# Hackneyed plots that could be improved by inversion? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 13, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397 "2010-03-13T22:00:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/21 "2010-03-14T17:59:12Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > I swear I once saw a movie where a racist got sent back in time to an alternate past where the races where reversed (ie whites sit in the back of the bus). It might have been a made-for-TV movie. Are you thinking of The Twilight Zone? A bigot gets sent back into several pasts where he is the minority that gets persecuted. He finds himself as a black man getting lynched the the KKK, and a Jew getting rounded up[ by the Nazis. He remains white, but other people’[s perceptions of him change. It was in the original TV show, and remade for the movie. In the movie Vic Morrow was the star of the segment. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/22 "2010-03-14T18:03:52Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > But yeah, I’d love to see one where the Noble Savages turn out to be just as or even more destructive, rapacious, petty and greedy than the Westerners, and the only reason they did not pick the continent barren was they did not have the machinery for it… Would you really love to see such a movie? This sounds like one of those ideas that might be funny in a brief skit, but I can’t imagine any decent person seriously enjoying a film in which the technologically advanced Westerners righteously subjugate the wicked and backwards non-white indigenous people. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/23 "2010-03-14T18:12:06Z")
There’s a John Travolta movie called [White Man’s Burden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Man%27s_Burden_%28film%29) that’s about an alternate universe where whites are oppressed by blacks. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/24 "2010-03-14T18:18:45Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > There’s a John Travolta movie called [White Man’s Burden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Man%27s_Burden_%28film%29) that’s about an alternate universe where whites are oppressed by blacks. That might be it (though I don’t remembr Travolta). It definatly wasn’t the Twilight Zone. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/25 "2010-03-14T20:50:27Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And now to briefly touch on the actual topic: How about when you know how long the movie is, and the plot is starting to be wrapped up halfway through? I think it’d be cool if that is the ending. I don’t know how they could pull it off, though. The way I learned it in HS English, most of Shakespeare’s plays are constructed that way, with “rising action” to the third act and “falling action” to the fifth. E.g., the actual climax of _Hamlet_ is not the final sword-duel with Laertes, but Hamlet’s refusal to kill Claudius when he finds him praying. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/26 "2010-03-14T20:58:24Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > I’d like to see a movie in which an American ends up living among an indigenous people and finds that they’re just as narrow-minded and short-sighted as the folks back home. Something along these lines is [_Black Robe,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_robe) where the Indians of New France are portrayed as ignorant savages who torture anyone they capture and completely misinterpret everything they see about the French. Even those friendly to the Jesuit missionary are so frightened of his strange power to put words on paper that they think he is a demon and hire a sorcerer to exorcise him. See also [_Out of Africa,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_africa) where the chief of the Kenyans on Baroness Blixen’s coffee plantation at first tries to block her plan to teach the children to read, because it is unseemly they should know more than their elders. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/27 "2010-03-14T21:03:52Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > But yeah, I’d love to see one where the Noble Savages turn out to be just as or even more destructive, rapacious, petty and greedy than the Westerners, and the only reason they did not pick the continent barren was they did not have the machinery for it… You could make a good historical case that was true of the Indians, who may have “walked lightly on the land” compared to the Europeans, but still made a great many changes to the landscape over the millennia after they crossed the Bering Strait, and burned forests for their own purposes, and bred barely-edible wild plants into domestic crops such as maize and potatoes, and probably hunted to extinction the Pleistocene mammoths, wild horses, etc. (See [_American Colonies,_](http://www.amazon.com/American-Colonies-Settling-America-Penguin/dp/0142002100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268600529&sr=1-1) by Alan Taylor.) ---
**Author:** ![wedgehed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8edcca/32.png) [@wedgehed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wedgehed)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/28 "2010-03-14T21:27:22Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > _No Country for Old Men_ actually subverted a cliche. It was set up as a somewhat conventional suspense/chase flick, with a hero being pursued by a bad guy for a bag of money, and using his wits to stay a step ahead. He has a dramatic moment on the telephone after the bad guy says he’s going to kill the hero’s wife, telling the bad guy, “you don’t have to come after me, I’m coming after YOU.” Then… > > The bad guy casually and effortlessly finds and kills the hero, gets the money, then goes and kills the hero’s wife, just like he said he would. You need to watch it again. The hero’s death didn’t play out quite like that. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/29 "2010-03-14T21:37:31Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > As for the “adult molestation” thing that’s just so bizarre somebody just _has_ to try and pull that off. I’d want to see that. THE CRUSH, with young Alicia Silverstone, comes pretty close. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/30 "2010-03-14T21:37:37Z")
Thought of another real movie that does invert a familiar trope: > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Some things might be flatly impossible to successfully invert, of course. The wife-beater always gets his comeuppance in the movies – would it really be possible to make a movie where he not only gets away with it but is portrayed sympathetically, and the bitch was asking for it? This is more or less what happens in _Birthday Girl_ (2001), starring Nicole Kidman as the wife.Kidman plays a mail-order bride who, with two accomplices, scams one man after another out of large sums of money by playing out a “kidnapping”. Her current husband, the film’s protagonist, is forced to rob his workplace to get the ransom money and is abused by the two “kidnappers”. After he learns Kidman was in on it all along, he beats her up. This character is portrayed sympathetically, and it’s made clear that Kidman’s character was a willing party to these scams.I’m also reminded of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_, which presents rape (committed by the hero) as a suitable punishment for the female villain. That was over 30 years ago though, I’m not sure any mainstream film would do this today. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/31 "2010-03-15T00:29:53Z")
Hell, it might or might not have been done, but the simple real life telling of the Wizard of OZ from outside the looking glass would be interesting. Instead of Dorothy’s fevered and hallucinatory story of her Aunts and Uncles and the people in her small Kansas town in the dreamland of Oz, perhaps a simple Winesburg type retelling and short story of small town period dustbowl Kansas with the same plotline. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/32 "2010-03-15T00:34:43Z")
[quote=“BigT, post:8, topic:532397”] [li]Either the hero is the one who keeps falling, or the “ethnic” hero and heroine are running away from white “savages.”[/li][/QUOTE] The latter is pretty much what we see in any portrayal of runaway slaves in the antebellum South. Here’s something that hasn’t been done yet and probably could be: A movie about the [Haitian Revolution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution) of 1791, essentially a successful slave rebellion and one of the few such in history. It would show the astonishingly (even by U.S. standards) cruel and brutal treatment of Haiti’s sugar-plantation slaves under French rule, **but also** the equally cruel and brutal vengeance they meted out against the whites when they rose up, as well as the complex and multi-sided nature of the conflict between whites, slaves, and free black _gens de couleur,_ the many cynical betrayals of and by both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary leaders, the interplay of it all with the contemporary politics of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and how all of this set the stage for Haiti’s rather dismal political history ever since. No moral message but “Life sucks.” OK, I take it back: It probably **couldn’t** be done. Too many minefields. But it should be. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/33 "2010-03-15T00:36:03Z")
> [@wedgehed](#): > > You need to watch it again. The hero’s death didn’t play out quite like that. You are correct, sir. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/34 "2010-03-15T00:42:08Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > Hell, it might or might not have been done, but the simple real life telling of the Wizard of OZ from outside the looking glass would be interesting. Instead of Dorothy’s fevered and hallucinatory story of her Aunts and Uncles and the people in her small Kansas town in the dreamland of Oz, perhaps a simple Winesburg type retelling and short story of small town period dustbowl Kansas with the same plotline. Hell, maybe Dorothy dies in a tornado. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/35 "2010-03-15T01:19:49Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > Hell, it might or might not have been done, but the simple real life telling of the Wizard of OZ from outside the looking glass would be interesting. Instead of Dorothy’s fevered and hallucinatory story of her Aunts and Uncles and the people in her small Kansas town in the dreamland of Oz, perhaps a simple Winesburg type retelling and short story of small town period dustbowl Kansas with the same plotline. I’m not sure I follow this. In the original novel Dorothy really does unambiguously go to Oz, and no one she meets there is an alternate of people she knows back in Kansas. That conceit is wholly the invention of the movie\*. And without the Oz adventure, just what story is there left to tell? \*and IMHO, a stupid invention. Apparently the makers of the film decided that it was necessary to tack on a moral of “no need to wish you lived in a fabulous place of magic and adventure- you can be happy in rural Dustbowl Kansas”. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/36 "2010-03-15T02:20:12Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I’m not sure I follow this. In the original novel Dorothy really does unambiguously go to Oz, and no one she meets there is an alternate of people she knows back in Kansas. That conceit is wholly the invention of the movie\*. And without the Oz adventure, just what story is there left to tell? > \*and IMHO, a stupid invention. Apparently the makers of the film decided that it was necessary to tack on a moral of “no need to wish you lived in a fabulous place of magic and adventure- you can be happy in rural Dustbowl Kansas”. I thought this thread was about inverting hackneyed TV and Movie screenplays/plots… Yea, the book is a bit different, I’ve read bits and pieces of it… But the beauty of the whole story in the classic movie version is that Dorothy is constructing a magical archetypical story of her everyday life. I guess what I am leaning towards is a deconstructionist and mundane Peyton Place/The Grapes of Wrath soap Opera type probe of the underlying archetypoes of the “magical adventure”. But Dorothy must die in a tornado ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/37 "2010-03-15T02:30:48Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > I thought this thread was about inverting hackneyed TV and Movie screenplays/plots… Yea, the book is a bit different, I’ve read bits and pieces of it… > > But the beauty of the whole story in the classic movie version is that Dorothy is constructing a magical archetypical story of her everyday life. I guess what I am leaning towards is a deconstructionist and mundane Peyton Place/The Grapes of Wrath soap Opera type probe of the underlying archetypoes of the “magical adventure”. But Dorothy must die in a tornado And then everybody blames it on the rich-bitch Almira Gulch and a class war breaks out and Tom Joad leads the nation in revolution . . . 😉 ---
**Author:** ![wedgehed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8edcca/32.png) [@wedgehed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wedgehed)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/38 "2010-03-15T02:51:41Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > \*and IMHO, a stupid invention. Apparently the makers of the film decided that it was necessary to tack on a moral of “no need to wish you lived in a fabulous place of magic and adventure- you can be happy in rural Dustbowl Kansas”. Don’t knock rural dustbowl Kansas. At least it didn’t have them flying monkeys. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/39 "2010-03-15T03:24:41Z")
Necessarily, my inversion of rural dustbowl Kansas would have flying pigs. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hackneyed-plots-that-could-be-improved-by-inversion/532397/40 "2010-03-15T03:27:30Z")
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