Trope Essays

Relatability Within the Common Trope All creative ideas have a foundation to base itself off of. These foundations are typically seen as themes, and cumulatively compose a narrative to be presented in some form of media. While themes can range, some themes appear much more frequently than others, and are labeled as a “trope”. A trope is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as: “a common or overused theme or device” (Merriam-Webster). One particular song to utilize tropes is Gillian Wench’s Wrecking

The clip I’ve pulled comes from an 1980’s episode of The Young and the Restless. When examining the sequence it’s hard not to notice all the tropes of the TV serial that are in play here. First of all the amount of exposition in the scene is outstanding, with the characters of Katherine and Jill discussing their relationships with Phillip. Katherine discusses how Jill tore up their perfect marriage and Jill mentions that Phillip told her that their marriage was coming to an end anyway. If an audience

it seems as if not. The novel focuses mainly on the conflict between two men, and the main female character in the novel, Elizabeth, falls into the classic gothic trope of the perfect, angelic heroine, who has little to no flaws or agency. Yet upon further examination, it is clear that Shelley parodies and builds on the gothic trope of the perfect woman in order to bring to light the detrimental effects of writing flat female characters, ultimately giving Frankenstein a feminist tone. How do you

does this obsession reveal about our social values and our society’s fears? Prior research has focused on the feminine being portrayed through one of two major tropes: the final girl or the monstrous girl. These tropes have traditionally been seen as two very separate entities, each symbolizing differing views of femininity. The final girl trope has been seen as a feminist role while the monstrous woman has been seen as an anti-feminist role. However, these

changed over the last hundred years, this plot line is still seen often enough for it to be classified as a trope for the fiction genre. And while this damsel in distress trope was first referenced in 1755 with the parody Don Quixote, it was never quite as well known as it is in the world of comic books. While many of the so called "Golden and Silver Age" comics found themselves following this trope, it was first seen in the world with

The Western is a popular genre which is set in the mid to late 19th century in America. The most common tropes of Westerns are shown to be centered on a masculine man who needs to save the day. Even though the West is symbolized as an option of freedom, this is only true for the men as the role of women are usually restricted and fenced in. In the film Shane and the novel Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey we can see how guns play an important role in the men’s identity, and how women are treated

writer, I earn my keep with the use of tropes. They are my bread and butter. They settle onto my characters like long lost lovers. Some of the most beloved characters in literary history fall into one trope or another. My favorite is the magical girl, the dark lord, and the femme fatale. Catwoman is possible the first name on anyone’s lips when you think of femme fatales, but Catwoman is just a persona slapped on top of a trope. The Oxford Dictionary defines a trope as “a commonly recurring literary and

“The Savior Trope and the Modern Meanings of Whiteness” by Name title argues that the cinema has always been cater toward an ideology of the white supremacy. Freedom Writers self-evidently appear as a majoritarian narrative by having Hilary Swank starring as Erin Gruwell who play as the enthusiastic young teacher who help change the lives for her students of color, but along the movie there is a subtle switch of importance from the teacher to these students as they struggle for changes. As it goes

The trope of a controlling government overreaching its bounds and establishing clear laws defining a person’s freedoms. Many novels and films have the whole population following rules that for ethical reasons should not be in place, rules that tell someone how he or she should handle a personal aspect of his or her life. Aspects that are considered the extremely personal such as who a person is allowed to be in a relationship with, or what career path a person should take, and even how much sex a

narrating public historical facts from an individual perspective that problematizes the dichotomy between the public and private, between the historical and the personal, and consequently between the journalistic and the literary. The autobiographical trope can be traced in The Armies as the narrative opens a window of intersection between a highly intersubjective experience and reporting a historical event. Through the formal division of the book into two parts, Mailer seeks to establish an inquiry about

The usage of tropes and imagery by film and videogames to create alterative interpretations of the past is similar to how the medieval past has been appropriated over the years. Umberto Eco (1986) defined ten different Middle Ages, in other words, ten different images of the medieval period that existed in contemporary western culture. This might sound unusual for a person with a casual understanding of history, but the collective image of the Middle Ages (and other periods for that matter) have

misfit character trope has evolved in television for 50 years now. It has played an important role in television and portrayal of society. A majority of sit-coms now obtain a misfit character in their casting.The misfit character trope has a very unique way of submerging the viewer into something more than just comedy. It takes social viewpoints about a specific stereotype and presents it in a way which is thrilling for the viewer to watch, yet still, making the viewer relate to the trope in some way

Western Tropes in “Dead Man” The “Classic Western” is one of the most iconic film genres in American culture, the genre has Given birth to countless films, plays, and books. Many of the tropes created by the Classic Western genre are ones that are outdated and considered offensive in today's culture. Jim Jarmush’s film Dead Man masterfully uses cinematic techniques as well as skillful writing to contradict the classic western tropes seen in John Ford’s The Searchers. Some impactful tropes that are

from the betrayal of his own creator, other human beings, lack of moral understanding, and utter hopelessness when he finally exacts his revenge. The titular character of Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's first published novel exemplifies the common trope of a mad scientist attempting to play God. In this case, Frankenstein evokes one of the original images of God; as a judge damning one of his angels to Hell, condemning his creation which he produced in order to achieve a life of glory and fame. The

witches are distinctively characterized during a romance narrative, but in The Princess Bride they inhabit alternative roles which contribute to this light hearted tale. The manipulation of tropes, commonly recurring literary devices, give a comedic feel to this intriguing and twist filled storyline. A classic trope in a romance narrative involves a damsel in distress who is usually

film that slightly changed the horror genre with its different way of story telling . This film took certain tropes and flipped them in order to make the audience think differently about how women are portrayed in horror films. It is very common in horror films to see a woman as a damsel in distress or as the final girl that somehow survives the mass killing. However, there are classic tropes that are inserted in this film like the pretty girl has a best friend that is less pretty than her. Their friendship

discourse under several rhetorical tropes. Therefore, given that tropes such as surveillance, classification, and affirmation can be concretely pointed out in the Western discourse about the Other, one can firmly argue that through his categorization of these rhetorical tropes, David Spurr has successfully managed to introduce a deeper level of analysis of the western discourse regarding the representation of the Other. Surveillance is a recurrent rhetorical trope that has been adopted by the colonial

Commonly used figures of speech that switch one concept or idea for another are tropes. One overused trope is irony. Irony is an action or words that show one meaning on the outside but has a completely different meaning on the inside, frequently people will

in an insular capacity by the rapper as well as other black youth in the immediate area including the Dro City Gang, a faction of the ill-famed Gangster Disciples. Chiraq as an expression evoked similar corollaries of the war metaphor, a literary trope used to heighten attention to and incite deep concern for a professed societal problem often with very little context behind the issue itself. Additionally, the renaming of geographical places in rap music and Hip

Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes, dives into the trope of sidekicks. The chapter highlights how the trope isn’t always expressed the same way in different stories with different characters. For example, Iron Man and War Machine have a different dynamic from Captain America and Falcon, who themselves have a different dynamic from Cloak and Dagger. However, before diving into these specific examples of this trope. I want to identify what is a sidekick. Sidekicks ordinarily act as