Straw Character: Difference between revisions

* ''Blue State'' is actually more politically complex than the concept (two people moving to Canada after Bush gets re-elected) would imply, but the protagonist's father is a definite conservative [[Strawman Political]]: he greets his son by calling him "Comrade Lenin," locks him for voting for Kerry, and begins to act like a deranged [[Bill O Reilly]] on mushrooms when his son argues with him, screaming out to "cut his mic," and eventually throws his son out of the house.

* Mexican film ''Un Mundo Maravilloso'' was deliberately made as a giant leftist [[Take That]] to the liberal economic policies of recent governments in Mexico (but more specifically [[wikipedia:Vicente Fox|Vicente Fox]]'s administration), the protagonist (a homeless, jobless hobo) and his friends several times blame "the system" and "the government" for his situation, and the minister of economy (the antagonist) in the end decides to '''outlaw poverty''' and for this he wins the Nobel Prize in Economy. Similarly, ''La Ley de Herodes'' (which is set in the 50s) from the same filmmaker has these two exchanges between an opposition party member and a strawman U.S. citizen:

'''Robert:''' Well a little... yeah. But my countrymen know that one day we will recover all of that, and in time more, much more. }}

* In ''Hiding Out'', Jon Cryer is an adult accountant hiding out as a high school student. In a history class, the strawman conservative teacher gives a weak and histrionic defense of Richard Nixon as Cryer's character struggles to bite his tongue.

* One of the villains of ''[[Machete]]'' is a Texas State Senator so virulent anti-immigrant that he occasionally rides along with a group of border vigilantes who shoot unarmed illegal immigrants coming over the border. Given that the movie is a [[Affectionate Parody|loving homage]] to over-the-top Grindhouse-style movies where subtlety was ''not'' considered a virtue, however, this is arguably intentionally over-the-top.

* Arguably every character in ''[[Saved]]'' except for the protagonist and her friends (and the protagonist at the beginning of the film) is a Straw Character. ''Saved!'' depicts a fundamentalist Christian private school. Most of the faculty, students, and parents connected to the school demonstrate both judgmentalism and an obliviousness to obvious realities due to their entrenched indoctrination. One particular scene deliberately sets up the type of devastating comeback mentioned in this trope:

'''Mary:''' [Mary hands Bible back to Hilary Faye] This is not a weapon, you idiot. }}

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSQSx3OCrXQ This] cartoon from the documentary ''For the Bible Tells Me So'' gives us a painfully obvious Straw Christian by the name of - any guesses? - [[Meaningful Name|Christian]].

** Frank Burns became so over-the-top that his strawman behavior was justified by the [[Rule of Funny]]. Towards the end of his run on the show, it had gone so far that Frank was almost a parody of a strawman conservative.

* Parodied/lampshaded in the first episode of [[That's My Bush]]:

'''[[George W. Bush]]''': And you must always remember that ''he'' believes what he does because of a strong moral imperative. }}

* Parodied on ''[[The Young Ones]]'' with the character of Rick; so over the top, it actually seems to be making fun of conservatives who see liberals this way.

* The British No 2 AV campaign used Alan B'Stard as an example of the kind of arsehole who would ''inevitably'' saturate the UK's political life if AV was introduced. Unfortunately, most of his dickery could easily be attributed to the politicans of the status quo.

* Britta Perry from ''[[Community]]'' is a Straw Libertarian with touches of [[Straw Feminist]], most of the time coming out as a huge hypocrite. She's generally a sympathetic, yet annoying character.

* And now ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' has Dick Roman, who somehow manages to [[Anvilicious|heavy-handedly]] embody ''several'' straw stereotypes of both conservatives and libertarians at once.

* On [[Smallville]], the show brought in Cat Grant in Season 10 as a gratingly-annoying Straw Conservative and [[Blonde Republican Sex Kitten]] who was apparently meant to be a pastiche of...whatever the presumably-liberal writers thought that conservatives believe. On one occasion, she is sneaking around and sees Clark and Lois getting caught up in some ancient ritual ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]) and mutters "I will never understand liberals." Apparently, the [[Blonde Republican Sex Kitten]] thinks that anything weird must be "liberal," and we're supposed to laugh at her ignorance...if we weren't too busy groaning at how heavy-handed the liberal writers were being in their attempts to build a Strawman Conservative. Even worse, apparently the Straw Conservative position in the Smallville-verse is to ''hate superheroes'', as we see repeatedly throughout Season 10, as a bunch of [[Straw Military]] characters show up to persecute the superheroes and drive the writers' point home even further.

* Mr Birling from ''An Inspector Calls'' is a prime example of a British conservative straw man. J.B. Priestly gives the audience no doubt that he is wrong about everything, including his political and social views.

* The rock musical version of ''[[Two Gentlemen of Verona]]'' had the Duke of Milan's entrance song making him a Strawman Conservative Militarist.

 

 

* [[Dragon Age 2]] has got an in-universe example, over the course of the third chapter the [[Reasonable Authority Figure|sane]] [[Only Sane Man|people]] are killed off, leaving only the Straw Mage and Straw Templar to lead the two sides of the final conflict.

* The radio transmissions in ''[[The Conduit]]'' are full of these, with right-wing Timothy Browning, left-wing Jared X. Fulton, and [[Granola Girl]] Autumn Wanderer, all of whom use the game's [[Alien Invasion]] as a springboard for their straw views.

* ''[[Saints Row]] 2'' features radio ads for an in-game gun shop called "Friendly Fire" that use extremely strawmanned arguments for protecting the second amendment. ("If you support waiting periods, you hate freedom!") Since you're playing a sociopathic [[Villain Protagonist]] who runs around shooting helpless civilians on a whim, the [[Straw Man Has a Point]] about just how unsafe you are without something to shoot back with.

 

* ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'': [[General Ripper|General Eiling]] is shown to have sinister straw-conservative leanings, he's eager to drop [[Nuke'Em|nuclear bombs]] on the Justice League, blames the "bleeding hearts in Congress" for not getting his way and eventually turns himself into a supervillain in order to "defend" America from heroes. The series also features a cowardly straw-[[Bill O Reilly|Bill O'Reilly]] type character.

** However, like the comic books, they avoid hinting which political side Lex Luthor leans toward in his policies when he runs for president. A quick line of dialogue revealed he was running as an independent.

* ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'' features a villain not taken from the comic pages, Lock-Up, who is a straw-conservative and vigilante who despises the "liberal media" and enjoys throwing everyone he doesn't like into prison. Lock-Up may have been an attempt to make Batman seem more liberal by comparison, since Batman, a rich private citizen who succeeds where the corrupt public system fails, has been accused of being a conservative-friendly character.

* The villain "Looten Plunder" on ''[[Captain Planet and the Planeteers]]'', a completely amoral capitalist who dreams of "stripping entire continents" for monetary gain, was a strawman conservative (At least [[Card-Carrying Villain|he had a reason, though.]])

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' uses these on occasion. The local Republican Party's usual meeting place is in a sinister castle, and their members include Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, Bob Dole (who favors them with a reading from the Necronomicon), [[Villain Ball|Mr. Burns]]. In "Sideshow Bob Roberts", the Republicans nominate multiple-convicted attempted murderer Sideshow Bob as a mayoral candidate. They originally mistook a water cooler for the candidate. In the same episode, Quimby (as the democrat incumbent) is said by the Rush Limbaugh parody to be Springfield's "pot-smoking, illiterate, spend-ocrat mayor". Quimby's response (uttered while watering a marijuana plant): "[[I Take Offence to That Last One|I am no longer illiterate]]."

** They did this to the Democrats in a more recent episode:

** ''[[The Simpsons]]'' used to take several at Democrats in the old days. Mayor Quimby was originally an expy of the Kennedy's, being a [[Composite Character]] of JFK (the voice), Ted Kennedy, and [[wikipedia:Political history of Chicago|the corruption that tends to be involved in Chicago politics]].

** In one of the earlier episodes, Bart's elephant Stampy runs through a Republican convention and gets cheered. A sign at the convention says "We want what's worst for everybody!" and "We're just plain evil!", and then when he runs through the Democrat convention, one has a sign that says "We hate ourselves!" and "We can't govern!"

** Especially notable for the [[Ayn Rand|Rand]] daycare center, where they deny the use of pacifiers and bottles:

'''Ms. Sinclair:''' It's saying "I am a leech"! Our aim here is to develop the bottle ''within''. }}

** Any episode where [[Author On Board|Lisa]] is played off against [[Flanderisation|Flanders]] is almost guaranteed to do this. "The Monkey Suit" (about teaching evolution in school) and "You Kent Always Say What You Want" (about censorship), for example.