20 Tropes Masterfully Subverted in Movies and TV

For a while now, we’ve been discussing tropes from the horror, action, sci-fi, and rom-com genres that still have some life in them. Similarly, we’ve also discussed tired tropes and the movies that actually did manage to pull them off. For this Pictofact, however, we wanted to give a spin to our loving research of fiction clichés, so we just focused on films and TV shows that, well, gave a spin to their own rehashed tropes. To set the mood, then, here’s a freebie: the sexy shower scene from Fury Road. Yeah, you know you remember the sexy shower scene.

What’s that? You don’t remember it? Well, that’s the point, there isn’t any. After the sandstorm sequence, the slave wives clean themselves in the middle of the desert just as Max approaches them – but neither he nor the camera sexualizes them. There are no creepy lingering shots, it’s all about their caring for each other and Max’s own survival. As for the audience, however, we’re so used to the male gaze that we either do sexualize the characters or we don’t even notice them because the scene is not framed as a sexy scene. But those two things are on us. As for the movie — yup, it subverted the trope. We now examine, then, other awesome examples of films and television trope subversion.