History Main / SocietyIsToBlame

* [[{{Hayate no Gotoku}} Hayate]] uses this trope when trying to explain his reasoning for attempting to kidnap Nagi. Only the fact that he fails, horribly, and then saves her from real kidnappers, getting her to take him on as her butler saves him, and starts the real story.

* In 1990, ''TheSimpsons'' exploded onto the pop-culture scene. Bart Simpson almost immediately became the most MoralPanic-inducing public figure of the past decade, not the least because of a line of subversive T-shirts with Bart's image that kids of all ages began sporting on the streets. One of the most notorious had Bart casually explaining: "I'm just the product of a society that's lost its good manners, [[TotallyRadical man]]."

* Unfortunately TruthInTelevision.

Basically, you can either believe this or believe that people are born inherently evil and destined to do crime, and that they do it for no reason at all. Its never society's fault after all; the banker who forecloses on your house to pay off the debts he inflicted on his company, the politician who put in place laws which prevent a felon from getting a job, then expect them to survive on air when they cancel benefits; no, it is the man and the man alone who is to blame. The old 'man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his family' idea; why, he's a dirty criminal and should have got a job.

* Parodied in ''FamilyGuy'':
-->'''Brian''': Those are some bad roaches.\\
'''Hotel manager''': I blame the schools.

** The big {{Wall Banger}} in this whole thing is that they never imply that the main characters have figured it out enough to want to fix it. They're happy to keep putting mutant criminals in prison forever? They don't want to fix things so that society stops creating more?

* Done satirically in ''GrandTheftAuto: San Andreas''. When the player beats or kills someone or steals a car, CJ will sometimes spout lines like "''I'' blame society!"

** ''Monty Python Live at the Hollywoood bowl'': "All right: we'll arrest them instead."

The TropeCodifier was the legendary American defense attorney Clarence Darrow (best known for defending John Scopes in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial Scopes Monkey Trial]]), who defended a pair of young NietzscheWannabe [[ForTheEvulz thrill killers]], Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, by arguing that society had twisted their minds. Though everyone expected them to hang, they got off with life sentences.

The TropeCodifier was the legendary American defense attorney Clarence Darrow (best known for defending John Scopes in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial Scopes Monkey Trial]], who defended a pair of young NietzscheWannabe [[ForTheEvulz thrill killers]], Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, by arguing that society had twisted their minds. Though everyone expected them to hang, they got off with life sentences.

->''"He's only a lad, you really can't blame him\\
Only a lad, society made him\\
Only a lad, he's our responsibility, oh oh oh\\
Only a lad, he really couldn't help it\\
Only a lad, he didn't want to do it\\
Only a lad, he's underprivileged and abused\\
Perhaps a little bit confused, oh oh oh..."''
-->-- '''OingoBoingo'''

->'''Robin Hood''': I've seen knights in armor panic at the first hint of battle. And I've seen the lowliest, unarmed squire pull a spear from his own body, to defend a dying horse. Nobility is not a birthright. It's defined by one's actions.
-->-- '''Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves'''

Basically, you can either believe this or believe that people are born inherently evil and destined to do crime, and that they do it for no reason at all. Its never society's fault after all; the banker who forecloses on your house to pay off the debts he inflicted on his company, the politican who put in place laws which prevent a felon from getting a job, then expect them to survive on air when they cancel benefits; no, it is the man and the man alone who is to blame. The old 'man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his family' idea; why, he's a dirty criminal and should have got a job.

Basically, you can either believe this or believe that people are born inherently evil and destined to do crime, and that they do it for no reason at all. Its never society's fault after all; the baker who forecloses on your house to pay off the debts he inflicted on his company, the politican who put in place laws which prevent a felon from getting a job, then expect them to survive on air when they cancel benefits; no, it is the man and the man alone who is to blame. The old 'man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his family' idea; why, he's a dirty criminal and should have got a job.

* ''NewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh'':

* ''TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh'':

-->-- '''Oingo Boingo'''

* The classic example would be ''[[Robin Hood]]'', where the peasants must resort to crime to survive the impossible taxation inflicted on them to pay for their king's war.

This trope is sort of a crossbreed between InherentInTheSystem and FreudianExcuse. Also known by the fancy name of "social determinism." Often a cause of UnfortunateImplications. See RousseauWasRight for one cause of this kind of thinking. Contrast TheFarmerAndTheViper, in which the evil ''is'' inherent.

"We're not bad/We're really good/We just had a bad childhood..."

* The criminals in WestSideStory invoke this mockingly in the song "Gee, Officer Krupke": "We're not bad/We're really good/We just had a bad childhood..."