The Tomb (508)

[Ragitsu]

O'neill's attitude toward the Russians, however, was, I thought, handled quite well. It appropriately comes across as a character flaw to me, not as a flawed element in the show's writing.

That character flaw has aged poorly because the accompanying attitude in question was more accepted/"normal" back then; nowadays, fewer people find it acceptable in a hero.

[Xaeden]

That character flaw has aged poorly because the accompanying attitude in question was more accepted/"normal" back then; nowadays, fewer people find it acceptable in a hero.

I think it depends on what fiction you're consuming. If you're watching a fluffy superhero movie or a military show designed entirely to tap into patriotic feelings, that's a flaw that writers are likely to steer clear from.

The point of Stargate was that it's set in present day and as such the characters who are tasked with saving the world have the same kind of problems that people have in the real world. Hence you repeatedly see the military trying to deal with problems by blowing things up, you see bigoted attitudes, etc. However, you also see people trying to push those people to do better. Often successfully, but when it's not successful, it's to let their characters and/or the audience sit with the weight of what happened. That's particularly prevalent in a lot of episodes dealing with humanoid replicators or with how they treated Michael on Atlantis.

Universe aside, Stargate is more light action romp than gritty drama, so they didn't go as far as they could have, and some of these darker themes that come into play from time-to-time may not be in line with what a segment of its viewership like about the show. However, there remains quite a bit of fiction that presents its protagonists in very nuanced ways.

You don't see it as much in movies of late because Hollywood has been spending less money on films that are not sanitized big budget flicks aimed at attracting as large of an audience as possible ever since the DVD market bottomed out (e.g. Marvel films). That money used to help fund smaller budget theatrical releases, which encompassed a wider range of themes and subjects, so films like "Gran Torino" are harder to get made.

However, you do have shows like "The Walking Dead," which has been among the most popular cable shows for years now, and the entire program is based around a group of seriously flawed individuals who try to do the right thing, but often engage in some fairly disturbing behaviors. Fear of the Other is among the problems that prominent characters on that show have and there's often a lot of back-and-forth about whether they should trust outsiders or not. Several times they've picked the latter with fairly devastating consequences to the individuals they choose to mistrust (and sometimes to themselves, as well).

There have always been viewers who advocate for making heroes characters that can serve as moral guides for viewer behavior, viewers who want to see main characters struggle with the same issues that people in the real world do, and viewers who confuse a purposeful character flaw with support from the writer for whatever that flaw may be. I don't know what metric you're using to say the second group is less prominent now than they were previously. There's certainly more awareness and public criticism of legitimately racist tropes and imagery in fiction, but I have seen nothing to indicate there's been an increase in the number of people who think certain characters shouldn't be bigoted as a way of exposing and critiquing that bigotry.