Tropes, as we’ve discussed, are very versatile things. They’re shortcuts, a use of shorthand of character types, story conventions, and other neat little expected features of stories, used to tell the audience something quickly. Depending on the context of genre and story, tropes can be used to communicate information to the audience instantly, based on the already existing backlog of information about storytelling that’s growing from an ever-expanding exposure to stories of all kinds. The more we watch, the more we understand, and the more faceted our understanding of things like the Jerk Jock, or Teeth-Clenched Teamwork.
Previously on this segment, we’ve discussed the places that tropes can be used in: their definition and place in genre, or in specific story narratives, the idea being that tropes take on different and distinct meanings depending on context and placement in specific scenarios, stories, and scenes. There are subversions, aversions, exaggerations, justifications, inversions, parodies, zig-zags, double-subversions, lampshades, deconstructions, and many, many other ways to go about exploring any given trope, but the fact is, any individual convention can be turned on its head every which way, and still make sense to an audience because of the context its in.
This is very helpful for exploring narratives of certain stories. It’s how and why we expect things like a Bookcase Passage from Indiana Jones films, or the Chosen One from fantasy stories.
But while some elements, such as the bookcase, or even the Chosen One, are specific to settings, genres, or other trimmings, other trope categories go deeper.
Some tropes are topical.
Topical tropes are tropes that deal with themes and ideas of certain stories. Idealism, anxiety, death, technology, identity…these are categories of tropes that are a little beyond individual stories, ideas that are more defined by the culture than by the context of a single fictional work. Some go deeper than others, but all of these tropes are more influenced by the world we live in rather than the stories that we tell.
One of the elements of our Trope Talk articles is going to be discussing these topical tropes, and how they fit in different ways into the culture and the stories we tell, and how they, and our culture, have changed as time has gone by. Stop in and check out this series, along with the other features on this blog. I hope to see you all there!
Twentieth Century Fun With Film 