Looking for a term!

[theweaselking]

What is the opposite of Lampshade Hanging?

Specifically, what I'm thinking of is in the execrable The Recruit - when it's revealed that this computer super-virus can infect toasters and washing machines and televisions because it can attack anything that takes electrical power?

A lampshade hanging would be someone complaining that this is stupid and makes no sense. And The Recruit *has* that - and then it promptly has Colin Farrell explain that no, he's a COMPUTER EXPERT, and THAT'S HOW COMPUTERS REALLY WORK. This is REAL, dammit, a really really realistically real problem that COULD HAPPEN.

There has to be a term for that - not hanging a lampshade on something, but, rather, insisting that NO LAMPSHADE NEEDS TO BE HUNG BECAUSE YOU ARE A STUPIDHEAD.

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Better Than A Bare Bulb, where drawing attention to it is considered better than just letting it lie?

[hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com]

That's Turning on the High Beams, where you hope to blind your audience with the lack of a lampshade.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

IMDB's idiotic linking dipshittery has had me going to Wikipedia instead for months now.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what's the deal with that?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Huh?

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Try clicking your IMDB link.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Interesting. It worked the first time I clicked it.

And I usually go right to the page and search from there - clicking other people's imdb links is odd.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but that doesn't help if someone (not this post, since you said you're talking about movie X) is referring to something with only a link to IMDB, or just the bare URL as a reply.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

It's a common practice with IMDB. If there are too many (as far as I can tell, a secret number known only to IMDB) clicks to a page, IMDB shuts it down for a while. I *think* it's their half-assed way of dealing with DDOS attacks.

As long as you actually put the name in the link, I don't care myself, as I can always look it up later. It's the people who write <a href="IMDBLINKHERE">random comment having nothing to do with name or title</a> that drive me mad.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Why do they do that? Is there some advantage to them that I don't know about because of AdBlock?

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

¯\(º_o)/¯

[nykeyoung.livejournal.com]

I think it's technically a Hand Wave (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HandWave), though I'd call it Because Shut Up.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Handwaving is "yeah, whatever" - this is "NO. The real world is WRONG and you are STUPIDWRONG for bringing it up."

Like...
"These bites were made by the MALE mosquito, in heat. Which is why the victims turned blue like a smurf."
"Don't only female mosquitos bite? And mosquito bites don't turn ANYONE blue."
"I'm the world's leading expert on mosquitos! You're stupid and so its anyone in the audience who asked that same question!"

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

ack

I'm now kinda tempted to launch a post on all the stupid things I've noticed in films - either where people say or do things that are very obviously WRONG, or where people don't do obvious stuff like say 'no, THIS happened'. The difference, I suppose, between dramatic tension and shit writing.

On a distantly related note, why the *FUCK* do people keep insisting that Lee Van Cleef is the Ugly?

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Why on earth is it specifically called "Lampshade hanging"? the trope page doesn't give any sort of history.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I recall seeing an etymology that claimed it's director slang - "we need more light in this scene! That spotlight looks way fake. Hang a lampshade on it and pretend" - but I can't find it now.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Also, I actually did like this movie, though essentially I had to not just suspend disbelief, but shoot it, rip its' head off, and then defenestrate it. Mainly, I loved it for the always-entertaining scene-chewing by Al Pacino.