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Heaven: Well, They Sure Got THAT Wrong...
Inspired by a tangent I went off on during this discussion, I'm starting this thread to discuss the phenomenon that occurs when you read a book or watch a TV show or movie that is set in your hometown, or that in some other way touches on your area of knowledge or expertise, and you can't focus on the story because of the jarring Things They Got Wrong.
The thing that got me started on this was a comment about the novel The Shipping News, probably the most well-known novel and movie ever set in Newfoundland, which to me is full of glaring errors (such as the "squidburgers" I ranted about on the other thread).
In general, I find that anything set in Newfoundland (if not written by someone from here), and anything that mentions Seventh-day Adventists, is bound to have some error, either minor or major, that is going to grate on my nerves, just because those are the two cultures I've been immersed in my whole life.
I know for a lot of people this is true of their profession as well -- like doctors who can't bring themselves to watch medical shows on TV. My own profession, teaching, is generally not too badly represented, although there are some cliches that are laughable -- like the common TV and movie trope where the bell to end class ALWAYS goes off in the middle of the teacher's lecture. Is there not one teacher in TV land who knows how long their class period is and plans accordingly? When do they wind down and give the assignment?
So, this is a thread to give examples and gripe about how your region, religion, profession or weird hobby is misrepresented on page or screen.
The thing that got me started on this was a comment about the novel The Shipping News, probably the most well-known novel and movie ever set in Newfoundland, which to me is full of glaring errors (such as the "squidburgers" I ranted about on the other thread).
In general, I find that anything set in Newfoundland (if not written by someone from here), and anything that mentions Seventh-day Adventists, is bound to have some error, either minor or major, that is going to grate on my nerves, just because those are the two cultures I've been immersed in my whole life.
I know for a lot of people this is true of their profession as well -- like doctors who can't bring themselves to watch medical shows on TV. My own profession, teaching, is generally not too badly represented, although there are some cliches that are laughable -- like the common TV and movie trope where the bell to end class ALWAYS goes off in the middle of the teacher's lecture. Is there not one teacher in TV land who knows how long their class period is and plans accordingly? When do they wind down and give the assignment?
So, this is a thread to give examples and gripe about how your region, religion, profession or weird hobby is misrepresented on page or screen.
Comments
Just the opposite of what you see in most crime TV shows, where the cops are never wounded or killed but the bad guys always are.
Also, American television shows and movies never get anything Episcopal/Anglican correct. I'm sure they could find a friendly priest who'd be happy to serve as an advisor.
I once presided at a funeral for someone who had died about 4 days prior. The smell was so dreadful that I, along with everyone else, was inclined to make things a little brisker than might otherwise have been our wont.
(Miss Amanda will get her wrap.)
Fake location shots happen all the time in film and TV and are very annoying to people who recognize what the venues really are.
One of my favorite TV series, Criminal Minds, once staged an episode called Reflection of Desire about a young man who kept the body of his dead mother preserved as if she were still alive (remind you of something else?). A significant chunk of the action was ostensibly set in Union Station, the railroad terminal in DC, but was actually shot in Union Station Los Angeles.
Years ago, I started a thread on the Ship about the tendency of movies and TV shows to portray Bible Belt protestantism as decked out with the trappings of Catholicism. You know the drill, a fire-and-brimstone preacher in a shiny suit, hollering out scriptural damnation quotes while surrounded by neon Virgins and Sacred Hearts.
Any futher remonstration on this topic would likely be more Purgatorial than Heavenly, so I'll just end by observing that things have not improved much on that score since I made that thread almost a decade ago.
For example...
In the movie Knocked Up, a character played by Seth Rogen says that as a child in Vancouver, he was run over by a postal truck, and his parents sued the government of British Columbia. Given that Rogen grew up in Vancouver, and the writer Judd Apatow grew up in a country that has a federal postal system(ie. the USA), between the two of them they should have known that Canada has a federal system as well.
My particular bugbears are American authors setting books in Britain - not a problem when the books are set in the USA, I don't know if they're wrong or not. I just hope they know of what they write. It's not the big things that irritate, so much, it's the way sentences are phrased and things are supposed to happen, but there are usually pretty big bloopers too.
Many travel websites and publicity films about South Africa highlight the dangers of attack by wild animals while on safari. In reality the biggest danger on a game reserve is a mosquito bite, not the risk of being mauled by lions or hyenas or trampled by elephants.
Malaria is endemic across large areas of South Africa including the Kruger Game Reserves and other private game reserves, and many tourists who come out on safari fall ill up to six months after returning from their holiday. With climate change, the 'safe windows' for malaria-free travel aren't reliable. In 2017, malaria deaths in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal reached epidemic proportions. It's depressing to write about something like this but I wish there was more awareness of the prevalence of malaria in rural areas.
Tangent/ I experienced this twice in South Africa a couple of years ago, once in Cape Town and then again in Pretoria. I was quite taken aback - non-South Africans do, I think, regard Afrikaans as a "white" language. Its history is very interesting, to this outsider, anyway./end tangent
Bell ringing (church bells) is always depicted wrongly.
And I second the 'free church stuffed to the gunwales with neon BVMs' mentioned upthread.
And in the TV series 'Victoria', when she married Prince Albert, she threw her bouquet? What? And I seem to remember (this might be a feverish imagining), the congregation clapped, a travesty that I have only seen in probably the last decade*.
MMM
*this is where a learned person posts to tell me they've been studying early nineteenth century wedding customs for the last 30 years and both are perfectly correct.
Quite without doing any research at all, my feeling is that 'Your Grace' would have been a more usual form of address.
Or would that be reserved just for the reigning monarch?
IJ
I've lost count of how many times a character boards a train at some London terminal on their way to another major city, and then we cut to a shot of two coaches and a tank engine chugging along a single-track branch.
Fools!
I think I remember her being addressed as Your Grace in the episodes where she was queen. I actually enjoyed the programmes, so it didn't really put me off; it just jarred a bit.
More of-putting is the trailer I saw for a new film, Mary Queen of Scots, where Mary has what sounds like a western Scottish accent. I get it that if authentic speech is the main aim, a modern anglophone (or any 'phone, I suppose) would need subtitles. So, even though we don't actually want 'authentic authenticity', the director could have got the actor to try and approximate a hint of a courtly French inflection, rather than some kind of Scottish queen of the walk.
Actually, the bridge swung to allow ships to pass (not surprisingly), so the sailor would have had to stand there feeling stupid until it swung back to its 'road' position and allowed him to leave and find his way to whatever ship he was due to join!
You mentioned hobbies - more transport - I hate those 'found in someone's shed' shows. I 'restore' (hmmm, OK) old bikes. Why is someone selling something cheap to some TV clown in a wax coat and flat cap? Surely he hasn't been paid off by the production company in advance? And when the Fred Dibnah music comes on and people start talking about heritage, it's time to run to the shed and breathe (oil fumes) deeply.
IJ
It was fine for most of the geographical details - there's even a mention of the (sadly no longer extant) restaurant where D. proposed to me - but one thing that she gets glaringly wrong is one of the character's names.
Surnames used as Christian names are not uncommon in Orkney, and one of the characters is called Drever Rendall. Drever is indeed quite a common surname in Orkney, but I've never met anyone with it as a Christian name, and it just jarred, because it seemed so unlikely - and because there were plenty of other surname/Christian names she could have used.
We'll overlook the fact that murders in Orkney are something of a rarity - as far as I know there have been three in my lifetime, and I'm 56.
While we're on that era, don't even get me started on the execrable pile of doggie-do that was The Tudors, where most of the rest of the cast looked more like Henry VIII than he did, they implied that the composer Thomas Tallis was the gay lover of one of the courtiers and had Henry's sister marrying the wrong king.
(I was part of a team researching one of the houses that was owned by Waltham Abbey and transferred into the ownership of Henry VIII during those negotiations. I've seen some of the Abbot's notebooks in the British Library. He doodled in the margins.)
To be fair though this level of exaggeration has to happen in any cozy small town or region where an ongoing mystery series is set. How is anyone still alive in Midsomer?
A couple of years ago (yes, it still bugs me) I read a book by an American author set in England. The owner of the hotel where they're staying apologizes that the elevator wasn't working.
(* or apologises)
No. No prince or princess would ever be called "majesty" at any time, ever.
In fact no king of England was addressed as "majesty" until the time of Henry VIII - possibly it was something he brought back from the Field of the Cloth of Gold?
"Highness" was a term often used to refer to kings, queens, princes and princesses from around the 12th/13th century.
Modern usage of course is that when you first speak to the sovereign you call them Your Majesty and after that it is either sir or ma'am.
I think I was taught that Mary Stuart didn't speak either English or Scots fluently when she arrived back in the country from France: she only acquired English after she came to England, French being the language in which she was most at home.
My Catholic high school did a production of Damn Yankees, and for a scene set in a Salvation Army mission, someone thought it would enhance the authenticity to hang a crucifix.
In fairness, that was high-school, and no one was getting paid to do the show, and they weren't purporting to have researched the life of a well-known Protestant.
Well I laughed. And hoped people don’t get first aid tips from tv crime shows.
Mary and Elizabeth certainly corresponded in French.
Perhaps no-one's quite sure where it is...
(Apart from Lyda, that is ).
IJ