Anachronistic Dialog

Anything Ryan Murphy has made about real events. "Feud" has too many to list.

"Thank you for your service."

He's playing to the limited brains of the american consumers who are amnesiacs when it comes to anything that's happened prior to the year 2000.

That drove me nuts while I was watching "Hollywood."

I rolled my eyes when Jim Parsons, while telling Rock he wanted to suck his cock, said, "It's kind of my thing."

No one - NO ONE - said that in the 1940s.

“Trope”—unless the producer (Joe Mantello) has studied Renaissance rhetoric or Ancient Greek before going to Hollywood, he would not have used it in the late 40s, and it didn’t have the same connotation it does today.

My goodness, OP, thanks for starting this thread. You've hit on a pet peeve of mine.

Films or TV shows set before the mid-80s, where a character does something important or difficult, and he does a fist pump and shouts "YESSSSS!" Or two characters high-fiving.

Takes me right out of the moment.

Mrs. Maisel does this constantly. It drives me absolutely crazy.

Ryan Murphy’s work is fiction. Just enjoy it for what it is.

I cringed when Joan Crawford said in Feud, “Yaaas bitch, twerk that big ol’ booty, henny!”

Agreed, R7. Whoever writes those scripts has no frame of reference for the era.

At least twice I have heard "it is what it is" in movies that were set 30+ years ago. Made me roll my eyes.

“You think you’re fooling anyone with that top knot?”

It felt like the Game of Thrones writers hated their audience during the last couple of seasons.

R11 That one has been used many times on Maisel. Also things like, “my bad,” and “at the end of the day.”

"When those nominations come out, I want you to be shaking hands and sucking cocks, even if you yourself are not nominated. It is your goddamn fiduciary responsibility" - Jack Warner to Joanie

How hard is it to read novels and watch films of the period just to get the basic vocabulary and grammar of the time?

This reminds me of a convo about period costumes and hairstyles. With so much digital info and historical detail available to people, there's really no reason to ever get it wrong. Research is a google search. But younger "creatives" (there's that word) are generally drawn to design that looks cool to them, regardless of historical context.

When you call them on it and try and explain, say, how the 1970s did not look at all like the 1950s (2 periods equally alien to them), their response is generally, "Who cares? No one's gonna know the difference."

These are the people making movies, TV, and advertising right now.

I got this vibe from The Greatest Showman

Mrs America is pretty good at getting the details right, which is why Hollywood feels so lazy.

What’s anachronistic about R14's quote?

R17 The Greatest Showman was just one huge anachronistic hot mess, from the dialogue to the music. A giant piece of shit all the way around.

This happened back during the pretty much unassailable "American Horror Story: Asylum." Who in the 1960s said "my A game," as a priest did while preparing for a (failed) exorcism?

R21 It was actually "Ups my game." I remember it because it was so egregious.

Please remember that an entire fake accent was created for old movies. It’s Hollywood- all fake.

Wasn't the The Greatest Showman purposefully anachronistic? Looking at the images and hearing the music it seems to be an ahistorical work.

I know a lot of people who love Stranger Things. But as someone who came of age in the early 1980s (just like the young characters), I think there is too much anachronistic dialogue and it takes me out of the show. I was watching one of the early episodes and one of the kids ended his little tirade with the phrase "Just sayin." Nobody said that in the 1980s -- that was a late 1990s catch phrase. I was wondering if the producers, the twin Duffer Brothers, had anyone review their scripts, so I looked them up on Wikipedia and it turns out they were born in 1984. They weren't even alive at the time the show is set! So I guess that explains some of it.

R25 Stranger Things feels to me like a poor imitation of a middling Steven Spielberg movie

How far apart is woman of color from colored woman?

I can't remember what the series was, but someone in Regency England beseeched her husband to "think outside the box."

I howled.

“Woman of color” v “color ed woman”:

And “think outside the box”, while we’re at it:

Ah, thank you (or "fank you"), R22. I had the idea, but not the intent.

Cool beans!

In THE QUEEN, when Princess Margaret describes Group Captain Peter Townsend as “all that and a packet of crisps.”

In Mad Men when Don Draper said “She done already done had herses.”

OP knows the definition of anachronistic, but doesn’t know how to spell dialogue?

🙄

Whore

"The clock has stricken three."

If you do not love the speech and manners of the period, why set you piece in that period?

"When your speech is as coarse as your face, Louis, you sound as impotent by day as you perform by night."

It's one of my pet peeves too, OP. That, and posture. Especially in women. The behaviour, attitude in female characters is sometimes way off mark when showing people who are supposedly living through the early 20th century, the 19th...

Also, every single period film that was shot in the 1970s looks like it was shot in the 1970s, regardless of the period they're supposed to portray.

If it's any consolation, this isn't really a new 'problem.' It's not my preferred style, either. The anachronistic dialogue comes closing to ruining Mrs. Maisel for me a lot of the time.

But this was common going back to Shakespeare and, I'm sure, before then. Many of his plays were set long before he wrote them, and in different counties. King Lear was set in the eighth century B.C. People certainly did not speak or dress the way his characters did. (They didn't have a chance of speaking that way, despite his then-current vocabulary, because he wrote in iambic pentameter, but still...) The focus was on story, and on the ideas conveyed by the plays. Maybe the problem today is that no real ideas are conveyed, just interpersonal dramas.

[quote] How hard is it to read novels and watch films of the period just to get the basic vocabulary and grammar of the time?

It's not hard, its the same work the art department did. it was a deliberate choice of the filmmakers, but of course the octogenarian queens of DL who are obsessed with the 40s don't get that.

The show wasn't made for you old bitchy queens, it was made for the 20 somethings of today. They couldn't give two shits about your stupid old fashioned pet peeves.

R40 & R41 have brain damage.

[quote] Also, every single period film that was shot in the 1970s looks like it was shot in the 1970s, regardless of the period they're supposed to portray.

Excuse me?

Off-topic: I remember a DL thread like 10 or more years ago about the youngest son of the creator of 'Mad Men' "dialling the phone with a pencil". Does anyone know how he turned out? I'd google if I remembered his name. I'm interested because many DLers seem to think Prince George will be gay just like Billy Crystal and his City Slickers co-stars were laughing at how a young Jake Gyllenhaal will grow up to be super gay because he liked musicals and was singing 'Oklahoma' all the time.

I stopped watching "Hunters" on AP just because Logan Lehrman's character used the term "a shit (fuck) ton". I don't think anyone said that in the 70s. Of course, I could be wrong.

R45, so you missed Logan’s dong in the last episode? It was lovely.

A child says something looks "cool" in Seberg which is set in 1967/1968. No.

R46 one can always watch ONLY the last episode. Thanks for the "tip" (and only the tip).

..and don't even get me started on "That '70's Show" what a hot mess that was.

[QUOTE] Just sayin." Nobody said that in the 1980s -

I used to say it.Although I probably said it more like “I’m just saying” but I definitely remember it and frequently getting a shit look from my mom because I usually said it after saying something that shouldn’t have been said.

People stopped saying "cool" in the 60s? I'm skeptical.

Maggie Smith used 1980s teen slang on Downton Abbey. I can't think of a specific example, but she'd be arguing with Lady Mary and say something like, "not cool".

In the 2000 part of Vox Lux someone makes a Natalie Wood drowning joke to a teenager. Wood died in 1981 so I doubt they would get the reference.

R53 I'm not so sure about that, actually. Her drowning has become part of showbiz tragedy folklore. I wouldn't be surprised that some teenagers are aware of her and how she died.

It's like James Dean. He died long before I was born, but I know he was a huge movie star who died in a car crash.

The joke was "It's like trying to sell a life jacket to Natalie Wood".

On the other hand... almost all the "period" movies we love are made with anachronistic syntax, diction, register. Just not as obvious as the vocabulary listed in this thread. It's interesting to see movies actually try to capture how people talked in the past... Peter Greenway's movies are sometimes almost unintelligible. The TV series Deadwood did a great job of capturing 19th century speech, even with some shocking swear words (the ubiquitous "cocksucker"). Convoluted, complex syntax...

Then, of course, there's Shakespeare....

He doesn’t know, his writers don’t know, the viewers don’t know.

Ignorance all around.

In The Tudors, when Henry VIII brags to Cardinal Wolsey that he’s going to “bust more cherries than Smucker's fruit jellies.”

The producers need to hire some of us eldergays as consultants on these matters! We can tell them about language in the '50s, '60s and '70s!

It always amuses me that when characters speak with received pronunciation in pre-19th Century period dramas.

Cynthia Nixon spoke that way in World Without End, which takes place in the 14th Century.

People did not talk like that then.

It’s time to catalog Ryan Murphy.

R59 It would be a good idea to hire some uptight, language-aware people, for sure.

I've been an editor for almost 20 years and I'm sadly well acquainted with how little people even register the language they use. Most people are not even aware of cliched and hollow fad language like "it is what it is," "at the end of the day," etc. They just repeat it. I'm not surprised that writers don't consider what sorts of language may and may not have been used during past eras.

One thing that has annoyed me for many years is the change from "being missing" to "going missing." I first noticed this change in broadcast journalism within the past decade. Little Amber is not missing. She "went missing." My problem with that is that this usage is technically wrong in many cases: if a person was abducted, then they were, technically speaking, taken and they did not go of their own vision. However, they still *are missing.* Anyway, this has irked me enough to provoke me to ask many other people if it irks them, as well, and not a single person I have ever asked noticed this change. Not one. But if a TV show or movie were set in the 1980s, and a newscaster said that someone had "gone missing," it would really drive me nuts. It's just one of those things.

I think in writing, too, there's a balance of how much "periodness" to put into something. If you were to write a story that were loaded with era-defining slang to the extent people actually used it, then it would probably come across as parody. Or if you did that in the 1980s, and scripted dialogue with as many "like, like, likes" as people *actually* use (even now) in their day-to-day speech, then that would be really distracting and tiring to the reader or viewer. And if you were to create something more archaic than that, from the 1800s or the Renaissance era, then you'd really alienate viewers or readers and they'd be distracted from the story by the language.

So, for example, even though Game of Thrones was not actually set in the Medieval era on Earth, that really is the era from which the series was drawing. And the early seasons that were written well very effectively balanced archaic language and dialogue with contemporary language so that viewers could feel like they've been taken back in time, but not to the extent that we wouldn't understand what people were saying. The last couple of seasons totally failed in that regard and became far too contemporary, and viewers noticed and resented it because that took us out of the world. So it's a balance.

Still, when Mrs. Maisel says "back in the day" and Suzy tells her "I got your back," it makes me want to stop watching the series. It feels careless and inattentive instead of intentional.

All British tv is infested with modern Americanisms but it’s especialiakky grating in their supposedly historical shows. All you have to do is watch British tv from the 70s - no Americanisms. Especially in historical dramas.

“I’m just sayin”

"I get fed up seeing how our lot always get shafted."

"When push comes to shove, I'd rather do it myself.

"It wasn't settled by me that you'd come back here and take up with your floozy again."

“I couldn't care less”

"I've been thinking about the date for the rematch."

“You’ve got stuff to do”

All from Downton Abbey

[quote]What’s anachronistic about R14's quote?

Yes. When did "suck cock" become common parlance? This is an important question for linguists.

Okay, apart from Barry Lyndon. There's always an exception to prove the rule. The lenses that film Marisa Berenson are very seventies, though.

Unsurprisingly, the professional editor comes up with the best post on the thread.

I saw a trailer for a movie about Emily Dickinson(?) and one clip shows her meeting someone and saying "hey, I'm Emily" and doing a fist bump with the other girl. I decided right then it would be a pass.

R66 :-*

R47, as a child in the sixties I did, in fact, say things were “cool.” “Cool” was a highbrow hipster concept in the fifties that went mainstream in the sixties.

R67 Not likely "A Quiet Passion", the Cynthia Nixon biopic about Dickinson. It was one of those films like listed in R56 which tried to capture the rhythm and diction of speech of the time. It really seemed like a different century.

Anachronism is a style nowadays in TV and Film production. Also gross historian inaccuracies. It's on purpose.

See The Great for a somewhat successful example.

It must have been this Apple TV show about Emily Dickinson. This one, I believe, is intentionally anachronistic as a narrative style.

Surely your mean volition R62, not vision?

The blame for some of these historical mishaps surely should be levelled at the writers and not the actors? So many youngsters in the UK speak 'valleyspeak' and use what used to be North American colloquialisms that I'm not in the least surprised to hear them in British period dramas, most are made with the US market (and ear) in mind.

I meant volition, R63. I have no idea how 'vision' ended up there. DL seems to have a way of making such mistakes happen...

The British detective shows from the 1970s that recreated the 1920s/1930s were fun. Not only did they use dialogue from the books, but there were writers, actors, producers whose parents or grandparents spoke 1920s/30s English. It was a natural for them.

I remember when men on British tv dramas were referred to as “blokes” or “chaps.“ Now I see men referred to as “guys” all the time. A British tv character will say to a group of friends “Hey guys, lets do this.” I don’t think BBC would’ve allowed a non-American character to use the word “guy” back in the 70s unless it was about a straw man they were about to set afire.

Sex Education takes place in England (it is actually filmed in Wales), but the school looks like an American High School. And they have a prom. And they have a principle instead of a headmaster. And all the characters talk with American argot.

Sex Education takes place in England (it is actually filmed in Wales), but the school looks like an American High School. And they have a prom. And they have a principle instead of a headmaster. And all the characters talk with American argot.

Years ago I saw a wretched Western, the name of which escapes me, that was set in the 1880-'90s. During an argument, one of the cowboys calls another a scumbag.

[quote]And they have a principle instead of a headmaster.

I hope their principle has principals.

I always wondered whether the phrase "eat shit" would have been known in Mozart's time since it featured prominently in the film "Amadeus."

1960, I am so over you!

"He's playing to the limited brains of the american consumers who are amnesiacs when it comes to anything that's happened prior to the year 2000."

Anachronistic dialogue has always existed in Hollywood films. You think those Cecil B. DeMille Bible epics were totally accurate?

"With so much digital info and historical detail available to people, there's really no reason to ever get it wrong. Research is a google search. But younger "creatives" (there's that word) are generally drawn to design that looks cool to them, regardless of historical context."

DL never misses a chance to take potshots at "kids today" but anachronistic costume design has always existed.

R80, very much so, he writes that phrase extensively to his cousin and to friends.

Here’s a canon he wrote on the text, “lick my ass nice and clean”

Yes, Mozart was into scat. But serious scholars of music and most Europeans (except maybe British) don’t dwell on it because they know it’s a frank part of the European character and sexuality.

As soon as I read your comment R75 I was thinking of Raffles with Anthony Valentine talking with "Bunny"!

R77, in the case of Sex Education, it is deliberate. The creator said that she is trying to evoke the world of John Hughes movies--which is why the school is more like 80s America than contemporary Britain.

Moulin Rouge did this on purpose.

Of course, that makes sense R86, It also seems to be set in the late 80/90s judging by things like the vehicles used, yet people have mobile phones but no internet? It's a feeling they're trying to give it, got to say it works quite well, like a Ferris Bueller's day off collided with Grange Hill.

Never mind. I found the super sartorial kid.

That's interesting, r78 - as a non-native speaker, "scumbag" has a sufficiently old-timey feel to me.

R90--As I understand it, "scumbag" is a direct reference to a condom. I don't think the word even existed before around 1980 or so.

Why not "cumbag", then?

Do you guys think the mainstream would enjoy an authentic play by Shakespeare with all the old school English dialogue?

One of the first rules of entertainment is: Know your audience.

If something "takes you out" of enjoying something, it wasn't intended for you. Accept that not everything is created for you and move on to something that doesn't "take you out". It's quite interesting that you see more threads about what people hate or have lot to complain about, but very few appreciative or examples of what doesn't "take you out".

The difference is Shakepeare had no way to know how people spoke hundreds of years before his lifetime. We cannot duplicate medieval and renaissance English because it would be incomprehensible.

But when we are talking about duplicating the language and manners of the last 100 years, it is pretty easy. There are films and novels that record it. And when films and shows like The Ice Storm, Mrs America, Mad Men, that get period right, there is no excuse for anyone else not to.

A couple of things...

“Do you guys think the mainstream would enjoy an authentic play by Shakespeare with all the old school English dialogue?”

Just to be clear, Shakespeare’s English was early Modern English—not Old English (Beowulf) and not Middle English (Canterbury Tales).

“The difference is Shakepeare had no way to know how people spoke hundreds of years before his lifetime. We cannot duplicate medieval and renaissance English because it would be incomprehensible.”

This is wrong. Shakespeare wrote in the late 1500s and early 1600s, and he had access to texts that were written at least in Middle English (Mediaeval era). There is no doubt at all that Shakespeare read and learned from Chaucer, and Chaucer was Mediaeval writer who wrote in Middle English. At least two of Shakespeare’s works are adaptations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

With respect to not understanding Renaissance-era English—that is Shakespeare. All things considered, native English speakers understand Early Modern English very well. Middle English, especially written in its original spellings rather than phonetically, is more difficult, like interpreting a closely related foreign language. Old English may as well be Old Norwegian from the vantage of English speakers.

What makes Shakespeare most challenging to understand is not so much the different Early Modern vocabulary, but rather that it is poetry, written in an unnatural meter with syntax altered to fit that meter and to accommodate rhyme, and Shakespeare’s proclivity for clauses within clauses within clauses, etc., as well as all the disparate histories and other informational references. The everyday spoken language of his time is not *that* different from ours. In fact, Game of Thrones probably comes relatively close to approximating it. If you didn’t get lost in that dialogue (of early seasons), then you certainly have no trouble parsing Early Modern English.

Here’s a sample of a letter written during Shakespeare’s time—not Shakespearean poetry, but a (formal form of) written English that more closely approximates everyday speech at that time. This is Early Modern English written during the Renaissance—and it’s perhaps five percent more challenging to read than today’s English is, mainly because of archaic vocabulary:

“ SIR, -There is nothing moves my charity like gratitude; and when a beggar's thankful for a small relief, I always repent it was not more. But seriously, this place will not afford much towards the enlarging of a letter, and I am grown so dull with living in't (for I am not willing to confess that I was always so) as to need all helps. Yet you shall see I will endeavour to satisfy you, upon condition you will tell me why you quarrelled so at your last letter. I cannot guess at it, unless it were that you repented you told me so much of your story, which I am not apt to believe neither, because it would not become our friendship, a great part of it consisting (as I have been taught) in a mutual confidence. And to let you see that I believe it so, I will give you an account of myself, and begin my story, as you did yours, from our parting at Goring House.”

Shakespeare lived and wrote at the turn of the century in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

Below is a selection of a text written in Middle English, from the 1300s. A tremendous “vowel shift” occurred between this time and Shakespeare’s Renaissance era, and this changed English tremendously; HOWEVER, Shakespeare was able to and certainly did read literature from this era. He drew from it in his own writing.

“ SIÞEN þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye, þe bor3 brittened and brent to bronde3 and askez, þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wro3t Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erþe: Hit watz Ennias þe athel, and his highe kynde, þat siþen depreced prouinces, and patrounes bicome Welne3e of al þe wele in þe west iles. Fro riche Romulus to Rome ricchis hym swyþe, With gret bobbaunce þat bur3e he biges vpon fyrst, And neuenes hit his aune nome, as hit now hat; Ticius to Tuskan and teldes bigynnes, Langaberde in Lumbardie lyftes vp homes, And fer ouer þe French flod Felix Brutus On mony bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he settez wyth wynne, Where werre and wrake and wonder Bi syþez hatz wont þerinne, And oft boþe blysse and blunder Ful skete hatz skyfted synne.”

And below is actual Old English, written during the 900s. The Middle English above is very challenging to understand, but at least parts of it can be understood when spoken. The Old English below is almost entirely indecipherable to us, both written and spoken.

“Ær þæm þe Romeburg getimbred wære iiii hunde wintrum 7 hundeahtatigum, Uesoges, Egypta cyning, wæs winnende of suðdæle Asiam, oð him se mæsta dæl wearð underþieded. 7 he Uesoges, Egypta cyning, wæs siþþan mid firde farende on Sciþþie on ða norðdælas, 7 his ærendracan beforan asende to þære ðeode, 7 him untweogendlice secgan het þæt hie [oðer] sceolden, oþþe ðæt lond æt him alesan, oþþe he hie wolde mid gefeohte fordon 7 forherigan. Hie him þa gesceadwislice ondwyrdon, 7 cwædon þæt hit gemalic wære 7 unryhtlic þæt swa oferwlenced cyning sceolde winnan on swa earm folc swa hie wæron. Heton him þeh þæt ondwyrde secgan, þæt him leofre wære wið hiene to feohtanne þonne gafol to gieldanne. Hie þæt gelæstan swa, 7 sona þone cyning gefliemdon mid his folce, 7 him æfterfolgiende wæron, 7 ealle ægypte awestan buton þæm fenlondum anum. 7 þa hie hamweard wendon be westan þære ie Eufrate, ealle Asiam hie genieddon þæt hie him gafol guldon, 7 þær wæron fiftene gear þæt lond herigende 7 westende, oð heora wif him sendon ærendracan æfter, 7 him sædon þæt hie oðer dyden, oðþe ham comen oððe hie him woldon oðerra wera ceosan. Hi þa þæt lond forleton, 7 him hamweard ferdon.”

Thank god the French invaded in 1066 and scubbed the language of so many Germanic words.

R95, I think your own sample show the opposite of one of your assertions. It is the poetry of the English Renaissance that we understand better than the prose. The letter you quote has no difficult vocabulary, but is still tougher for most people to understand read aloud than a sonnet with obsure words.

Shakespearean poetry is pretty easy for people to understand because it is more formal and closer to the vocabulary and patterns of contemporary English. But the prose passages are a lot harder for people today to understand because it more closely imitated the spoken language of the time. That is why Shakepearean productions (especially British ones) substitute words, edit grammar, and physicalize meaning. A modern script that duplicated that spoken speech would be unintelligible--so films like Shakespeare in Love, etc. do not attempt to duplicate the spoken language of the time. You cannot throw in common words or idioms of the time like "tundish" or "cock-a-hoop" and be understood.

But there are few words and idioms of the 1940 or 1960s that cannot be understood today.

Shakespeare himself had access to some literature of the time of the Henrys--but far less than we have to that of the time of Mrs Maisel. And even then, it was written language, with few works trying to approximate actual speech. Twentieth century novels and films usually had to goal of getting the cadence and vocabulary of actual speech.

Today's writers have access to etymology, recorded interviews, written records, fiction and film to a greater extent than anyone in the past had. If the writers of Maisel and Hollywood, just watched ten films of the period or breezed though a novel or two, they would hear why the dialog jars. A good portion of their audience can hear it--why cannot they?

I find Shakespeare dreadfully boring. Ever go to one of his ‘comedies’ and actually laugh? I usually fall asleep so I don’t bother spending the money. I saw Glenda Jackson play Lady Macbeth, it should have been RIVETING for a young gayljng, yet I dozed off during on of the men’s long speeches.

I think you totally disagree way too much.

R101 Comedies in Shakespeare's day were not necessarily intended to be laugh inducing. The convention of a comedy is "all's well that ends well." Generally, comedies of the time are about miscommunications and follies that occur as a result. A sitcom version of this convention is Three's Company and oftentimes I Love Lucy--someone observes X happening, makes lots of wrong assumptions, and mishaps ensue. As long as the play ends with all the major characters surviving (and usually getting married in the end) by various twists of fate, then it's a comedy. That is something that has changed markedly since the Renaissance.

Shakespearean Romances are not necessarily "romantic," either. A Shakespearean romance can be considered a type of a comedy, technically, and romances generally begin and proceed as tragedies--and then they end well for most of the major characters.

yeah that’s what I remember learning in high school:

comedy- marriage at the end

trajedy- death at the end

There is comedy in every one of Shakespeare's plays but there is also serious stuff as well. They did not distinguish genre in the same way people do.

I have laughed at a lot of Shakepeare plays. The recent NTLive of Bridge Theatre's Midsummer Nights Dream made me laugh out loud a lot. Going further back, Cheek by Jowls As You Like It made me laugh. A lot of the productions in the Delecorte made me laugh.

Generally though those Stanford and regional Shakespeare productions are deadly.

Shakespeare's clowns were intended to induce laughs, and they almost never do. Talk about deadly.

the people who laugh at Shakespeare tend to be middle aged NPR listeners, eating organic food on an expensive blanket at a park, casually unaware of the people watching them. When they go home, the wife (with sunken tits and lumpy midsection) will attempt to seduce husband for intercourse, but he had already jerked off in the bathroom to Hungarian teenage gay porn.

Good lord.

This thread started out ok but it looks like the pedants have arrived.

R101 Oh, thank you DL, you've taught me I've been wrong (as have most of the past 500 years of humanity) to think there was anything important going on with Shakespeare.

Nothing to see here,... move along.

R107 I am 42 and I love Shakespeare. I have liked Shakespeare since I first read him in school and I was an English major and then earned an MFA in creative writing. My day job is in communications, with my primary function being to serve as an editor. All my adult life, I have dipped into Shakespeare’s writing and out of it in intervals, and one of my favorite podcasts is the Folger Shakespeare Library’s “Shakespeare Unlimited.”

I don’t laugh at his plays in the way I laugh at slapstick comedy. The person who posted above at R105 is obviously familiar with Shakespeare’s writing. All of his plays, and many of his sonnets, have humor and some of that humor is laugh provoking. In the plays, a lot of the humor has been lost because the puns have lost relevance with linguistic changes and pronunciation changes. Puns are a major part of his humorous sensibility and some are really very funny, especially when they are performed well. There’s also a lot of situational comedy that can be identified as comedy (in the contemporary sense) on the page, but which really comes alive when performed and does beget a lot of laughs.

But his comedies are not sitcoms. That is not the format of a comedic play, to sting together a series of jokes the way contemporary comedies do. The format is: misadventures that conclude with a wedding.

That said, his comedies, his romances, his histories and his tragedies alike contain humor and that humor sometimes is intelligent and witty and thought provoking, it is often crude, and it is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. And often it occurs in the direst of situations—which is what makes Shakespeare one of the great writers of human psychology. He depicts the reality of the haunting intellect and relieving laughter by juxtaposing death, decay, betrayal, jealousy and violence with silliness, bawdiness, foolishness, cleverness and so on. Darkness and lightness tabgo with one another in his work. That is what draws people to his work. Once you get into it, you ride an emotional and existential rollercoaster and realize that in the end, that’s what life is.

Shakespeare’s writing is amoral. There’s no real good and bad, there are no uncomplicated heroes or villains. All characters, whether royalty or gravediggers, fuck things up and cope as well as they can. They have fun, they agonize, and they either have joie de vivre while alive or else they worry themselves into early graves.

^ TL:DR....

R111 Only boring people are bored.

“Class, the state curriculum says that we should be teaching you Hamlet this semester. However, I looked up the play and TBH? TL:DR. So instead, we’re going to read Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote because, first, it’s short, and secondly Audrey Hepburn was ICONIC.”

[quote]I find Shakespeare dreadfully boring.

Ignorance is really nothing to boast about, even on DL.

Do people not know that the term "romance" mean a fantastical fiction during the renaissance and the connection of the word to erotic love did not exist till the 19th century?

In Hollywood, there are references to “Asians.” Wouldn’t the term “Orientals” have been used far more commonly in post-war America?

Yes. I think by eliminating words like "Orientals" "Spics" and "Niggers" we minimize the bigotry minorities faced in the past.

R35 Dialog is the American spelling (e.g., catalog, analog).

R116 same with using the term 'person of color.' 'Negro' was the preferred term by black people. In fact, 'black' didn't come into widespread use until the late '60s with the 'Black Power" and "Black is Beautiful" movements. Then 'African-American' became the new term in the late '80s.

Frankly, I can't watch modern TV/movies because they deliberately make them anachronistic so as not to offend modern sensibilities.

[quote]Dialog is the American spelling

No, it is not. Dialogue is the preferred spelling.

R118 Then - Negro Now - Black or African American

Then - Colored Now - Person of color

R119 My spellcheck doesn't underline 'dialog' as wrong.

Because it's technically not "wrong," R121, but dialogue is the preferred spelling, just as catalogue is preferred over catalog.

We have our Negro Day!

For an audience member, there's a difference between anachronism as a deliberate style choice, and anachronism as ignorant carelessness.

Anachronism as a deliberate style choice: the audience knows, going in, that the bus driver knows exactly what he's doing, and audience can enjoy the ride and the scenery, even if moderately uncomfortable. The audience is in secure hands.

Anachronism as ignorant carelessness: the audience is jolted out of the story, made highly uncomfortable, realizes the bus driver is drunk & has no idea where he is going. Audience's emotional investment in the story is in jeopardy. Audience spends its time watching out the front windscreen, worrying about when the next dreadful mishap will occur. Production is ruined.

Hollywood is interesting in that the power of the deliberately anachronistic plot is undercut by the anachronistic dialog. If the characters were more credible as people of the 1940s, then the alternate history defeat of bigotry would have been delightful.

As it was, it just seemed dopey. Like contemporary people inexplicably wearing historical costumes and leaving their cell phones in the car.

I heard "spic" used in Penny Dreadful City of Angels.

Dialogue not dialog!!!

R125 The problem we have now is that producers/writers are so afraid of the current "cancel culture."

Mindy Kaling talked to Terry Gross about this, saying things they wrote for The Office would not get written now. The example she gave was someone saying, "I'm Mexican." And Michael Scott responding, "Is there a less offensive word you'd like us to use?"

So I am sure the writers of Hollywood were not going to call Asians "orientals" -- even though that is what they would have been called in the '40s. And don't even mention what black people were called!

Ryan Murphy's characters very rarely are credible as people regardless of the era.