I think partly what you’re running into is that we live in a postmodern age of storytelling. The classic fairytales where the wicked wolf dies (three little pigs)(red riding hood) or the knight gets the princess after bravely facing down the dragon (George and the dragon) are being subverted because people got bored of those stories, and they wanted to see a twist, so we get something like Shrek—The ogre is hired by the king to rescue the princess from the dragon, but ends up rescuing the princess from the king.
The original archetypes DID exist in stories, but they are rarely used today without some kind of twist. This has happened to the extent that our culture is saturated with this, the twist is now expected and it’s possible to forget that the archetypes ever existed as a common theme.
Essentially I think you’re finding instances where the archetype doesn’t match the majority of modern examples. This is because the archetype hasn’t changed, but media referencing that archetype rarely uses it directly without subverting it somewhat.
(Edit)
Thinking about it further, the fairytales I talked about also subvert expectations- hungry wolves normally eat pigs, for example. Those archetypes come from the base level of real life though. It would be common knowledge that wolves will opportunistically prey on livestock. This makes a story about pigs building little houses and then luring the wolf into a cooking pot fun because it reverses the normal roles. When it becomes common to have the wicked wolf lose, though, the story becomes expected and stale. Then someone twists it a little more and you get Shrek, or Zootopia (where (spoilers) the villain turns out to be a sheep)
I think partly what you’re running into is that we live in a postmodern age of storytelling.
This. Postmodern stories expect the audience to be familiar with the thing they subvert, but this expectation starts to fail when they become more successful than the thing.
(This does not have to be a fatal flaw. For example, Magical Girl Madoka is a subversion of the magical girl trope, but it makes sense even to an audience unfamiliar with the trope. Probably because the first two and half episodes kinda follow the trope, before the story starts to deviate from it. This is different from opposing the trope from the very start.)
I sometimes feel weird when I watch a movie for kids together with my children, as I see that the movie is subverting a trope that I am familiar with… but they are not. I wonder what kind of message they get from the movie; whether they somehow get it anyway, or it’s just “random things happen for random reasons”.
(My older daughter once asked me, why are adult males always depicted in movies as idiots. I guess the movie producers still see themselves as transgressive heroes who defy the popular stereotypes, but in fact they are just a part of the new monoculture. These days, a truly shocking story would be about a brave boy who succeeds to overcome adversity alone, and gets a girl… who does not turn out to be a lesbian.)
I think partly what you’re running into is that we live in a postmodern age of storytelling. The classic fairytales where the wicked wolf dies (three little pigs)(red riding hood) or the knight gets the princess after bravely facing down the dragon (George and the dragon) are being subverted because people got bored of those stories, and they wanted to see a twist, so we get something like Shrek—The ogre is hired by the king to rescue the princess from the dragon, but ends up rescuing the princess from the king.
The original archetypes DID exist in stories, but they are rarely used today without some kind of twist. This has happened to the extent that our culture is saturated with this, the twist is now expected and it’s possible to forget that the archetypes ever existed as a common theme.
Essentially I think you’re finding instances where the archetype doesn’t match the majority of modern examples. This is because the archetype hasn’t changed, but media referencing that archetype rarely uses it directly without subverting it somewhat.
(Edit)
Thinking about it further, the fairytales I talked about also subvert expectations- hungry wolves normally eat pigs, for example. Those archetypes come from the base level of real life though. It would be common knowledge that wolves will opportunistically prey on livestock. This makes a story about pigs building little houses and then luring the wolf into a cooking pot fun because it reverses the normal roles. When it becomes common to have the wicked wolf lose, though, the story becomes expected and stale. Then someone twists it a little more and you get Shrek, or Zootopia (where (spoilers) the villain turns out to be a sheep)
This. Postmodern stories expect the audience to be familiar with the thing they subvert, but this expectation starts to fail when they become more successful than the thing.
(This does not have to be a fatal flaw. For example, Magical Girl Madoka is a subversion of the magical girl trope, but it makes sense even to an audience unfamiliar with the trope. Probably because the first two and half episodes kinda follow the trope, before the story starts to deviate from it. This is different from opposing the trope from the very start.)
I sometimes feel weird when I watch a movie for kids together with my children, as I see that the movie is subverting a trope that I am familiar with… but they are not. I wonder what kind of message they get from the movie; whether they somehow get it anyway, or it’s just “random things happen for random reasons”.
(My older daughter once asked me, why are adult males always depicted in movies as idiots. I guess the movie producers still see themselves as transgressive heroes who defy the popular stereotypes, but in fact they are just a part of the new monoculture. These days, a truly shocking story would be about a brave boy who succeeds to overcome adversity alone, and gets a girl… who does not turn out to be a lesbian.)