When you’re done setting fire to things tomorrow, and all family-members are back to huddling behind their screens (phone, laptop, tv) or books, consider digging into these 4 patriotic tropes. Caveta lector: TVtropes* can suck you in and you won’t be seen for hours. (If your family events run towards contentious, this may be a benefit.) Below are some Independence Day relevant tropes:
*TVtropes is a fairly-open wiki, where community members contribute tropes and examples of them. The assumption of the site is that entertainment consumers have in their heads hundreds of tropes which enrich the material they view when that material’s creators reference one of those tropes. For example, in the most recent Sherlock Holmes, when Holmes seems unwilling to let Watson get married, he is exhibiting Friend Versus Lover, which viewers will recognize as funny.
Inspirational Quote:
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”–Carl Sagan
COMMENTS:
“Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the world!”
“I do not intend to tiptoe through Life only to arrive safely at Death.”
– Sarte
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’
– Samuel Johnson
Nice pointers! Since you seem to like metadiscussions, here are some other metadiscussions for your amusement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFicqklGuB0 (movie trailers)
http://www.8asians.com/2010/06/30/sundays-coming-trailer-spoofs-christian-worship-sermons-and-apa-leaders/ (Sunday services)
Speaking of tropes, have you come across this one yet?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey
Lelouch is the first anime example on the page.