On Tropes and Subversions Thereof

In case it isn’t already obvious, I like to analyze tropes. Whether or not I do it effectively is another question altogether, but I am fascinated by what draws certain people to certain tropes. What makes one person roll their eyes, stirs deeply the heart of another. What makes me shrug, might make you swoon. What makes her giggle might make me wince.

Yet some tropes are relatively universal. Maybe not everyone likes them, but enough people do that a given trope could endure in a hundred movies, a thousand songs, and a hundred thousand books, and people would still seek it out. However, because some tropes are that beloved–seemingly too common and also ofttimes sloppily executed–we can grow weary even of that which we love. Not just one person rolls their eyes now, but everybody.

Enter the trope subversion. The supposed magical cure for an overused trope (or is it…). “The Princess saves herself!” “The kiss does not wake the sleeper.” “The dragon is actually friendly.”

An easy example of this, if a rather too heavy-handed one, is found in the movie Frozen. The young princess “falls in love” with a stereotypical love-interest over the course of one single rather obnoxious song. (I am not a huge fan of Frozen, sorry). In the end it is not this “love interest” OR the second love interest whose kiss saves the day, but that of her sister. Disney lampshades the insta-love story, then subverts the only-her-one-true-love-can-save-her trope. All well and good.

I use this example because it is pretty over the top and as such is a pretty stark example both of a subversion and the following truth: subverting a trope doesn’t inherently equal a good story. It can, of course. But so can using a standard trope. Subversion does not indicate quality. It is, in and of itself, perfectly neutral.

Now I know a lot of people love Frozen, and that’s fine. One of my nieces has spent many a day dressed up as Elsa. I don’t think the story’s bad, and the fact that one sister saves the other with love is actually quite sweet. I’m fine with that. But when the main (and, in some other cases, only) praise of a story is the fact that it subverted a trope, we must realize that we have in fact said not one word about the quality or truth or richness or depth of the story. We have merely stated the equivalent of “this story has a tree in it.” It’s nice if you like trees, but its not very informative as to whether those trees are effectively or meaningfully integrated into the story.

That being said, I understand why someone might pitch a story as a subversion, not as an indicator of quality, but as a warning that ‘this isn’t going to go the way you think.’ “500 Days of Summer” did this well. The movie tells you explicitly that this story isn’t going to end in romantic bliss. They’re not going to work it all out in a sweeping romantic gesture during the last 10 minutes of the movie. Side note, I don’t really like that movie at all. I don’t really like the premise of spending an hour and a half investing in two people, only for the whole purpose of the story to be “and then they went their separate ways, no harm, no foul.”

Maybe it spoke deeply to someone else about experiences they had, about moving on or something, but it seemed rather soulless to me, and I would never watch it again of my own free will.

The truth is, a subverted trope usually leads to a known trope whether you want it to or not. Contrary to what some may think, tropes do not exist because of narrative laziness (though they can surely be executed with it, same as anything), but because of resonance. A certain trope strikes a note that pings back from your soul with deepened sound, resonating with something that was already present, enriching some soil that was already there. We can learn new things from old tropes, again and again.

Robin McKinley wrote The Blue Sword because of some book she read where a woman was capture by the “Natives” and there was a sort of “captor-captive” romance happening, and then the captor-guy turned out to be from the woman’s same nationality (“non-native”) anyway. She was very disgusted with the whole thing. The way this  trope of the well-bred lady being capture by locals and then romanced was executed was appalling because it was done so badly, with such little reason and (I suspect) so little respect, knowledge, or desire to challenge assumptions.

So she decided to write a book where all of that was essentially reversed. The locals are the heroes rather than the antagonists, and the psuedo-British-Colonial lady that gets captured by them? Well it turns out that she’s one of them, though she didn’t know that it was her heritage. From there it becomes a classic adventure story with some romance lightly sprinkled in. Now I love this book, but I can still admit it’s not perfect, and she still fell into some of the traps she was explicitly trying to avoid (It’s not technically a white savior narrative, because Harry’s Grandmother was Damarian, but it’s still tends a bit that way). But, for the most part, she took the good of the trope–the idea of being brought into a world you do not know against your will, and being forced to learn, adapt, and to respect that which is very different from what you’re used to, of being humbled by others and by circumstances, and of finding a home where you did not expect to find it–and sloughed off much of the bad.

And she ended up writing a very classical story of a heroic chosen one who had magic she never knew about.

Tropes are like flavors. Our tongues are ready made with certain taste-buds, like little pockets ready to receive specific tastes. We all have different palettes, no doubt, and experimentation with flavors is a wonderful thing. But at the end of the day, most people have a space on their tongues for “salty” and “tangy” and “sweet” and the like. And when that salt hits your tongue, you revel in it, because it was just what you wanted. And it doesn’t matter that it has thrilled a million tongues before, and will do so a million times again. It satisfies.

So, I guess, all I’m saying is, you may need to gargle vinegar once in a while for your health, or chew a piece of pickled ginger to refresh your palette, and you may be a straight up foodie (hear, hear!) and want to try all manner of strange concoctions–but that’s no reason to look down on the fact that sometimes our tongues simply crave salt, sweet, and sour, and we never really move on from those, while so many other fun experiments may be enjoyed, but quickly forgotten.