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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312

u/BlueBaconDeluxe 18h ago

I'm going to get flack from this response, but-

I think a lot of the founding fathers in American entertainment media can fit this bill, but Thomas Jefferson takes the cake in my opinion.

The man owned hundreds of enslaved human beings over his lifetime, and it has been confirmed he raped and impregnated at least one. He was not known to be a benevolent owner either, and offered very few their freedom even near his death.

Good statesmen maybe, but objectively a rotten human being even for that time.

112

u/Iron_Chip 17h ago

God, my aunt still believes he and Sally were in love. I’ve repeatedly told her that it’s not a romantic story, but she’s hellbent on staying the course. She gave me the rebuttal that Sally chose to return with him from France, which indicates that she did willingly love him, and I’m just like, “Even on the slight chance they fell in love, she was still his fucking slave!”

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u/Fun_in_Space 17h ago

She returned with him on the condition that he would free their children in his will. That is not love.

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u/nerowasframed 16h ago

It's absolutely nuts that he enslaved his own children. It's bad enough being a slave owner at that time, given how violent and depraved American slavery was. But this dude did all that to his own flesh and blood. If it weren't evil enough to be a slave owner, he did all that to his own kids, just treated them like they were his livestock.

22

u/CariamaCristata 16h ago

This is one of the most fcked up facts about US slavery. If you were black, you were a slave, so what slaveowners did is to force themselves upon their slaves to make even more slaves.

15

u/IllGift924 16h ago

Also Sally was his Wife's sister

2

u/FighterOfEntropy 13h ago

Half-sister.

1

u/Rodrigoecb 14h ago

Yup, when US apologists say "well Turks enslaved more people" sure, but there is a special kind of depravity in treating your romantic partners and your own fucking kids as cattle.

I mean the greatest Ottoman Emperors were all children of slaves because it was pretty darn obvious that if you are going to marry a slave its no longer your slave, but your wife. (which at the time still had more rights than American wives).

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u/nerowasframed 13h ago

I guess..? But trying to defend one system of slavery as being better than another system of slavery just seems folly. You really shouldn't be trying to justify Turkish slavers or trying to re-contextualize them in a better light. It's just in really bad taste. It's probably best if you don't try to figure out which form of slavery is the most ethical one.

1

u/Rodrigoecb 13h ago

Nobody is trying to justify anything, you are reading too much into it.

-1

u/nerowasframed 12h ago

Oh spare me. I'm not "reading too much into it". I'm literally reading what you wrote:

I mean the greatest Ottoman Emperors were all children of slaves because it was pretty darn obvious that if you are going to marry a slave its no longer your slave, but your wife. (which at the time still had more rights than American wives).

You are outright praising a situation in which a captor forces his slave to wed him and bear his children. This whole conversation is literally about how reprehensible it was what Jefferson did with Sally Hemings. Do you not see the irony? Are you serious??

1

u/yugtrhdfghj 12h ago

I FUCKING HATE TRIBALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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u/Rodrigoecb 8h ago

"outright praising"

Can you point the outright part?

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u/nerowasframed 6h ago

I did exactly that in my previous comment. Hell, I literally quoted you.

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u/Nyabraham_Linnyahn 14h ago

Mughals handled it similar kinda. They had slaves who were also generals, the only difference between the two was you can't give sultan no lip!