually ''progressed''. World War II has happened, Britain is in the throes of social upheaval which separates Jeeves and Bertie (Bertie is sent to a school that teaches the aristocracy how to fend for themselves), poverty and suicide and graphic death are acknowledged, and Jeeves even admits to having "dabbled in" World War I. The book's setting, Rowchester Abbey, is falling apart at the seams and the characters who inhabit it start to feel like a pocket of old-fashioned happiness in a darkening world. In case any doubters still exist about 3/4 through the book, there's Constable Wyvyrn's musings ''about just how much the world has changed.''

* ''[[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]'' was a deconstruction of the [[King Arthur]] mythos, which a lot of Brits took offense to. (It was compared, at one point, to defecating on a national treasure.)

* ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'' by F. Scott Fitzgerald could be the earliest deconstruction of the American dream lifestyle. It shows the rich and happy as people who are [[Stepford Smiler|empty on the inside]] and the fight between new rich and old rich lifestyles, particularly with the titular character Jay Gatsby.

* ''[[A Tale of Two Cities]]''. To many, the famous opening line ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...") seems [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny|cliche]], but one needs to look at it in the context of the [[French Revolution]]. In the years following it, revisionists on both sides relied heavily on propaganda, romantising their own side as undeniably good, and demonising the other side as undeniably bad. ''A Tale of Two Cities'' makes the assumption that both side was absolutly right and runs with it, and so both the aristocrats and the revolutionaries have, among their ranks, noble, honorable people fighting for what they belive is right, and total sadists who just want some bloodshed.

* The Death and the Compass, by [[Jorge Luis Borges]], is a short story that deconstructs the tropes of [[Mystery Fiction]] and [[Detective Drama]]: In the first lines, the [[Great Detective]] Eric Lonroth is implied to have a [[Rogues Gallery]] and an [[Arch Enemy]] in [[Diabolical Mastermind]] Red Scharlach. Then there is a murder. [[Inspector Lestrade]] Treviranus was [[Stating the Simple Solution]] that a thief must have killed him. Lonroth lapmshades that this ''"solution"'' heavily implies a [[Random Events Plot]] and prefers to study the victim’s books, he was a rabbi expert at [[Kabbalah|Judaism investigating the name of God, and there is a piece of paper that states that:]] ''"the first letter of the name has been articulated"''. Deeming those as an [[Magical Incantation]], [[Deliberate Values Dissonance|Treviranus, a Christian policeman, doesn’t want to investigate those superstitions]] and give the books to Lonroth. Later, an [[Intrepid Reporter]] misinterprets Lonroth’s declarations and publishes that Lonroth wants to [[Linked-List Clue Methodology|find the letters of God to find the name of the murderer]]. One month after the murder, there is another murder with a note, ''"The Second letter of the name has been articulated"''. Treviranus discovers that the victim was a crook who worked for Red Scharlach and states that [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|HeHasOutlivedHisUsefulness]], Lonroth suspects [[Never One Murder]]. The second month after the first crime, Treviranus gets a call that offers to explain the strange murders, but it’s [[Disconnected by Death]]. When he and Lonroth investigate, it seems that a third man had been kidnapped and maybe murdered, because there is a third note that says ''"The third letter of the name has been articulated"''. Treviranos suspects a [[Scooby-Doo Hoax]], but Lonroth knows someone is playing [[Criminal Mind Games]]. The papers claims that [[Police Are Useless]] [[Unfortunate Implications|and that there is a Jewish]] [[Ancient Conspiracy]]. One day before the third month after the first murder, Treviranus gets a map that seems to [[Connect the Deaths]]. Exasperated, sends it to Lonroth. Lonroth realizes that there must be a fourth murder and goes to prevent it. He’s [[Genre Savvy]] enough to know that once the mystery is solved, the rest is purely routine… [[Wham! Line|except it’s not]]. {{spoiler|He is surprised and overpowered by the [[Big Bad]] Red Scharlach, who gives [[The Summation]]: [[Inspector Lestrade]] Treviranus was right all along, the first murder was a robbery gone bad, but when Scharlach read the article with the [[Linked-List Clue Methodology]], he was [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] enough to make an [[Evil Plan]] that relied in two [[Batman Gambit|BatmanGambits]]: Lonroth’s [[Complexity Addiction]] (and [[Unfortunate Implications]]!) to explain a crime with the most complicated solution (an [[Ancient Conspiracy]] involving a [[Magical Incantation]]) and his [[I Work Alone]] philosophy that he will not ask Treviranus for help. Lonroth [[Actually Pretty Funny|only can praise Scarlach]] [[Evil Plan]], but [[Stating the Simple Solution|that it could have been more simpler]]. [[Contractual Immortality|Red Scarlach promises this plan for the next time he kill Lonroth]], and then [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?|he simply shoots him]]. Both of them were incredibly sad, [[End of Series Awareness|because they both felt that this was the end of their adventures]].}}

* [[When You Reach Me]] provides an interesting deconstruction of the [[Time Travel]] ideas, mostly from being told not as a person who is doing the time traveling. The time traveler himself is seen as generally crazy to everyone, and the only way he can have someone believe he's from the future is by sending notes carried in his mouth, because he can't bring anything to the past.

 

* ''[[My So-Called Life]]'' is essentially a deconstruction of teen comedies, although the creators never declared it as such. Tropes like [[Playing Cyrano]] and [[A Simple Plan]] are played seriously, showing how unpleasant they would be in real life. And the parents, instead of being [[Adults Are Useless|cartoonishly clueless]], are clueless in a [[Parents as People|more realistic, and more painful, way]].

* Good luck watching another [[Cop Show|crime drama]], even [[Police Procedural|a relatively realistic one]], after watching ''[[The Wire]]'''s deconstruction of the genre.

* ''[[The Gruen Transfer]]'' analyzes and deconstructs advertising.

** Similarly, the "Ad Road Test" segment in ''[[The Chaser's War on Everything]]'' took situations in ads to see how they would work in the real world.

* A dark deconstruction of a typical [[Dom Com]] can be found in ''[[Titus]]'' in which it shows how a dysfunctional family can be messed up in the real world. It also plays around with several other tropes. For example; Titus' and friends' antics lead to bad publicity for their garage, leading to their biggest client demanding his money back, leading to the garage in financial trouble, leading to him drinking to drive Erin away, and so on. In most sitcoms, the guys would just make idiots of themselves publicly, learn A Lesson, then it would be forgotten by the next episode.

* The new ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' massively deconstructed the old one, by showing how it "really" would look like if the last people were fleeing from a genocide. By proxy, the show also deconstructed "light" sci-fi like ''[[Star Wars]]''.

** It also does away with the [[Snap Back]] that fans of ''[[Star Trek]]'' are familiar with. In ''Trek'', the ship could get shot up with no ill effects next episode. With ''Galactica'', especially following the Battle of New Caprica, you see what effect an epic space battle would have on a ship with no access to a station for repairs.

* ''[[wikipedia:Bodies (TV series)|Bodies]]'' is basically a deconstruction of hospital dramas.

* ''[[The Sopranos]]'' takes [[Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!]] and all its consequences and plays them for drama.

* Though [[Crap Saccharine World|on the surface it looks like business as usual]], ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' deconstructs much of [[Power Rangers|its franchise]]. We see exactly the kind of threat the villain can present (99% of the world has been nuked), the [[Plucky Comic Relief]] is not an [[Instant Expert]] upon becoming a Ranger (and is just competent enough to avoid being [[The Load]]), the [[Teen Genius]] designing all the gear got her skills from being in a secret think tank for most of her life and has [[No Social Skills]] [[Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training|as a result]], and there is immense pressure to keep the [[Mid-Season Upgrade|Mid Season Upgrades]] coming [[Exponentially Escalating Arms Race|lest the villain get ahead]]. Things that don't get deconstructed tend to be lampshaded and made fun of; gratuitous [[Stuff Blowing Up]] was questioned once, and the aforementioned Teen Genius regularly gets offended when the Ranger suits are referred to as [[Spandex, Latex, or Leather|"spandex"]].

* ''[[Naeturvaktin]]'' is a fairly standard [[Work Com]] [[Cringe Comedy]] centring around Georg, a [[Control Freak]] [[Pointy-Haired Boss]] with awful politics. The sequel ''[[Dagvaktin]]'' is about just how awful and non-wacky it would be to have to work with someone like that in real life, ''and'' how [[Cry for the Devil|genuinely messed-up they would have to be to become that kind of person in the first place.]] Several episodes of ''[[Dagvaktin]]'' are [[Genre Shift|straight-up drama with no jokes at all]], dealing realistically with the spiral of bullying, abuse, child abuse and murder which Georg ends up perpetrating.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* [[Unknown Armies]] is this for [[Urban Fantasy]], by pointing out the various issues with human nature that would come up if the supernatural really existed in the modern day world. Violence, insanity, tragedy and anti-social behaviour is common in the occult underground.

 

* [[Stephen Sondheim]]'s ''[[Into the Woods]]'' spends its first act as simply a retelling of the stories of "[[Jack and the Beanstalk]]", "[[Little Red Riding Hood]]", "[[Rapunzel]]", and "[[Cinderella (novel)|Cinderella]]", all tied together with the story of a baker and his wife who are cursed with infertility unless they can procure certain items from all four. In the end it looks like everyone's gotten what they want and is happy, but suddenly the narrator announces "To be continued!" Act two begins with the idea that the giant was just minding his own business when Jack came up the beanstalk and killed him, and just builds from there into an incredibly brutal [[Anyone Can Die]] deconstruction of fairy tales.

* ''[[Hamlet]]'' has been read as a massive deconstruction of Elizabethan revenge dramas (although most of them end in tears for everyone). ''Measure for Measure'' might do the same for comedies. The whole thing is a source of much debate.

* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: [[Euripides]]' ''Trojan Women'' and ''Hecuba'' portrayed [[The Trojan War]] as a human tragedy rather than a sweeping epic tale of martial valor in the Homeric tradition. In general, his tragedies are regarded as more "modern" than those of his predecessors because of their morally ambiguous protagonists, pervasive sense of [[Wangst|anxiety and despair]], religious skepticism and overall portrayal of mythologycal subjects and characters as real people.

* The musical ''[[Urinetown]]'' has the downtrodden people fighting to overthrow the oppressive system that heavily taxes and regulates their bathroom usage during a worldwide massive drought. They succeed, but {{spoiler|they are so caught up in the "freedom" that they don't control themselves at all and end up effectively squandering all the remaining water.}}

 

== Video Games ==

** The setup of the first ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' is simple; a terrorist attack on a government nuclear warhead disposal facility occurs and a legendary mercenary is brought back to stop it. However, all the characters are unbelievably screwed up, ''precisely by the character traits that they'd plausibly need in order to do what they do'', and the plot gets very complicated very quickly. Unfortunately, [[Misaimed Fandom|not all members of the fandom saw the deconstruction; they instead thought the game was the ultimate action film and wanted to be Solid Snake.]]

{{quote|'''Snake, {{spoiler|in the ending where Meryl dies}}:''' I'm a loser. I'm not the hero you thought I was! I'm nothing!}}

*** It should be noted that, except for ''Metal Gear Solid 2'', the series was somewhat affectionate in its dismantling of said tropes. At the end of the day, the heroes find a reason to justify their personal suffering and the battles they just fought.

** Finally, ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' raises the question of what exactly happens to [[Action Hero|action heroes]] after the action movie ends. The choices that are presented are dying in a blaze of glory, suicide, or falling into obscurity.

* ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' deconstructs the more cerebral, [[RPG Elements]]-gifted and [[Emergent Gameplay]] style of [[First-Person Shooter]] games (such as ''[[Deus Ex]]'' and ''[[System Shock]]'') by showing you exactly how much choice you actually have. {{spoiler|None. During the entire game you are essentially on the leash of [[Mission Control]] and the [[But Thou Must!]] demands it makes of you, and all the choices you can make (ammo types, plasmid loadout, etc) are (with one specific exemption) basically meaningless in terms of the game's plot.}} In addition, [[Deconstructed Trope|several other tropes unrelated to the genre are deconstructed as well]], most famously the concept of "Galt's Gulch" from [[Ayn Rand]]'s novel ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]''.

** [[Word of God]] is that they weren't trying to deconstruct Objectivism ''per se'', more that they where trying to deconstruct the idea of Utopian fiction (showing that human nature always gets in the way of any so-called "perfect society") as well as the idea of the [[Ubermensch]] with the antagonists Andrew Ryan and Sofia Lamb (who runs a collectivist society in ''Bioshock 2'').

* ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Knights of the Old Republic|Knights of the Old Republic 2]]'' has all of the standard RPG conventions; you recruit party members who follow you forevermore, an [[The Obi-Wan|Obi-Wan]] equivalent who explains everything, and you gain XP, levels and new abilities through combat. {{spoiler|And then several important characters ''call you out on all of this,'' saying, "Have you ever stopped to ''think'' about how you get stronger by killing everything? Don't you ''wonder'' why these people follow you without question? Has it ''occurred'' to you that your [[The Obi-Wan|Obi-Wan]] only knows so much about both us and the villains because she's ''worked for both?''" It turns out that these standard RPG conventions aren't [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] at all, but rather, things that actually happen in the plot, caused by the plot's [[Awful Truth]]. The standard aspects of the genre we as the player take for granted are seen by the people involved not because [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|they can see through the fourth wall,]] but because any sane person would look at this behavior and realize that it's not the way reality should work, even the reality of [[Star Wars]].}} Light or darksided, it says something about the Exile that s/he doesn't even notice it.

** Not to mention the way it subverts the [[Karma Meter]], by making what seems like the right thing to do end up being exactly the wrong thing to do, as is often the case in real life. For example giving to a beggar could lead to a worse outcome than if you had left him alone, as it makes him a target for armed robbery, and thus getting him killed.

** This includes deconstructing the idea of the RPG party and battle system, and at one point a companion tells you it frightens her how she follows you unthinkingly into battle, shoots when you say to shoot, kills when you say to kill etc. {{spoiler|As in the above XP Point example, this is framed as a disturbing and unique characteristic of the main character, and treated as a plot point.}}

** Finally, it deconstructs Lucas's presentation of the Force, in that the [[Big Bad]], having sampled from both the Jedi and Sith wells, ultimately rejects both because they're completely opposed ''yet they both work''. Obviously the Force is far greater than they realized and the [[Big Bad]] is hoping to destroy the Force itself using the PC, freeing life from its influence.

* [http://www.cracked.com/article_15660_ultimate-war-simulation-game.html This article] from ''[[Cracked.com]]'' proposes an ultra-realistic war game. That is, you spend two hours pushing across a map to destroy a nuke silo only to find out later it was an orphanage, complete with celebrities decrying the attack. Public Support rises and falls depending on entirely arbitrary factors, mission objectives change frequently and without warning, the cool superweapons kill 100 of ''your'' soldiers because the contractors cut corners, etc.

* Even though ''[[Half Minute Hero]]'' role-playing-game parts mostly ridicule many cliches found in role-playing games, it deconstructs RPG game concept as a whole. Makes you wonder why almost all other role-playing games include hours of [[Forced Level Grinding]] and other tedious activities.

* The ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]'' franchise often plays around with tropes and expectations, but one of the main thrusts of the recent ''[[Devil Survivor]]'' title is an ''unrelentingly vicious'' deconstruction of "[[Mons]]" games in the vein of ''Pokémon''. During the course of the game, many people obtain small handheld devices that allow them to summon various kinds of demons which essentially work like the Mons do in other games. Needless to say, it doesn't take very long before many start using them for power, or "justice", or the like, resulting in chaos and death on the streets of a locked-down Tokyo.

* ''[[Haunting Ground]]'' could be considered as a deconstruction of the more typical [[Survival Horror]] games where the main character is given all sorts of weapons and ammunition to cut down a near endless stream of monsters. The most Fiona can do herself is kick the enemy, and she relies on her pet dog to keep the enemy at bay as long as she can. The game also has a feature where the main character panics and gets harder to control the more she's hurt, like most real people would do if they were being chased around by psychopaths.

* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' is a deconstruction of literally the whole [[Mystery Fiction|Murder Mystery]] genre. {{spoiler|Despite that, it's supposed to be [[Fair Play Whodunnit]], though one could argue about the amount of fair.}}

** {{spoiler|The OPENING SEQUENCE of the second game states quite clearly "No Dine, no Knox, [[Clueless Mystery|no Fair]]. In other words it is not mystery. But it happens, all it happens, let it happens." The author actually goes out of the way to inform us that he's not following Van Dine or Knox's rules of "fair" detective fiction and that... well, it's not a mystery that can be solved by us.}}

 

== Web Comics ==

* A more blatant deconstruction of the [[Dating Sim]] genre is ''[http://www.tsunamichannel.com/archive.php Experimental Comic Kotone]'' from ''[[Tsunami Channel]]'', to the point that the main character is intentionally left anonymous, and the universe ''just won't let'' '''''anyone''''' to know his real identity.

** The side story ''Magical Girl Mina'' can be considered a deconstruction (or possibly reconstruction) of the magical girl genre. Mina is far from stereotypical proto-MG and does not adhere to any of the expected cliches, tropes and quirks (despite Tsunami being explicitly instructed to scout those traits) but is smart and fit and very inquisitive about how magic works and can be used. On the other hand Mina never reacts to the weirdness "normally" (such as fleeing or avoiding the situation) but accepts it with cautious curiosity.

* ''[http://www.mighthavebeen.net/ My Name Is Might Have Been]'' deconstructs ''[[Rock Band]]''. Yeah, [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|the video game]].

* ''[[VG Cats]]'' deconstructs the cartoon violence of ''[[Tom and Jerry]]'' in [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=207 this strip].

* ''[[Tales of the Questor|Quentin Quinn Space Ranger]]'', an offshoot of ''[[Tales of the Questor]]'', is Deconstructing ''[[Star Trek]]'' right now. So far the design of the starship Enterprise, the habit of using forcefield airlocks without wearing space suits and the [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]] have already been hit. Hard. Up next is engineering.

* In the Chapter 26 of the Spanish webcomic ''[http://jesulink.com/ 5 Elementos]'', the author show the effects of a civil war in a world habited by lots and lots of people with superpowers.

* ''[[Misfile]]'' can be considered a broad deconstruction of the [[Gender Bender]] [[Transformation Comic]], showing how much it would actually suck if you were transformed into the opposite gender and didn't have those kind of tendencies to start with (the part frequently ignored by TG comic fans who wish something like that could happen to them.) Ash is depicted like a real transgendered teen would be (literally a boy trapped in a girl's body), with a realistic level of distress to not only the biological and social changes, but to also having the entire foundation of your world and personal identity ripped out from underneath you.

 

== Web Original ==

** The [[Villain Protagonist|villain is the protagonist]], a shy, nerdy guy who wants to [[Take Over the World]] because he sees it for the [[Crapsack World]] that it is and wants to improve things... [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|on his own terms]]. He also wants to get a date with the girl at the laundromat, whom he's too shy to talk to.

** The [[Hero Antagonist|hero is the antagonist]], a [[Smug Super]], [[Jerk Jock]] womanizer who believes that, because he is superpowerful, he's better than everyone else and is only too happy to display it. He further believes that only people who are like him can be heroic, and anyone who's nerdy or unpopular is a potential supervillain. It's strongly implied that this behavior is what drives people like the villain to become evil in the first place.

** The [[Nigh Invulnerable]] super hero is only brave because he's never had to experience pain in his life. When he ''does'', he has a [[Heroic BSOD]] over it.

** The villain finds that his victory: the hero defeated, entry into the Evil League of Evil secured by {{spoiler|his [[Love Interest]]'s murder}}, comes at the [[Pyrrhic Villainy|price of his humanity]].

* Stardestroyer.net, as mentioned above in [[Fanfic]], deconstructs the seemingly utopian ''[[Star Trek]]'' universe, pointing out holes.

* ''[[Sailor Nothing]]'' loves showing just how jarringly, horrifically, nightmarishly different the characters' lives are from [[Magical Girl]] anime. Several of them even watch an exaggerated, stereotypical version of such shows; the main character actually watches it to escape her life.

* [[Furry Fandom]] works frequently portray an entire world as furry. [http://www.sofurry.com/page/16447?contentlevel=all I Wish I Was Furry!] shows what would happen if we woke up one day and the world actually was furry. The main character is even a human furry fan, like is typical for transformation stories. {{spoiler|[[Squick|And a plushophile.]] (It's exactly what it sounds like.)}} A furryized world, as it happens, is dark and brutal.

* ''[http://everything2.com/user/t3h_poker/writeups/Sonny+gets+Mad+Scienced Sonny Gets Mad Scienced]'' is [[Deconstructive Parody|the "humourous" type of deconstruction]]. It revolves around two central ideas; telling a [[Mad Scientist]] story from the perspective of one of the nameless subjects experimented on, and {{spoiler|being [[Genre Savvy]] doesn't always help.}}

* The [[Whateley Universe]] is a deceonstruction of the classic superhero/supervillain tropes, with mutants who have to obey real physical laws, some supervillains like Dr. Diabolik who are pretty far from the classic villain, and even some supers who are far from the classic hero.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX1m0Y2Vkg This video] is a deconstruction of Pokémon. Yes, Pokémon. It is mostly played for laughs but there is a point about half-way through where Pikachu is bleeding as he's strangled by a Bulbasaur and it's played straight.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' director Chuck Jones often used deconstruction on his cartoons. The best known example is ''[[Duck Amuck]]'': First the scenery changes, forcing Daffy to adapt. Then Daffy himself is erased and redrawn. Then the soundtrack fails, then the film frame, and so on until Daffy is psychologically picked clean. Another example is ''[[What's Opera, Doc?|What's Opera Doc]]'', which takes the base elements of a typical Bugs Bunny cartoon and reassembles them as a Wagnerian opera. (Conversely, you could also say that it takes the base elements of Wagnerian opera and reassembles them as a Bugs Bunny cartoon.)

* ''[[Family Guy]]'' does a [[Crosses the Line Twice|particularly nasty]] deconstruction of ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' and its [[Amusing Injuries]], wherein Elmer Fudd is out "hunting wabbits", shoots Bugs Bunny four times in the stomach, snaps his neck amidst cries of pain, and then drags him off leaving behind a trail of blood. In another episode where Peter and friends became [[The A-Team]], the show's "amusing injuries" are discussed as actually life-threatening.

** The second [[Christmas Episode]] deconstructs [[Santa Claus]] to [[Nightmare Fuel]] levels.

*** The episode eventually winds up in [[Crosses the Line Twice]] territory when, {{spoiler|at Frank's funeral, the "mourners" do not cry but rather laugh when Homer dozes off and mumbles some idiotic gibberish. Even the minister.}}

* The ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]'' episode "1+ 1=Ed" is a deconstruction of how cartoons work, similar to [[Duck Amuck]].

* ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' is a deconstruction of the whole Autobot-Decepticon War. Things ain't so [[Black and White Morality|black and white]] as before, in fact the Autobots' leadership is flawed and somewhat corrupt, with one higly racist, incompetent, cowardly jerkass general on it, who only is amongst the High Command because he blames his mistakes on Optimus Prime, whose status as [[The Messiah]] makes him somewhat of a push-over, and its leader is ready to commit dirty tricks to defeat the Decepticons. The Decepticons however, are as much the monsters they were in G1, and though this time Megatron's pragmatic enough to blast [[The Starscream|Starscream]]'s ass any time he tries to overthrow him. Starscream only survives thanks to the Allspark piece on his head. [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|Without it he would have died right from the start]]. Then comes the [[Darker and Edgier|season]] [[Anyone Can Die|three]]...

* ''"Hey Good Lookin'"'' by [[Ralph Bakshi]] (who else) is one big Deconstruction and [[Take That]] against anyone who believes that the 1950s were really just like ''[[Grease]]'' or ''[[Happy Days]]''. The main character is ostensibly as cool as The Fonz but actually a [[Dirty Coward]] who can't back up his bragging, the [[Plucky Comic Relief]] is actually a racist sociopath, their gang aren't really [[True Companions]] despite looking like it, the supposed [[Big Bad]] never [[Mind Screw|explictly]] does anything really bad and the ending's [[Broken Aesop]] is intentional about the [[Shallow Love Interest|"Romance"]] between the main character and Rozzie.

** Applejack handled the same situation in a much more straightforward [[Frothy Mugs of Water|manner]].

 

* ''Reductio Ad Absurdum'' is one of the major logical fallacies; a style of argument that does this to its opposition. It takes the opponent's argument and logically follows it through to an absurd or indefensible conclusion.

* The well-known [[Aesop]] "[[Be Careful What You Wish For]]" operates in this way. Person X makes wish Y. Wish Y is granted to person X. Wish Y then manages to have sufficiently negative unintended consequences on person X's life that wish Y now looks like a ridiculous thing to wish for. Thus, Wish Y is deconstructed.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Genres]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]