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I am Stacey, a junior from New Jersey and one third of your co-hosts. In today’s episode, I will be discussing what tropes are and their influence on culture. And as this is our back to school “The More You Know” series, we will be tying these t-ropes, tropes, pun intended ahaha, to high school, yayayay.
Segment 1 - What are Tropes? (General)
Simply, tropes are literary devices or stylistic techniques that convey a message.
Tropes are commonly recurring literary and/or rhetorical devices or cliché-type species in creative works.
They are readily identifiable and appear in many forms of media with more or less the same characteristics or air. Tropes range in their medium: there are cinematic tropes, comic book tropes, literary tropes.
Tropes are predictable, but can vary in broadness or specificity.
In a satirical setting, tropes may be poked fun of at because of their said predictability.
A most basic example of a trope is the girl-next-door love-at-first-window-sight in films.
Segment 2 - The Influence of Tropes (General)
Though tropes can be a good laugh in someone’s simple cinematic endeavors where entertainment is a sole purpose, some are gaining notoriety for being long past their socially acceptable expiration date.
An example being outdated tropes under the umbrella of the portrayal of women in media, as say the masculinized career woman that must be asexual.
An article in The Atlantic that tallies this and nine other tropes about women and will be linked in the description of this podcast, happy reading! I personally think this article is a very important read.
Racist tropes are an issue hot off the press! This may be in film. An asian with a very asian name and a very asian accent and qualities deemed as very exclusively reserved for asians *cough* long duck dong. The pushed model of model minority. Blackface!- harboring overused, inaccurate stereotypes of people of African descent. But also on the news right now, regarding politics and political decisions. Tropes and genuinely everywhere, and not just in cinema.
Tropes have the ability to morph our thoughts in a specific, narrow direction or formulate biased preconceptions of someone or of some situation before we, ourselves, first handedly, have met said person or say undergone said situation.
If our popular culture is fostering these outdated, backwards tropes, what does this say about our society as a whole?
Segment 3 - What are High School Tropes / Common High School Tropes? (Specific)
High School Tropes are exactly what they sound: cliches in media pertaining to a character’s time in high school and their coming of age adventures. They are the same or similar recurring motifs that appear in movies where the main character or characters are high schoolers. As other tropes in media, high school tropes can vary in broadness or specificity, being thematic or a minor aspect of a character.
Segment 4 - Examples of Highschool Tropes in Film (Specific)
John Hughes is basically synonymous with coming of age classics.
Breakfast Club,
Sixteen Candles,
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,
Pretty in Pink.
Hughes is the American filmmaker/director mastermind behind these cult classics.
Breakfast Club
The premise of the movie is already founded on a trope: Misfits landing an enjoyable SATURDAY detention.
The Breakfast Club itself is arguably a trope, cited in popular culture
There’s a relationship initially blossoming from hate
The classic air vent escape route
The characters embody classic stereotypes associated with high schoolers: the nerd, the princess, the jock, the rebel, and the basketcase.
Sixteen Candles
Geek!
Forgotten Birthday
The Dance!
Racist Asian stereotypes in the notorious Long Duck Dong character
Ferris Bueller
Glorified absence
Playing sick
Lots of Breaking of the Fourth Wall
Power of school authority
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