Talk:American Title

It appears to be a list of work titles that contain the word "American", with no analysis. It also appears to be untouched since the fork, except for adding or correcting crosslinks to the list.

Should we even have this? If yes, should it be a trope (in which case it needs to go back to the Trope Workshop for some major revision), or a list (in which case it should become a category)?

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I think it's a trope, but not in the way the page is written. I've seen a good number of movies with american on the title and all of them is about how America is decadent and corrupt beyond imagination; it's how the creators see it, I'm not expressing an opinion. In other words, it's a sub-trope to Take That directed towards an entire country.

I think "A Serbian Movie" also would fit this description. It's a movie that seems intent solely on attacking Serbia and saying it's a horrible country.

I dunno how to name it, maybe "National Depreciative Title"?

I think this needs to be explored further, as it is at the heart of this possible trope. In the case of A Serbian Film, the creators have explained that the title is a reaction to the heavily censored, toned down, and publicly-funded nature of films released in their country, so yes, it is very much a take-that of a non-American variety.

It kind of reads like it's trying to be two different things at once -- sort of "Eagleland as a title": Good "American" Titles and Bad "American" Titles. That said, it's carrying more meaning than simply "this story involves America or an American", so it's not just a simple naming pattern. However, the example list is exactly as Rob describes it -- contextless strings with the word "American" in them. I'm not sure it's worth the effort of expanding it all into a proper trope or two.

Kind of like Be My Valentine, it's a Naming Conventions Trope.

I've added Category:Naming Conventions to the page, since we'd probably want that no matter what decision we make here. (Unless we decide we don't want the page, but it looks like nobody wants that.)

Honestly you can argue both ways. The examples make it seem like a list, but the description gives the trope's purpose, clearly communicating that it is supposed to be a trope. The ideal course of action is to return the trope back to the workshop and fix up examples, but the chance of it lingering there for several years is high. Plus, I can see some pretty ridiculous context being written, like "The American Movie is named such to represent how it takes place in America." Even though it's not my preference, I suggest we turn this into a category.

Time shouldn't be an issue. We're doing this for free and no bomb is gonna explode if we spent too much time repairing this.

The other issue is who has seen the works. As we have a small number of active editors, and there will probably be at least one work no one has looked at, we could be dealing with works without context for a long time.

The description does seem to sell the idea of it being a trope, but I don't know enough about the works in question to add the needed context.