Considering that history is often told selectively based on the lens through which it is viewed, there could be many. Biographies, too. Like when some celebrity who was once known to have struggled with addiction and is said to have “finally beat their addiction” just before they died, like they died clean. It may be true, or it may be true that they’d gone a couple weeks/months/years without a relapse, but it seems you can only ever say an addiction is “beat” in retrospect, after someone is dead, and there appears to be no uniform standard for how long it takes for such an addiction to be beaten.
For example, here’s an excerpt from Nico’s Wikipedia entry:
It seems the only people who don’t “die clean” are the ones who die of an actual overdose. In fact, I’d say that’s the name of the trope: the “Died Clean” trope, where by respected or beloved celebrities who struggled with addiction always managed to beat it before the end, unless there is incontrovertible evidence that their addiction is what killed them. So Elvis Presley, for instance, was denied a “died clean” label in spite of the best efforts of the Memphis medical examiner who declared “drugs played no role in Presley’s death” because, as it turns out…
But for that, I strongly suspect The common/accepted wisdom today would be that Presley kicked his many drug habits mere months prior to his death and it was just too bad he didn’t stop sooner.
Yup! I like it when shows and movies subvert this one too.
That is based on reality, though. I know quite a few people who’ve died due to drugs, and it’s not uncommon for it to happen after a period where they were clean, and then they relapsed. The reason is that they no longer had the tolerance they’d built up before, so took a dose that would usually have just got them high, and died from it. Among regular drug users this is a known risk, but obviously that doesn’t mean it’s a risk people manage to avoid, because, well, if you were good at avoiding risks you wouldn’t be taking those drugs in the first place. (I’m not a user myself, but for various reasons know a fair few people who are).
I’m sure there is an effort on the part of some bereaved people to try to whitewash their dead loved ones, but that’s not the only reason for saying that someone died of drug use after a period of being clean. The people I know who’ve died in that way definitely weren’t being whitewashed.
I think you misunderstand. The proposed “died clean” trope applies to people who didn’t die of a drug overdose, however long (or if they’ve even) been “clean.” Every celebrity who’s ever had a drug problem and died from anything that wasn’t a drug overdose “died clean.” They kicked drugs just last week and were still in rehab when they died? Beat it, died clean. Like a cowboy riding off into the sunset.
Yes, it’s an exaggeration, no I don’t assume any inherent moral failing on the part of people who suffered addiction, whether they died from it or not. It’s just a thing I’ve seen in enough deceased celebrity bios to infer a pattern—a “non-fiction trope” if you will—but will admit I have not rigorously studied the matter.
Oh, sorry, I get what you mean now. Can’t think of any time I’ve seen it, though. Even when celebrities have died for reasons other than their drug use, I don’t recall seeing their drug use being ignored. Carrie Fisher, for example - she had drugs in her system, and the coroners couldn’t determine whether they caused that particular heart attack, but the family didn’t try to pretend that her years of drug use hadn’t damaged her body so much that it was probably the reason for her death. She didn’t die of a drug overdose but her drug use wasn’t ignored.
If a celeb genuinely is clean when they die, or they die for some reason completely unrelated to drug use (like your example of Nico, who I’m afraid I’d never heard of), then it’s not whitewashing to say that drugs weren’t the reason for their death.
What ASL v2.0 is saying is that if Fisher *hadn’t *had drugs in her system, she would have been said to have “died clean” - even if she had last used three days before she died. Her history of drug use and even its overall impact on her health might have been acknowledged but as long as she didn’t test positive at the hospital she would have been said to have “beaten her addition” or “died clean”. It’s not a matter of saying that drugs weren’t the reason for a death - it’s a matter of saying everyone who dies for a non-drug related reason magically “got clean” right before they died. (I’m not sure how often it happens, but I’ve seen it happen with non-celebs, too )
A trope that always bugs me is the fact that any wild animal which appears will immediately make some kind of recognisable sound (even if the species concerned does not, in fact, sound like that) and will then attempt to attack the character.
Take a snake, happily minding its own business in the desert, waiting for mousy snacks to wander into range, when a chase scene appears. Does Mr Snakey, startled by the vibrations, quietly slither under a rock when the hero runs past? Does it heck. It goes straight for 'em, hissing and striking open mouthed at the hero or, if you’re really lucky, at the camera. The goal in life of a movie bat is to fly into someone’s face, preferably that of a nervous woman who will scream and slap at it. You wonder what’s in it for them.
Yep, and furthermore, the flamboyancy of the noise and display is the same, regardless of the size of creature. Snake? A hiss and a rearing up then an attack. Which sort of makes sense, the display might be a last ditch effort to try to get the perceived threat to go away even if flight would have been better.
But bears and dinosaurs also roar and rear before they attack even though in choosing to attack, the noise is moot anyway, and if it was a predatory attack it would have been as silent as possible.
One could make a topic on its own of sound effect tropes in general. There’s the Wilhelm scream, for one. And one that bugs me is when someone pulls a sword out of its sheath, there’s always a distinctive metal-on-metal sound, like “shiiiiink”. But pulling a sword out of a leather sheath would be a quiet whisper, if it made any sound at all.
I used to think that was a played out cliche, then I actually grabbed a kitchen knife off of the counter a few years ago and completely unintentionally, it actually made that sound as the blade lightly brushed against the surface of the countertop. I actually thought to myself, “wow, it actually happens.”
Interesting. Thanks for responding. I’d think for a non-fiction ‘thing’ to be a trope it would have to happen more often … or, perhaps the bar for non-fiction tropes would naturally be lower.
But, if there were to be a non-fiction trope, I think this would be a good example.
Self-driving cars, even back in the 40s. Driver has to turn and look at his passenger to talk to her, for 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds – I always count. Long enough to go two football fields with nobody looking at the road.
Then somebody says “They’re behind us” and the driver has to turn his head to look out the back — no mirror.
Another is impossible bird calls. Foley editors love to fill outdoor audio with birds, uncaring that every species has a unique voice and limited range. The common loon never calls in migration through Louisiana swamps, but they,re in every bayou film.
Introducing a critical puzzle-like problem which is then solved 10 seconds later, sometimes completely by accident (e.g. a light hitting it just the right way). This seems especially bad in serialized TV shows. The worst offender I can think of was called Zero Hour.
The hero who sacrifices his life to defeat the “macguffin” menace, BUT we don’t have to feel bad about that because he had a fatal illness. Bonus points for wretchedness if the hero happens to be the oldest person in the cast.
(Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, someone else I can’t remember in a film about a meteor going to hit the earth…
Any other examples will be greatfully received. )
I hate the part where they solve the dilemma by having the real one say something unflattering about one of the other characters. I was watching the first X-Men movie with my grandson; don’t judge me, it’s a pandemic, and they run into Wolverine, who Mystique had been impersonating. They don’t know who he is, and he says to Cyclops, “You’re a dick”, and they’re all like “That checks out.” Well, my grandson says, “Doesn’t everyone think Cyclops is a dick?” Yes, they do, or they should. He is a dick.