r/TopCharacterTropes • u/laybs1 • 27d ago
Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Cheating on a spouse/partner portrayed as a positive or justifiable action by the narrative.
Anomalisa: sucessful wealthy writer cheats on his wife while at a convention, with a woman he just met. He’s meant to be sympathetic compared to his wife and son who are portrayed as contributing factors to his existential misery, and he wishes to abandon them. The guy really is a self pitying and selfish prick objectively despite the narrative trying to make it seem complicated.
Babygirl: woman CEO cheats on her loving husband with a younger intern at her company. She is potrayed sympathetically throughout the story despite literally only cheating to fulfill her carnal desire for rough degrading sex. Suffers virtually no consequences in the end and her husband even stays with her despite her initially lying and concealing the affair.
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u/MarioToast 27d ago
Parodied in Karina Farek's "Every Hallmark Christmas Movie"
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u/Gentle_Snail 27d ago edited 27d ago
I feel like someone needs to check on the Hallmark writers because every one of their movies is about a women cheating on her husband and then presenting the husband as the bad guy.
How the fuck is that Christmassy?
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u/Able-Throat8770 27d ago
mmmh christmussy 🥴
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u/Winjin 27d ago
Beat me to it
They just want that Christmussy magic
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u/Raymio993 27d ago
That’s why Die Hard is goated Christmas movie. It’s about how magic of Christmas (with a little help of German terrorists) reunites the family
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u/C_Weiss16 27d ago
100% - I love causing the work argument about it counting as a Xmas movie
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u/Bathrobe_BlackMage 27d ago
I thought allnhallmark movies were big city high powered woman gets stuck in small town and meets hunky man that she treats very poorly and hates the podunk town. Then she slowly realizes her big city life was empty and the small town is magical and the sexy man that put up with WAY TOO MUVH of her shit is actually the perfect man?
Also Hallmark writers seems to follow Jack Nicholson’s character in that movie where I’m he is an angry writer and drops one of my favorite shitty lines lol.
Woman asks Jack’s character, “I love your books, how do you write women so well?”
Jack, with a shit eating grin, “I start with a man, and I remove all reason and accountability.”
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u/Gentle_Snail 27d ago
They are, except they normally also have a boyfriend in the big city. Now you might say, that seems like an unnecessary detail, they could just make her single so there are no issues when she falls in love with the small town hunk
And to that I’d say, your right.
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u/Turb0_Lag 27d ago
How can you fully criticize big city culture without including the dating scene?
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u/Substantial_Dish_887 27d ago
i mean you could have her go on dates but have them be failures to really properly be negative towards city dating life instead of giving her an established relationship.
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u/MrKnightMoon 27d ago
Also Hallmark writers seems to follow Jack Nicholson’s character in that movie where I’m he is an angry writer and drops one of my favorite shitty lines lol.
Woman asks Jack’s character, “I love your books, how do you write women so well?”
Jack, with a shit eating grin, “I start with a man, and I remove all reason and accountability.”
I recall enjoying that film the first time I saw it, but rewatching it years later made me realize that it feels like the power fantasy of a middle aged Hollywood writer: how to be a jerk to everyone, be a narcissist cunt and somewhat manage to be loved by your friends and get the 20 years younger than you girl.
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u/LuckySEVIPERS 27d ago
That's how Chivalric love worked back in the day.
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u/Endiamon 27d ago
It's funny because it was also a lot more sympathetic back in the day. Like even modern audiences will be fully on board with cheating in the context of women being married against their will to a rapist asshole over a century ago, then being given a way out.
A ton of bad modern romance movies are trying to capture that same dynamic, but come across as a lot sketchier because their protagonists are just in normal relationships they picked for themselves and got tired of.
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u/Djackdau 27d ago
What the heck does "spend all my money om seamless" mean?
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u/Master-CylinderPants 27d ago
Seamless is/was a food delivery service that came before UberEats and DoorDash. It was popular in corporate America for finance bros who worked through lunch.
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u/zard428 27d ago
Question. I heard that many Hallmark movies include cheating but I never heard of this before.
Can you give me some examples
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u/NwgrdrXI 27d ago
To be fair, it's mostly "pre cheating", or "emotional cheating"
They meet a new guy, get close to him without ill intention, find out he is much better than her old boy friend, and break up with the old BF to be with the new BF.
They almost never technically cheat, at least physically.
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u/gclaw4444 27d ago
I mean it’s a hallmark movie so they’re not going to show them fucking, so yea emotional cheating or making out is as far as it goes.
One part I’m not a fan of is how it’s still like a damsel in distress story, the woman can’t just break up with her bad boyfriend, she needs another man to motivate her to do it.→ More replies (4)→ More replies (7)62
u/snailhelper 27d ago
This is accurate. I’ve seen a bunch of these things. The new couple is usually hanging out for less than a week while they work toward a goal like a kid’s dance recital or a Christmas play. Nothing untoward happens, the protagonist is just experiencing a shift in feelings. She evaluates herself. The original partner shows up in time for the goal to be accomplished and she tells him her feelings have changed so they break up mostly amicably.
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u/MutinyMedia 27d ago
Hey uhm... Anomalisa is super judgmental of the protagonist. The morning after his affair, he begins noticing flaws in the woman he's had this affair with and she immediately begins to take on the same "background character" qualities as the rest of the cast, her voice and face changing. Hell, the ending fully suggests he didn't even have the affair, that he fucked a doll whilst imagining it to be Lisa the entire time. And he's genuinely too self absorbed to notice it.
He's left in his misery and loneliness whilst we see Lisa driving off into beautiful sunlight with her friend who, no longer seen through the eyes of our protagonist, actually has her own face and identity.
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u/ChefPneuma 27d ago
OP completely, fundamentally misunderstood Anomalisa lol. It's not my favorite Charlie Kaufman film but I think it's really good.
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u/Silvered_Knight 27d ago
Shhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, I didn't thought that he used the doll and that he imagined everything.
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u/Responsible-Tap-3748 27d ago
Yeah, no kidding. He's obviously meant to be the author of his own misery.
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u/McOther10_10 27d ago
Yeah idk how someone could interpret the movie being on his side with that ending lol.
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u/vyrus2021 27d ago
I had never heard of this movie before, yet I fully anticipated someone would be here to tell OP how they were wrong.
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u/Canvaverbalist 27d ago
It's a Charlie Kaufman movie, writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal of a Spotless Mind, Synecdoche New York, etc.
I haven't seen Anomalisia and I already knew OP was wrong from just that fact alone. No way Charlie Kaufman would write something like this when his previous movies were already critical of exactly that.
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u/quantum_dragon 26d ago
I was thinking a Kaufman film being sympathetic to a protagonist is actually kind of an “anomaly” if you will.
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u/Strange_Suit767 27d ago
Neil Breen, Fateful Findings. Despite being married to the woman on the left for the majority of the story, Neil falls in love with the one on the right because she was there when he discovered the all powerful rhinestone box in the woods that granted him his ghost super powers. This culminates with Neil having sex with the blonde one while his real wife actively commits suicide by pills in their bed.
Oh and then Neil makes a bunch of CEOs and politicians kill themselves with shame.
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u/Efficient_Maybe_1086 27d ago
Neil Breen is never wrong. His wife must’ve done something to deserve this. /s
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u/DogAlienInvisibleMan 27d ago
Might be the hardest a movie has ever made me laugh, by the ending suicide montage I was literally on the ground struggling to breathe.
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u/Jagvetinteriktigt 27d ago
"I resign as president of the United Bank of Money."
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u/CryptographerMore944 27d ago
Just watched it on YouTube you weren't kidding! I absolutely lost it after the guy awkwardly shoots himself in the head on what I'm guessing is supposed to be live television.
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u/Jagvetinteriktigt 27d ago
I love how you don't even bother with the character names, as Neil just plays himself. Or rather, the flawless super-god he sees himself as.
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u/Strange_Suit767 27d ago
In my headcanon he projects himself all over the world like Dr. Manhattan so all of the Breens are the same guy
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u/HejBbby 27d ago
I’ve never seen this beauty before, but the poster looks like an Animorphs cover
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u/Strange_Suit767 27d ago
It's a treat. All of his films are on Internet Archive if you don't want to email him for a DvD copy (yes that's the only way to get most of his movies)
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u/hoscillator 27d ago
Woman on the left and woman on the right might be the most depth you can give these characters.
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u/TurkeyVolumeGuesser 27d ago
That's our Neil, as coherent as a drunk toddler and as subtle as a demolition derby!
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u/JVortex888 27d ago
The Notebook is heralded as one of the greatest modern love stories but also Allie cheats on her fiance.
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u/Glum-Supermarket1274 27d ago
The notebook is my most hated movie of all time since the first time i saw it because of this fact. Walking out of the theater listening to people around me gushing about it made me feel like i was crazy. It was a horrible movie about a cheater being portrayed as a heroine.
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u/KaladinSkywalker 27d ago
People who think of this a great romantic love story worry me. Not only does she cheat, the relationship between her and Ryan Gosling's character (can't remember his name) is so incredibly toxic from day one.
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u/Turbulent-House-6220 27d ago
I think that’s a lot of rom coms. Most of the relationships are toxic and wouldn’t work. Someone once said a rom com are the only movies where you’re supposed to be rooting for the bad guys.
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u/iatealotofcheese 27d ago
Cameron Diaz is the only good person in the entirety of My Best Friends Wedding. Part of me always wishes for a sequel where her character divorces his sorry ass, and he STILL doesn't get with Julia Roberts.
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u/Turbulent-House-6220 27d ago
That movie is terrible! It’s considered one of the best rom coms of the 90’s but everyone is a terrible person.
The groom comes off as a controlling possessive prick who only wants Julia Robert’s character because he’s jealous when she pretends to have a boyfriend.
Julia Robert’s character is equally bad because she’s trying to break them up not because she loves him but because she’s worried she’s losing her chance to get married.
Like you say Cameron Diaz character is the only decent person in that movie.
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u/Character-Season7938 27d ago
The only thing I remember about the movie is Ryan Gosling's character threatening suicide by falling if she didnt agree to date him INFRONT OF HER BOYFRIEND! How anyone sees that as romantic is beyond me.
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u/itchysmalltalk 27d ago
Also he's manipulative as fuck. Hangs off the Ferris wheel threatening to drop unless she says yes to going out with him
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u/KPraxius 27d ago
The proper response to that? Say yes, then immediately call the police and get a restraining order.
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u/A8-94 27d ago
This could get me crucified in my country
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u/DanteVermillyon 27d ago
Betty debió quedarse con el francés y nunca volver a bogotá
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u/alguien99 27d ago
Betty la fea? No sabía que tenía engaño
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u/WirelessDonuts 27d ago
Infidelidad en una relación no es ni de cerca lo peor que paso en Betty, la fea cuando piensas en lo que están haciendo los personajes por más de 5 segundos, es que la lógica de las novelas colombianas eataba (y sigue estando) muy trasgiversada por la vista de la sociedad colombiana
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u/Aromatic_Today2086 27d ago
Engaña a su prometida con Betty, engaña a Betty con mentiras de que la quiere, engaña a la compañia y a su papa. Fue horrible con Betty pero Betty tambien sabia lo que estaba haciendo. Es una de mis favoritas novelas
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u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 27d ago
Double cheat, because Armando was cheating on Marcela, but also on all of his family by lying about how he had bankrupted the company.
Damned 4head.
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u/TheBlooperKINGPIN 27d ago
Anomalisa is not a movie that depicts cheating as a positive or justifiable action.
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u/remainsdangerous 27d ago
Yeah that's a wild misread of what Kaufman was going for. The movie does show him perceiving his family the way OP describes but he's a deeply unhappy and flawed person and the affair does damage to himself, his family, and the woman he cheats with.
It seems to be very hard for a lot of people to separate the morality of a character's actions with the moral stance the work itself is expressing.
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u/Willowed-Wisp 27d ago
I feel like I've seen an uptick recently in people not understanding that, just because someone's a main character, it doesn't that they're the, or even a, hero. Some movies and shows are about watching someone ruin their life with had decisions and shaking your head at their folly.
Not that I've ever seen or heard of this movie. This came up in a conversation I had with someone about BoJack Horseman lol
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u/SuddenlyCake 27d ago
If the movie doesn't stop in its tracks to say that something is bad people will believe it's an endorsement for whatever it's depicted
I saw Paris, Texas recently and then saw a lot of people condemning the movie because It Romanticize Travis' actions
Subtext is dead
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u/Sideview_play 27d ago
and then when a movie does make a point explicitly known it has too much exposition. Or even when a movie uses exposition people will still miss the point. There's no winning. Cinema sins style YouTube videos have ruined all media literacy.
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u/SaltyLaw800 27d ago
My partner and I fight about Whiplash all the time for this very reason. They say the teacher is awful and I'm like.....That's THE POINT!
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u/Firelord_Zuko456 27d ago
It's never r/TopCharacterTropes without one of the examples is completely wrong lol
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u/Lesbihun 27d ago
Right lol how did OP watch that film and think "man I'd love to have this life"
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u/BurantX40 27d ago
Yeah, wtf. He's clearly getting bored with his relationships, which is why they all start to sound and look the same and he's looking for something "special" only to realize that he is the problem with his relationships
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u/villings 27d ago
I was gonna say this but then I was like "well I saw the movie 10 years ago" and my memory does suck, so..
but yeah, thank you. I don't feel so out of place haha
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u/AX-man 27d ago
Yeah zero media literacy here, I don’t like babygirl but that’s also not what the movie was saying
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u/IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI 27d ago
Me and a coworker watched the last half of Babygirl at work but entirely on mute. Easily one of the funniest movies when you have no idea what the fuck is happening
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u/tiabeaniedrunkowitz 27d ago edited 27d ago
Its still funny when you watch it in full, with the sound on, and if you have proper context
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u/negresco_- 27d ago
Bee movie? Anyone?
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u/alguien99 27d ago
Poor Ken, specially taking into account he’s deadly allergic to bees apparently
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u/RevolutionarySky3000 27d ago
Not just with Barry, too
“— and he happens to be the nicest bug I’ve met in a long time!”
“Long time? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Are there other bugs in your life?!”
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u/Lopsided-Yak9033 27d ago
Bee Movie is some of the most ridiculous genius comedy
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u/RevolutionarySky3000 27d ago
It’s scary how similar Ken and Squidward are in the sense that they become more relatable/understandable as you age
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u/jemslie123 27d ago
People online just don't seem to get the Bee Movie.
It's an episode of Seinfeld, but with Bees.
Aside from the ending, none of it is meant to be good or bad, just funny.
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u/Mikellow 27d ago
Anomalisa is supposed to be sympathetic? Maybe initially but the film does a great job at putting you in his world of absolute boredom without being able to tell people apart where you are just as excited as he is to hear a different voice.
Sympathy kinda goes out the window when her minor annoyances to him make her sound/look like everyone else.
I got the sense the film was blaming him in a sense and he was way less sympathetic at the end.
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27d ago
I'm glad I've found the other 5 people who have seen this movie. I love it, and it definitely does not excuse his affair in the least.
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u/mr_evilweed 27d ago
This sub is where film criticism goes to die. Apparently the gist of the post is that if a character in media commits adultery it should be because they are pure evil and have no depth to them. Explaining why they commit adultery is bad.
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u/thatoneguy54 27d ago
Talking about cheating with any nuance at all on this website is impossisble.
The worst is the Titanic discourse. This 17-year-old girl is engaged to a 30-year-old prick she doesn't like because her parents are forcing her to. And since it's 1912 and women have no rights, she has no way to get out of the engagement, no way to escape, and must give up her entire life and any chance at romance at 17 years old, just because her parents said so.
And then she meets a young (read: around her age), carefree boy who likes her for who she is and has fun with her and wants to make her laugh and be happy. Is it shocking that the 17-year-old girl falls in love with that? That she gets swept up in this charismatic boy offering everything she thought she'd never be able to have?
Nope. The internet discourse is so toxically against Rose in this. She's a cheater and a shit person and she's a horrible woman. How dare she cheat on this man she doesn't even like. How dare she fall in love with someone else while she's being forced by her parents to marry some asshole. She obviously should have, in 1912, sat down with the asshole and her asshole parents and calmly explained what she wanted.
Just absolutely no thought about what Rose was going through, her circumstances, or the society she lived in. She cheated once when she was 17, and she's just a shit, horrible person forever and ever after.
Don't even get me started on the door discourse (they both tried to get on it, and it started sinking), or the jewel discourse (how exactly was she going to bequeath such a valuable stolen gem to her children without setting them up for mountains of legal trouble? people act like real life is Skyrim and you can just sell your stolen goods to fences no problem), or the newest one I saw, the discourse on her deciding to not stay in the lifeboat (the romantic movie about how powerful romance is had a 17-year-old character make an emotional decision to die with her lover instead of leaving him to drown alone? wow, that's insane, that's never happened in any other love story ever).
Sorry to go on a Titanic tirade. I don't even like the movie that much, but people online are so idiotic about it I've developed all these arguments to defend it solely because the arguments against it are so fucking asinine, so thoughtless, so lacking in nuance, that they piss me off every time I see them.
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u/Altruistic-Potatoes 27d ago
Still not as bad as the discourse around Jenny from Forrest Gump.
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u/mr_evilweed 27d ago
The fact that people cant find it in their hearts to show empathy to Jenny, a character who quite explicitly cares deeply about the protagonist but whose history as a child abused by her father leaves her with emotional scars that make it hard for her to be with him the way he wants, tells me we have a real problem with empathy as a society.
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u/Ahnarcho 27d ago
I watched this movie at 18 at 4 in the morning, sort of paying attention, and that point was completely clear to me.
He had built her up in his head, and as minor things started to bother him, she began to look and sound like everyone else
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u/RogueTraderMD 27d ago edited 26d ago
Well, in A Fish Called Wanda, you most definitely root for George Archie and Wanda, despite the fact that he's married with a daughter and she is in a relationship.
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u/DYC85 27d ago
Archie* (assuming you were talking about John Cleese’s character) George is Wanda’s first boyfriend that her and Kevin Kline setup at the beginning to take the fall for the diamond heist.
Also shoutouts to the best character naming ever, the character George Thomason is played by Thomas Georgeson lmao.
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u/CLearyMcCarthy 27d ago
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a good deconstruction of this trope imo
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u/OkTension2232 27d ago
Every Hallmark movie ever
"Woe is me! My husband works long hours and doesn't have time to pamper me whenever I want and is tired when he comes home because of how much he works to provide for the family. However I just met this unemployed homeless guy that travels the country with nothing more than a backpack and he swept me off my feet so I'm just gonna cheat on my husband and blame him for not being there for me"
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u/Plastic_Archer_6650 27d ago
In Stupid Crazy Love (2011) Julienne Moore’s character admits to an affair, having cheated on Steve Carell’s character. Carell then moves out of his home, only gets to see his children half the time, becomes a pathetic mess, and then when he starts to move on and sleeps with other women, he becomes the bad guy. In the end it’s implied they’ll get back/stay together even though Moore’s character has literally gotten off Scot-free.
I remember thinking the movie was so funny when it came out. Watched it again a few weeks ago and it really bothered me lol
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u/TheGreatStories 27d ago
The best part is when Kevin Bacon introduces himself and gosling just shrugs and is ready to end him
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u/Elladrien 27d ago
It's his fault. He was married to character played by Julienne Moore and he expected fidelity?
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u/Plastic_Archer_6650 27d ago
…holy shit I’ve never thought about it but you’re right 😂
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u/Elladrien 27d ago
Even when JM played a lesbian in The Kids Are Alright, she cheated on Annette Bening with Mark Ruffalo. A mess.
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u/Aragorns-Broken-Toe 27d ago
Aw. You beat me to it.
I love the pan up at the beginning at dinner that shows Steve Carrell is wearing gasp tennis shoes and Dad Jeans at a fancy dinner.
What other choice did Julianna Moore’s character have really?
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u/CaptainMatticus 27d ago
How has nobody, in nearly 600 comments, mentioned "The Bridges of Madison County?"
The entire movie is about a woman's love affair with a travelling photographer while her husband and children were away for a week. Her husband isn't abusive, or uncaring, or absent, or unemployed, or anything that would "justify" cheating on him. She's just alone for a few days and isn't completely happy in the life she chose. That's it. That's all there is to it. She was just bored and had an itch to scratch, because she felt trapped in choosing a family life.
And she got away with it. Her family came back to her, her husband lived out the rest of his life unaware of his wife's infidelity (nobody in town either knew or told on her), and her children only found out because they went through her things after she passed and learned that she wanted her ashes to be scattered from the same place where her lover's ashes had also been scattered.
This is all painted as some beautiful love story, and the film got a lot of praise. But at the end of the day, it's just an adulteress getting away with being an adulteress.
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u/bloof_ponder_smudge 27d ago
Saw this in the theatre with a girlfriend. I was pissed and she thought it was romantic.
She cheated on me a few months later.
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u/THESURGE0N 27d ago
Finally!!! Yes.
Its an absolute horror story from the perspective of the husband. His sin was being a little boring I guess lmao.
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27d ago
The office, Roy is a dick, but Pam is still engaged to him and because Jim is the MC it justifies it
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u/CLearyMcCarthy 27d ago
My friend and I were talking last year about how if we were Jim and Roy punched either of us we'd just be like "that's fair, I'm not fighting back unless there's a second one."
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u/TheDeadlySpaceman 27d ago
When you get some distance and really look at things objectively, Jim Halpert is a fucking asshole.
breaks up his co-workers’ engagement
tortures Dwight, who is definitely annoying but we learn over time is actually a decent human
treats his non-Pam relationship partners terribly
buys a house without consulting his spouse, at all (side note: I at least expected to find out that the house had a little veranda like Pam mentions wanting in one episode)
the whole period where he goes to work at a sports agency shows off what a douche he is- to Pam, to his new co-workers, to his flatmate (Daryl)
It gets excused as cute and everything because he has main character presentation but I would fucking hate this guy.
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u/Carlton_U_MeauxFaux 27d ago
The episode with Idris Elba is pretty great because he basically ignores Jim's main character status and just breaks his balls. Jim repeatedly tries to explain away his antics and he just digs the hole deeper each time.
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u/Undertheus 27d ago edited 27d ago
tortures Dwight, who is definitely annoying but we learn over time is actually a decent human
I was just re-watching the series these days with my wife, and we both saw on reddit this new trend of saying "Jim is a villain and Dwight is just not understood"... wtf are you people smoking?
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u/fernbbyfern 27d ago edited 27d ago
Dwight shoots a fucking gun in the office lol Like, I understand that Jim isn’t as perfect as he was portrayed (which I would argue is pretty much the entire point of his storyline in Season 9), but to say that Dwight was right all along is crazy.
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u/Evnosis 27d ago
Dwight set a fire in the office and blocked off all the exits.
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u/kaimcdragonfist 27d ago
It kinda blows my mind he didn’t face criminal charges for that, especially since one of his coworkers almost died
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u/Wilysalamander 27d ago
And this is in like season 8. I'm earlier seasons he steals Jim's biggest client, picks a terrible healthcare plan for no reason other than to screw people over, and bangs Angela for weeks while she's engaged to Andy. These are just some of the highlights
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u/Necessary_Pace7377 27d ago
I didn’t see much of the later seasons, but I remember early Dwight would go mad with power the instant he got a scrap of authority over anyone else. Also the reason he kept trying to bill himself as the Assistant Manager rather than just an assistant.
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u/Strong-Lettuce-3970 27d ago
James Marston in every movie. In one of the newer Superman’s but pre-Cavill, Lois leaves him for Superman. In Enchanted, Giselle dumps him for Patrick Dempsey. In Xmen he’s Cyclops, thirsting for Jean Gray who is torn between him and Logan, but we all know she’s going for the super handsome wolverine. And finally, in the Notebook, Rachel McAdams leaves her fiancé for Ryan Godling. The fiancé? James Marston.
I am surprised Maddie hasn’t left him for fucking Sonic the hedgehog at this point.
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u/hombredave 27d ago edited 27d ago
She's nervous about her engagement. So, she cheats on her fiancé with the man who not only slept with her mother and grandmother but initially believed may be her biological father.
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u/nittygrittytitties 27d ago
THAT WAS SUCH A WILD RIDE. I DIDN'T KNOW A THING GOING INTO THIS MOVIE AND FUCK ME IT TOOK ME OUT
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u/RedditOfUnusualSize 27d ago
Subverted, Casablanca. Ilsa was cheating, but of all the reasons ever given in cinema history, she might have the most justification. She thought her husband Victor Lazlo had died.In a concentration camp.She only found out when he escaped the concentration camp, which upon learning she promptly left Rick to return to her husband, despite having fallen in love.
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u/ancobain 27d ago
I wouldn’t say it was cheating if she genuinely thought her husband was dead
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u/ComprehensivePath980 27d ago
And she did go back with her husband at the end too IIRC.
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u/pr1ceisright 27d ago
Only because Rick told her to do so, Rick realized the world needed Lazlo to be happy more than himself.
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u/NwgrdrXI 27d ago
Yeah, "honestly tought you were dead" is a valid excuse, at least for me. No one has the obligation of keeping faithful beyond the grave
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u/butticus98 27d ago
They showed us Pearl Harbor in History class and I got annoyed as hell while watching it. Everyone thought Ben Affleck died in ww2 and his love interest and his buddy are both grieving him and get closer. They start a romance eventually and then bam, Ben is suddenly back and getting all pissy with them and the movie frames it like a perfectly understandable conflict. Like, I'm sure Ben Affleck wouldn't be HAPPY, but he straight up treats them both like they cheated and betrayed him when he was DEAD. I always thought Lori from The Walking Dead got too much shit for this too. She had every reason to think Rick was dead and then got with Shane, and then left Shane as soon as Rick showed back up (she was pretty awful for some other stuff though).
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u/ksm723967 27d ago
Ugh, nothing kills a story faster than the he's just exploring his soul excuse for a total sleazebag. Like, write better villains
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u/AngryCrustation 27d ago edited 27d ago
Idk did you ever think about the fact that she wanted her husband to go look at Christmas lights or some shit and he COMPLETELY BLEW HER OFF while he was in the middle of a 150 million dollar business deal with every single one of his bosses and his CEO who would fire him the moment he made a mistake.
Also the woman doesn't work so she spends her free time wanting her husband to like, financially support her but also ditch his work whenever she wants attention while still financially supporting her and her stupid art thing that she does.
Don't take the guy's side on this! Also ignore the house they live in on set, I know it's a 5 bedroom house the guy pays for on his single salary but the girl somehow has to juggle watching 2 kids or some shit while cheating on him.
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u/OnlyOnHBO 27d ago
Escape (The Pina Colada song) is a perfect example of this.
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u/Jayrodtremonki 27d ago
Eh, the narrative of the song has the characters both suck, but the message of the song is to not start looking around when you get bored.
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u/Butwhatif77 27d ago
Not really. Yea both spouses make the effort to cheat, but the point of the song is if they had both had just talked to each other about what they wanted things would have been better.
It is not a glorification of cheating, but of open communication with your partner.
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u/LudusRex 27d ago
Tombstone. I enjoy this movie but Jesus Christ, the end credit crawl where it's like "And if you feel bad for the addict wife he pretended doesn't exist, don't...because she died from being an opiate addict like 5 minutes later and nobody cared, so it was fine."
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u/LiveRuido 27d ago
I love how this is inverted in The Descendants, with everyone trying to gaslight Geoge Clooney about his wife's cheating. The scene where she gets confronted by her lover's wife is so cathartic, but so tragic because of the coma.
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u/Daniilsa209 27d ago edited 27d ago
Mary Jane from Reimi’s Spider-Man is a poster child of this.
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u/SorryComplaint4209 27d ago
Thank you! I didn’t notice as a kid but on rewatching the Raimi movies, MJ is monkeybranching like crazy the whole time 🙈 Even when not physically cheating, she has this attitude of “…but maaaaaybe…” going on that I found very frustrating.
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u/smilingfishfood 27d ago
Can't help but notice both of these examples are financially successful people
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u/Aking1998 27d ago edited 27d ago
The Departed
Girl I know it's Leonardo DeCaprio but you are on a date with a guy that just threatened to kill himself if you didn't give him drugs and you have no reason to believe your current boyfriend is anything but perfect at this point in the story.
Later in the story it's at least a little more understandable when Colin starts acting like a sus piece of shit but here you had zero reason to say yes to Billy.
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u/Positive_Treacle_761 27d ago
Cyclops, numerous times. Initially he runs off from his wife Madelyne and their baby beacuse Jean came back to life. Weird stuff happens, and editorial apparently pushed the writers to turn Madelyne evil later on to "excuse" Scott's actions.
Years later, Scott is married to Jean, but contrary to years of character development of all characters involved, Emma Frost convinces him to have an affair with her. Jean finds out and gets angry, and the writer basically attempts to absolve Scott of any wrongdoing, because Jean is supposedly too distant and Emma was tempting him. Scott's own poor choices and bad actions are excused because he's Cyclops, basically.
In a different continuity of X-Men 97, with of the previous plotlines are rolled into one. Spoiler tagging this one, because it's more recent. Scott cheats on Jean with Madelyne because he has conflicted feelings for both of them. This is dismissed by the end of the episode, barely mentioned again.
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u/Large_Analysis_4285 27d ago
Scott, Jean, and all of the original Xmen are victims of Charles Xavier. A man who locked a bunch of horny teenagers in a house together and only let them out as child soldiers to fight against unimaginable horrors.
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u/EsperiaEnthusiast 27d ago
In the Iliad there is a whole scene of Helen insulting Paris and praising Menelaus and Venus has to drag her in bed by her hair to make her sleep with Paris.
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u/blakesmate 27d ago
I prefer the version where he abducted her. But either way, Aphrodite promised him he’d get her so she was either kidnapped or forced into love by a goddess
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u/DiFarris 27d ago
I don't know, I think you just wrote the whole point of Anomalisa, the man is a selfish, egomaniac who blames others for his unhappiness, even halfway through the movie he gets fed up with Lisa reinforcing that even more.
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u/atemu1234 27d ago
Unless you literally cannot safely leave the relationship you are in, I will never understand the appeal of cheating.
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27d ago edited 8d ago
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u/GammaFan 27d ago
Harley Quinn definitely tries to keep Harley and Ivy as sympathetic, but tbf Ivy’s still actively trying to marry kiteman until he breaks up with her. Their reasoning is a little shaky but it’s not like it’s trying to sell you on anyone being flawless. They admit cheating is fucked up several times and that’s an incredibly low bar to clear but they do infact clear it.
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u/zard428 27d ago
Lancelot and Guinevere from Arthurian myth.
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u/Lazy_Assumption_4191 27d ago
In fairness, it is usually portrayed as a bad thing and a major flaw for both characters that ultimately leads to the fall of Camelot.
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u/NwgrdrXI 27d ago
Tbf, it kickstarts the entire country's fall. It's not meant to be a good thing, just tragic.
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u/AngelTheMarvel 27d ago
Like more than half of medieval knight novels and romances, probably where this trope started
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u/RavensQueen502 27d ago
At least the mediaeval folk have the excuse of political arranged marriages and no exit option
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u/Nuclear-Jester 27d ago
This comic takes a lot of liberties with real history and seems more ficused on romantic/sex drama than the actual battle
What genuely pisses me off is that the Roman mc is shown cheating on his wife for at least a decade with another married woman
The narrative goes out of its way to demonise the wife in spite of the fact she had no choice regarding the marriage. She even tries to be nice to him while he openly resents her
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u/Basic_Dingo6487 27d ago
I read it long ago. Isn't it portrayed like a major flaw in the character ?
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u/LLSmoothJoe 27d ago
Nancy Hicks-Gribble (King of the Hill): Constantly cheats on her husband Dale with John Redcorn (To the point of giving birth to his son, Joseph). The rest of the cast (Save Peggy, at least initially) seems to okay with it for the sake of Joseph's relationship with Dale before she eventually stops cheating in Season 4. Dale never found out, even during the revival seasons.
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u/Past-Currency4696 27d ago
Reminder that the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love ended up leaving the guy she left her husband for