Published on June 4, 2025 9:06 PM GMT
I want to define a new term that will be useful in the discourse.
Imagine you landed in a foreign country with dogs, but with no word for dogs. You would see these things, and want to talk about them. You would like to be able to tell people whether they can bring dogs into your house, but you can’t, because there isn’t any word for “dog.” You’d like to ask if you can pet someone’s dog, but you can’t do that either, because when you ask “can I pet your dog?” they say “pet my what?” It would get pretty frustrating.
This is how I feel about a certain phenomenon I’ve noticed over the last year or so. I notice it all the time—It’s as ubiquitous in society as dogs are, and I see it just about as often—but there isn’t a word for it. People seem to make the same error of judgement over and over, and I want to talk about this error. There’s a lot I want to say about it. I want to be able to point out when someone is making the mistake. I want to ask people about whether I’m making the mistake. I want to talk about how some people seem to see very clearly, and make the mistake very rarely. Others seem to be very cloudy-eyed where this mistake is concerned, and they make it very often.
So, I’m going to make up a new term. The term is “The Stereotype of the Stereotype.” The mistake I’m talking about is not “The Stereotype of the Stereotype.” The Stereotype of the Stereotype is a noun. This mistake is a verb. The verb is “confusing the stereotype with The Stereotype of the Stereotype.”
Mixing up ‘the stereotype’ with ‘The Stereotype of the Stereotype’ is as significant a mistake as seeing the word “rainstorm,” and opening your umbrella. You aren’t allowed to mix up levels that way. The stereotype is the stereotype. The Stereotype of the The Stereotype is The Stereotype of the The Stereotype. And they are as different as a rainstorm, and the word “Rainstorm.”
Let’s use some examples to define this term “The Stereotype of the Stereotype.”
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Sir Terrence Pratchett was a British satirical fantasy author, most famous for his Discworld series of books.
There are 41 of these books. Most of them follow distinct arrangements of characters. For example, eight of them follow a man named Sam Vimes. Another five follow a girl named Tiffany Aching. However, there’s one character who shows up in nearly every book. His name is Death.
Death appears in 39 of the 41 books. With a few exceptions of Early Installment Weirdness, Death has a very consistent characterization: He is fair, reasonable, workmanlike, sympathetic, and—in an alien way—kind. He helps people in need. He can be relied upon to do the right thing. He isn’t responsible for killing people, he just collects their souls. He’s about as malicious as a garbageman.
This makes Death a compelling, interesting, and likeable character. The books which follow him, such as Mort or Reaper Man, are compelling and interesting. He forms an enjoyable side dish to novels in which he is only a minor character. There’s nothing wrong with Death.
So when a friend of mine read Guards, Guards!, one of the Discworld books, and said he liked the character of Death, I wasn’t surprised. I liked him too.
But then this friend of mine said something strange. He said (and I’m only paraphrasing here): “It’s nice to see a portrayal of Death that doesn’t paint him as some mindless villain, and actually gives him some characterization.”
It took some doing to get that idea into my head, so I paused for a few seconds before I said:
“Can you think of a single example—in all of myth and all of fiction—where Death has been portrayed as a mindless villain?”
He couldn’t.
I’m sure there is some mythology out there with which I am unfamiliar where Death is portrayed as a destructive, unfeeling, malevolent force of evil. I’m sure there are novels I have not read where he is psychopathic and cruel. I’m sure that someone, somewhere has written a book or directed a movie where Death is not, basically, a kind hardworking man with a job to do. I’ve never read the books, or seen the movies, though.
On the other hand, I was able to name half a dozen works where Death is portrayed as friendly and professional, including Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology, but also the children’s television show The Grimm Adventures of Billy and Mandy and the computer game Manual Samuel. Ryuk in the television show Death Note is depicted as a demon partially responsible for all human death, and he is a comical, likeable character. Ditto the other death demon in the same television show.
I’m sure there are occasional negative portrayals of the Grim Reaper which I’ve seen in cartoons—one of them probably chases Bugs Bunny around—but those seldom qualify as “characters.” Are there any characterized portrayals of Death—ever—that show him as the malevolent figure my friend imagined? I can think of only one, and it's a longshot, too. Hades from the children’s film Hercules. In any case, Hades is the prince of the underworld, not Death himself. He’s closer to a dictator than a murderer.
So where did my friend get this nonsense he was spouting about Death being always portrayed this way? Even he couldn’t think of a single example of Death being portrayed as a mindless killer.
In fact, Death is often portrayed in a single, stereotyped fashion. It’s just that this stereotype is precisely the opposite of what my friend imagined! Death is always portrayed as sympathetic, complex, and fundamentally either good or neutral.
Ah, but here’s the rub:
The Stereotype of Death is sympathetic, complex, and fundamentally either good or neutral. We can observe this very easily; any time someone sets out to imagine Death for a book or a TV show, this is what they come up with! But the stereotype of the stereotype of Death is something completely different. If you ask someone “what is the stereotype of Death as he is portrayed in fiction” I bet there’s a good chance they’ll say “Malevolent and heartless.”
That’s because the stereotype has a stereotype of its own.
When you hear “cop” the phrase “donut-eating” may quickly spring to mind, regardless of its accuracy. That’s a stereotype.
When you hear “stereotype of death” the phrase “malevolent and heartless” may quickly spring to mind, regardless of its accuracy. That’s a stereotype. And the thing you’re stereotyping is also, coincidentally, a stereotype.
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What is a stereotypical male action hero?
Tough. Stiff upper lip. Never cries, never loses his cool, never loses his temper. Never has mental illness, never suffers mental trauma. Handles everything. Knows how to do everything. Never gets in over his head. Never relies on others for help.
Yeah right.
Let me rattle off some classic male action heroes who I have read/watched.
In no particular order: Luke Skywalker, Joe Turner, Edmund Dantes, Harry Dresden, Baby, James Kirk, John McLean, Douglas Quaid, Han Solo, James Bond, Tarzan, Indiana Jones, Neo, Captain Vimes, Sam Dryden, Travis Chase, Rayland Givens, Sherlock Holmes, R. J. McMurphy, and Michael Corleone.
There is one man on this list who I think might fit this archetype (Holmes.) As for the rest, hah! Forget it.
James Bond, in the novels, routinely cries, vomits, or passes out from fear, shock, or disgust. He loses his temper, trips over his words, is awkward with women, says things which he takes back as being cruel or unsympathetic, changes his mind, gets nervous, gets scared. In Diamonds are Forever he kills two men and feels guilty about it for the rest of the novel. He can’t get the image of their murdered faces out of his head. In Casino Royale he is tortured, and the trauma follows him for the rest of his life. He is permanently humbled.
These are not great novels. They are not even good. James Bond is some of the worst dreck the market has to offer. You might as well read Marmaduke. At least Marmaduke has two things going for it over James Bond: The portrayals of human nature will be more accurate, and the philosophy more advanced.
So if the worst and most boring male action hero in literature is sensitive and emotional, that’s setting the bar pretty low.
Look at the examples on this list that are actually good and you’ll see an even starker contrast. Michael Coreleone spends the whole of the Godfather (book or movie, it doesn’t matter) coming to terms with his responsibilities as an action hero. It conflicts with his better nature. He must shape himself into someone he isn’t in order to do what he thinks is right, and it is profoundly affecting to him. His rich, tortured emotional inner life is the entire subject of the story. Both Bond and Michael rely on others. Bond on his friend Felix and Michael on his wife and family.
John McLean, perhaps the most imitated action hero of the last fifty years, openly weeps, fears for his life, screams, runs away, and second guesses himself.
Where does this idea of the stiff upper lip hero come from? Have you ever actually seen one? Not a parody of one, but an actual example? Sherlock Holmes, maybe. It’s been a while since I read Hound of the Baskervilles. I’ve heard Richard Hannay follows the mold. So does Sam Spade, allegedly. But I’ve been tricked before. I was told James Bond fit the mold, and I believed that—until I read the books.
So: the American male action hero follows a very strongly set mold. An archetype: He doubts himself. He screams when he is in pain, he cries when is sad, he vomits when is shocked or when he exerts himself. He fears for his life. He shows sensitivity and kindness to his family. He second guesses himself. He frequently has no idea what he is supposed to do in any given situation. He relies on his friends and lovers for assistance. He is conflicted about hurting and killing other people.
Almost every male action hero I can think of from the last 200 years conforms to this stereotype—and for good reason, too. Such men make much better, much more compelling heroes than some emotionless rock.
But the emotionless rock, I find, exists largely in theory. It is the stereotype of the stereotype. If you ask someone to describe the stereotype of male action heroes, they’ll describe a stereotype of the stereotype of male action heroes that is stoic, emotionless, and hypercompetent. But actual examples of such heroes are very rare.
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Of course, sometimes, this concept can be misapplied.
For a long time, I didn’t understand what people meant by a cliche “man wins a woman as a reward” romance plot. Do you know that trope? The man beats the dragon, and as soon as he does, the woman loves him and wants to sleep with him.
When I was 10, I thought this was bullshit. If 10 year old me had known the term “The stereotype of the stereotype,” then he would have used it instantly to describe this. There was this plot which seemed to exist only in complaint-form. No actual story had this plot. It just existed in, you know, complaint-space.
But this does happen. It's just that when I was 10, I had never read these stories. Later, I would read (to take a sampling of the heroes above) Harry Dresden, James Bond, Michael Corelone, and Travis Chase, and watch (to take another sampling) Joe Turner, John McLean, Douglas Quaid, and Indiana Jones. Debatably, you could also include Baby, Tarzan, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and even Kirk. Conan the barbarian gets the girl so many times that you need a scorecard to keep track. This trope does exist, it's just that I was in a bubble that isolated me from the trope, without being inside a bubble that isolated me from the complaints about the trope.
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Why are all my examples fictional?
There are definitely real stereotypes of stereotypes. There are stereotypes of stereotypes in law, politics, history, rhetoric, and religion. But I don't want to polarize this essay. This essay isn’t about defending or attacking a political position—
—Not to say that defending or attacking a political position is beneath me, just that it’s not something I intend to do right this second—
—It’s about adding a tool to our mental toolboxes. That’s all words are. They’re mental tools for communicating to other people, and to ourselves. And If I said something distractingly political, like:
“The stereotype of King Alphonse II’s rulership of Spain is that he was a great king but the stereotype of the stereotype is that he’s a terrible king.”
Then suddenly all the King Alphonse II supporters and King Alphonse II haters would get mad at me, and get mad at the essay, and get mad at the idea.
And I don’t want to alienate people from this concept. I don’t want to alienate anyone from any idea. No matter how repulsive a political position is to me, I want to be able to communicate clearly with the people who have that idea. And I think this idea is very useful in political communication, so it is very important I don’t deny it to large portions of the population by laying out some fool example in the original document.
So I have used only frivolous examples. But that doesn’t mean this concept is only useful for frivolous situations. That would be like saying that, since you practiced your punches and kicks on a straw dummy, you now know only how to fight straw dummies.
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People mix up the stereotype with The Stereotype of the Stereotype. That’s the problem. The problem is not the existence of The Stereotype of the Stereotype, which can be useful.
If you watch a tiny little old man hobbling down the street in a kung fu movie, everyone understands the difference between the stereotype (the tiny little old man is an unstoppable kung fu badass) and the stereotype of the stereotype (the old man is a feeble little weakling.) We understand that we are supposed to play the role of someone who expects the old man to be a feeble weakling, even though we actually know that in every kung fu movie, the tiny old man is an unstoppable kung fu badass.
The problem comes when a person, deliberately or by accident, confuses the two. They confuse the way things actually tend to be perceived with a perception of how things tend to be perceived.
The most useful response I have to this is the one I mentioned earlier under Death. “Name one.” If someone, perhaps someone who isn’t very genre-canny about kung fu movies, says “but an old man is always a symbol of weakness and feebleness in kung fu films!” try the counter “Name one.” My friend almost instantly realized his error when I asked him to name a single example of Death being portrayed as cold and malevolent.
But really, I have no good response. Asking someone to “name one” works fine, but it doesn’t get across the breadth or depth of the mistake, and it comes across as childish in a real argument.
My hope is, that if you and your interlocutor have both read this essay, your response can be “That’s just The Stereotype of the Stereotype!”
And that will suffice.
Discuss
