I'm joking with the meme, but it's an interesting how plot armor unintentionally places value on people's lives in fiction.
It's telling that censorship laws decide who it is and isn't acceptable to kill. Just thinking about violence against sentient robots and how that's normalized in things like Samurai Jack.
Like we know the robot has thoughts and feelings, like they'll try to run to save themselves or plead for mercy, but a character can still heroic after essentially killing a non-human who's acting like how we understand humans.
I feel like there's something dangerous in how easily we can depict appropriate targets of violence. Not just robots, but anybody deemed as less than human are allowed to be more put at risk.
Unnamed people are killed in superhero fights all the time. But unless they are of a class of characters like protagonists, they are collateral damage at best.
I think Plot Armor as a trope needs more class consciousness and awareness around how deciding who gets to be protected is often an unconscious political belief.
What about you though? Any tropes in media you'd like to see explored more or written with a leftist understanding?
"Secret cabal controlling the world from behind the shadows" traffics in anti-Semitism. The trope doesn't predate The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It validates the fascist idea of an enemy being both weak and strong. If the cabal actually control the world, they obviously don't need to hide behind the shadows.
yes it does, the illuminati & freemasons are from the 18th century
now modern interpretations of it definitely have interwoven secret society tropes with antisemitic ones. and the original panics about masons and illuminati were kind of colored with antisemitic tropes
it's all kind of a mess so i guess i'm saying you're broadly correct just too late in your chronology
The secret group controlling the world is pretty much as open as you can be about it. They have mega yachts