Values Dissonance/Other Media

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Advertising

  • Commercials for Underoos brand underwear, once omnipresent on Saturday Morning TV vanished in the early 90s—a combination of networks' programming targeting older kids and increasing paranoia over anything that could even be implied to sexualize kids. Do a search for "Underoos" at YouTube and judge for yourself.
  • Neither would commercials showing children taking a bath sit well with modern audiences either due to said moral panic on paedophilia.
  • These fruit drink adverts were made and broadcast in the UK in the 1980s. Especially weird because "Kia ora' is Maori for hello, and has nothing to do with the American South.
  • 1960's Jell-O Ad. Is pretty good commercial, no?
  • The earliest McDonald's television commercials featured news weatherman Willard Scott as a far different version of Ronald McDonald. The commercials featured Scott (wearing a burger tray on his head, and sporting poorly-applied clown makeup and a goofy grin) explaining that he "likes to do what all little boys and girls like" and accosts a young boy by bribing him with cheeseburgers - the kid even says that he's "not supposed to talk to strangers", and Ronald replies with, "Well, your mother's right as always, but I'm Ronald McDonald!" Even though people wouldn't have batted an eyelid back then, the commercials were swiftly swept under the rug after the company relaunched the mascot in the late 70's, for obvious reasons.
  • If your husband hates your coffee your only choice is to improve it for him.
  • CSA: Confederate States of America includes what they lead you to believe are commercials for fictitious products, all including over-the-top black stereotypes and caricatures as mascots. Then as the credits roll it is revealed that almost all of these products were real or based on a real product; said real products were either pulled from the market, or in the case of Darkie Toothpaste, renamed and had its packaging altered to reflect changing sensitivities (though, to add to the dissonance, the Chinese name of the brand, "黑人牙膏", still translates as "Black Person Toothpaste", and a Chinese-language advertising campaign reassured customers that "Black Person Toothpaste is still Black Person Toothpaste".
  • Destileria Limtuaco, a Philippine distillery, got hit hard by this when they put up billboards for their Napoleon Quince brandy in 2004, with the slogan brazenly asking "Nakatikim ka na ba ng kinse anyos?" (transl. "Have you tasted a 15-year-old?")[1] Needless to say, rights groups slammed the ads as being sexist (and creepy), though somehow Limtuaco remained defiant and sued the ad standards board, only for the Supreme Court to rule against them in 2008.

Board Games

  • In the German-made board game Puerto Rico, the little brown cubes were originally "slaves". Later editions changed that to "colonists".

Public Service Announcements / Social Guidance Films

  • The Duck And Cover (1951) were be viewed as scare tactic since it was released during the Cold War. However, it has found a purpose for natural disaster like tornadoes since among the instructions does involved getting to the lowest area that can be found.
  • Many fire safety films made before 1965 would fall under... fire since many safety devices like a smoke detector were missing in the films, though they wasn't released said year.
  • Boys Beware video, which talks about the dangers of hitchhiking, would be deemed homophobic by many countries who have to understand LGBT people are no more different than they are.
  • Bike safety videos made before 1975 had gotten this treatment due to a lack of information regarding helmets, even with the same road rules.
  • In the safety film, Accidents Don't Just Happen, the unnamed narrator, a doctor, mentions about seat belts and his consideration of adding them to his car. This was made before 1968 when seat belts in automobiles were made mandatory by US Federal Government, though city buses were exempt. New York took a step further in 1984 by making it illegal for not to be wore occupants while the automobile was in motion and made it punishable by fines.

Music

  • Not even KISS is immune to this. Listen to Deuce. Just a wee bit sexist, isn't it? Plus, Domino and Christine Sixteen might be seen badly in today's Paedo Hunt world (especially Domino, which never gives the girls age but it can easily be taken as less teenager and more Lolicon).
    • If you think that's bad, check Love/Hate's song "Rock Queen" - "met a little girl, just thirteen, she's a knock-down blue-eyed slut psycho-virgin tease. Rock queen, thirteen, buxom blonde, bad dream, let me touch your cookies - let me eat your cookies - now" [1]
  • The song "Same Old Lang Syne" by Dan Fogelberg (not the same as Auld Lang Syne, a Robert Burns song) is about a chance meeting between former lovers who have since gone their separate ways. They talk with each other about their life, buy a six-pack of beer at a liquor store after failing to find an open bar, split it, reminisce, and drive away to go on living their lives as they had been doing. The offhand reference to driving after drinking alcohol introduces an element of Squick into what is otherwise a heartfelt romantic ballad. The song was written in 1981, which was before all the "Don't drink and drive" Public Service Announcements began to appear. Values Dissonance can be Newer Than They Think.
  • Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado has some of this: a few songs use the word "nigger", which is changed for modern productions (there's a long-standing tradition of changing the lyrics to G&S songs anyway). Many have criticized the operetta for making fun of the Japanese, but it is almost certainly meant to be a satire of British society.
  • In Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, Zerlina wins back her fiancé's good graces by singing him an aria inviting him to beat her. However, if you listen to the music, it is obvious that she's actually suggesting something much more pleasant for both of them.
  • Mungo Jerry's 1970 hit "In the Summertime", which reached #1 in the UK and Canada and #3 in the US, says, "Have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find"—where "what you can find" refers implicitly to sexual conquest. Even the edgiest rock today doesn't advocate drinking and driving, especially if you go on a drunken sex hunt from behind the wheel.
    • It was presumably for this reason that the song was used in a British advertising campaign advising against drinking and driving.
    • Not to mention the part where they say "If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal/if her daddy's poor, just do what you feel"- which could be interpreted as either using her for sex, or even worse, just raping her.
  • The music video for the They Might Be Giants song, "The Statue Got Me High" featured a couple brief scenes depicting fire, one of which had band member John Linnell covered in flames. The scene aired on US music video stations without complaints, but an edited version was made for air in the UK, showing the same scenes but without the fire. According to John Flansburgh, this was done because fire and ninjas are not allowed on British television.
    • Actually, they indicate in the commentary for the video that the Brits objected to fire because it may result in imitative behavior, which led to the joke to the effect that "It's like how you can't say the word 'ninja' or kids will want to go become ninjas."
      • Since British kids saw a cartoon titled "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles," it may not have been a joke.
  • The music video for Mel Brooks' "To Be Or Not To Be (The Hitler Rap)" was shocking to many Europeans, since it was not widely known that Brooks is Jewish.
  • "Judy's Turn to Cry", the sequel to "It's My Party (and I'll Cry if I Want To)" by Lesley Gore. Our heroine, jilted by her boyfriend, kisses another guy—whereupon the jealous Johnny hits this interloper and takes her back. This is presented as a triumph over rival Judy. Lesson learned, girls—don't expect your boyfriend to be faithful to you, but you had sure better be faithful to him.
  • The original version of Kentucky's state song, "My Old Kentucky Home," written in 1853, featured lines that referred to black people as "darkies." In 1986, after the term was deemed offensive, the word was replaced with "people."
  • Many sixties songs were written and/or sung while high. But back then, drugs were used for "expanding your mind" rather than trying to be cool. (I'm lookin' at you, Jerry Garcia!) These days, though, singers who do drugs get a lot of flak from fans and bandmates, or at least more than sixties singers would.
    • Garcia, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc. most certainly were criticized and served time in jail for their substance abuse and rock excesses in The Sixties as well; Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' drug bust in 1967 was very controversial.
  • Some older rock songs, such as The Beatles' "Run for Your Life" and The Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb", can be a little problematic for post-feminist ears.
  • Not even Schoolhouse Rock is immune. It's a lot more mild than most of the examples on these pages, to be sure, but their song "The Great American Melting Pot" doesn't exactly fit with today's era of multiculturalism. Another one of their songs from the America Rock compilation, "Elbow Room", is either this or Politically-Correct History.
  • The Crystals' "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)" is more likely to raise hackles now than it was back in the '60s. What's interesting is that contemporary reactions may be more in line with songwriter intent. Goffin and King wrote the song in shocked reaction to learning that Little Eva was getting beaten up by her boyfriend and didn't object. More details on Wikipedia.
  • The Christmas classic "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" gets this reaction from more than a few people who actually bother to focus on the lyrics. Sure, the underlying message is that the father is dressed as Santa, which the mother finds cute enough to kiss him over, and the child just so happens to catch them in the act and find it comical. However, the song leaves a number of things open to interpretation, such as infidelity, and a Broken Home situation.
  • Similarly, "Baby It's Cold Outside" is not well-liked in feminist circles, because at a superficial hearing it depicts a man pressuring a woman into sex.
    • In a world with date rape drugs, the woman's line "what's in this drink?" is much harsher than it would have been in the Forties.
    • What's funny is that, at the time, the song was supposed to imply that the woman was voluntarily staying the night with the man, which was very daring for that era. At the time the song was written it was still somewhat unacceptable that a unmarried couple were left alone without a chaperon, lest the woman's reputation took a dive; most of the lyrics are the typical "acceptable" excuses that could be used in such circumstances and the lady's protests are supposed to be nominal (in a "I have to go but I really don't want to" sort of way), hence the lines about the drink and the cigarette.
  • ABBA isn’t immune to this either. When one listens to “Does Your Mother Know”, it would be deemed inappropriate due to the subject matter, even though the singer refused to go along with the girl in question due to her age.
    • “When I Kissed a Teacher” would also fall under this due the recent[when?] controversy with Teacher-Student Romance, even if it was the student who stated it.
  • When "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" was new, it was regarded as humorous. Now as Wikipedia puts it, "the song today is considered a powerful anti-war song". That said, when it came out the lyrics was the same, but the melody was different.

Mythology

  • Classical Mythology: Hades is often viewed by modern myth buffs as being The Woobie, despite being the default God of Evil in modern pop culture adaptations of Classical Mythology because Medieval Christianity, with its practice of demonizing pagan religions, decided to associate him with Hell. The funny thing is the Ancient Greeks themselves didn't like Hades that much - they'd attempt to not speak his name and look away when making sacrifices in his name. Meanwhile, guys that are commonly considered assholes today, like Zeus, Poseidon and Hera, were viewed with great respect by the ancient Greeks. About the only Greek god modern audiences and the Ancient Greeks had the same opinion (read: hatred) of is Ares, and he was given the Draco in Leather Pants treatment by the Romans!
  • Abrahamic Traditions:
  • In a slightly different meaning of the word "Values", the Three Wise Men's gifts cause a lot of confusion with modern people who know what "gold" is since it's still a valuable, sought-after commodity, but have no idea what "Frankincense and Myrrh", which in addition to being religiously symbolic, were pretty valuable commodities in those days. This gets played for laughs a lot and linked with the commonplace modern situation of one birthday guest showing up others by bringing a more expensive gift.
  • Religious reformation is essentially taking the Retcon pen to those parts of The Bible that simply won't fly now. You know, the slavery, genocide, and other fun stuff.
    • The Book of Job is a particularly Egregious example. Job's reaction to his plight, even when learning the truth, makes him look like an Extreme Doormat to the shenanigans of those two.
    • The Book of Judges: Taken without a religious context, God reads like a totalitarian dictator for the entire book.

Radio

  • In a rare example of this trope operating the other way round, when the Hancock's Half Hour series 5 episode 'Sunday Afternoon at Home' broadcast, there were letters of complaint because it featured the cast sitting round at home totally bored....and there was no mention of them going to church. The BBC explained that the episode was called Sunday Afternoon and the cast had been to church in the morning.

Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy

  • The closing line from Bob Newhart's routine "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue" was hilarious in the 1960s, but could never be used in a new routine in the 2020s: "Tell you what, Abe. Why don’t you take in a play?"

Toys

  • The newer LEGO lines, specifically Mars Mission, Atlantis, and Power Miners show the main human characters barging into native habitats, attacking and persecuting the native creatures (most of which seem to be trying to defend their territory) and plundering the area for resources. It's like Avatar, except here we're supposed to be rooting for the humans. And let's not even get into Space Police... Fortunately, it's Lego, so you can make whomever you want win.

Web Comics

  • Used intentionally in Amazoness! The comic takes place in Ancient Greece, with a cast of Amazons.
    • Several characters are the slaves of other characters, with none of this being looked at oddly or negatively. In fact, the receiving of a girl's first slave is treated more like getting a new pet than anything else, with the mother telling the girls to "take care of them" and that it's a "big responsibility". However, in actual practice the situation often seems to be "slavery" in name only. Given the general treatment of women during that time period, being a slave to an Amazon was probably a reasonably sweet deal.
    • Since it is set in an all-female society, lesbian relationships are the norm (usually between mistress/slave) and sex with men is considered a necessary duty for reproduction. A woman actually wanting to have sex with a man is considered a sexual deviant.
  • Twokinds arguably has an example with Ensemble Darkhorse Eric. While he's definably one of the nicest humans in a world where nice humans are very rare, the fact remains that he's an extremely pervy slave trader by modern standards.
    • Who has sex with his female slaves (or at least heavily hinted), slaves who are under magic to be unable to disobey his orders...
    • More recently the issue has been brought much more to the foreground of the story, when Eric refuses to release slaves who saved his life despite of being free of the mind control spell at the time, on the basis that they were just doing what good slaves are supposed to do in any case. As affable as Eric can be, he is also a major Jerkass.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Stated in comic by one of the characters as being 'one' of if not major the reasons why the Court and the Woods do not currently get along.
  • Due to the vast differences between human and troll society in Homestuck, there's bound to be some in-universe dissonance. For example, when John tells Karkat that he's not a homosexual when Karkat hints at a possible future kismesis (a type of troll romance based on mutual hate), Karkat has no idea what the word 'homosexual' means. After John explains it, Karkat is shocked that humans even have a word for it, where as it's a complete non-issue for trolls, considering how they reproduce.
    • Later a different dissonance is Played for Drama when Vriska tells John that he, as a human, can't understand her justifications for killing Tavros.
  • In-Universe and Played for Laughs in Freefall. Sam is a scavenger, Florence is a pack predator. They have very different ways of interpreting things.
    • In strip #3306, Sam speculates that humans were upset when sqids treated them like gods... because sqids steal everything, including their own lives, from their gods.
  • Most readers of Ralph Hayes, Jr.'s Goblin Hollow webcomic felt he hit this pretty badly when Penny's upbraiding an obnoxious, bigoted Jerkass preacher, something that was perceived as her Crowning Moment of Awesome and a fine example of her Character Development from being a Bratty Teenage Daughter to a Grumpy Bear Deadpan Snarker with Mama Bear traits, was met in-universe by Lily demanding she apologize for causing such a scene in church and promptly slapping her in the face and grounding her for a week when she refused to do so. The author was deeply shocked, even outraged, when the readers were themselves outraged by this and revolted against Lily and Ben being treated as being the ones in the right.
    • Penny in general being regarded as a "troubled teen", as most of the things she actually does don't come off as being anywhere near that unusual or anarchic for a teenage girl in the eyes of most readers. Her biggest signs of "being troubled" are that she's surly, not too shy about sexual matters (though still a virgin) and always wears black clothes.

Web Original

  • An in-universe example occurs in Chaos Fighters, particularly in Lefrad, which consists of continents has different administration systems. Yedrei-Phlaq confrontation happened an unspecified time prior to the start of the entire main series, which is partly due to their leader trying to force their administration systems to others (Yedrei uses monarchy while Phlaq uses democracy. As the result, in Chaos Fighters-Route of Peaks, the government of Tziac sent only one person to join the main characters' party to eliminate the mountain bandits, fearing of bringing significant casualties to the soldiers, which happened during the confrontation. Even other countries merely used long range weaponry to eliminate them, despite sending slightly more (read: two) people to aid the main characters' party. This also leads to another dissonance where in Chaos Fighters-Route of Land, almost every country in Yedrei continent gave military support of various degree to help the Estau rebel pact, which is a military force to capture Lestreb from the demons' reign.

Other Media

  • Theodore Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) drew black characters in what would now be considered "blackface" caricatures. However, some of his political cartoons indicate that he was anti-racist, so this seems to have been simply the cartooning style of the day.
    • He admitted that he got caught up in the anti-Japanese storm after Pearl Harbor, and viewed it as an Old Shame.
    • Here's the proof.
    • He might have been more anti-Nazi/pro-war than anti-racist. His political argument for entering World War II, at a time when the prospect was controversial in the US, focused more on "the Germans will invade if we don't invade them first" than on "when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up."
      • it was a bit of both, actually. One of his main points was that racism and segregation in the military and the workforce were hurting the war effort.
    • His early cartoons were anti-Semitic and racist partly due to his own prejudices, and partly due to the magazines paying him to write those cartoons. He eventually realized that demonizing Jews was just what the Nazis were doing, and so had a complete shift in his attitude towards people who were "different".
    • Even some of his anti-racist cartoons can be subject to values dissonance. This one, for example. Perfectly admirable sentiment, but the imagery of injecting insecticide into someone's brain probably seems a lot more disturbing today than it did in the 40s.
      • Given that it is a cartoon in a genre characterized by its use of visual metaphor, I don't see how anyone could find that image shocking at any time in history unless they were completely unfamiliar with the idea of visual allegory.
        • It's also a reference to his well-known earlier work doing advertising for Flit insecticides.
  • Older works will often show children going out alone and their parents being okay with it, which may seem strange in today's rather paranoid culture. The same can be said for many Intergenerational Friendships.
    • Possibly even more jarring when you consider that children today are probably safer than they were then. And if you go back far enough, to the point where children were working in factories, fighting in wars, or otherwise doing things that would seem insane to modern audiences. But it's a truism that, in cultures with a significantly high enough mortality rate, the "we can always make more" mentality tends to be much more common.
    • This fact is curiously alluded in Digimon Tamers, when Takato's parents discuss if they should let their pre-teen son and his dinosaur pet go to an strange world where God Knows Which Dangers Lurk.

Mother: (angsted) But he is only ten years old! He's just a kid!
Father: (stoic) There was a time not long ago where he should have been old enough to travel alone.

    • In 2008, there was a mother, Lenore Skenazy, who let her son take the subway home. Alone, albeit with a transit pass, a map of the transit system and more than $20 in case of an emergency. (She lived in New York) Naturally, the reaction was ether "NO! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" or "Good for you!"
      • Taking the train alone might be a rite of passage for a kid in New York, Chicago, or London, whereas in Hong Kong or Tokyo, it's just another day.
  • Celebrities and athletes in the media limelight tend to fall for this trope in the midst of a scandal or arrested for a crime. The public reaction seriously differs from case to case, even when two scandals/crimes are somewhat similar.
    • Case in point: Chris Brown and Charlie Sheen. Both men are known for beating at least one woman, yet in Sheen's case, he's not nearly as ridiculed (though the lack of any leaked photos may have something to do with that).
    • In a stranger case, Michael Vick[who?] and Dante Stallworth.[who?] Vick's been publicly vilified with his involvement on dog-fighting since day one. Two years later, Stallworth settles out of court for running over a man to death when Stallworth was intoxicated with marijuana. Yet Stallworth didn't face near the criticism that Vick did. And there's more from where that came from. In fact, Cracked had an article specifically addressing this conundrum.
  • The Carousel of Progress at Disney Theme Parks. Since a lot of its script was written in The Sixties, there's a lot of talk about how new technology helps ease the women's burden of housework. It never occurs to the husband that the burden could be eased more if they'd step in.
    • Even in the sixties, such things would have been regarded as increasingly antiquated. The current script treats those comments—which only occur in the scenes from the 1900s, 20s, and 40s anyway—as conscious anachronisms.
  1. ↑ Gabriela goes bar-hopping
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