Acceptable Hard Luck Targets

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    A subset of Acceptable Targets. These examples deal with targets that are often just very unlucky. These are things that could happen to just about anybody.

    In a way, these might be even worse than other Acceptable Targets. While many people do show pride in their culture, ethnic group, nationality, etc. - people generally (with few exceptions[1]) don't show pride in a disability, illness, or whatever hardship that they have. It's usually considered bad enough that they have the disability, illness, or any other hardship - that being discriminated for it would add insult to injury, so to speak.

    Of course, in some cases there's some circular logic here - they're only unlucky because they happen to be Acceptable Targets.

    Fat Bastard

    Overweight

    You must be dumb. End of story. Or lazy. Or greedy. Or gluttonous (in some TV shows fat characters never appear in a single scene without shoving food into their mouths). Or low-class trailer trash. Or a slob. Or sweaty, stinky, or otherwise sub-human. Or, in an inversion, if you're American you must be a disgusting fat slob.

    Crazy Homeless People

    The Mentally Disturbed

    Evil Albino

    Though with some luck this just might be heading for Discredited Trope status, though there's still a very long way to go yet. See Heroic Albino—compare how short is next to the Evil Albino one.

    People with speech impediments

    Common speech problems such as the lisp, stutter, pronunciation of "r" as "w", or even funny accents, are still regularly used for comic effect. This can even extend all the way up to damaged vocal cords requiring the use of an external electronic voicebox, or complete loss of speech, which usually results in jokes about people having to write down everything they say. Most Looney Tunes characters had "amusing" speech impediments, but the classic examples have to be Michael Palin's portrayal of Pontius Pilate in Monty Python's Life of Brian, and Peter Cook's Impressive Clergyman in The Princess Bride.

    People with non-disabling deformities

    Especially with the increase in the availability and use of plastic surgery, people who have noticeable disfigurements that are not actually disabling (or at least don't appear to be, regardless of whether they actually are) are subject to ridicule, if they're ever shown on television at all.

    People with "mild" disorders such as ADHD, OCD or Asperger's

    Encyclopedia Dramatica's favorite target. Portrayed as completely incompetent, whiny, stupid, abnormal, subhuman, and/or with strange interests. Then again, try to find an Unacceptable Target for Encyclopaedia Dramatica. Good luck. Except possibly cats (even then there is conflict over that). Accentuating The Negative in just about everything makes it pretty much equal to everybody, disorders or not.

    For the most part, people with Asperger's, ADHD, OCD, depression, etc. will get smacked from two angles. On the one hand, they'll be portrayed as stupid, incompetent, and foolish - the traditional way to do it. Then, they'll get attacked from the opposite angle - that they're actually perfectly fine and are either whiny or suffer from Special Snowflake Syndrome. Drama queens in other words. Or that they're just trying to get special advantages on tests. There is a grain of truth here, like there is in a lot of things that gain public traction. There has been an over-diagnosis of various disorders over the years, with ADHD probably being the most notorious. In addition, ADHD medicine often gets abused by people in high schools and on college campuses in order to stay up and study later. That said, people who actually have ADHD are often just as troubled by this behavior as everyone else, if not more, since the medicine that they actually need is at risk of being stolen and abused.

    Tourette's syndrome

    The "swearing disease", despite the fact that swearing tics occur maybe ten percent of the cases.

    Mouth Breathers

    It's always used to describe people who are dumb in some way. Admit it...you've heard it used to describe that Jerk Jock or that bigass Bully with more muscle than brain in high school, or those stupid customers who ask stupid questions. Some of us have to breathe through our mouth because we have a cold, sinus infection, the flu, or really bad allergies. (And we all know 90% of Allergy Medications don't work) OI!

    Amputees

    People in wheelchairs

    People with allergies

    Especially ones that cause them to develop cold or flu - like symptoms from plants, animals, dust, etc. Like overweight people, their suffering and awkwardness is often just plain funny. It's often depicted as just one more indication that the character isn't Mr. or Miss Right for the protagonist. However, if a secondary protagonist is a Loser, an allergy sufferer rejected by The Hero may be his last hope for wedded bliss. There's also a tendency to give nebbishy characters allergies in order to reinforce their wimpiness.

    Perpetual Poverty

    There's usually a good reason for it in Real Life, but in sitcoms they're often depicted as lazy, ignorant, etc., or else the Butt Monkey / Cosmic Plaything. It's really interesting when the lower-class (usually) guy falls for the Rich Bitch and has to deal with the vast ocean of differences between the social classes. Hilarity Ensues.

    People who were held back a year in school

    Commonly portrayed as a Jerkass Bully, being much bigger than the class, being incredibly stupid, and most fiction examples won't cover any potential examples for being held back (such as how they were held back because they spent too much of the school year in the hospital recovering from a severe illness or injury). They also are never shown as taking school seriously; frequently giving up and not even trying to do their schoolwork so they can catch up.

    Community college

    The ultimate butt of education jokes. Whether a series takes place in high school, "real" college, or the outside world, expect at least one joke about a character attending community college. Despite the fact that many educational professionals agree attending community college for two years and then transferring to a four-year school is an excellent financial decision, pop culture and society at large have not gotten over the fact that "anyone can get into community college." Community college students are seen as A) poor, B) lazy, C) stupid, or D) all of the above. This is one of the few fiction-based acceptable targets that also applies completely in real life—it is perfectly acceptable to insult the community college system and its students in most social situations.

    • And this despite the fact that many community colleges offer an excellent education with some even offering programs not available at the local universities.

    Trade School

    By people who have not been to trade schools.

    Male Harassment victims

    Did you know that Sexual Harassment can actually happen to men too? Or that women can actually commit Sexual Harassment...and actually do it to a man and not another woman? Or that men can actually commit Sexual Harassment against other men? Most places don't actually realize this and force men who are targets of harassment to "take it like a man" and that anyone who tries to do something about the harassment is "PC Bullshit" or "a wimp."

    Males with small penises

    Guys with a Teeny Weenie. As the popular perception goes, Bigger Is Better in Bed, and a large penis is symbolic of virility and all-around masculinity. Those that have smaller-than-average "equipment" are usually perceived as weak, pathetic, and not truly a man. This main perception is the core reason why Compensating for Something is widely considered an insult.

    Minimum Wage Employees

    Anyone who works a low-paying job. Bonus points if it's "menial" labor or customer service.

    Silent Majorities

    To many, the term "Vocal Minority" doesn't exist, they forget it exists, or they are too ignorant to say it exists. If there is a "Vocal Minority" in your group causing havoc to society, oftentimes much of everyone else will lump you and the other innocent people in your group and you will be lambasted for your group's Vocal Minority regardless if you were never apart of it or were even against it. This goes double for fandoms, triple if it involves politics, race, nationality, and/or religion. For example: If you are American, you are a stupid fat slob who disgraces society. If you are an American who is smart, slim, and nice, you do not exist to these people. No exceptions.

    People with physical features that some just don't happen to personally find attractive

    If someone finds a person unpleasant for any reason, it's not uncommon for the complainer to, while ranting about this person they find unpleasant, also throw in "Oh, and they also have a big nose/a weird chin/creepy eyebrows/chubby cheeks/are fat/too hairy/etc".

    Examples of Acceptable Hard Luck Targets include:

    Crazy Homeless People

    Evil Albino

    Literature

    • The treatment of albinism in fiction is startlingly harsh. The condition seems to have been declared officially creepy with Moby Dick. There are no ordinary people who happen to be albino; instead there are an assortment of insidious operatives and psychotic killers. There is a sense of albinos having some kind of otherworldly powers, when all they can really claim is poor vision and susceptibility to skin cancer. And, of course, there's the White-Haired Pretty Boy.
    • Played with in The Princess Bride. The Albino in that really only takes care of the Zoo of Death.
    • In The Da Vinci Code, it seems like Silas is this. Turns out, that's exactly what he is.

    Real Life

    • Horrible truth in television since the persecution of albinos is still widespread, especially in areas of Africa where witch doctors pay a fine fee for albino limbs to use in their concoctions.

    People with Speech Impediments

    Film

    • Foreign/unusual accents and dialects are also typically considered speech impediments, and therefore become subjects of mockery. Examples include Borat, Inspector Clouseau, Ricky Ricardo, "Fes," King of the Hill's "Boomhauer," etc.
    • Essentially the entire point of The King's Speech, in which George VI is humiliated by his stutter.
    • Spoiler alert! In the movie Chinatown directed by Roman Polanski. Used and then subverted. A Japanese gardener refers to the "grasses" but the detective (along with the audience) only identifies the gardener's bad grammar and so dismisses him as a humourous red herring with nothing valuable to offer. Later, the detective returns and comes to realizes an essential clue from the gardener who wasn't saying "grasses" but "glasses". The error wasn't in grammar but in pronunciation: the 'r' and 'l' being commonly mispronounced by those Japanese who attempt to speak English. Shame on the detective for being so quick to dismiss an unsophisticated foreigner, eh?
    • Another Michael Palin example, in A Fish Called Wanda, in which his character stutters like crazy, but only the villain makes fun of him for it. Palin based this aspect of the character partially on his father, who had a stammer. There now exists, in London, the Michael Palin Institute for Stammering Children.
    • The Roman emperor Claudius stuttered due to cerebral palsy, and in I, Claudius, his family is presented as very cruel because of the way they shun him for this. He is able to overcome this impediment through a lot of training, although he continues to pretend to stutter prior to becoming emperor to preserve his public image as "poor Claudius".
    • Worth noting that the actor who played the stuttering public attorney in My Cousin Vinny actually had a speech impediment in real life for years and only recently beat it before signing up for the role. He thought of his character having a speech impediment as a "sick joke."
    • Subverted in Pan's Labyrinth, in which the character who stutters is told that he will not be tortured if he can count to three without stuttering. He can't, and is tortured.

    Live Action TV

    • Averted in The Big Bang Theory. Kripke is a jerk to the main characters, but they never pick on his rhotacism. Of course, it's still pretty clearly intended.
      • Sure? "What accent is that?"
      • The character that asks that was born in India and moved to America, it seems like the writers were re-asking a fan question.
    • Played with in M*A*S*H, when a wounded soldier with a bad stutter treated as an idiot by his commanding officer. However, the normally snobbish and rude Charles was very sympathetic and mentions that many very intelligent people also had stutters, at the end of the episode it was revealed that Charles's sister also has a stutter.

    Web Animation

    Western Animation

    People with non-disabling deformities

    Film

    Graham: As a child, my heart bleeds for him. As an adult, he's irredeemable.

    Real Life

    • Women with flat chests and women with huge breasts are often the subject of ridicule. The former are often accused of being immature, while the latter are often accused of being slutty.

    Western Animation

    • An episode of Family Guy at one point featured Stewie having a recollection about a man with a cleft lip, who he referred to as a harelip - an offensive term for the condition.
      • Not to mention Jake Tucker and his upside down face.
    • Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender (the main villain of Season 1) has a nasty burn scar on his face, which was given to him by his own father. He does get a Heel Face Turn in Season 3, though.
      • Zuko is an interesting example, as his scar doesn't prevent him from being Mr. Fanservice.

    Tourette's Syndrome

    • Western Animation In an episode of South Park, Cartman encounters a child whose Tourette's causes him to swear, Cartman sees this as an opportunity to swear all he wants and use Tourette's as an excuse. Kyle sees through Cartman's ruse right away and sets out to disprove him. Other children are shown in the episode with different kinds of ticks that do not involve swearing.
      • It's worth noting that the Tourette Syndrome Association called the episode "surprisingly well-researched" and were generally happy with the way people with Tourette's were portrayed in the episode.

    Mouth Breathers

    Film

    • Uhura calls Kirk one in Star Trek, although considering her talented ears, it may just have been an accurate descriptor.

    Literature

    Real Life

    • Not to mention when it's caused not by a temporary sickness or allergy, but a permanent deformation of the internal sinus passages.
    • Take one look at This link. Wow, I hope those guys NEVER have allergies or a bad cold.

    Western Animation

    • King of the Hill: "Bobby is breathing through his mouth, I'm afraid if I feed him he'll suffocate!"

    Amputees

    Real Life

    • One particularly grating recent example being Dutch Rail's refusal to display posters that show one of Marc Quinn's Complete Marbles sculptures at railway stations across the country. Before you ask, no, it wasn't the nudity they objected to. To put matters into perspective, this is a company that will happily plaster a close-up of a bloody face across its billboards.

    People with allergies

    Western Animation

    Film

    • Walter, Annie's fiance from Sleepless in Seattle, has many allergies including some foods. While he's not unsympathetically treated on the whole, it is presented as if it's a nerdy and less-than-sexy trait.

    Real Life

    • See also, Mouth breathers. Some people have to breathe through their mouth because they can't clear their nose out thanks to allergies. It's a Catch 22 allaround...the second you clear it out, within 10 minutes, your nasal passages are blocked again and you have to breathe through your mouth.
    • This one is perhaps less offensive and more idiotic in that pretty much everyone has some allergy- it's just the severity and specifics of the allergy that people start a fuss over. Really, to say someone has no allergies is to say that they have a superhuman immune system.
      • A lot are played through laughs, at least hayfever. Allergies like Nuts or Shellfish? No laughing matter. Even people who complain about not being able to eat peanuts in an area that has a large no nuts sign is more than often shut up when they learn how severe peanut allergies can be.
        • People who loudly and/or obnoxiously inform others -- especially strangers -- of their allergies are perfectly acceptable targets, regardless of the severity of said allergies.

    People who were held back a year in school

    Live Action TV

    • Kelso on That '70s Show was held back as a kid and kept it secret out of shame. It fits the role of Kelso as the group's resident idiot, and he takes some shots at him when they hear it. The main joke however is that he was old enough to legally buy beer for them and told nobody.

    Real Life

    • This seems to differ a lot the higher up you go - high-school may show seniors who didn't graduate and are there an extra year, but sometimes the lines of what is acceptable for a sophomore and the like will be shown as blurring; such as how a junior will be taking chemistry. This also changes a lot more for the "Honors" students.
      • Differs from country to country. In Germany, it's not exactly uncommon to repeat a year, while in other countries it rarely happens - so if it does, expect students doing so to stick out.

    Video Games

    • The protagonist and the main Love Interest in Clannad were both held back a year. While one was held back for delinquency, the other was held back for illness.

    Anime

    Community college

    Live Action TV

    • Played with in the episode of CSI: Miami, with Richard Speight Jr guest-starring as an intelligent guy who didn't get into a great college because his classmate stole the test, got a really high score and offset everything. The classmate then lorded it over him at a reunion.
    • Played for laughs on the TV sitcom Community, set in a community college.
      • The show lampshaded this in one episode where the main characters try to find a way to get high school students attending the campus for college credits to stop making fun of them for being in a community college.
    • In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon looks down on Penny for attending (and dropping out of) a community college. Though in this case, it's less that the show itself attacks community colleges and more that Sheldon is an Insufferable Genius who looks down on everyone -- including his other friends and colleagues, many of whom have earned Masters and Doctorates from "proper" universities. None of the other characters seem to have a problem with it.

    Film

    • While not a comedy example, Rudy is told that he must build his academic record at a community college before he will be eligible to apply to Notre Dame. The inference is that these institutions are dumping grounds for Ivy League rejects.

    Real Life

    • Bonus Points as sometimes, community colleges are better in some courses than "real" colleges, only cost much less. (For example, the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education, arguably one of the best culinary arts schools in the country, is part of Grand Rapids Community College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.)
    • Laney College in Oakland, California is increasingly regarded as one of the best theater schools in Northern California, as its actors frequently land top spots in universities—or, you know, get picked by theaters as soon as they graduate. Unfortunately it has the double-whammy of being a community college in Oakland, which is stereotyped as being dangerous, poor, and riddled with drug dealers.

    Western Animation

    • Unless, of course, the character comes from a poor background, like Luanne Platter from King of the Hill, where her going to Community College is celebrated by her family.
    • Hayley on American Dad attends a community college, which is often the butt of some jokes ("I got a check-plus. That's like a C at Arizona State!").

    Trade School

    Real Life

    • Astronauts actually did get people understanding them, before Lisa Nowak went after that woman her boyfriend was having an affair with.

    Male Harassment victims

    Manga

    • Averted in Kinou Nani Tabeta, the lawyer protagonist took a case in which a big guy is abused by his small girlfriend, it is portrayed realistically.

    Live Action TV

    • An episode of What Would You Do tested peoples' reactions to abuse by different sexes, by having two actors playing a couple alternate being abusive. When the man was the one yelling and being rough, more often than not people stepped in to stop it. When the woman was the abuser, most people did nothing—in fact, several women who saw it happening looked satisfied, including one who did a little fist-pump after she passed them. When asked her about her reaction, she said she assumed he had it coming.

    Literature

    • Pretty much the whole message of Michael Crichton's Disclosure and the MacGuffin for the book. He also waxes at length on the (presumably correct for the time) statistics and what they mean.

    Western Animation

    • In an episode of King of the Hill, Hank Hill's reaction to being told he can sue for "Male on Male Sexual Harassment" is... "BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!" followed by his shocked expression. The other person he shows it to also is too afraid to admit it. It's amazing how real it can be.
      • Another episode had him being borderline-stalked by a female cop with the hots for him, which wasn't shown as being the least bit acceptable. Yet still played for laughs.

    People with physical features that some just don't happen to personally find attractive

    • Naruto has Gai and Lee, who are frequently made fun of for their large eyebrows and their oddly shaped eyes and lashes, in canon, fanon, and just the fandom in general. The jumpsuit, haircut and poses are all their own choices, though, so those don't count.
    1. ↑ the Deaf culture being one
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