Regressive Thinking Depicted

Table Of Contents

Conservative Trope Examples

  • An autonomously driven truck recklessly hits a horse trailer knocking it off the road and runs Logan's pickup truck into the grass in the median almost killing them as the dodge oncoming traffic.
  • Rizzoli says she didn't go to college because she couldn't stand the idea of listening to a professor "drone on and on" and instead wanted to do work right away. Even though she was top student with academic accolades.
  • Kingsman The Secret Service (2014) | Science & Technology Depicted Negatively
    Billionaire tech tycoon Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) plants a hidden signal inside cellphone SIM cards he distributes that, when activated by a satellite he owns, turns everyday people into ruthless brutes who savagely murder each other.
  • An executive at a pharmaceutical company attempts to start a deadly pandemic so she can make money off the vaccine they developed.
    Staff Aside
    This episode is the epitome of so many right-wing conspiracy theories about covid-19 being deliberately unleashed and also so people can profit off of it.
  • A young social media influencer woman is depicted as vapid in her conversation with Beckett where she also refuses to listen to reason that she is in danger being a target of a serial killer and she has important things to do. She snaps out of it when she reaches her car and sees her friend dead in the passenger seat.
  • We're the Millers (2013) | Young People Depicted as Dumb
    Casey Mathis (Emma Roberts) goes out with a boy who talks using stereotypical dumb young people slang and has a misspelled "No Ragrets" tattoo on his collar bone that when asked says he has no regrets about getting it.
  • MI6 gets hacked multiple times by a former agent who creates an explosion and also has a computer program orchestrate his escape.
  • The movie is an ode to old ways over modern technology which the villain uses against them. When Bond is shaving, Moneypenny notices he uses a cut-throat razor which is very traditional and says, "sometimes the old ways are the best" and helps him shave. The exact line is repeated later by Kincade, caretake of Bond's childhood Scottish home, as he lays a knife on a table for Bond to use. He also has to use his father's old shotgun engraved with his initials to fend off an attack as they sold off all the newer weapons.
  • The Hangover Part II (2011) | Overly Manly Behavior Normalized
    Teddy (Mason Lee) says the best day of his life was the night out with the guys when he engaged in overly aggressive masculine behavior including playing the "stab between the fingers game" where he lost a finger.
  • Professor Hadley (David Koechner) is a kooky college professor consumed with proving that Bigfoot is real.
  • Phil (Bradley Cooper) lampoons Alan (Zach Galifianakis) for wearing a "man purse" and Alan proudly responds it's a satchel and reminds him that "Indiana Jones wears one." Phil responds "so does Joy Behar."
    Staff Aside
    The scene is obviously played for laughs, but it perpetuates the stereotype that men are supposed to wear "manly things" and women are supposed to wear "womanly things."
  • Sydney (Jason Segel) tells Peter (Paul Rudd) to "gently remove [his] tampon and try again" as he coaches him to yell like a manly man.
  • A federal government computer system becomes artificially intelligent and uses computer technology, the Internet and surveillance data to manipulate them to do her bidding.
  • Fool's Gold (2008) | Young People Depicted as Dumb
    Gemma has a "revelation" that her father Nigel "unconsciously" named his yacht, Precious Gem, after her. He doesn't correct her and clarifies that he intentionally named it after her upon which she insists again he did it "unconsciously."
  • Fool's Gold (2008)
    Tess tells Finn of her plan to go back to college, get a PhD and teach. Finn says, "when are you going to stop selling this crap about going back to school" and further denigrates academia. Finn tells her their boat sunk which she was relying on to pay for her tuition after they divorced, and so she hits him with a golf club. Finn also gets punched later on by his rival treasure hunting former associate Moe.
    Staff Aside
    The movie is great fun. But nobody wants to watch academics do their thing on screen even though it is valuable, necessary and rewarding work. So of course, there will always be an inherent conservative bias against it as it's an easy foil for screenwriters. And when assault is played for laughs, even with a woman against a man, it perpetuates a conservative mindset. It's never ok for a man to just hit a woman on screen. Men hit men all the time and women hit women all the time on screen. But conservative men like to play the victim card against women and so when women are depicted as assaulting men, they use that as ammo.
  • Scientists create a cure for cancer by genetically engineering a measles virus, but it mutates causing the ensuing zombie apocalypse the movie is based on.
  • Live Free or Die Hard (2007) | Intelligent People Overly Flawed
    "The Warlock" (Kevin Smith) is depicted as a stereotypical overly paranoid, eccentric, condescending and maladjusted hacker still living in his mother's basement (which he calls his command center) with Stars Wars paraphernalia everywhere. He's distrustful of police officers presumably because he does hacking type things that may be considered illegal.
    Staff Aside
    This is a common anti-intellectual trope where intelligent people are depicted with flaws such as being eccentric and also condescending to average non tech people like John McClane.
  • Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
    Cyber security consultant to the Department of Defense, Thomas Gabriel, hacks into NORAD and shuts down the entire defense network with just a laptop to show that it's vulnerable after his bosses refuses to listen to his concerns.
    Staff Aside
    This is making the department of defense and the federal government look incompetent if one person with a laptop can shut down their defenses. Also, they would have systems in place so that genuine concerns like Thomas Gabriel's wouldn't be ignored.
  • Live Free or Die Hard (2007) | Young People Don't Appreciate Old Things
    Driving with John McClane, Matthew Farrell gets upset hearing Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio saying it isn't "classic rock" but "OLD rock" and that "what sucked back then still sucks today." When John turns the volume up he says, "This is like having a pine cone shoved in my ass."
  • Live Free or Die Hard (2007) | Old Ways are Better than New
    When John McClane and Matt Farrell's car is stuck in a traffic jam caused by a cyber-attack, Matt asks, "what are we doing?" and John responds, "It's a little thing they invented back in the sixties called 'jogging'. You're gonna love it. Come on."
    Staff Aside
    It's a funny joke aimed at Matt's youth with the 60s reference and implying that young people are lazy and so wouldn't know about jogging today.
  • Billy Costigan orders a cranberry juice, and a connected man at the bar asks him is he's on his period. So he hits him. And then Frenchie, a mob guy, intervenes and asks him the same thing again about being on his period.
  • Snakes on a Plane (2006) | Couples Having Sex Die
    A couple who sneaks into the bathroom to join the "mile high club" are the first to die.
  • The vast majority of the servers and staff at the restaurant are teenagers or young adults who do the minimum amount of work required, spit in (or worse!) customers food if they send it back to the kitchen, and would rather be doing just about anything other than working.
    Additional Tropes: Workers Depicted as Lazy
  • Humans have been living a peaceful coexistence with robots who help make their lives easier to manage, but Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) doesn't trust them one bit. The robots follow the "Three Laws of Robotics" which regulate how they are to interact with humans, but nefarious actors have other ideas and unleash an army of robots who move to take over the world and subjugate humans purportedly for their own good because they were careening towards extension.
  • Head coach Herb Brooks has the players run skating sprints one evening so many times they got sick and couldn't continue any more. He didn't even have them stop when they turned out the lights in the arena signaling it was closed. His assistant coach and doctor made comments about the players having had enough but they did not intervene.
  • Old School (2003) | College Depicted Negatively
    College dean Gordon Pritchard (Jeremy Piven) is depicted as corrupt, uncaring and overbearing and is the main antagonist of the fraternity three adults created to circumvent college zoning laws.
  • Ocean's Eleven (2001)
    Rusty (Brad Pitt) teaches four young male and one female television actor how to play cards, and they are all depicted as really bad and dumb including someone laying down a non-matching flush saying "all red". Daniel Ocean (George Clooney) comes in later and wins a really big pot taking advantage of their stupidity.
  • Humans create artificial intelligence in the future, and it backfires causing the remaining human race to hide underground from killer AI robots.
  • Office Space (1999) | Anti-Intellectualism Depicted
    The movie depicts working in an office in positions requiring college degrees in a very negative light with many negative stereotypes exaggerated. The protagonist, Peter, hates his job and quits despite a undeserved promotion and is shown in the final scenes much happier working outside as a construction worker instead.
  • The football players high school teacher is also a stripper who does a dance to the song "hot for teacher."
    Staff Aside
    There is a conflict in the movie from his coach and Dad around Mox prioritizing education over football and getting an academic scholarship to Brown. So, they at least depict that favorably, but they still had to make a teacher moonlight as a stripper.
  • Tweeder steals a police car and goes joyriding while drinking with three naked women. The local police force won't do anything because it's a small town and they're on the football team. But the two police officers do say they never crossed a line to steal a car when they were young.
  • Rounders (1998) | College Depicted Negatively
    Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) quits law school with the blessing of his professor in order to be a professional poker player.
  • The Big Lebowski (1998) | College Depicted Negatively
    The Dude tells Brandt (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) that he attended college, but "spent most of my time occupying various administration building, uh, smoking a lot of thai sticks, breaking into the ROTC, bowling. To tell you the truth Brandt, I don't remember most of it."
  • Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) | Young People Maligned as Inattentive
    Martin Blank (John Cusack) engages in a long shootout with an assassin in the local UltiMart convenience store and the young store clerk is completely oblivious playing an arcade game with his headphones on and would have died if Martin hadn't pulled him out of the store before it exploded.
    Staff Aside
    This wouldn't have been funny or believable unless it was a young person. It's because the false stereotype that young people are less inattentive or more easily distracted is rife in media and on screen.
  • Dantes Peak (1997) | Couples Having Sex Die
    A couple enters a hot spring naked and start making out but then the eponymous volcano acts up causing the spring to start boiling which kills them rather gruesomely.
  • Harry's daughter Dana is depicted as a rebellious, irresponsible teenager who steals money from his partner Gib's wallet and also throws away a snow globe her Dad gave her.
  • PCU (1994)
    College president Garcia-Thompson is depicted as an over-the-top liberal foil who takes political correctness to extreme levels.
  • A college student seeking help from Droz is majoring in Sanskrit. His reply, "Sanskrit? You are majoring in a 5000 year old dead language?"
  • A group referred to as "Jerry Town" ala Jerry Garcia are portrayed as a bunch of lazy, irresponsible pot smoking hippies who cannot focus and talk in over-the-top stereotypical stoner voices.