US Tropes

[samhenderson]

Aliette de Bodard has a well-thought-out rant here about the imposition of US Tropes on storytelling, well, everywhere.  Clint Harris (wendigomountain) responds with some of his own thoughts here.  I haven't time or brain to respond intelligently, but this really resonates with me.

Comments

[mrockwell]

Actually, she's wrong about the serial killers. Some of history's worst killed young women (and men) for pleasure and they were NOT Americans. And most of them predated Bundy. Including Gilles de Rais, who was French.

[elsmi]

...But this has nothing to do with the cultural-specific folklore/mythic resonances/standard tropes that she's talking about, yes? The statement is "Our most infamous French serial killers...", emphasis added.

[mrockwell]

No, she's pointing at serial killers as being a US trope, and they're not - serial killers are not unique to the US, and neither is fiction about them. And de Rais WAS France's most infamous serial killer, and he most certainly did not prey on old women for their money.

[samhenderson]

Actually, I think she's specifically referring to the common movie and TV theme that's essentially a watered-down kind of torture porn: "Serial killers obsessed with killing young women in titillating ways." Giles de Rais is certainly infamous but I did take the original post to intend a more modern take.

And the converse is true - there have been many, many American serial killers who kill for money, but in general I don't think that's what gets into the narrative, either storytelling or particularly media.

[mrockwell]

But torture porn movies and their predecessors weren't uniquely American, either. The first and most graphic movies in this genre were almost exclusively foreign. Glamorizing violence isn't a US trope. It's a *human* one.