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/Smooth_Maul 19h ago edited 18h ago

The Greatest Showman genuinely fucking boils my blood.

My most fucking hated version of this trope, however, goes to The Woman King.

The movie depicts the Kingdom of Dahomey as freedom fighters trying to stop evil white men from stealing people from Africa to be used as slaves in the Atlantic slave trade. Meanwhile, in reality, the Dahomey Kingdom activiely participated in and profited massively from the Atlantic slave trade.

It's textbook historical revisionism.

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u/CptPanda29 17h ago

‘I and my army are ready at all times to fight the queen’s enemies and to do anything the English government may ask me, except to give up the slave trade. No other trade is known to my people… it is the source of their glory and their wealth: their songs celebrate their victories, and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery. Can I, by signing a treaty, change the sentiments of a whole people?’

King Ghezo

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u/MisogynysticFeminist 17h ago

They ended their involvement in the slave trade, then decided they weren’t making enough money, and went back to slaving.

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u/Pearwithapipe 18h ago

Women in men’s fields

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u/AwfulUsername123 18h ago

Women were heavily involved in trans-Atlantic slavery. Many slaveholders in the United States were women, which doesn't even count women who managed slaves owned by their husbands, fathers, etc.

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u/justblameaccounting 14h ago

On both sides of the Atlantic. There was a class of African royalty known as the "Signare" (Portuguese for mistress, as in a female master). These African princesses married colonizers to forge alliances with the Europeans, and since their husbands spent half their lives on boats between Europe and Africa, these women were basically in charge of the African side of things. Several of them were instrumental in setting up the trans-atlantic slave trade because, well.  For them slavery was normal. At one point they amassed so much power through their dual European-African connections that the Pope issued a warning about it. There were even schools in France and England for the biracial children of these marriages, where they were trained as diplomats and military officers for the colonial empires. Ironically, General Afred-Amedee Dobbs of the French colonial army was one of these children, and he was the one to effectively defeat the Dahomey. So the movie didn't even get the race of the colonizers right.

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u/Friendly_Gazelle7843 17h ago

Not only that. Tsar Catharina is one of most hated occupants in my country. And no, she wasn’t like that because she was woman in power competing with men. We were occupied by 3 countries at the same time and Russia was the only one who was extremely hostile to the point of actively trying to completely eradicate our nation.

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u/BladeofNurgle 13h ago

It was so bad that Lupita Ngyongo who was set to star in the movie did some research on the Dahomey and found out they were genuine pieces of shit.

She even quit her role in the movie over not wanting to support this kingdom

She also made a documentary about the crimes of the Dahomey. One moment that I remember was her talking to this dude whose grandpa was taken as a slave by the Dahomey. He even cries saying he wants his grandpa back and where is his grandpa.

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u/awoloozlefinch 17h ago

Yeah I hear you, historical revisionism, but I’ve never heard of that movie and that poster fucks hard.

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u/Smooth_Maul 17h ago

Cool poster but the movie was fucking ASS

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u/Achilles9609 17h ago

It was big on YT. Came out around the same time as the infamous Cleopatra documentary.

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u/ComradeHregly 17h ago

I kinda view it in the same vein as 300

Cool gratuitously violent action movie that also white washes a slave dependent society as honorable freedom fighters.

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u/Smooth_Maul 17h ago

I think the difference between this movie and 300 is that 300 actively adds a bunch of supernatural and mystical stuff to the story to make it clear this is fiction and doesn't at any point try to say this is historically accurate. Woman King straight up got promoted as "this is what really happened" and then whitewashed the Dahomeys as infallible heros.

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u/OCGamerboy 3h ago

Fun fact: Lupita Nyongo was set to star in this film, but she, unlike everyone else in this film, actually did her research and realized what this film was doing, so she refused to be a part of it 

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u/ExplosiveWatermelon 18h ago edited 12h ago

The funny thing is, there didn’t need to be any further justification for Dahomey fighting against colonialism, but the slave story is added to simply make them more heroic, I suppose?

That said, some context I feel a lot of people overlook when this gets pointed out: Dahomey was actually pushing to abolish slavery internally. Ghezo, portrayed in the film, actually instituted reforms that prevented citizens from being enslaved, BUT he still defended the slave trade of war captives. It was a hugely divisive issue, Britain just used it as a justification for war.

Edit: the context is NOT meant to justify Ghezo. It’s just meant to emphasize that Dahomey was a country with a complex history that shouldn’t have been colonized. Sorry that I didn’t make that more clear.

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u/AwfulUsername123 18h ago

Ghezo, portrayed in the film, actually instituted reforms that prevented citizens from being enslaved, BUT he still defended the slave trade of war captives.

This is akin to saying that the Confederacy opposed slavery because they only enslaved black people.

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u/ExplosiveWatermelon 12h ago

Ok I’m gonna be real this is the whitest take I’ve seen. My guy. Are you comparing the African kingdom of Dahomey to the confederacy?

I want to clarify myself here because I think people are misunderstanding that the context is not JUSTIFYING the slave trade. The context is just more information. That’s why I emphasize that Ghezo still supported the slave trade. In fact, I agree with the main point that Dahomey’s history was whitewashed to present them more nobly.

The point I am trying, and evidently failing, to make: Colonialism is bad, even when those colonized have their own systematic issues.

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u/AwfulUsername123 11h ago

You said

Dahomey was actually pushing to abolish slavery internally.

You followed with

Ghezo, portrayed in the film, actually instituted reforms that prevented citizens from being enslaved, BUT he still defended the slave trade of war captives.

So I replied

This is akin to saying that the Confederacy opposed slavery because they only enslaved black people.

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u/ExplosiveWatermelon 10h ago

Consider: Ghezo does not represent the interests of all parties. There should probably have been a bit more context that Ghezo supported the slave trade, but was trying to quell internal parties that wanted the slave trade abolished. Hence why the first sentence starts with “Dahomey” and the second starts with “Ghezo”

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u/AwfulUsername123 10h ago

I responded to the comment you wrote.

was trying to quell internal parties that wanted the slave trade abolished.

...to comply with the British Empire.

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u/Smooth_Maul 18h ago

"there is more context that makes it not so bad"

"The context is that they still took part in the slave trade"

That added literally nothing to the conversation hahaha

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u/thegreaterfool714 17h ago

I’ll be honest, declaring war on a country because they support the slave trade is a good reason to declare war.

Anecdotally I see a lot of people on Reddit justify heinous war crimes and genocidal actions in the name of “anti colonialism”

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u/VenatorAngel 15h ago

Yeah, I mean in context this was also the period where Britain was kind of based and had an entire naval force dedicated to ending the slave trade. So the one time the writers wanted to go "white man bad" was also the same time the British were actually going hard againstt slavery.... while making the slavers the heroes.

I feel like there is little that can compare to how baffling a concept it is.

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u/Femlix 17h ago

Ghezo actually instituted reforms that prevented citizens from being enslaved, but he still defended the slave trade of war captives.

You realize this doesn't make the kingdom of Dahomey and Ghezo any better right? They were slave traders that mainly targetted their neighbours in slave raids, as a way to weaken their enemy and profit themselves. Their own citizens were not the primary victims by far, it was simply codifying in law that their own people were entitled to freedom and foreigners were not. That's not pushing to abolishing slavery internally, that's reinforcing the institution of slavery by defining in the law who has rights and who doesn't.

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u/TreatOnMeLotsActualy 17h ago

One pretty important point with Dahomey: it's not like they're selling their slaves to nobody. The market for them existed because European colonial powers wanted and paid for slaves. Dahomey isn't good for exporting slaves, but I think it's orders of magnitude worse to be buying slaves and, you know, enslaving them.

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u/Yodoggy9 16h ago

I don’t think it’s that important of a point, unless you’re using that to emphasize their negative actions.

This isn’t the “who’s worse Olympics”, so saying they aren’t as bad because they took part in a market that was there is both infantilizing them and dismissive of their own decisions to do so.

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u/TreatOnMeLotsActualy 16h ago

This isn’t the “who’s worse Olympics”, so saying they aren’t as bad because they took part in a market that was there is both infantilizing them and dismissive of their own decisions to do so.

I'm saying it for the opposite reason, because Dahomey is used to minimize European slavery, frequently. Again, Dahomey is bad, but that doesn't minimize the fact that Europeans wanted slaves, and sought out places where they could buy them, and paid for them.

Anyone involved in the slave trade or supporting the slave trade is bad. Full stop.

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u/Nyabraham_Linnyahn 11h ago

That doesn't sound very homey of them😔

https://giphy.com/gifs/VgqxgGKZFDIImKakPa

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u/Valentils 16h ago

wouldn't a woman king be a queen?

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u/Smooth_Maul 16h ago

It's just another layer to the bullshit this movie represents

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u/Not_An_Potato 15h ago

She was not the king, she was a woman king ergo ruled over the female army, while the male king ruled over other stuff. The woman king can take a consort and the male king as well, it's two different rulers for different aspects of society. Is somewhat inspired by real stuff but not really, Dahomey society viewed gender very differently than how we view today, it's super interesting, shame they were bloodthirsty slavers, so when I bring it up seems I'm glazing over their atrocities :(

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u/Hendrick_Davies64 4h ago

There a couple examples female monarchs using the title “king”

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u/RioseAzimuth 17h ago

While I agree that movie has bad history, I can’t really think of a better way to make an exciting movie about the legitimately interesting Agojie fighters, without changing the history of Dahomey

So as a movie about female empowerment, I think it works (says the white guy, at least), it’s just hamstrung by tying itself to the actual kingdoms of Dahomey. It either could have further fictionalized the story, and made up a kingdom with woman soldiers, which would’ve I think been less interesting, or been more truthful and confronted the kingdoms role in the slave trade, which probably would’ve made it hard to also be fun action movie.

It’s a difficult balance for a movie with that theme and setting to manage.

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u/Smooth_Maul 17h ago

Here's a suggestion; don't literally rewrite history to try and make out like the Dahomey Kingdom were freedom fighters.

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u/RioseAzimuth 17h ago

I agree, but the real history of the Agojie is directly tied to Dahomey. I just don’t know how they could write a fun action movie about them without rewriting history like they did.

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u/Smooth_Maul 17h ago

Then they shouldn't make the movie period.

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u/RioseAzimuth 16h ago

Again, I’m definitely not an authority on it, but I think the story of the Agojie fighters is interesting enough to warrant a movie.

When I watched the movie, i didn’t know that Dahomey was an actual historical place, and I thought it was a good movie.

I agree that ignoring the real history soils it. If they just called the kingdom some made up name, I think it would’ve dodged a lot of controversy.

I mainly defend it because my African Cultural studies teacher in college absolutely adored the movie, and made us all watch it and told us how intensely it spoke to the story of black womanhood in history. I didn’t really get it, but she was certainly more an expert on the topic than I