Self-Deprecation: Difference between revisions

Note that this isn't about whether other people are allowed to make fun of you. Those would be different tropes (related to [[N-Word Privileges]]). Nor is it [[Heroic Self-Deprecation]], which is actually putting yourself down for real.

 

 

A [[Super-Trope]] to [[Our Product Sucks]].

 

{{examples}}

* The original ads for the Volkswagen Beetle constantly mocked the car for its small size. Allegedly this violated one of the unwritten rules of advertising, "Don't mock the product." The ad campaign was a smash success.

** This was the famous "[[wikipedia:Think Small|Think Small]]" ad campaign of 1959. This, and its successor of 1960 ("Lemon") started the so-called "Creative Revolution" in advertising: put the creative guys in charge of selling the ad. This ad series gets a [[Shout-Out]] in ''[[Mad Men]]'': in Season 1, set in 1960, which Don Draper does not approve (talking derisively about its creator, [[wikipedia:Julian Koenig|Julian Koenig]]). By Season 4 (starting in November 1964), his ads are more or less in the same vein.

* Former Chicago Bears fullback William "the Refrigerator" Perry (who got got his nickname because he was ''huge'', standing 6'2" (188 cm) and weighing over 300lbs through most of his career) would often mock his own weight, as he did in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLagFBUKzmI this commercial] for McDonalds in 1985. Emphasized, in fact, as it premiered on December 2nd during a game between the Bears and Miami Dolphins.

 

* Edvard Munch's 1893 painting ''[[media:Edvard Munch, 1893, The Scream, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 x 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway.jpg|The Scream]]'' has an inscription literally pencilled onto the corner of the image: "can only have been painted by a madman". [https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/munch-scream-madman-1.5922732 It has been confirmed that the note is in Edvard Munch's own handwriting.]

 

* Done often in ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'' - for example, listing "great failures in a man's life", which was a short biography of the author, the last point being "Creating the ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'' anime".

** The second OVA for season 3 is a never ending string of jokes at [[Studio Shaft]] poking fun at themselves and their own series. Such as thanking viewers who "came across the opening and didn't change the channel".

* In the audiobook version of [[Jon Stewart]]'s ''[[America (The Book)]]'', there are these gems: "[[Stephen Colbert]] is the Arthur Schlesinger Professor of American Studies at Harvard University. He is personally unpleasant." and "Stephen Colbert has received the Werner Heisenberg Prize for Excellence in Theoretical Mathematics seven consecutive years, yet can barely feed himself." Guess who narrates these parts.

 

* [[Stan Lee]] once remarked that ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' regular J. Jonah Jameson was based off of how he imagined the fans viewed him: a cantankerous, money-hungry old man. Most comics fans saw (and still see) Lee as an affable grandfather figure, so in this case the Self-Deprecation didn't quite work.

* In Marc Guggenheim's ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]: Choosing Sides'', Mac Gargan is discussing selling his life story. He wants Guggenheim to do the movie, then says "No, the other Guggenheim, the one who wrote that hockey movie", simultaneously putting down Marc himself, and giving a [[Shout-Out]] to his brother Eric.

* If you are a [[Spider-Man]] fan who didn't like [[The Clone Saga]], you are far from alone; no less than ''thirteen'' of Marvel's best writers contributed to a one-shot humor-oriented comic called ''[https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Spider-Man:_101_Ways_to_End_the_Clone_Saga_Vol_1_1#cite_ref-Only_Appearance_1-114 101 Ways to End the Clone Saga]''.

 

* [[Arnold Schwarzenegger]] enjoys making fun of himself.

** ''[[Last Action Hero]]'' can be seen as one very protracted example.

* The 2005 [[So Bad It's Good]] remake of ''[[House of Wax]]'' was practically marketed as "slasher flick where [[Paris Hilton]] plays a ditzy airheaded bimbo who is brutally murdered", and it clearly delivered on that. Still, Hilton did read the script before she took the role, so...

 

* [[Jasper Fforde]]'s ''[[Nursery Crime|The Fourth Bear]]'' introduces the setup early in the book for a ridiculous tongue-twisting punchline much later. One character [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|comments on]] what an elaborate setup that was for such a lame joke and the other sadly agrees, "I don't know how he gets away with it.", which was a line from ''[[The Goon Show]]''.

* Fforde has nothing on [[Far Fetched Fiction|Robert Rankin]], who constantly [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|breaks the fourth wall]] to self-complain about [[Plot Hole]]s, stupid [[Running Gag]]s, and absolutely ridiculous plot devices (Elvis with a time-travelling sprout in his head has to kill the Antichrist! Yeah!). At one point he actually inserted himself, writing the novel in a bar, in the novel itself.

* As first-person narrator of ''[[Jeeves and Wooster]]'', Bertie often cheerfully [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] his [[Upper Class Twit]] status. He may be stupid, but at least he's self-aware.

 

* Played with in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' when Faith (in Buffy's body) attacks Buffy (who is in Faith's body) - Faith has issues, but here she is literally beating ''herself'' crying out that she is sick and disgusting.

** Oz is modest to a fault about his musical talent - Xander asks if it's hard to play the guitar, he shrugs "Not the way I play it." When bandmate Devon suggests they need roadies since other bands have them, Oz replies "Other bands know more than three chords."

* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' funnyman [[Chris Farley]], anther comedian who pretty much made a career out of physical routines that involved making himself look dumb.

 

* Ska band [[Reel Big Fish]] used to sell T-Shirts proclaiming "I Hate Reel Big Fish." And their most popular track was called [[It's Popular, Now It Sucks|"Sell Out"]].

** They also titled an EP ''Keep Your Receipt''.

** One of the more visible/notable examples of this is when the members of [[Pearl Jam]] appeared in the 1994 movie ''Singles'' as the other members of Matt Dillon's character's band. Their appearance was nothing but one giant pisstake at their (Pearl Jam's) expense.

* Bloc Party's vocalist has said that he wrote "Helicopter" as a jab at himself. He's not nearly as much of a [[Small Name, Big Ego]] as the song makes him sound.

* The inner fold of [[Deep Purple]]'s ''Who Do We Think We Are'' LP consisted of a collection of print reviews from around the world, panning the band. [[Uriah Heep]] also did this, in the gatefold of their double-live album. In the early 1970s, most critics' attitudes toward any [[Heavy Metal]] band not named [[Blue Öyster Cult]] ranged from indifference to contempt, so the two bands probably couldn't have scraped together enough positive press between them to fill an album cover.

* [[Steely Dan]] frequently poke fun at themselves through written material posted on [https://web.archive.org/web/20130509131626/http://www.steelydan.com/inprint.html their website].

* An advertising campaign for 1980s San Francisco New Wave band Flipper: "Flipper suffered for their music. Now it's your turn".

* 10cc wrote "The Worst Band in the World", although it could be argued that it's written from the point of view of another, fictional band.

* The song "Redneck" by [[Lamb of God]] was written about their lead singer Randy Blythe. It's one long [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|Reason He Sucks Speech]].

* The Spinto Band promoted their shows at the SXSW festival with a take-off on the "Shit (insert group of people here) Say" [[YouTube]] meme called [http://youtu.be/SKDBpul1FhA "Shit People At SXSW DON'T Say"] - one such line is "Man, the line for the Spinto Band showcase is four blocks long!".

 

* ''[[Bloom County]]'', given the characters' [[Medium Awareness]], [[No Fourth Wall]], and [[Interactive Narrator]], does this a lot:

** In one strip, minor character Yaz Pistachio asks Opus to give her just one name worse than her own.

** A later arc was built around the premise that the comic strip was so offensive that the American Government ordered the comic to be transformed into something akin to ''[[Family Circus]]''. Stephan Pastis ''fails'' and gets put on trial, ''with Rat as his lawyer''. {{spoiler|Rat actively sabotages Stephen's case.}}

 

* ''[[Mad]]'' is infamous for this, regularly referring to its writers and artists as "The Usual Gang Of Idiots" and insulting its readership by claiming that only [[Too Dumb to Live]] [[Yiddish as a Second Language|schmucks]] would be caught reading their magazine. Plus, almost every artist has an [[Author Avatar]] created specifically for this purpose. It's all meant in jest though, and given [[Take That| the general humor of the magazine]], it helps to show that you can take it as well as you can dish it out.

 

* ''[[The Funday Pawpet Show]]'' used filmed opening segments of people saying "Hi, I'm ________, and you're wasting your time watching the Funday Pawpet Show!".

* ''[[The Muppet Show]]'' often engaged in this. For example in one ''Veterinarian's Hospital'' sketch, when discussing the things that might happen to herald the end of the world, such as "Dr Bob actually curing a patient", Nurse Piggy suggests "One honest laugh". And then there's [[Statler and Waldorf]].

 

* [[Howard Stern]] lives this trope on the show. While he savages other celebrities, rival radio hosts and his own crew, he also spends a lot of time making fun of his small penis (though later he found out he's actually fairly normal, he's just really tall and it looks small on him), his big nose, his neuroses, etc.

* ''[[I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue]]'' lived and breathed this trope, with the late Chairman Humph being baffled that anyone was listening to this rubbish. Chairman Jack continues this tradition.

{{quote|''Dear Hello Cheeky, I was wondering if you could help me. On second thought, if I'm writing to you, I must be beyond help.''}}

 

* It's tradition in game rulebooks to include a page or so showing how the game is played. In the "Obligatory Example of Play" (yep, that's what they called it) in [[Hero System|''Lucha Libre Hero'']], one of the players, "Steve", is clearly not getting the point of the game. His character, ''El Heraldo de Justicia'', is described as a "dark-clad avenger of the night", and "Steve" spends most of his actions trying to get his hands on a gun despite the fact that a ''luchador'' can do more damage in this game with his wrestling moves. Steve Long, part-owner of Hero Games, and incidentally the guy who edited ''Lucha Libre Hero'', got his start as a game designer with the book ''Dark Champions'', which focused on gritty Punisher-style vigilante action. The flagship character for ''Dark Champions'' and Steve's very own player character is the Harbinger of Justice. (The section wraps up with "Editor's Note: I do ''so'' have a gun.")

* The ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' supplement ''Pentex: Subsidiaries'' describes some of the companies under the umbrella of the titular evil [[Mega Corp]]. The last one listed is "Black Dog Game Factory", a fictionalized version of the real Black Dog Game Factory—an actual subsidiary of ''Werewolf''{{'}}s own publisher [[White Wolf]] (which published their mature-themed game books). The company's fictional games all feature White Wolf's signature traits ([[Darker and Edgier]] settings, etc.) taken [[Up to Eleven]], and the employees are all unflattering parodies of real White Wolf writers, including the writers of the supplement itself.

* When the ''[[Shadowrun]]'' Verse's metaplot called for a nuke to be set off to destroy a massive bug-spirit infestation, then-publishers FASA situated both the spirit-hive and ground zero for the nuclear blast in their own Chicago office.

 

* In ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]'', [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] deprecated their previous hit by having the Major-General boast in his [[List Song]] that he can "whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense ''Pinafore''."

** For very good reason -- ''HMS Pinafore'' was a satire of the British upper crust, which Queen Victoria is said to have particularly disliked. ''Penzance'' was an attempt to get back on the Queen's good side by mocking their earlier work, and by sucking up shamelessly at the end. (The pirates immediately surrender when ordered in the name of Queen Victoria, because they're good English boys despite being pirates and all.)

* Arguably the [[Most Triumphant Example]] in theater is the title character's monologue in ''[[Cyrano De Bergerac]]''. After a nobleman makes a rather lame attempt to mock Cyrano's large nose, the protagonist launches into a rant of clever - and hilarious - insults he ''could'' have used, going so far as to lampoon the myth of ''[[Pyramus and Thisbe]]''.

 

* The release of a trailer for the MMORPG ''Perfect World'' was criticised for, among other things, having [https://web.archive.org/web/20131121111200/http://kotaku.com/5038379/trashing-trailers too much lens flare]. Their response? [http://kotaku.com/5038870/a-new-perfect-world-international-trailer A new trailer... "Now with more lens flare."]

* ''[[Homestar Runner|Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People]]'': "Say it with me now, The Cheat: [[The Problem with Licensed Games|licensed games are never good!]]" [[Licensed Game|Guess what the game itself is.]] And it's ''good''.

* An optional area in ''[[Epic Battle Fantasy]] 5'' lets you fight monsters from earlier games in the series as a bonus challenge. As expected, monsters from games that were made years earlier look dated and somewhat primitive in design, and the main characters make scathing comments about them during battle. NoLegs' very simplistic early design, eyeball monsters barely having moving parts at all and the Beholder's infamous tentacle rape attack get the most criticism.

 

* [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=980203 This] ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' strip joked that a (fictional) wrongful hiring scandal had drastically hurt the strip's viewership. "Two people used to read ''Sluggy Freelance''. Now only one does. In percentage terms, this is devastating for the comic."

* In [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0541.html this strip] of ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'', one of the demon roaches says, "They'll let any old hack write a sourcebook these days" in reference to the strip's acid-breathing shark. The acidborn template, with the specific example of the acidborn shark, appears in the ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' sourcebook ''Dungeonscape'', co-written by OotS author Rich Burlew.

* When [https://web.archive.org/web/20131106203110/http://tangcomic.com/ Tang Ho] needs someone to function as a [[Butt Monkey]], his first choice is generally his own [[Author Avatar]].

* Tom Siddell, the author of ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]''. Not so much in the comic itself (Tom doesn't write himself into the comic and promises that he never will) but in talking with his fans: If you ask him about the art, he'll probably tell you that he thinks it's bad [[Art Evolution|and that it used to be worse]]. If you ask him about the hollow-eyed cartoon self-portraits he uses to represent himself online, he'll tell you that they're more handsome than he is.

{{quote|''Terrible work is still consistent work.''}}

** Strip 1,000 was called "I can’t believe someone was asshole enough to make 1,000 sprite comics." Strip 1,001 was called "I can’t believe someone was asshole enough to make more than 1,000 sprite comics."

* David Morgan-Mar, author of ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'', periodically mocks his own drawing skills and penchant for awful, awful puns. He even once convinced Jane Goodall to pretend to slap him for how he portrayed her LEGO alter-ego. (Well, actually, he asked her to pretend to punch him - she convinced him a monkey-slap would be more in-character for her!)

 

* ''[http://www.youtube.com/user/ebolaworld The Ebolaworld Channel]'' on [[YouTube]] love this trope. E.G.:

** "You're watching the Ebolaworld Channel. Why are you doing that?"

** Similarly, [http://www.digg.com Diggers] make similar jokes, since one cannot have sex on the internet.

** The ''[[Something Awful]]'' Forum Goons are pretty fond of this as well, but then again they don't take much seriously in the first place.

* Zero of the [http://testzerosblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Video-Game-Bunker The Video Game Bunker] does this a lot:

** "Anyone can shoot a review show out of their basement. While I personally find this a little bit pathetic..."

* Yahtzee of ''[[Zero Punctuation]]'' repeatedly points out his own hypocrisy during his rant about gaming webcomics, as he himself is in the "insult games for amusement" business, and also describes himself as a social and sexual failure very often.

* ''[[Key of Awesome]]''{{'}}s "Moves Like Jagger" parody illustrates the apparent difficulty of imitating [[Maroon 5|Adam Levine]] by having Mark sing about being too fat to perform the parody, and Todd about being too weak. They end the song by calling themselves "attention whores" who will "do-o-o-o-o-o anything for laughter."

 

* In ''[[The Lion King]]'', when Zazu is asked by Scar to sing a more upbeat song while imprisoned, he sings the first few words of "[[Ear Worm|It's A Small World]]" to which Scar vehemently shouts "No! No! Anything but that!"

** [[Insistent Terminology|Cast Members]] at [[Disney Theme Parks]] also love taking pot shots at "It's A Small World" in general.

* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' takes a few shots at itself in "[[Who Would Want to Watch Us?|The Ember Island Players]]", where the Gaang goes to see play done in tremendous detail about everything that happened to them since Aang's awakening. In an early episode ("The Great Divide"), the group stopped at a canyon and wound up trying to resolve the differences between two feuding clans. Many fans felt it was the worst episode in the series. In the play when the actors playing them spot the canyon they point out its existence... [[Discontinuity Nod|and then decide not to stop and just keep going]]. There's also Sokka saying that {{spoiler|whether or not Jet died wasn't very clear}}.

** Though the last one was more of a [[Take That]] at the execs not letting them actually say that Jet was dead; Combustion Man's death also gets this treatment despite being a bit more clear.

** His cameo in ''The Simpsons Game'' takes it even further with a scene where it is revealed even he doesn't know whether his name is pronounced "Groan-ing" or "Grain-ing" and another where he introduces himself as "animation's greatest luminary" only for Bart and Homer to blurt out [[Family Guy|"Seth McFarlane?"]]

{{quote|'''Troy McClure:''' Yes, the Simpsons have come a long way since an old alcoholic made humans out of his rabbit characters to pay off his gambling debts.}}

'''Bullwinkle:''' (''looking at us'') Neither did they, apparently. }}

 

* [[Halle Berry]], as depicted in the page image, is one of the few actors to have won both an [[Academy Award]] (''[[Monsters Ball]]'') and a [[Golden Raspberry Award]] (''[[Catwoman (film)|Catwoman]]''). For the latter, she donned the dress she wore accepting her Oscar, and went to the Razzies to accept the award personally. She even held both her Oscar and her Razzie up at the same time in her acceptance speech.

* [[Woody Allen]] uses this throughout his work, most often against himself but occasionally against Jews or New Yorkers generally. For instance, from ''[[Annie Hall]]'':