Audience-Alienating Premise cleanup

Bratz

• Audience-Alienating Premise: An In Name Only Live-Action Adaptation of a doll line that was losing popularity at the time, with just about every single high school teen movie cliche that you can think of.

I don't think the premise turned people off so much as the lame execution. Cliched teen girl dramas do have an audience, as do movies about doll lines. But maybe the "losing popularity" part makes it ambiguous...? Was Bratz really losing popularity by 2007?

Yeah, teen girl dolls targeted at teen girls, im not sure what premise they could have had besides teen girl drama.

I'd like to ask if I can add this for Mishima A Life In Four Chapters or not (like it could be Minority Show Ghetto instead).

• Audience-Alienating Premise: This is most likely the reason it was an Acclaime Flop. Most american audiences didn't even know of Yukio Mishima or his works, not even Japanese-Americans, not helped by large portions being in Japanese. Meanwhile as outlined in Americans Hate Tingle, Japanese audiences found his political views too offputting to watch to the point it went gone straight to TV there with no home release.

Edited by generation81 on Dec 22nd 2023 at 3:38:58 PM

I’m unsure if a lack of familiarity with the work is enough to qualify for this trope or not, so I’ll leave it to further discussion.

Not familiar with the film. The write-up does seem valid to me (a lot better than the previous one, which was very bare-bones), but I'm a bit bothered by the fact that "it was in Japanese" is cited as an audience-alienating trait, even on foreign markets. Is reading subtitles really that difficult?

As I said, I suspect its Minority Show Ghetto.

Found this on YMMV.Lore Olympus

• Audience-Alienating Premise: People who enjoy Greek mythology tend to skip on reading this comic due to the way some of the Gods are portrayed, a few of them written more like original characters created by the author than the deities they are supposed to be. The fact that greek culture and history is rarely present in the comic, aside from brief mentions of it, doesn't help at all.

As much as LO is hated (with justifiable reasons), the comic itself is fairly successful; it was printed in physical form and there is even an animated TV show in the making (but no updates afaiw). So I think this might be misuse.

Agreed, that sounds like using the trope as an excuse to complain.

Just drafting this one - I think it qualifies. Any thoughts?

• Gloriana was commissioned as a new opera to accompany the 1953 coronation of the UK's Queen Elizabeth II. However, Benjamin Britten chose to centre the story on an aged, vain and fallible Elizabeth I, basing it on the book Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. As it's an adaptation, the content wasn't a surprise — and the themes and premise were not what audiences wanted for the grand celebration at the start of Elizabeth II's reign. It was initially a critical failure as well, and wasn't performed again for a decade. The opera was later omitted from the 'complete' works of Britten series, and a recording wasn't released until 1984.

There's actually a radio play (Imo and Ben) covering the whole mess, which is about to be remade as a stage play. I'd mention that as well, but it's already a relatively long example.

Heard about this opera, and it sounds like it qualifies.

Another old work - thoughts on this?

• The Whore Of Babylon: Thomas Dekker's grand play about the Empress of Babylon's conflict with the fairy queen Titania was shelved after a single performance in 1606. Dekker (who didn't attend) angrily blamed the cast for its failure, but later commentary has focused on the muddled and vague way in which it served as a metaphor for the Catholic plots against queen Elizabeth I and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth died three years before the play's debut, new king James I was less antagonistic towards Catholics, and much of the audience didn't know or care much about failed plots from twenty years earlier.

(Much to my surprise, despite Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot the year before, it seems James was still better at religious tolerance than Elizabeth - although that's a low bar)

Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 28th 2024 at 6:07:16 PM

I could see it. A topical play that only debuts decades after being topical could be audience-alienating, especially with monarchies.

I have an entry to propose myself in Theatre:

• Lesser known Inkling member and poet Owen Barfield's Orpheus: A Poetic Drama is an very loose adaptation of the Orpheus myth with heavily Christian takes on the themes of identity, free will, death and resurrection, and eternal salvation. The play took 50 years to be published and has only been performed twice, once in 1948 and once again in 2006. Part of the issue is not only the esoteric and confusing dialogue and happenings in the play, but the play's subject matter; Christians are unlikely to think of a retelling of a Greek myth when looking for Christian plays, while fans of Greek mythology are likely to be turned off by the sheer inaccuracy of the play compared to the source material.

Edited by PhiSat on Jan 29th 2024 at 2:14:48 AM

I'm in a discussion over these examples from AudienceAlienatingPremise.Anime And Manga:

• Gatchaman Crowds never became the big hit many were expecting when it aired. The series is a reimagining of the classic Science Ninja Team Gatchaman with a new group of heroes using video games to help make the world a better place. Gamers weren't interested in the philanthropy concept; while Gatchaman fans were unhappy with the liberties taken with the source material. It did do well enough to get a second season, but it doesn't have anywhere near as many fans as other shows such as Casshern Sins or Yatterman Night; and the next adaptation is planned to be a straighter modernization of the classic series as a result. They argue it getting a second season, more than many others, should put it at successful enough to disqualify it.
• Gate: While the premise of a modern army clashing with an Iron Age fantasy world is in itself not alienating, the story contains strong nationalistic and right wing overtones, generally depicting all countries other than Japan as only interested in exploiting the resources of the other world, versus the almost flawless Japanese characters. On top of that, the series openly admits that Japan intends on doing the same, though it's treated as a good thing. While a moderate success in Japan (helped slightly by it getting a minor promotion from the JSDF), of the current 15 volumes, only the first received a broad foreign release. The anime had a bit more success, but mostly came and went, and failed to make much of a lasting impression on Western audiences (at least compared to others in the genre). They argue if successful in their home market, not APP but Americans Hate Tingle instead.

I'm inclined to agree with these arguments for removal. Thoughts on the matter?

I don't agree with removing AAP entries from outside home countries. Nothing on AAP says anything about home country vs abroad. It's a case of audience reaction overlap with Americans Hate Tingle (often because of Values Dissonance), not misuse on one side.

Edited by PhiSat on Mar 15th 2024 at 12:44:44 PM

I tend to agree.

If it finds an audience in its home market, it sounds like Americans Hate Tingle but not this trope.

It it gets a second season, it's not a Short-Runner and I'm not seeing evidence it falls into the other trope categories used to justify AAP on objective grounds, as listed on the description.

Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 15th 2024 at 6:56:38 PM

From Recap.The Twilight Zone 1959 S 5 E 28 Caesar And Me.

• Audience-Alienating Premise: An Irish stereotype ventriloquist is best friends with his conscious mobster ventriloquist dummy, who sells out the Irish stereotype character and runs off to New York with a young girl. Then the mobster ventriloquist dummy convinces the young girl to kill her aunt with a poison blow dart.

It doesn't say how the audience was supposedly alienated or provide any proof, so yes, cut.

The Flash (2023):

• Audience-Alienating Premise: From the moment the film was announced, audience interest was lukewarm due to several factors which compounded as time passed, so that it largely couldn't shake off the negativity surrounding it and wound up being one of DC's most expensive flops:
  • The film was part of the very divisive DCEU, with Ezra Miller's Flash being based on the modern take on Barry Allen instead of his successor Wally West, which has been a sticking point for DC fans since this take on Barry is a Base-Breaking Character. Apart from that, Miller's portrayal of Barry in both versions of Justice League was one of the more divisive points of those movies.
  • Even for those more receptive to Miller's Barry, the behind-the-scenes drama for the movie and the DCEU at large, like the years it spent in Development Hell trying to lock down directors and scripts, only soured impatient fans waiting for the film to finally come out, and contributed to the DCEU's poor reputation so that many were skeptical the movie would be any good.
  • For DC fans, once it was confirmed that it was not simply going to be a Flash solo film but rather a very loose adaptation of Flashpoint^note Which had already been adapted twice by that point featuring the Ben Affleck^note In what was advertised in his final time in the role, itself bittersweet due to him being burnt out from the part after the behind-the-scenes troubles of Justice League (2017) and his solo film being retooled into The Batman (2022) as a result and Michael Keaton iterations of Batman and a new take on Supergirl, it was seen as little more than a means to revamp the struggling DCEU instead of letting Flash stand on his own merits. This is because Flashpoint notoriously led to DC's surprise line-wide reboot, The New 52 universe, and it was well-publicized that the movie would do the same for the DCEU.
  • When the film finally did come out, it was well-publicized long before its release that James Gunn was already resetting the DCEU for a new franchise, the "DCU", on a scale beyond even the previous DCEU revamp plans, beginning with dropping most, if not all DCEU stuff from continuity and recasting Superman and Lois Lane, so while Gunn and others claimed the film would be how the change happens, it was seen as a dead end narratively for the DCEU. And it turned out that the film didn't really set up the DCU in any case, leading to more bad word of mouth from those who went to see it for that.
  • By the time the movie came out, it was by then yet another multiversal story after several such big movie and TV projects were released during its long development period, leading to the movie getting more unfavorable notices and word of mouth in comparison with those, on top of being seen or dismissed as "more of the same", further turning away more of the potential audience.

So I originally found it under Overshadowed by Controversy, which I didn't think it fit under. I moved it to Audience-Alienating Premise since that seemed more appropriate. However, coming back to it, I wonder if:

• It really belongs there?

• If it could be condensed?

The only things that seem related to the premise are the third and fourth bullets. The bulk of this just reads like Tainted by the Preview while the Ezra stuff is Overshadowed by Controversy.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 14th 2024 at 11:21:07 AM

I agree. Ezra fits more into Overshadowed by Controversy, although I think the multiverse stuff wasn't a huge turnoff.

The page already has an Overshadowed by Controversy and Tainted by the Preview entry that seem to cover the rest of the bullet points.

Industrial Society and Its Future is listed on the AAP subpage and has an entry in its YMMV page, and I have to tilt my head at whether this is a work that counts given that it's not a traditional published work — it was a manifesto by a domestic terrorist that was published via extortion (he would only stop his bombings if it was published, which the Wall Street Journal caved to). Is this really something that really needs to be covered as not having a particular "audience"???

If there's no audience, there's no one to alienate.

I can kind of see the entry having merit, in that it's undoubtedly a work with a premise that virtually no-one except the author will agree with.

On the other hand, I'd be happy to see the entire page cut for not being a narrative work.

The thing is, Ted Kaczynski has developed a following so there is technically an audience for his manifesto. But I don't see why his manifesto should be troped in the first place.