Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,685
edits
Mundane Luxury: Difference between revisions
→Literature
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (added Mugi from K-On! as a weird mutation of the trope) |
|||
| (11 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
{{quote|There were three beds in here! Each with a frame and a mattress! A ''mattress''! Was one of these yours???|''[[Vigor Mortis]]''}}
To someone who has had a rough life, even the simple things are a big deal. The [[Woobie]], the [[Butt Monkey]], the [[Chew Toy]], and other downtrodden characters tend to [[An Aesop|know better]] than to take them for granted.
Line 19 ⟶ 20:
** When he's given a million yen so that he can live outside the mansion for three days, he's told to spend all of it and spends the next few panels explaining that he could live in luxury for the next year with that kind of money. Of course, he's spent it all before he even finds a place to stay for the night.
** This trope could also be used to explain why he doesn't realize that he has at least [[Unwanted Harem|a half-dozen attractive women throwing themselves at him]].
* Oddly implemented with Mugi from ''[[K-On!]]'' Mugi is [[The Ojou]], the only daughter of a filthy rich family -- and is absolutely delighted by the most mundane of things, like the products sold at a dollar store or [[Burger Fool|getting a part-time job in a burger joint]].
* In ''[[Weathering with You]]'', one of the signs of how bad Hodaka's life used to be is his calling a simple Big Mac the best thing he'd ever eaten.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
Line 33 ⟶ 35:
* In ''[[History of the World, Part I]]'', [[Spike Milligan]]'s character is given a box of matches. "So rich!", whispers Spike.
* Audrey's song, "Somewhere That's Green" in ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'' is basically about this, with her dreaming of living in a tract-house away from Skid-Row with "a fence of real chain-link" and a disposal in the sink.
* ''[[Willy Wonka
* ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek (2009)]]''; the first thing Scotty asks Spock Prime is if they have sandwiches where he's from; clearly, Scotty hasn't had one for a long time, as he's been working on an ice moon colony in the middle of nowhere.
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
*
** The Auditors of Reality get [[Weaksauce Weakness|a fatal dose of this]] in ''[[
* When [[Harry Potter]] comes to Hogwarts, he is at first overwhelmed by the fact that he can eat the food he really likes and no one is going to take it away from him. When he was living with the Dursleys, Dudley would always eat everything Harry liked out of spite.
** Also from ''[[Harry Potter]]'', Dobby in his first few appearances, of the "simple kindness" variation.
* In ''[[The Dark Tower/The Drawing of the Three|The Dark Tower]]'' by [[Stephen King]], Roland of Gilead comes from a [[Scavenger World]] and is completely overwhelmed by the taste of a simple tuna fish sandwich and some soda. ([[Stock Yuck|
* In the [[Ray Bradbury]] story ''The Fox and the Forest'', time travelers can be easily detected because they immediately start sampling exotic foods, liquors, cigarettes, and perfumes, which apparently aren't available in the future.
* In the first ''[[Doom]]'' novel, Flynn Taggart runs himself ragged fighting against zombies and aliens, and since he's not in a
* In ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'', Kvothe spends his young days so poor eating regularly is a luxury for him.
* In ''[[Treasure Island]],'' when Ben Gunn is rescued, it turns out that the thing he misses most about civilization is ''cheese.''
* Meat in ''[[House Of Stairs]]''
* In one of his books about life in Caracas at the turn of the XX century, Oscar Yanes wrote that a common birthday gift was sugared bread or cookies, then an expensive rarity for a mostly impoverished country.
* In ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'', the protagonist's family is so poverty-stricken that even being able to sleep in a bed is a luxury. Their house has one, and Charlie's four grandparents have to share it; Charlie and his parents use mattresses. Charlie himself has a
** Wonka also claims that cacao beans are this for the Oompa Loompas. While many compare their situation to slavery, it's much better than what they had before, living as a primitive tribe in a place where [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You|Everything was Trying to Kill Them]] and the only food available was caterpillars and other food that sounded as nauseating as they tasted.
* ''[[I Survived (Novel Series)| I Survived]]: the Destruction of Pompeii, A.D. 79'', apples were considered this because Marcus, a slave, is often fed gruel and rotten cheese by his egotistical master. Marcus secretly steals an apple from a freeman salesman, who was trying to clean his mess thanks to a minor tremor.
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
Line 57 ⟶ 61:
* At first, Hunter from ''[[Queer as Folk]]'' has a hard time accepting that Michael and Ben are being nice to him (giving him a warm jacket, feeding him, paying his hospital bills, letting him use their shower and sleep in their guest room when he wants to, and things like that) because they want to and not because they have some sort of ulterior motive. Understandable, considering that he's a teenage prostitute who's been living on the streets for quite some time.
* In ''[[Torchwood: Miracle Day]]'', Oswald Danes, a convicted kiddy rapist/murderer released from death row, is seen filling a trash bag with food from a buffet. When questioned, he makes a good point about how he'll be unable to find work, and must collect food whenever he can.
* In ''[[The Winds of War and War and Remembrance|Winds of War/War and Remembrance]]'' a train headed on the [[Deadly Euphemism|Transport to the East]] stopped at a Polish station. At that moment someone throws a sack of apples aboard and all the prisoners are pitifully grateful, having had no food and little water. In the book it was an "unknown benefactor". In the miniseries, a poor Polish farmer hefting a sack [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|shoves his way past the SS guards and puts it on
== New Media ==
* Vita from ''[[Vigor Mortis]]'' regards even having a proper amount of food each day as a luxury she doesn't deserve (in part because she is getting it and most of her family isn't). Her teammates in the Hunter's guild thought her astonishment at things like how much food she was getting was funny. After one of them walked with her while she was making a delivery to her family, and saw where she lived before using the guild lodging, that teammate apologized.
== [[Video Games]] ==
Line 74 ⟶ 81:
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', "Homer's Enemy": Frank Grimes spent his whole life struggling to get by, so he's shocked when he discovers that [[Too Dumb to Live]] Homer lives in a two-story house, which is
** [[The Simpsons]] themselves experience this sort of thing all the time (in one episode, Bart refers to ordinary name-brand products as things rich people buy). Marge seems especially prone to it.
* In one of the ''[[Futurama]]'' [[What If|"Anthologies of Interest"]], Bender is turned human and becomes obsessed with such common pleasures as eating and drinking, leading him to become incredibly obese {{spoiler|and eventually dying from it.}}
** Zoidberg gets this pretty frequently. "A floor? We live like kings!"
* ''[[DuckTales (2017)]]''. In the episode "The Living Mummies of Toth-Ra!", Toth-Ra's subjects are blindly loyal to him, despite being slaves in all but name, and they see no problem with this. Scrooge's cliched attempt to rally them with benefits of freedom like, "feeling the warmth of the sun and the wind in their faces" doesn't convince them... But when Launchpad shows them what a burrito is, they switch to full revolutionary mode. And when they start to get cold feet, he re-energizes them with descriptions of ''other'' junk food, while Scrooge sarcastically mumbles, "This is the dumbest revolution I've ever been a part of."
* In ''[[Amphibia (TV series)|Amphibia]]'', the food Anne has to live on in the eponymous fantasy-land isn't very appetizing for humans, often containing live insects, nor are living conditions all-too great, their technology level (at least in Wartwood) being comparable to that of Earth's Renaissance. When she and Sasha finally meet up, Anne is overjoyed when she learns Sasha has access to cheeseburgers, pizza, tacos, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking| and ''KETCHUP!'']] (clearly having explained the concepts of each to Captain Grime's mess sergeant) plus showers with hot water.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Naturally [[Truth in Television]]. When a [[News Broadcast]] features a story about charity work being done in impoverished and disaster-stricken areas of the world, it won't be complete without a clip or two of the villagers/victims enthusing about the food and clothing they have been given.
* When you've been to really big scout camps, living in a tent on field with 15
** This is doubly true of aid workers, soldiers, etc, returning from deployment into third world areas.
** Seen on any given season of ''[[Survivor]]'' with the challenge rewards. The players really start getting excited about simple comforts after the first week or so of roughing it (approximately the third or fourth episode).
Line 88 ⟶ 96:
* When concentration camps were liberated by the US Army many released prisoners were found to have a mysterious sickness(among many). It turned out that they had gorged themselves in a mad burst of joyful gluttony on ''spare army rations'' handed out by well-meaning but medically untrained GI's and had overstrained their weak stomachs. This is known as '[[wikipedia:Refeeding syndrome|refeeding syndrome]]' and can be fatal.
* People who have dated across class lines have probably seen or experienced this trope (and its inversion) when the wealthier partner's family gathers.
* Following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2011/apr/26/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-in-pictures liquidators] were ordered to place flags in areas of the damaged plant to inform others about the clean-up. This was very dangerous due to the high levels of radiation. The ones who followed those were given a day off and some Pepsi, which were both hard to come by in the Soviet Union in 1986.
* It sometimes happens to those who had been hospitalized. Often times, via feeding tube, they would have to be given [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_food medical food]. Of course, this depends on the situations where regular food consuming isn't an option due to injury or illness preventing such action, for example a jaw injury. In other cases, hospital food can vary ranging from bland to restaurant style.
* This is why [[Elvis Presley]] had such a notorious appetite for junk food, [[Bacon Addiction|
* In recent years,{{when}} bookmobiles and even a book vending machines have started to
** E-readers price down gargantuan hoards of books that previously would be only something the more scholarly of the rich would have access to. This is either straight or an inversion, possibly both depending on how it is received.
* For somebody who has been in quarantine or medical isolation, simply talking with somebody else face-to-face can be a luxury (as so many people learned during and after the pandemic lockdowns of 2020).
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
[[Category:One Man's Trash Is Another's Treasure]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
| |||