LMM pictured here with 'stripper-mom'

Read a recent blog post–and the accompanying comments–about authors who use/rely on tropes.  The upshot was:   TROPES = BAD! FOR SHAME FOR SHAME I KNOW UR NAME! BAD AUTHOR! No Cookehs For U!

Interestingly enough, about the same time that all this took place, I watched the remake of HALLOWEEN–the Rob Zombie directed remake.

U know what I saw?

TROPE CITY, BABY…Read it and weep.

The upshot is, the viewer actually get to SEE how Meyers ended up a 7 ft. tall, slow walking death machine.

Psst!!!  It’s the mask baby THE MASK!  Whenever LMM puts on the mask, he kills.  When he takes off the mask, he doesn’t kill.  Logic would dictate that someone (*lookin’ at u mom*) take the fricken mask away but no one does.

Now, while I have to say this was a really well done remake and while I enjoyed seeing HOW LMM became BMM (Big Michael Meyers), Zombie fell down and went BOOM all over his uh…trope.

Let’s take a look cuz the tropes they abound!

Rob Zombie says, 'Leave that long, haired country boy alone!'

1. Stripper mom: pretty, sweet, loves her poor, misunderstood son but makes bad man choices.  Fails to protect her son because she’s…stripping.

2. Stupid drunk boyfriend of mom (or step-dad – not sure which): Constantly berates LMM because he’s poorly dressed, has long hair and is a 12-13 YO wearing a clown costume for Halloween.  Do not laugh or the child will strap you to your barcaglounger with duct tape and kill yew.

Dude…Should have taken the kid shopping for something better but I guess that broken leg (and ur beer) was in the way.

3. Slutteh sister:  Screws boyfriend Halloween night while mom is at work instead of taking LMM trick or treating like mom told her to.  My CP, Denise, who loves those classic 80’s horror movies, will tell you that the slutty girls always die after secks!

4. Bullehs:  Yes there are bullies who harass LMM about his stripper mom and how they want to do her.  This is accompanied by much lip smacking and while said boys have shorter hair than LMM, they’re dressed no different than he is  (FYI the movie begins in the mid-late 70’s–so pre term-coinage of the phrase affectionately known as ‘MILF’).

I have to admit, I actually felt SORRY for LMM so in that regard, the tropes worked.  At the same time, the writer in me was going, “Uh wow….even Rob Zombie’s not above resorting to tropes. Who knew?!”

Much like the classic slasher/horror movies of the late 70’s and most of the 80’s…the slutteh girls die.  If nothing else, maybe the resurgence of horror remakes will cause more teenage girls to practice abstinence–especially when their little brother is around.

Okay…enough with the funny.  Seriously, where this movie FAILED in the trope dept is…well…it used the tropes? Is using a trope a failure?  I’m thinking….NO, not really.

I think the failure lies in not doing anything different with the trope (and ‘failure’ is probably a rather harsh word so don’t take it literally, Rob).  In Halloween, Rob showed us only a glimpse of why LMM became BMM instead of showing us the whole picture.  Obviously, horny teenagers everywhere have no desire to sit through a recap of BMM entire life story from the day he shat his first diaper.  OTOH, if every kid whose mom was a stripper, sister was a slut and step-dad was a belligerent drunk watched that and said, “OK hey I know my destiny,” the world would be a much emptier place.

When you get down to it, a trope is nothing more (or not that different from) the classic character archetypes and classic archetypes whether they’re the Brooding Alpha Male or Slutteh Sister, are classic because they’re so widely used, so widely recognized that, in a way, we (the viewer/reader) take comfort in them.  We KNOW them as well as we know our own children.  They are so familiar to us that we quickly identify with them.

I think where the trope falls down is when it’s abused.  Yes, Trope Abuse.

So, share with me some authors or movies that abused tropes–and tropes you love.  One of my all-time faves?  The Ugly Duckling.  *sigh*