Positive Discrimination: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

When the [[Token Minority]] can do no wrong. She (this is most often seen with the [[The Smurfette Principle|lone female character]]) will never bumble or make a mistake, even in a show where the majority of the team does. She will be much smarter and have [[Only Sane Man|more common sense]] than average, she has more knowledge and skill than she has any reason to possess given her background, she will ''definitely'' be of [[Closer to Earth|superior moral character]], [[Action Girl|and she can probably kick your ass too]].

Contrast with [[Closer to Earth]]. Almost all instances of [[You Go, Girl!]] are this, when women are displayed as superior to their male competitors in sports or other traditionally male domains. The [[Innocent Bigot]] may display Positive Discrimination, but in this case it will be [[Lampshaded]] as a bad thing. [[You Are a Credit to Your Race]] is a related trope. Taking the polar opposite tack leads to [[Mighty Whitey]]. A very frequent character trait of the [[Gamer Chick]].

 

 

* Used widely in kid-directed commercials. Picture this scenario: Two kids are having a race in an RC car commercial. As their two cars near the finish line, a third comes out of nowhere and beats them to the punch, doing flashy maneuvers the all the way. Mouths gaping, the two boys exchange awestruck glances and the camera panels to the mystery racer. If you hadn't guessed already, yes, [[Samus Is a Girl|it turns out to be some random girl]] holding the controller.

* Also works for minorities. Some white kid will be sitting around, wearing bland clothes, with a bland haircut, and looking horribly bored while holding a product. Then, with a burst of hip-hop, in sweeps the black kid, wearing trendy clothes with plenty of bling, and of course he's got the far superior version of the product! The white kid looks on with resigned, mournful envy as the black kid dances up a storm. No, really, Gogurt did this exact commercial, and slightly milder variations are quite popular, especially for food products.

* The ads for Flash in the UK seem to be aware of this trope such as one had the mother coming home to find the kitchen in a complete mess and storming all over the house looking for her husband. The husband uses this time to quickly clean the kitchen up and then position himself in the living room so that when the wife comes in to scold him about the mess she looks back to see it clean and is left speechless.

* Used in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlu8zawoXTg Mario Kart 7 ad]. {{spoiler|The incredible opponents are Japanese girls.}}

 

* Motoko Kusanagi of ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'', the sole female on her team, is the most skilled member of Section 9, being an expert hacker and skilled in both hand-to-hand combat and firearms. She even outdoes some of the other team members at their own specialties; anyone fighting her will lose because the Major is a [[Genius Bruiser]] and turns people's advantages against them.

** Shirow Masamune loves this trope.

** Though early on, Panther's main trait was his being a [[Determinator]] (he worked hard to impress his racist coach, misinterpreted the racism as his not being good enough, and worked even ''harder''). While his race did come into it as described, it's not like they had the "he's awesome 'cuz he's black!" attitude the whole time.

* There are two female Espada in ''[[Bleach]]'', past and current.<ref>And Cirucci but she isn't considered one anymore.</ref> Apart from Starrk, they're the only nice ones. They're also stronger with only two Espada stronger and {{spoiler|Harribel is the last Espada defeated, taken down personally by Aizen. And the two female Espada seem to be the only ones that actually get to live.}}

 

== Comic Books ==

* In ''[[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]]''. Jane Smith is professional and usually the one to be in control of the situation. John Smith makes bumbling mistakes and more than once seems to succeed purely on luck. He is also not as cold-hearted as his wife. It appears she paid for that skill with her charisma and wisdom stats.

* Occurs in the movie version of ''[[Get Smart (film)|Get Smart]]'' due to [[Values Dissonance]]. Agent 99 being the competent and experienced professional while Maxwell Smart was a blundering incompetent was originally a surprising and subversive twist. Today it just seems like this trope. In fact they seem to have made Maxwell ''more'' competent in order to compensate. This may be to rectify the fact that in the original, 99 ''admires'' Smart, likes him being in charge, and is prepared to completely ignore his lack of ability in favor of his experience, character, and tendency towards dumb luck. The modern 99 is clearly aware of Max's inexperience, so they had to give him at least some capabilities.

* A scene in the film ''[[Dogma]]'' depicts two angels condemning a room full of businessmen for their ([[Corrupt Corporate Executive|many]], many) sins such as child molestation, among other things. Every one of them are male, and the only female in the room is a secretary, who's worst sin was not saying "God bless you" when one of the angels sneezed. {{spoiler|Although, to be fair, the angel was going to kill her all the same so in the eyes of the killer, she was just as guilty as the rest.}}

** Well, that, and the golden calf.

* ''[[The Bourne Series (film)|The Bourne Series]]''. All the important female characters are pretty unambiguously good; except for Bourne himself nearly all the important male characters are corrupt and/or outright sociopaths. Julia Stiles' character does spend the first two films trying to kill Bourne, but only because she was given false information.

* This is one of the rules set down for ''[[The Lone Ranger]]'': all villains had to be white to avoid accusations of racism.

** Stanley Kramer, the director/producer of ''Dinner'' argued that Poitier's had to be perfect because the only objection to his marrying Spencer Tracy's daughter was his race.

** This is a bit of [[Typecasting]] as Poitier is pretty much a demigod of perfection [[Real Life|IRL]].

** Circumstances are contrived to make sure her character is the most effective (this last part possibly justified as the [[Game Master]] showing favoritism towards her). She excels against several weak opponents, but her low hit points make her weak against a tougher foe and the group has no real tank due to this.

** To be fair, this has less to do with her being female but more with her filling the role of the newcomer that the resident jerkass thinks he can walk all over. Just as in every movie where an apparent naive newcomer sits down at a poker table with a bunch of cardsharps who think they can scam him out of his money, [[The Magic Poker Equation|they will invariably be the ones who end up losing]], either because of karma or because the newcomer wasn't quite as new at the game as they thought.

* Done in the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' films with Hermione Granger (much less so in the books). The film version of Ron is rather [[Flanderize]]d, being much more cowardly and incompetent than he is in the books, with most of his good material being given to Hermione. One major example is in the first film, when the [[Power Trio]] is caught by a man eating plant. Ron panics and is nearly crushed by the plant, while Hermione is the first to figure out how to escape, and subsequently saves Ron. In the book, while it is still Ron being crushed, Hermione is the one who panics and Ron has to yell at her to snap her back to her senses. She is still the one to save him, but if Ron hadn't kept a cool head (while being crushed to death), he might not have survived.

** Averted from the fifth film onwards. Notably when the kids are being restrained by the Death Eaters, Ron struggles against his captor while Hermione just cowers in fear. And Ron is given a few CMOA in the seventh film to balance things out a bit.

** Also, while Pepper Potts is not portrayed as an [[Action Girl]], the movie still tries to drive home that she's much [[Closer to Earth|more sensible]] than Tony and morally superior as well... even as she spends the entire movie being passive-aggressive and rude. In the second movie, she becomes the company's CEO despite spending most of her career as a secretary.

** James Rhodes is also much more responsible, level-headed, and reasonable than Tony, to the point that he really does seem to be a much better choice for keeping the Iron Man suit. Although in fairness, these three characters being more mature than Tony might have less to do with the fact that they're all minorities, and more with it being a very low bar.

* The early movies starring [[Adam Sandler]] would often show not just Adam's character but practically everyone else to be annoying, bizarre, or just plain unpleasant (due to [[Rule of Funny]], of course). The one exception would be the pretty young woman whom the Sandler character lusts after, who was always about as [[Mary Sue]] as it could get: always did the right thing, never disgraced or embarrassed, and without any but the smallest flaws that could be easily ignored by the story. The implication was that Sandler didn't deserve such a perfect creature and had to spend the entire movie reforming his behavior to be worthy of her. As time went on, the usual Sandler formula began to be subverted. In ''[[Big Daddy]]'', for instance, the girl Sandler is with at the start of the film is even more morally flawed than he is, and [[Break the Haughty|receives her comeuppance in the final scene as most of the movie's characters (both male and female) laugh at her]]. And the remake of ''Mr. Deeds'' [[Inverted Trope|turns the trope completely inside-out]]: the heroine of the story is actually a ''villain'' at the start of it (well, more of a [[Defector From Decadence]]) while Deeds (Sandler) is [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness]] personified. The girl ends up having to suffer quite a few indignities (including a brutal [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]) as part of her [[Heel Face Turn]] and to prove to Deeds that ''she's'' worthy of ''him'' - and, just to add insult to injury, also discovers that in ''this'' film, [[Slapstick Knows No Gender]].

** ''[[The Waterboy]]'' subverts this, too: Sandler's love interest is good-hearted, but also somewhat trashy and a petty criminal to boot.

* [[George Lucas]]' ''[[Red Tails]]'' does this with the African-American Tuskegee Airmen, not by making them unusually good but by making their white counterparts incredibly incompetent.

 

== Literature ==

** It should also be pointed out that<ref>until a certain point in the plot</ref> any male [[Our Monsters Are Different|Aes Sedai]] are (now) slowly driven insane by the Dark One's tainting of saidin.<ref>the male half of all magical energy</ref> All these men, back in the Age of Legends, going immediately insane was responsible for the [[Apocalypse How|Breaking of the World]]. Also worth nothing is that the women of the time stubbornly refused to help even when their own plan had pretty much collapsed around their ears. Then again, they make it a point that if the women had joined in, it could have been even worse as both sexes would have gone wild. Or the men's plan could have worked and the Breaking never would have happened. It's left ambiguous.

* Of the four protagonists of Patrick Tilley's ''The Amtrak Wars'', the two guys are pretty deeply flawed, get slightly better or a lot worse, and die. The two girls wind up more or less saints by the end, and live.

** Though arguably the Watch books do err slightly towards this trope when it comes to sex: while you have capable male officers and capable female officers the more [[The Fool|bumbling comedic roles]] like Colon or Nobby are all male.

*** Part of that is to show how Fred and Nobby are part of the "old" Watch rather than the "new" Watch. In the first Watch book a) Fred and Nobby were literally half the force, and b) the other two weren't much better (Carrot was a [[Naive Newcomer]] and Vimes was a drunk).

* In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], after Jacen's death, the Moffs are caught using biological weapons against the Hapan royal family, and part of the terms of their amnesty are that a certain percentage of Moffs be female.

* The saintly Uncle Tom in ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'': Harriet Beecher Stowe intended him to be a model of a perfect Christian. Many other examples in that work.

 

* The seventh season of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' introduced a female crewmember who quickly proved the most competent of any of them (not a challenge given the competition, granted...) They thankfully backed off this some in later episodes. It should be pointed out, however, that she came from an alternate universe where the Red Dwarf crew were ''all'' more competent than their "regular" universe counterparts. A recurring theme had Kochanski berating Lister for not being as competent as ''her'' Dave. However, there was a lot of implication that they were more competent ''because'' of her, so it still stands.

** A subversion was Holly from Series 3-5, played by Hattie Hayridge. The character admitted in one episode to being a "deranged, half-witted computer" and in another couldn't even count without banging her head on the screen.

* ''[[The Office]]'' (USA): Even though Stanley and Darryl have clearly been obnoxious or inappropriately insubordinate, Michael constantly ignores it for the cameras, fearing accusations of racism. The show is also pretty impressive when it comes to gender: the female characters are exactly as flawed as the male ones.

* ''[[Spin City]]'' averted this cleverly with [[Twofer Token Minority|gay black guy]] Carter. Carter was highly intelligent, extremely good at his job and often acted as the voice of reason, but he was a flawed character in other ways such as his neuroses and hyper-sensitivity to racial and sexual discrimination.

* In the BBC version of ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'', the character of Djaq is a [[Twofer Token Minority|double token minority]]- the one non-white outlaw and the only female member of the group. She is frequently shown to be more intelligent than the other characters and is usually the one to tell them off for being idiots, kicks butt while fighting, has incredible healing powers, and can always get herself out of a fix with her Saracen know-how.

* Pretty much any family sitcom involves a wife who is far more intelligent and level headed than her spouse. This usually leads to one or two episodes where the trend is reversed so the husband can be right at least once. This one pretty much goes back to ''[[The Honeymooners]]''.

** Although sometimes they make it so the wife is ''still'' right anyway because the husband starts flaunting the fact he was right and messes up again. If you are a man on one of these shows, you simply cannot win.

* "Broken Heels" by Alexandra Burke is about how much better at everything women are than men.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7c16swRoMU Daniel] [[Tosh.0|Tosh]] would like to have a word with her.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* Scott Adams, the writer/artist of the comic strip ''[[Dilbert]]'', has trouble including minorities in his central cast because he loves [[Jerkass|deeply]]-[[Butt Monkey|flawed]] characters, and doesn't want get angry letters by creating dumb, criminal or lazy minority characters. So he created Asok, an intern from India who's basically a foil to the rest of the cast. He's technically brilliant, hardworking, honest and nice. His only flaws are inexperience and wide-eyed naivete. Basically, he's TOO nice and TOO trusting. Adams still got letters.

* Delta, the only black cast member of ''[[Luann]]'', is of course the smartest and most level-headed of the entire group. Unless you count "being a workaholic" as an actual flaw, she's about as [[Mary Sue]] as they get.

* Dr. Liz Wilson, the female veterinarian of [[Garfield]], has it all. She's a hot babe, a caring doctor, and she's smart. Back when the strip played up the romantic antagonism between her and Jon Arbuckle (before she and Jon finally became a couple), Liz was pretty much consistently portrayed as a goddess whom Jon could never measure up to, and he was lucky to be even breathing the same oxygen as she. Really, her only perceptible flaw was her [[Deadpan Snarker]] behavior toward Jon (which Jon, of course, never seemed to notice). Just to make things even, though, she ''did'' shoot down Jon so many times, and so coldly, that after a while you stopped laughing at Jon being an idiot and started to resent Liz for being so mean to him.

** Played more straight in ''[[The Garfield Show]]'' where Liz is far less snarky and irritable and willingly dates Jon from the get go. Jon, while not quite as brainless as his comic counterpart, is still pretty pathetic.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

** In perhaps her most notable appearance, Beth was more of a [[Wild Card]] than a straight face or heel. Still officially a heel at the time, she entered the 2010 Royal Rumble Match (which only two other Divas, Chyna and Kharma, have ever done) and foreshadowed her [[Heel Face Turn]] by easily eliminating Great Khali (who was a face at the time, albeit not a very sympathetic one). She then attempted to eliminate then-heel (and her [[Real Life]] boyfriend) [[CM Punk]], but he got the best of her. It's doubtful she would have won in any case, since one of the last entrants in that match (and the eventual winner) was [[Edge]], who has demonstrated in the past that he [[Would Hit a Girl]].

** A special case occurred early in 2004, when [[Trish Stratus]] was a face and [[Christian]] was a heel, and Christian brutalized Trish with a submission hold [[I Lied|after promising to throw the match]]. But when Chris Jericho (Trish's boyfriend at the time) tried to come to her rescue, she inexplicably sided with Christian and became a heel herself (and yes, the [[Unfortunate Implications]] were thick).

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius]]'', [[Fantastic Racism]] between humans and the shapeshifting beast-men races called the Laguz are a major theme. While there are many senselessly evil or stupid human characters, in the first installment of the verse there was not a single evil Laguz. They were either outright heroic, brutally tortured and crazily brainwashed into attacking the heroes, or had a [[Anti-Villain|very good reason]] for opposing the good guys.<ref>Yes, this includes Naesala and his ravens, considering that all the piracy and mercenary work they do is for the sake of feeding their people at home.</ref> It got a bit better in the sequel, with a few Laguz bandits, some Laguz too big on the whole [[Blood Knight]] thing etc., but not exceptionally either.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' began its existence with Marge and Lisa being clearly smarter and more sensible than their male relatives. This was taken to the extreme in an episode where it was revealed that there was a "Simpson gene" for stupidity which only affected males ([[Discontinuity|we don't mention that episode much]], [[Canon Discontinuity|and the writers seem to have retconned it]]). As the series progressed, Marge developed her own idiotic habits, but so did everyone else in Springfield... save Lisa, who apparently absorbed every ounce of common sense and intelligence in the city. Of course, it didn't have anywhere else to ''go''. It was [[Early Installment Weirdness|much different in the very earliest episodes]]: Homer was relatively well-adjusted (if a bit naive), Marge was a [[Lady Drunk]], and Bart and Lisa were equally annoying, bratty nitwits.

** The episode "The Last Temptation of Homer" played this trope ridiculously straight, especially in comparison to the farcical depiction of female characters in earlier episodes. Facing a string of lawsuits, Mr. Burns is forced to adopt an affirmative action hiring policy so he at least won't get hit with an anti-discrimination lawsuit (though why he wouldn't have been forced to do this before 1993 is never explained). As a result, the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant hires its first-ever female technician, Mindy Simmons (voiced by guest star Michelle Pfeiffer). Much to Homer's consternation, he discovers that [[Distaff Counterpart|Mindy shares all of his good qualities]] (proudly working-class, friendly, fun-loving) and none of his bad ones. Indeed, despite being shown [[Big Eater|eating at least as much as Homer does]], Mindy never gains any weight and remains forever a sexy babe. And while she does have at least ''some'' flaws, Mindy seems downright perfect compared to silly, pathetic, bumbling, stupid Homer. She's definitely the more grown-up and sensible of the two, and all the humiliating gags in the episode are at Homer's expense. All this, of course, is to test Homer's morality: can he remain faithful to Marge while in the constant presence of this goddess (quite literally, as Homer imagines Mindy as Venus the first time he sees her)? A subversion of the trope finally came in a later episode, in which [[Continuity Nod|Homer finally confessed to his family his temptation to sleep with Mindy]] (which he didn't do), and assured everyone that they never see each other anymore, because Mindy [[Not So Above It All|"hit the bottle pretty hard and lost her job."]]

*** Amusingly this was despite the episode seemingly trying to subvert the trope and displaying Mindy as a bumbling, more compatable female for Homer, however many of her flaws mirroring Homer's are minor or merely implied. The show doesn't seem to know how to get away from this trope, even when it's ''trying it's hardest to avoid it''.

* The major reason for the general fandom rejection of [[The Scrappy|Lola Bunny]] in ''[[Space Jam]]'', who aside from being the only new character didn't follow any of the usual humorous slapstick conventions. For instance, late in the film, Bugs pushes her out the way when one of the Monstars is about to squash her, as though she, unlike all the other toons and even Bugs himself afterwards, will not just get flattened like a pancake or some other [[Amusing Injuries|temporary cartoon injury]] that is easy to recover from. Even a ''human'' character in the movie gets flattened and does not receive permanent damage.

** One could argue this is less a case of Positive Discrimination and more [[Wouldn't Hit a Girl]]. That said, Lola arguably exemplifies [[Women Are Wiser]], and she's the most talented basketball player of all the [[Looney Tunes]]. (Given that [[Serious Business|the entire premise of the movie revolves around basketball]], one could argue how much of an edge this gives her).

** However, that's not to say Wanda and Mrs. Turner are perfect (or even close). Wanda borders on being a complete bitch more often than not, while Mrs. Turner is still (usually) neglectful and not exactly a genius, even if she seems so in comparison to Mr. Turner. As for other female characters, Vicky is the embodiment of evil, Tootie and Veronica are borderline-psychotic stalkers, and Trixie is a bit bitchy and air headed. In fact, the guys on average, sans Cosmo and Mr. Turner, probably have it better off. Despite some of their flaws (Timmy being a bit of a slow minded [[Jerkass]], AJ being a bit of an [[Insufferable Genius]], Chester being poorer than dirt), they're all otherwise relatively normal kids who are (usually) able to handle themselves.

** AJ starts off as Timmy and Chester's [[Black Best Friend]] who happens to be a [[Straight Man]] to Timmy. Now he's an [[Insufferable Genius]] who (very rarely though) rubs his brain power in Timmy's face.

* ''Barbie in [[A Christmas Carol]]'' has Barbie's [[Black Best Friend]] Christi playing a living saint while Barbie is in the role of [[The Grinch]].

* Played with and then mocked in a ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' sketch where they play a skit once, then play it with the races reversed. Then they do something completely unrelated to the previous two skits. Each is bookended by a scientist asking what the audience feels about the skits, then concluding something completely nonsensical.

** Done again immediately afterwards when the other minority juror (a dog) gives a technical explanation and another juror interrupts him with, "Uh, you're a f**king dog."

* Abby from ''[[The Replacements (animation)|The Replacements]]''. In addition to being rich, she also seems to be the [[Straight Man]] in her [[Girl Posse]], and is rarely the butt of anyone's joke.

** [[Winnie the Pooh (Disney film)|The 2011 movie]] returns Kanga to her original book portrayal.

** This is why Kanga is often left [[Out of Focus]]. Since many of the plots are set off by [[Poor Communication Kills|some kind of misunderstanding]] [[Idiot Plot|or other matter that anyone with common sense could settle immediately]], she's left out of the adventure outside acts of unindividual bumbling from the whole cast.

* Villain example; [[Dark Action Girl|Jinx]] is the only female member of [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|the HIVE Five]] on ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'', and is also the only one of them to both largely escape [[Villain Decay]] {{spoiler|and get to do a [[Heel Face Turn]]}}.

* In one episode of ''[[South Park]]'', the boys are forced to attend the Museum of Tolerance. One display shows a stereotyped young Asian with a calculator, to show that even ''positive'' stereotypes—such as the stereotype that all Asians are good at math—can have an overall negative effect on the stereotyped group in question.

* In the eighties cartoon ''[[Bionic Six]]'', the family started out with three children, two of their own (a boy and a girl) and an adopted child who was black. The male son was a jock, and [[Butt Monkey|go-to guy for saying or doing anything stupid]]. The adopted black son was not only just as big of a school hero jock as the white son, but was a ''supergenius'' on top of that.

 

* In the Lego series ''[[Bionicle]]'', each Toa team has only one female on it, the main three so far being Gali, Nokama and Hahli. In each case they are the least flawed and the wisest members of their teams. Particularly noticeable in ''Legends Of Metru Nui'' in which each Toa Metru is given a major character flaw which they must overcome to unlock their individual mask powers, such as Vakama's lack of confidence and Matau's inability to stop and think before rushing in. Not only is Nokama's flaw relatively small (not admitting when she's wrong), it is only referenced once and she overcomes it very early on, extremely quickly.

** It gets better after a [[Retool]] that switches settings to focus on a world with [[Gladiator Games]]. The one girl there, Kiina, is brash, aggressive, and blunt; traits that help her in the arena but make her a pain to deal with outside of it.

*** Though, [[The Movie]] actually shows her as a [[Genki Girl]] with a little [[Tsundere]] thrown in the mix.

** Actually kind of [[Averted Trope|Averted]] on the original team, as Toa Onua, a male, was very wise and never argued with the others, unlike Gali who frequently argued with [[Hot-Blooded|Tahu]] and [[Ineffectual Loner|Kopaka]].

* There's also a common [[Double Standard]] in the real world of excusing members of minority groups for sexist or homophobic (or yes, sometimes even racist) beliefs or attitudes, with the justification that any criticism of this behavior would be [[Culture Justifies Anything|"disrespectful to their culture."]] During the age of European imperialism, this dilemma came up a ''lot''. One famous case study focused on the controversy surrounding female genital mutilation among the Kikuyu tribe of Kenya (then known as British East Africa). The British colonizers were caught on the prongs of a [[Morton's Fork]]: if they condemned the practice, they faced the [[Mighty Whitey]] accusation; but if they tolerated and/or defended the practice, they would be attacked by feminist groups.

 

== Notable Aversions ==

* It goes without saying that any work shot through with a racially or culturally supremacist viewpoint is going to avoid this trope like the plague (''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' and ''The Eternal Jew'' perhaps the most noteworthy examples).

* Asians (the Chinese in particular) are also often depicted [[Asian Rudeness|acting superciliously - sometimes even cruelly - toward other characters]], especially if the topic in question is something that Asians are "naturally" better at (martial arts, philosophy, etc.). This trend has inspired the ''[[Cracked.com]]'' website to identify [http://www.cracked.com/article_15989_hollywoods-6-favorite-offensive-stereotypes.html a common negative stereotype]: "The Wise Old Asian Asshole." Pai Mei in the ''[[Kill Bill]]'' movies probably took this character type about as far as it could go - so far, in fact, that Pai Mei's extreme sadism drove one of his victims to murder him in revenge.

* ''[[The Man Show]]'', as its name suggests, takes a [["Just Joking" Justification|(jokingly)]] male-supremacist attitude toward the world, even going so far in the very first episode to [[Refuge in Audacity|start up a petition to repeal women's suffrage]]. Somewhat softened in that most of the male characters - including the two hosts themselves - are hardly paragons of virtue, and also in that the treatment of the pretty girls on the show was generally with the relatively harmless "sex object" stereotype (although occasionally the gags would get crueller than that). One spoof episode even had the hosts get in touch with their "feminine" sides: while continuing to wear male clothing, they acted much less raucous and talked in gentle tones and [[Cute Kitten|cuddled some kittens]] in the finale. (However, recent radio-show remarks by Adam Carolla suggest that his chauvinistic attitude on the show may not have been just an act.)

* Melvin Udall ([[Jack Nicholson]]) in ''[[As Good as It Gets]]'' is a lonely romance novelist afflicted with a serious case of obsessive-compulsive disorder (which, granted, isn't a "traditional" disability but still can - and often does - wreak quite a bit of havoc with its victims' daily lives). In a more trite or inoffensive film he'd come off as [[The Woobie]] due to this trope. But director James L. Brooks turns him into more of a [[Jerkass Woobie]] whose extreme shortage of social skills has made him unbearably rude and misanthropic. (He's been prescribed pills for his disorder, but never takes them because he's too ashamed to.) Much of the movie is concerned with Melvin slowly becoming friendlier and more sensitive, especially to a gay neighbor whom he had mocked earlier in the film. Especially shocking is a scene in which Melvin, irritated that his daily breakfast at the diner just down the street from his apartment is not going as planned, offhandedly mocks a waitress for being [[Hollywood Pudgy|"fat."]] The restaurant owner immediately flies into a rage and [[Break the Haughty|forces Melvin to leave the building]], prompting ''everyone'' else in the diner to [[And There Was Much Rejoicing|burst into wild applause]] - a humiliating punishment that would ''never'' be administered to any disabled character suffering from any ailment more serious than OCD, unless said character blatantly crossed the [[Moral Event Horizon]].

** But it can also be seen as a straight white guy needing a gay man and a woman to make him less of a jerk so he can be happy.

* The disabled protagonists of ''[[Rory O'Shea Was Here]]'' are as flawed and human as everyone else in the film.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Meta Concepts]]

[[Category:Race Tropes]]