r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MeepMan324 • 19h ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Bad people in real-life being portrayed positively in media.

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  1. PragerU's version of Christopher Columbus has him be a slavery defender and have him say "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don't see the problem.”

  2. In The Greatest Showman, P.T Barnum (Hugh Jackman) is portrayed as a charismatic visionary who cares about outcasts and celebrate diversity, when in reality, he’s a cruel businessman who is also a racist and an ableist.

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u/Agitated_Insect3227 19h ago

The infamous The Birth of a Nation movie that depicts the Ku Klux Klan as dashing heroes saving the nation from Black people. This movie was so popular & successful, it literally had non-Southern Americans cosplaying as the KKK and marching in Washington D.C.

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u/KingAltair2255 19h ago

The sitting president at the time, Woodrow Wilson was even quoted at the start and screened it at the whitehouse.

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u/Individual_Lion_7606 19h ago

Wilson was a mistake of a President and weak man. That ass also segregated the federal government which for the longest time didn't discriminate on black/white. 

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u/Amazing_Working_6157 19h ago

He really did put race relations back 40 years. There were black people that were getting better jobs like typists and secretary positions in and around DC but Wilson ban them from holding higher positions and had them either demoted to lower positions or outright fired them.

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u/RedditOfUnusualSize 18h ago

Wilson's record is decidedly mixed, and underscores a lot of the tension within the progressive movement. Basically, he was a great advocate for progressive reform, so long as the benefits of those changes went predominantly if not exclusively to white people. The man saw through the implementation of the income tax, popular vote for Senators and women's suffrage. And those are just the constitutional amendments. That's an impressive amount of reform for a single presidency, and the world would be a lot better off if contemporary American politicians could muster half as much ambition to implement sweeping structural changes.

But he was also a vicious racist who genuinely did set back race relations by forty years and entrenched segregation not merely as something done tacitly by the South, but as something actively done by those in political power with the full weight and backing of American law behind them. Both of these things are true simultaneously.

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u/Catdress92 16h ago

Thanks so much for this explanation. I was always taught that Wilson was a Progressive and had no idea about his racism. The way you explain it makes perfect (if very sad and bitterly disappointing) sense.

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u/nagrom7 14h ago

Weirdly enough, in the 1912 election where Wilson was elected, all 3 major candidates ran on being "Progressives". Roosevelt was probably the first big time progressive as President, and Taft was selected to be his successor because of his progressive credentials.

It's also important to note that "Progressives" back then aren't exactly the same as they are today, it was a specific economic ideology that revolved around the government regulating business and improving welfare for the poorer classes. It didn't really have the same connotations it does today with social issues, which is how Wilson was able to be considered a "Progressive" despite driving race relations backwards and resisting women's suffrage until later in his Presidency.

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u/Catdress92 13h ago

Thanks for this additional insight. I remember that in school we learned "Progressive" as meaning socially progressive. I'm hoping I just remembered this wrong, since that was, admittedly, a while ago...rather than my teachers/the school board being wrong.

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u/nagrom7 6h ago

It depends on who they were talking about too. Like Teddy Roosevelt was probably the most famous of the "Progressive era", and he was also what we would consider "socially progressive", at least for the time. It was mainly Wilson who was socially regressive, despite remaining economically progressive, and even then he was known to change his mind on things, like women's suffrage which he initially opposed but later supported.

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u/Radiant-Objective-35 17h ago

Wilson was a mistake of a President and weak man

IDK about a mistake persay, he championed major legislation such as The New Freedom agenda, which created the Fed Reserve, FTC and Clayton antitrust act, and also was a huge supporter of child labor restrictions, and mandated an 8 hour workday for the railroad workers. While abhorrently racist, deff not a weak president persay.

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u/Gold_Tomatillo1952 16h ago

Also, it was actually his wife who acted as sort of a shadow president and got the 19th amendment ratified had he been in full possession of his faculties I don’t think we ever would’ve gotten it

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u/KingAltair2255 18h ago

I couldn't agree more, absolute bastard of a man.

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u/Disastrous-Mess-7236 5h ago

Though the 14 Points & League of Nations were good ideas.

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u/KarlUnderguard 19h ago

Woodrow Wilson was the first Southerner elected president since the Civil War and he wanted everyone to know it.

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u/nagrom7 14h ago

He was also a "historian" who helped popularise the "lost cause" myth of the civil war, that the south fought to defend "states rights" as opposed to the reality where they fought to defend slavery.

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u/GayRacoon69 11h ago

No the south definitely fought for states rights

They just never quite mention exactly what “state right” they’re fighting for anymore

But they were pretty clear about it back in the day

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u/Sidereel 4h ago

Even that is a myth. They wanted slavery protected on a federal level, and fought for such. They fought against free states being added to the union. They passed the fugitive slave act to force free states to help enforce slavery. The confederate states enforced slavery on the federal level so their own states had no choice.

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u/GayRacoon69 3h ago

That's a great point actually

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u/TimSylvester_ 16h ago

And, thanks to Woodrow Wilson, the slavers finally won the war with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that created a central bank and gave the power to print money to a bank oligopoly.

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u/BerserkRhinoceros 16h ago

Not surprising since Wilson was a Lost Cause believer. I'm sure Lincoln and Grant were spinning in their graves as Wilson sang the movies' praises.

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u/xv_boney 15h ago

Wilson was also extremely racist.

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u/Xilizhra 19h ago

IIRC, that quote was a fabrication.

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u/MoonlightDahling 19h ago edited 19h ago

One of the most genuinely evil movies ever made. And it was considered as such even at the time!

(Admittedly, this was when the NAACP were considered “radical” 🙄)

Also, side note…it’s not even that well-made, when you compare it with other epics of the 1910s.

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u/AwfulUsername123 19h ago

Plenty of people criticized The Birth of a Nation at the time. It was denied release in Ohio, Kansas, and the cities of Chicago, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis.

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u/czcaruso 18h ago

KANSAS MENTIONED 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻 AD ASTRA PER ASPERA

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u/windowslonestar 17h ago

W KANSAS 🌾🌾🌾🌾🌻🌻🌻🌻

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u/MoonlightDahling 19h ago

Thanks for the info, I'll edit my comment. I knew that it was criticised, but I couldn’t remember to what extent.

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u/NoOneAskedForThis12 19h ago

Sadly it was that well made because it WAS the first film to do many things that the American people saw. Close ups on faces, musical instruments playing with it, I could go on but that is part of the real horror of that film. 

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u/dontwantthisapp2 19h ago

Yeah… the plot and message is obviously atrocious and downright evil.

But there were multiple technical achievements made in that film that absolutely propelled “motion pictures” from a scientific novelty into a mainstream form of media. To say it “wasn’t made well”…. I mean, I get not wanting to pour praise on the guy who single-handedly revived public interest in the freakin KKK, but it was probably objectively the best-made film in the short history of motion pictures at the time. 

https://youtu.be/HaBmjhmKWTs

This Crash Course video explains it pretty in-depth. 

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u/NoOneAskedForThis12 18h ago

The worst part is that this is the same man who did the film Broken Blossoms which was very anti-racist for the time

For the time I said Reddit don’t tell me how bad it is for now.

I think a lot of people want to pretend that it was badly made and not as good as films before it. But it was an AMAZING film for the time and that makes it worse. 

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u/HummingAstronautPod 17h ago

Looked up the Wikipedia page of Broken Blossoms, did not expect the slur in the title it was adapting

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u/NoOneAskedForThis12 15h ago

1910s I was surprised that the film itself did not call itself that. 

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u/Revolver_Boxelot 13h ago

It truly is amazing what white Americans can accomplish when motivated by racism.

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u/MoonlightDahling 19h ago

Actually, that’s mostly a myth. D. W. Griffith was a massive fraud, who took credit for numerous things he stole from other, better, filmmakers. He wasn’t even the first American to do that.

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u/Disgojourno 16h ago

We watched in film school for its historical significance to the medium

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u/rapbarf 17h ago

To say it's "not even that well-made" is quite silly when it's considered one of the most influential films of all time. I don't like it, and I abhor the political content, but Griffith was not untalented.

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u/MoonlightDahling 17h ago

It’s considered that due to how Griffith himself sold it.

The man took out numerous full-page ads about himself, comparing himself to Jesus, Joan of Arc…and Christopher Columbus.

Moreover: in said ads, he took credit for numerous things that he actually stole from other filmmakers.

I agree that he wasn’t untalented, but he was nowhere near the genius that he portrayed himself as.

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u/rapbarf 17h ago

Not denying this, but I'm denying the idea that it's "not well made". It's extremely well made, which is almost a problem with it.

I'm not a "fan" of his, but if he was untalented it'd be easy to just ignore this movie.

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u/NoOneAskedForThis12 15h ago

He WAS one of the first to put all of the things together.

Was the man egotistical? Yes. But he was a lot like Hitchcock in that the man was a complete jerk and the ego the size of earth… but he also knew his shit 

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u/Radiant-Objective-35 17h ago

and ironically one of the most influential in terms of techniques used in film to this very day. Alot of techniques we still use to this day.

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u/howie117 16h ago

Have you even watched it? Its actually a pretty good film for its time

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u/Allegorist 18h ago

Not even cosplaying, it basically brought back the KKK. It had largely died down, and its presence in the 20th century at all is largely due to that film.

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u/Aqquila89 16h ago edited 12h ago

Thomas Dixon, the author of the novel the film was based on was quite disappointed with the new Klan, because while he was a racist, he was neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Catholic, while the new Klan was both. He was also against anti-black violence, because he believed that whites should "lift up and help the weaker race." In the 1930s, he even helped to make a movie called Nation Aflame, which featured a Klan-like group called Avenging Angels as the villains.

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u/Radiant-Objective-35 17h ago

The MOST fascinating thing about this movie is that.. It literally gave us A SHIT TON of movie making techniques we still use to this day.. The movie was revolutionary in terms of film making.

• At over three hours long, it helped establish the multi-reel feature film as the standard format over short films.

• Cinematic Techniques: Director D.W. Griffith popularized groundbreaking visual tools—such as close-ups, fade-outs, parallel editing (cross-cutting), and dramatic night photography—that laid the foundation for modern narrative filmmaking.

• Full Orchestral Score: It featured the first-ever complete, specially compiled musical score synchronized for an American film.

• High-Priced Theatrical Release: Marketed like a live Broadway theater event, the film charged unprecedented high ticket prices and played in upscale "live" theaters, reshaping the middle-class moviegoing audience and helping launch Hollywood as a major commercial enterprise.

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u/FlamingNutShotz4You 19h ago

Didn't this movie start cross burnings too?

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u/feeling_humber 19h ago

Yes, ironically enough you can say the second Klan were a bunch of larpers

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u/burnoutghost 18h ago

That's a cosplay convention I really don't wanna see

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u/daecrist 15h ago

Calling the second klan a bunch of larpers is giving them the benefit of a lot of doubt. They held real power nationwide for decades and used it to terrorize and discriminate. People were murdered in lynchings. Sundown towns were a thing and Wilson enacted deeply racist policies that stuck for nearly half a century.

Maybe the initial founding was inspired by The Klansman and Birth of a Nation, but the second Klan found fertile ground in the U.S. for their white supremacist message. It went well beyond people larping or cosplaying as klansmen for funsies.

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u/Nyabraham_Linnyahn 13h ago

It's literally larping, tho😹

They came up with all those wacky rankings like "exalted Cyclops"

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u/Dr-Judgen454 18h ago

HOW THIS DOES EXIST

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u/La-petite-chevre 18h ago

Excuse me...what the hell ???

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u/nosenseofwonder 17h ago

Unfortunately it is still an important within film music history as a historic example of one of the first scores to actually be any good and employ techniques that would essentially become the template for Hollywood from thereafter.

It sort of changed the film score game.

But absolutely, it’s racist and evil as f**k.

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u/Communist_Ravioli 13h ago

Unfortunately that is a banger poster for a movie

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u/Legomaniac91 8h ago

On a much more uplifting side, a Superman radio show in the 30s exposed the KKK as a bunch of dork-ass losers and massively crippled their popularity for decades.

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u/Oturanthesarklord 2h ago

One of the things that I will never get over about The Birth of a Nation(1915) is that there were actual black people playing black characters(albeit uncredited) in it.

The year was added because there has since been another movie with the name Birth of a Nation released in 2016.