Lost Aesop: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

In a '''Lost Aesop''', however, it's not entirely clear whether the writer ever knew exactly what kind of Aesop they were aiming for in the first place.

The most usual form of this trope is when the audience is [[Anvilicious|whacked over the head]] with the moral-of-the-story, only for the plot to ignore that moral and set off in pursuit of another, different one. It's as if the writer changed their minds halfway through the narrative. Note that there is no debate about this; no character will state "Hey, see that lesson we learned half an hour ago? We were wrong." Also, unlike a [[Broken Aesop]], there is nothing subtle about this: one Aesop is explicitly explained only to be undermined equally as clearly. Eventually, the audience will be buried under a number of conflicting messages, stuck going back and forth between them and unable to tell where the writer was originally going with this.

 

 

 

 

Some would argue that, if the above definition is to be used as a guide, then ''every'' Aesop should be a Lost Aesop if it's meant to be gracefully presented. Life is so complex that there's rarely, if ever, a single overriding lesson to learn for any scenario, despite what [[Single-Issue Wonk|some people]] think; besides that, [[Anvilicious|nobody likes a really blatant and intelligence-insulting message]]. Furthermore, due to the fickle nature of human reasoning, it is possible for two people to glean two equally valid - or even contradictory - lessons from the same presentation. If you tell a left-winger that a disgruntled person opened fire on a building full of people, you might get the interpretation of "Guns are dangerous"; if you told the same story to a right-winger, you might then be told something like "If everyone else in that building had been carrying a gun, the shooter wouldn't have dared open fire" (i.e., guns save lives).

While it's obviously a more confused (and less subtle) cousin of the [[Broken Aesop]], the Lost Aesop also claims kinship to the [[Yo-Yo Plot Point]], since it's the recurring nature of a relatively small "error" that sets up a whole lot of confusion. The fact that the Lost Aesop seems more likely to occur in works that are produced by a group rather than a single person might also suggest the reason for the mangled moral was that the opinions and viewpoints of the writing team varied greatly.

 

{{examples}}

* In an example of how making an issue too complex can result in confusion, the second season of ''[[Kaleido Star]]'' couldn't decide whether ruthless competition was a ''good'' or a ''bad'' thing. Sora's non-confrontational manner and own self-doubts cost her her position as Kaleido Star, as she was usurped by the ambitious May and the icy Leon. Later, she decides to compete against the two of them to prove her worth, with the help of ex-Bad Boy now [[The Atoner]] Yuri Killian. At the Circus Festival itself, {{spoiler|however, Sora realizes that achieving her own dreams in the contest means crushing everyone else, and ends up throwing the competition away rather than winning such a polluted and underhanded event}}. Yet Layla berates her for her unwillingness to compete, May is ''genuinely'' hurt (to the point of ''tears'' and a borderline [[Heroic BSOD]]) when Sora openly refuses to compete with her as well, and their viewpoint is presented to the audience as correct...when just a short while ago, Sora's decision not to step on other people on her way to the top was seen as a noble sentiment. The series tapers off into [[Take a Third Option|the middle road of "competition]] ''[[Take a Third Option|does]]'' [[Take a Third Option|encourage everyone to do their best"]]... but it ''does'' leaves some of the implications the show itself raised unanswered (Is it all right to trample over people who are polite and gentle? Are merciless tactics acceptable in the pursuit of stardom? Is it noble or weak to try and avoid a fight? If a rival who poses a good challenge has his/her wish rejected, is it valid for him/her to be upset or not?).

* ''[[Chobits]]'' completely lost its Aesop as it navigated the issue of human-Persocom relationships. Hideki begins the series with the belief that Persocoms are machines, and a relationship with such an object is no substitute for human interaction. We meet Yumi, who suffers from an inferiority complex because she feels that she, as a human girl, can't compete with "perfect" persocoms. We also meet Minoru, who has built a persocom as a [[Replacement Goldfish|replacement]] for his dead older sister. This is presented as understandable...but unhealthy. So far, so good, since everything lines up with the original message. As the series progresses, however, Hideki falls in love with his own Persocom, Chi, and the "robots can't replace humans" sentiment goes flying out the window. At the end of the story, all the moral and social implications of a society that finds companionship in machines rather than other people are quickly swept under the carpet in favour of a rather rushed scenario where the message seems to be "it's okay to love an object, because the fact that you love it makes it worthy of love."

** Sadly, the [[An Aesop|Aesop]] was completely lost in the [[Anime]]. But, in the end, [[Tropers/Eevee Lord|this Troper]] believed the moral was the question of if it was possible to {{spoiler|[[Robo Ship|love]] [[Robosexual|someone]] without the physical act of [[Can't Have Sex Ever|Sex]].}}. This is certainly something that comes up in [[Real Life]], with some couples having to make similar medically relevant choices in their relationships today.

 

* Because the Marvel ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]'' crossover was written by multiple authors, most of whom didn't agree with the direction Marvel was going, the moral behind the story seems to jump from book to book. It's okay to sacrifice liberty for security, especially when dealing with superpowered individuals—except wait, no it's not. America means freedom and righteousness and all that is good—wait, it means [[Myspace]] and [[YouTube]]. Allowing the leaders to do their jobs is a perfectly legitimate course of action—wait, you'll get drafted into a superpowered army and made a slave of the state. Iron Man is cool—wait, he's a douche!

* ''[[JLA: Act of God]]'' is confusing and written by only one writer. Is the moral of the story that powers leads to arrogance? You're only a real super hero if you don't have super powers? You should work inside the system? Other than "Batman is awesome," it's never really clearly told.

* A very lost aesop happened during [[Peter David]]'s first run on ''[[X Factor]]'' (when it was a government superteam). A scientist had developed a way to test fetuses for the mutant gene, in the womb... and then would offer to abort the baby if it was a mutant. The X-Factor team was, naturally, horrified by this, especially Wolfsbane, who is both mutant and Catholic. ''Except...'' due to [[Executive Meddling]], the "abortion" option was excised, and the doctor instead was offering an in utero ''cure'' for the mutant gene. The team's reactions were not changed; they were still horrified, even Wolfsbane, who has often said she would be much happier if she hadn't been born a mutant. The aesop went from being about abortion to being a vague [[Fantastic Aesop]] about it not being okay to de-mutantify unborn babies.

 

* As suggested at the top of the page, ''[[Plan 9 from Outer Space]]'' positively revels in this to the point where, while you're sure the creator intends for you to take home some kind of message, it's impossible to work out just what that message is supposed to be. The aliens come to Earth to stop humanity from blowing up the universe, but they do this by, well, animating corpses and having them kill a few people. About the time you think old [[Ed Wood (creator)|Ed Wood]] expects you to side with the aliens (not destroying the universe seems good), their destruction by the humans is presented as a happy ending. It doesn't help that all the characters are as incompetent as their creator. In the end, the only real moral you can take home from this film is that there are some films best watched with friends so you can laugh at them. It's a pretty good moral, but probably not what Wood intended.

* ''[[Westworld]]'' is an odd case in that the Aesop is still ''present'' till the end, but isn't ever ''explained''. We're given that people are living out their fantasies by committing horrible deeds against robots, and that the robots are now killing them, but are we supposed to sympathize with the robots? Are we supposed to think they've gone too far? Are they just supposed to be [[The Scourge of God]], with no true thoughts of their own? And let's not get into [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|the Black Knight on his throne]].

* ''[[Fly By Night]]'' is a film that doesn't know whether to praise hip-hop or condemn it. It tends to flip flop when it comes to criticizing [[Hardcore Hip Hop]], but it also seem to chastise [[Conscious Hip Hop]], and [[Political Rap]] as well.

* ''[[Camp Nowhere]]'' seems to have ''some'' kind of Aesop at the end, but good luck trying to figure out what the heck it is. It could be that kids shouldn't worry about having potential and growing up, but the film's hero stands up to his father and says that it's "okay to be stupid sometimes." It could also be about how [[Growing Up Sucks]], but the hero ''does'' learn some responsibility during the movie and even looks forward to dating his love interest when they're older. Maybe the lesson is that it's wrong to fool your parents and start a phony summer camp, but that was a borderline [[Fantastic Aesop]] even in 1994, and everyone ends up thanking the hero for the fun summer anyway, so THAT can't be it...

 

* In his book ''On Writing'', [[Stephen King]] said one of the characters in ''[[The Stand]]'' was going to make an observation about the purpose of the events in one part of the book... only for King to realize he didn't have a convincing message handy. The character eventually ends up saying that he simply doesn't know.

** Another King example: In his nonfiction horror analysis ''Danse Macabre,'' he notes that Mary Shelley in ''[[Frankenstein]]'' never makes clear whether Victor Frankenstein's fatal sin is in presuming to create life, or in refusing to take responsibility for his creation afterwards... neither of which is mutually exclusive. To the book's benefit, arguably.

** In Victor's case, they are one and the same thing. When he gained the ability to create life, Victor became obsessed with making an artificial man...but his motive was purely ''self-centered''. Prior to animation, everything he visualized about his creation was in reference to himself, how his creations would think of him, the importance of his role in the history of the future, there was no concept, no recognization, of the reality of his creation as a ''separate'' entity, with a life and nature and role of its own separate from Victor's wants and needs. When face-to-face with the ''actuality'' of that separateness, as opposed to the fantasy that had obsessed him, Victor was repulsed and abandoned his creation in digust. In later time Victor comes to look back and recognize his own obsession, but too late. Victor was like a couple that planned every step of their child's life during pregnancy, with no thought whatever for the actuality of the child.

* In his novel ''[[Podkayne of Mars]]'' [[Robert A. Heinlein]] was trying for an Aesop about the dangers of [[Hands-Off Parenting]]. However, until the [[Character Filibuster]] at the end, there's really nothing in the novel that suggests that the characters' parents lack of involvement was to blame for their problems - or even that, [[Values Dissonance|by today's standards]], the parents were uninvolved to begin with.

 

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' continuously flip-flops on its stance on the new way vs. the old way. On one hand, we have Buffy herself, who acts like no other Slayer before her, having family and friends. On the other hand, modern weaponry (that is, anything newer than bladed weaponry) is continously said to be useless even though it would be quite useful (shotgun blast to the head of a vampire should at least lobotomize it, if not dust it and most guns could work wonders on demons). It gets even worse after they use a Rocket Launcher to destroy a demon that was unable to be destroyed by [[Exact Words|"any weapon forged"]].

** The first season episode "Witch" starts off seeming to be about parental pressure, presenting us with a shy, sympathetic girl who has been bullied by her mother into joining the cheerleading squad and is so desperate not to fail she has been using witchcraft to injure and disfigure the other candidates. Then, it seems that the girl is just psychotic and her mother is actually living in fear of her. ''Then'', it turns out that the mother has actually swapped bodies with her daughter and she's the one who's been off cheerleading and disfiguring while the daughter has been left trapped in her body. Which takes the initial theme of parents reliving their teenage years vicariously through their children to extremes but completely loses the theme of teenagers going to extreme lengths to satisfy overbearing parents.

* The ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "Obsession" is a monster-hunt story that revolves, for the most part, around Kirk's titular obsession with the monster. When the creature first attacked him and the ship he was serving on, 11 years earlier, he hesitated to fire at it and the creature killed half the ship's crew. In the episode itself, a young security officer on the Enterprise also hesitates when faced with the same creature, and the creature ends up killing several men. Both Kirk and the young officer blame themselves for their crew-mates' deaths, and there is plenty of angst over the matter. How is this solved? Turns out that the creature is immune to phasers, and neither of the two men could've stopped it when they had the chance. The Aesop that was being set up is that "humans hesitate by nature, sometimes it can't be helped, and you can't spend your life blaming yourself for it". This is even outright explained by Spock. However it ends up being something like "failure is sometimes okay in hindsight" - which is no Aesop at all. Needless to say, once the creature is revealed to be nigh-invulnerable, the episode proceeds with the monster-hunt and never touches on any of the above in any way.

 

 

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Bob and George]]'': ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/000428c starts out warning against violence], [[Hypocritical Humor|lapses into firing at Roll]], and [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/000429c ends up warning against ice cream].

 

** Another ''Simpsons'' episode with a Lost Aesop can be the 10th season episode "Lisa Gets an 'A'". This episode was about Lisa getting sick from having Homer shove her into a supermarket's ice cream freezer a little too long. Marge makes her stay home from school and she does so with Marge's advice that she forget about trying to learn and play some of Bart's video games. Lisa does so playing a ''[[Crash Bandicoot]]'' spoof to the point she is hooked. In the process she gets a homework reading assignment: her class started reading ''[[The Wind in the Willows]]''. She spends the duration of her sick leave playing the game. When she goes back to the class, she had not read the book and her class is now being tested on it. Finally with some urging from Bart and Nelson Muntz, Lisa takes a cheat sheet and attains a very high grade. Later Principal Skinner calls her to the office to discuss the test: her lone test grade brought the entire school's GPA up to its minimum standard and the school now qualifies for a grant. Even after Lisa deliberately confesses to having cheated, Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers try to have her stay quiet long enough so the school can get the grant money, feeling it would do a lot of good for the school. In the end Lisa fixes her grade in the privacy of her own home, while the school staff gets the grant money and they cash it at a liquor store. What... exactly is the message of this episode? [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|It's okay to cheat as long as it helps?]] No, that's not right. Could it be "[[Space Whale Aesop|Don't worry about your grades Lisa, you're surrounded by idiots]]"? No, measuring intelligence on nothing but academic achievements is rather asinine. Maybe it's [[Captain Obvious Aesop|Do your homework and don't abuse your sick leave?]] Eh, too blatant. Maybe it's... you know what, forget it. I'll just say the message truly lies in the subplot with Homer and his pet lobster Pinchy: If you adopt a lobster as a pet, don't give it a hot bath for too long or you'll accidentally cook it. There, satisfied.

** Yet another example in ''Itchy and Scratchy The Movie'':

** One episode had the children stuck inside for Recess because it was raining outside. Miss Finster is delighted about this, hoping that keeping the children off the playground will turn them into mindless zombies as it did with a previous class of hers. TJ eventually gives an impassioned speech about how it's just water and can't hurt them before veering off into how adults are using the rain as an excuse to tell them what to do. He and the gang go outside to play in the rain and the sun comes out. At the end of the episode they are implied to have gotten sick from playing in the rain. So was the lesson "don't be afraid of water", "don't let adults tell you what to do", "staying indoors for too long will turn you into a zombie", "playing in the rain will make the sun come out"...you'll get a headache if you try to figure it out.

* The ''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]'' special ''Misty Island Rescue''. The film is supposedly about making good decisions... only the writers themselves can't seem to decide whether or not Thomas should make decisions and think for himself, and the other characters never seem to object to Thomas's stupid choices, making the whole thing quite vague.

{{quote|'''Buttercup''' "But from now on, um, uh... from now on, um, uh, I can't think of anything." }}

* In ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "Stew-Roids", the [[Alpha Bitch]] Connie D'Amico starts dating Chris as part of a [[Pygmalion Plot]] bet, but when he treats her kindly and with respect she abandons the bet and starts dating him for real. Chris gets spillover popularity from dating Connie, which results in his [[Acquired Situational Narcissism|becoming an asshole]] and breaking her heart. Rather exploring this idea (that pretty people aren't always jerks and that popularity can go to anyone's head), the rest of the plot focuses on Connie trying to win back her popularity purely for comedic purposes.

** There are way too many other episodes of ''[[Family Guy]]'' with Lost Aesops to list here.

** "Over a Barrel" is about a conflict between settler ponies and Native American themed buffalo. The historical treatment of Native Americans certainly can't be discussed in it, so the conflict is one of misunderstanding and conflict of interest between equally powerful parties. But really it just seems like an excuse to put the ponies in a [[Wild West]] setting for some reason. Pinkie Pie tries to solve the situation by singing an extremely naïve song about how "You gotta share, you gotta care" that only escalates the conflict. However, the parties are actually quite willing to compromise as soon as they figure out how. The conflict is solved mainly because it wasn't that bad to begin with. The official aesop at the end, then, is pretty vacuous, and ends with "You've got to share; you've got to care." (Pinkie Pie: "Hey! That's what I said!") If that wasn't a stealth [[Spoof Aesop]], it's kind of confusing; is it good to assume everyone can just be nice and get along, or not?

* In the end of the first ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' story arc, Jack abandoned the Autobots for a normal life, only to then rejoin as they battle Decepticons, which he does little to nothing to really help due to the fact he can't. Then Arcee gets injured and Jack stays because she was his first bike. Not really clear if their was an aesop, but it feels like there was one somewhere. Maybe its 'don't leave your friends?' No, 'You can't abandon your calling?' No, How about 'Being pals with Optimus Prime and a bunch of Robots is cool.' Yeah, I'll take that, but that's the aesop of every Transformer episode, hell, that's just what we figure out for ourselves when we watch it.

* ''[[Adventure Time]]'' is full of these; intentionally, as often as not, especially one episode where Jake explicitly declares that there was a lesson to be learned and he avoided it.

 

{{reflist}}