Tropes That Piss Me Off

It's in every romcom. It sometimes appears when the Action Gal cleans up for some undercover espionage at some high-ticket gala. It's definitely there when the lead female in any procedural drama has a flashy new outfit.

The camera pans from her shoes, lovingly framing her torso, and cuts away within a few seconds of seeing her expression so the viewers can see the extended look of awe/appreciation on the person viewing her¹.

That's just one trick of Pervy Cam. The other, more insidious one, is making certain that boobs, butt, or both wind up in the points of interest whenever a lady is in the frame. This leads to female leads, even initially-unsexy Action Gals not getting "headroom".

"Headroom" is a framing term that means that the character on screen is not at risk of having their head and face drift out of shot. As this tumblr post explains. When men are in frame, the most interesting thing is their face and what they're doing. When women are in frame, the most interesting thing is their bodies.

This post over here begins with an explanation of what the 'sweet spots' are and how they're not used to objectify women in Mad Max. And then this one explains Mad Max de-emphasised nudity.

So it is possible to have a naked woman on the screen and have her NOT be a sexual object. Likewise for fully clothed ones.

People tell me that there was no Pervy Cam in Batman Versus Superman, but I know that they had more than one Pervy Pan, and several butt shots, every time Diana Prince turned up in a slinky outfit.

Pervy Pans on men linger on their expressions so the audience can read their feelings. Pervy Pans on women flick away the instant the breasts move out of the sweet spots. Men get headroom. Women don't.

If the camera objectified men as much as it did women, viewers would find the results unnerving and wouldn't be able to say why. In fact, I challenge directors everywhere to reverse the camera treatment on their male and female leads. See what it does to audiences. See what it does to the movie.

Go on. I double-dog dare you.

Of all the romance tropes that exist, it's the older-guy, twenty-something gal that's the most irritating, and it ties directly to this trope here. Men get old, women get replaced.

It's almost as if all women are worth is how good they look. This is evidenced in all the post-makeover shots where the camera lovingly pans up the beautified girl in question from the tips of her toes... but doesn't always make it all the way to her face.

I call it

We've all seen that movie. Action Guy and Action Gal or Damsel Gal do not get along for the entire firkin movie. Except near the third act when they kiss for no good reason and then suddenly have sex.

Sometimes, they don't even kiss. They just go at each other in a sudden and unexpected display of lust.

It's so far out of left field that it's circumnavigated the globe and come in from the right field.

And it's supremely annoying.

Especially

For those who haven't realised the predominance of dead Tokens, read here first in which the token black guy [and sometimes black gal] gets a target drawn on them the instant the Big Bad is out to get the good guys.

Running along side Bury Your Gays, the audience is pretty much trained to expect anyone not cis, het, and white to bite the big one when the stakes are raised. They apparently deserve it for not being cishet white people.

It's

Here's the link to educate yourself, but if you don't want to be bothered with the wiki walk: It begain in the Heteronormative 40's and 50's when people realised that women (a) actually do have sex drives, and (b) those spinsters sharing a house and a bunch of cats were doing way more than knitting and watching television together.

This is around about the time that Tragic Girl Romances began to come out in the pulp zines¹ in which the heroine

It's usually a feature of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but sometimes your Action Gal explains her usually manly feats with "I have brothers". The brothers are almost always older, and numerous, and our female lead has learned to hold her own against them as some form of survival skill.

Sometimes, there are no brothers, the mother is usually out of the picture¹, and the father "didn't know how to raise a girl" so did all the boy stuff with her.

You know that point in the movie. The hero has hit a wall. Hit a low point. Hit the place where most people would give up, mourn, and try to pick up the pieces. Along comes an inspirational message from the nearest Magical Minority, a trope so large that it has entire sets of sub-tropes. This helps get

It's usually a person of colour, but occasionally a disabled person. For extra points, it's a disabled person of colour. And the reason why

I have to admit that I've only recently realised that this one was a thing, and it's all because of this video. If you haven't watched this already, take a good look.

It's surprising often this turns up, isn't it. Sexy woman emerges, fully formed, but is also a blank slate for the male lead to impress upon. Everything he finds good, she meekly follows along with and finds good.

Keep in mind that he is in control of all of her

I know I referred to this earlier as the "Loveable Misogynist", but there's also excusable racism in this particular character type. It's a blend of the Politically Incorrect Hero and the Jerk With a Heart of Gold with some elements of Good Flaws, Bad Flaws mixed in.

And what it winds up making is a surprisingly generic hero for serialised drama television. Sure, he's heroic, but he's also a bit of a jerk and he has some bad habits. Sometimes, he's a

I gave y'all a link to the trope, yesterday, but... in case you missed it, the main goal of the trope is to do horrible things to women because their man character needs motivation.

Or because they couldn't write a stable relationship to save their own butts.

Or because they have no clue how to write a woman once she stops being a love interest and starts being a life partner.

Last iteration of this that I encountered was... just before this