Historical Villain Downgrade: Difference between revisions
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But there are [[Adolf Hitler|certain]] [[Josef Stalin|characters]] [[Emperor Caligula|in history]] whose actions can't be depicted realistically on, say, a children's TV series.
That's where the
Basically, this trope occurs whenever an historical villain's evil actions are either glossed over or reduced in severity, in order to make them palatable, [[But Not Too Evil|even as a villain]], to mainstream television audiences.
Compare [[Lighter and Softer]], [[Politically
{{examples
== [[Film]] ==
* In the film ''[[Conspiracy]]'', which revolves around the 1942 Wannsee Conference where prominent officials of [[Nazi Germany]] met to discuss the implementation of the Holocaust, [
** Part of this is because Lange is used to highlight the Nazi objection to the ''Einsatztruppen'': it was deeply unsettling to execute large numbers of noncombatants with a gun. This is one of the reasons why the gas chambers were developed - to remove the killers from the consequences of their actions. Lange's objections are intended to reflect this - he doesn't give a damn about the fact that Jews have died, but doesn't like having to kill them. He is contemptuous of Heydrich, because Heydrich hasn't been there and overseen the killing himself. The fact that he is at least a source of irritation for Heydrich conspires to paint him in a better light than he actually is in the film.
* The SS camp commander Amon Goeth in ''[[Schindler's List]]'' is a prime portrayal of a sadistic monster who loved murdering people during the Holocaust. In real life however, he was ''even worse''. Spielberg had to tone down the man's senseless cruelty because his crimes were so horrible and numerous (which included a frequently used torture dungeon built under his house, also shooting playing children with his sniper rifle, personally killing half a thousand people with his own hands, and more) that [[Reality Is Unrealistic|to an audience it simply wouldn't have been believable on screen]] - some had trouble even grasping that an actual person such as the one shown in the movie could actually exist.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Dracula]] may be pretty bad, but he is absolutely ''nothing'' compared to Vlad the Impaler, upon whom the character is based. (Though this is complicated by several [[Historical Villain Upgrade
* Happens sometimes in ''[[Dear America]]'' series, due to the fact that it's made for children. A very obvious example of a whole group being downgraded is in ''My Heart is on the Ground'' by Ann Rinaldi, which makes the white men who took Lakota children to be "reeducated" in the ways of white people seem only like misguided missionaries.
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* ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'''s aunts met Caligula in one episode. No need to get bogged down in the whole "fetus-eating" thing.
* Uday Hussein's sadistic nature is toned down quite a bit in the ''House of Saddam'' [[Miniseries]] for much the same reason as Amon Goeth in ''[[Schindler's List]]'': the producers thought the audience would just have trouble accepting that a human being could be as wantonly cruel as he was in real life.
* [[The Borgias]] depicts Juan Borgia as a stupid lech whose actions can be explained away by insecurities. And he really does love his family. The real Juan was sometimes referred to as a sort of idiotic
* Being a kids' show, ''[[Horrible Histories]]'' has to do this occasionally; though they do talk about death and violence frequently, some historical figures ''still'' have to be downgraded or at least simplified. Hitler is rarely used at all, and a lot of things are omitted from the segments about people like Caligula or Henry VIII.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Two examples from the ''[[
** The Soviets after the first game. The first game gives what many accounts would consider an accurate depiction of Stalin's regime, but in the next two games they're just a joke.
** A bigger case is the Empire of the Rising Sun in RA 3, who are clearly modeled after [[Imperial Japan|Imperialist Japan]], which in real life was infamous for its war crimes, which include pointless mass murders by the hundreds of thousands, enslavement of tens of thousands of women as sex slaves, and performing medical experiments on prisoners from their colonies that killed thousands of people. Even the whole honor aspect that's presented as a joke in the game was a scary thing in real life; they considered surrender dishonorable and would execute or use enemies who surrendered as slave labor, and fed their civilians propaganda about the Allies that drove them to commit suicide by the tens of thousands when America invaded the Japanese home islands. All of these thing are of course never brought up in the game and the Empire is simply presented as an over-the-top comedic organization, though interestingly it is brought up in an in-progress mod called ''[[Red Alert 3 Paradox]]'' where in the mod's version of RA 3 events, the Empire butchered a major Soviet city.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* '' [[Hark!
* In-Universe example in ''[[Eerie Cuties]]'', where Nina writes an essay on Queen Lamia Asra-pa Quintessa, portraying her as [[Not Evil, Just Misunderstood]] and a [[Kindhearted Cat Lover]]. (Lamia's cat was, in fact, a demonic familiar and accomplice to Lamia's crimes, which included genocide.) Nina doesn't get a very good grade. {{spoiler| She really has no sinister motive trying to portray Lamia positively, simply doing so because she is naive and loves cats herself, although when it is suspected she might be the reincarnation of Lamia herself, this incident seems to be evidence to confirm it. (She is not.)}}
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* As the page quote suggests, this is [[Lampshaded]] by [[Pinky and The Brain]] while discussing Caligula in one episode.
* In ''[[Captain Planet and
* One episode of ''[[Histeria
== Other ==
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** Japan is a good example. But so are the other Imperial powers. That means, America, Britain, France, Spain and many others often get toned down.
* Various historical dictators will have their atrocities glazed over by the modern apologists, for political reasons.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110116100648/http://www.canadianlegends.ca/Products.asp This] action figure of [
* In media based on the New Testament of [[The Bible]], Pontius Pilate is often portrayed as reluctant to sentence Jesus to execution. This is unlikely given that Pilate was recalled to Rome because the ''[[The Empire|Romans]]'' though he was too brutal.
* [
* The history books often leave out the fact that some African tribes profitted from the slave trade by capturing and selling rival tribes.
* [[Mao
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Hollywood History]]
[[Category:Historical Villain Downgrade]]
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