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Forgotten Trope: Difference between revisions

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** The "threat to Britain from France or Germany" idea did make it into at least one post-Cold War techno-thriller, Larry Bond's ''Cauldron''. The scenario involves the dissolution of NATO and a war pitting an aggressive France, allied with Germany and much of continental Western Europe, against the US, UK, and most of the former Warsaw Pact, excluding Russia. (However, the notion of England actually being ''invaded'' is never brought up.)
** A modern example of Invasion Literature most Australians will know of is ''[[Tomorrow When the War Began]]'', wherein Australia is invaded by an unnamed country.
** The use of real countries as the villains in a fictional work these days is falling out of favour, as books are often turned into film or video for export. Ian Fleming uses Russian army counter-intelligence SMERSH in the books, but the pictures turn this into mercenary non-state actor SPECTRE; likewise, Sony's infamous "The Interview" targets North Korea as vilifying communist China would mean not being able to profit by exporting the movie to that country.
** The genre was being parodied as early as 1909, when [[P. G. Wodehouse]] wrote his early novel ''The Swoop'', in which England is invaded by the armies of ''nine'' different countries at once, only to be driven out by the Boy Scouts. (Oddly enough, in [[Saki (author)|Saki]]'s ''When William Came'', written four years later, the "Boy-Scouts-as-saviours" idea is repeated, entirely seriously.) The Scouts don't actually fight off the Germanic hordes, thankfully. Instead, they inspire the population to resistance by boycotting the Kaiser's parade.
* The Captivity Narrative, in which a good, Puritan girl is captured by Indians and has to resist their culture, was pretty popular in America from the 17th-19th centuries. These were often folktales that were made up long before the printing press and other forms of culture were readily available in remote settlements. These, often times, exploited the [[The Savage Indian|Savage Indian]] archetype for the sake of [[Rule of Cool]] or [[Rule of Drama]], regardless (or because) of its [[Unfortunate Implications]].
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