Ah crud. I *know* this. Or at least *knew* it. There's a companion term for it wrt to hero characters, a stripping away of vices to allow what remaining vice the hero exploits to save the day to be permissable. Like in the old westerns, where the good guy doesn't drink, doesn't chase loose women, doesn't cuss, bathes, etc, all to be allowed the vice of violence necessary to rid the town of the bad guys.
You're right that there's enough of a class of these patterns happening that there's vocabulary to abstract it. But I can't remember what it *is*.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-10 09:45 pm (UTC)You're right that there's enough of a class of these patterns happening that there's vocabulary to abstract it. But I can't remember what it *is*.