Ego-troping in the classroom.*

I mistakenly clicked on a link to tv tropes and now I have a head full of oddly-named and only half-remembered trivia like the Crowning Moment of Awesome.**  While I'm always amazed by the degree to which I agree with random strangers on the internet (e.g. Ledger's improvisation with the detonator in The Dark Knight), I'm always even more amazed that there are people out there who fail to realize what the best line or moment according to science in a film is.   The Crowning Moment of Awesome in Return of the Jedi, for example, occurs in the film's first act (as anyone who was five years old and me when he saw it in the theaters will tell you).  You wouldn't know that from reading tv tropes.  

More seriously, I use the site in class to get the kids conversant with the notion of subversion, i.e. that a given scene can be explicitly working to produce the very effect it wants to undermine.  For example, in the scene from The Dark Knight in which the Joker fiddles with the detonator, I pull up the entry on the "Unflinching Walk":

When just blowing something up isn't enough, proof of one's apparent badass bombing technique can be seen when the bomber leaves himself barely enough time to escape the blast radius, usually just enough so that as he's walking away, he's silhouetted by the explosion itself.

Then we can talk about why Ledger's improvisation worked so brilliantly in a more sophisticated manner (e.g. the lack of an explosion subverts the badassness of the "Unflinching Walk" such that blah blah blah).  

*That title makes no sense.  Sometimes I'm simply slave to the pun.

**Not to be confused with the Awesome Moment of Crowning.

Comments

[G C]

Of all the sites I dare not visit when I have something else to do, TV Tropes is by far the deadliest.

[Karl Steel]

This was my first visit. I have just lost...an hour? Christ. Thanks a bunch, Scott. You've just ruined my holiday break.

[MikeJ]

I can give no examples of what pisses me off about TV Tropes because it's been so long since I've been there, but it was this: if any element of the trope is mentioned in a scene, it is listed as an example of the trope, even if it has no real connection to it.

In other words, I found people who were so obsessive/compulsive they had to classify every scene in a show insufficiently attentive to detail.

[tomemos]

Instead of wasting all that time at TV Tropes, you could have just let the good people at Lonely Island tell you about the unflinching walk.

[Karl Steel]

That was one of the bits I turned up in my first foray, T., although it was (oddly?) funnier with the sound off. I just wish the TV tropes people had better taste in...stuff, by which I mean my taste. I'm not in the target dorkographic for their refs.

[James T]

That particularly goes for the "Crowning Moment of Awesome" page, which gets so choked with every second scene from half-baked, over-emoting bilge like Doctor Who and Dragonball and god-knows-what that trying to find a real "awesome" entry is a fool's errand. Still, skip every reference to a webcomic and you clear out half the crap in one fell swoop.

[SEK]

Differentiating between the actual X described and false positives can be a teaching moment. (Especially if you want them to think you're old enough to respect, looks be damned, as they're always surprised by what references I don't get, given my general level of dorkiness.)

[Ahistoricality]

Well, the CMOA they had listed for the literature (yeah, I went to the literature page) I was familiar with was pretty good. Selective, to be sure, but what they had listed certainly seemed to fit the trope pretty well.

Wouldn't "ego-troping" involve looking for your own writings in tvtropes, or for examples in literature and other media of things you yourself had done? For example, Scott, you could look for other examples of people who encountered people having sex in what had previously been their own private space.

[Karl Steel]

Oh, look. 9am here, I've had breakfast, finishing first cup of coffee, looking at the stack of final papers. No I'm not. I'm reading TV tropes. And, under "Race lift" (harh!), I encounter:
"Before about 1970, it was common for TV stations in the US South to edit shows featuring non-stereotypical black characters to remove their scenes. In cases where the character couldn't be edited out, the episode or the entire show wouldn't be aired. Promacers [sic] therefore had an incentive to choose an all-white cast even if the original characters were intended to be minorities."
I know I could google this myself, but...really? I'm not surprised, exactly, but does this mean, for example, that Eartha Kitt on the old Batman wouldn't be shown in the US South?

[MikeJ]

Differentiating between the actual X described and false positives can be a teaching moment.

I've given up on teaching the entire internet.

[tmurry]

Yeah, tvtropes isn't perfect, but it always has me link clicking compulsively (if just to find out what the hell the name of the trope means, since cuteness is waaaay more important than clarity in their naming process).

I have to say I was totally bummed when i clicked to find that "awesome moment of crowning" didn't refer to childbirth.

[SEK]

For example, Scott, you could look for other examples of people who encountered people having sex in what had previously been their own private space.

I deserve to have a trope or two named after me. Hell, I am a trope!

I know I could google this myself, but...really? I'm not surprised, exactly, but does this mean, for example, that Eartha Kitt on the old Batman wouldn't be shown in the US South?

I'm not sure about that, but as I'm about to head into rural Mississippi, I'm sure I can find out. (It does seem to me a case of the putting the pun before the horse, though.)

I've given up on teaching the entire internet.

Unfortunately, kids today live on it, so teaching them how to use it more responsibly is one of those things I feel obligated to do.

I have to say I was totally bummed when i clicked to find that "awesome moment of crowning" didn't refer to childbirth.

If you scroll down, I think there's a mention of and/or a link to Knocked Up. I'd look, but honestly, don't really want to be reminded of that scene. (Not because of childbirth, mind you, but because it means children, and I don't want to think about children on my birthday.)

[Rebecca]

I love that you use TVTropes as a teaching tool.

[Martin Wisse]

One reason for the analitiy and inclusion of not very good or even well known anime series and webcomix and such on tvtropes is as an explicit reaction to the other Wiki's poofacedness about noticibility. On the more popular concept pages this does get a bit out of hand...