"Are you not entertained?!" Well, actually, no, not very often.
So, this is a constant struggle, but especially difficult during the Hollidays: I can't turn off my inner critic. It sometimes drives Mrs. The_Riv crazy, because she has a wonderful ability to suspend her disbelief and appreciate the whole in spite of any errant parts, and always champions the people performing/presenting over what I consider to be the integrity or potential of a piece, whatever it may be. It's particularly trying re: music, because as a conductor I always have strong opinions re: all of the elements of music, as well as a myriad of extra-musical aspects of performances. So, the struggle is real (but just for me), LOL. It's not a Statler & Waldorf thing -- I'm not making fun of anyone -- but my senses seem to be hard wired to assess instead of access, and sometimes it's a real drag. Anybody else?
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I've got better at not excessively critiquing the physics in fiction (Jack in Titanic telling Rose to "swim up" when they go down with the ship was particularly mock-worthy). I find it helps to set aside particular media to watch with someone where heckling and mocking the plot, scenery, costuming, acting, score etc are all permitted, and then take a deep breath and suspend your disbelief for everything else.
Yes -- and my relentless question is why there don't seem to be people like he and me working on these projects?! How does this stuff get past everyone?! Those who don't struggle to see and/or hear beyond these things wouldn't notice or care if they weren't there. But for some of us... it's the whole freaking ballgame.
I'm not sure that's correct. For example, is Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar wrong or mediocre because it has its characters speaking Elizabethan English instead of classical Latin? I think that insisting there's only One True Way™ to tell any story is needlessly blinkered.
Because they fired us. Sincerely, a former professional proofreader
What "degree of flex" is permissible? I'd argue that re-staging with non-Elizabethan dress and settings is one of the ways Shakespeare's plays maintain their entertainment value and relevance. Plus there's the whole question of what onstage actions are "authentic" given Shakespeare's notoriously sparse stage directions. And does one need to use a real bear in Winter's Tale?
Most narrative art by definition includes a bunch of fakery and falsehoods. That's not really Richard III, that's Ian McKellan pretending to be fifteenth century monarch. He's not really at Bosworth Field, he's on a sound stage in London. And the costuming is all wrong!
And at least some of us, if not arguably all of us, are all the poorer for it. I wish more people were re-engaged in this kind of work.
And, @Arethosemyfeet, you may remember the oft told tale, now, about how when watching Titanic for the first time, Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson was distracted and troubled by the haphazard smattering of stars in the skies surrounding the sinking ship, so much so that he contacted James Cameron to let him know the night sky in those scenes was totally wrong, explaining in great detail how and why. When the extended/anniversary edition of the film was released years later, Cameron had taken care to correct the skies to show precisely what stars everyone would have been under at that terrible North Atlantic place and time. "Swim up," was, if you'll pardon then expression, the tip of the ice berg.
Yes, I understand that with films, plays, music etc.
But when I'm relating an account of some funny incident - and the whole room is laughing - it's not the time to say 'actually, it happened on Wednesday'!
Fun tales, stories and comedy is in the timing, and I'm good at it. Details (or spending time recalling details) definitely get in the way of the fun.
Does that make sense?
But I am mostly talking about films, television, plays, concerts, dance events, gallery exhibitions, even festivals to a degree. I can't give over to them for my own entertainment, and I do try. And I don't mean things like a Christmas Pageant where Lamb#3 suddenly makes eye contact with Grandma and takes off up the side aisle.
Indulging one's inner critic can be highly entertaining.
No need to suspend disbelief. Get out the red pen.
Mwa ha ha ha ha!
More seriously, I had a friend who was highly knowledgeable about cinema and who became a lecturer on film. He would examine and dissect absolutely everything. It added a great deal to the experience. He didn't do it an annoying way but in a way that enhanced your appreciation of whatever film it happened to be.
I wish I could help somehow. Maybe if you feel burdened by this, rather than that you have insight, the next step will be (somehow) learning to enjoy things without the critical stuff you feel burdened by?
I can be very critical, but I usually try to channel that inner critic into humor and laughter instead of disgust. It doesn’t always work. But if it’s a serious gaffe in an otherwise okay bit of entertainment, I try to remember the wisdom I learned from Animal House: Again, sometimes easier said than done. But wisdom can always be found in Animal House.
He spends a good many articles dealing with these kinds of questions. Some are I think only of interest to specialists: it's nice to know about why pop culture depictions of armour do and don't work, but not much turns on it. Maybe there are people who watch Gladiator II, and come away thinking that the Romans had newspapers. On the other hand, when he talks about depictions of the Dothraki he's picking up on something that perpetrates racism; and when he talks about the Fremen mirage or the Spartans the errors he talks about have serious political ramifications for modern worship of strong leaders and militarism.
(I am I think not sure that updating Shakespeare's costumes and settings is as easily done as said. It usually works in the comedies. But in the tragedies or histories I think it blurs the specific issues Shakespeare is talking about into general ahistorical ideas about power - and power is nothing if not instantiated in specific institutions.
Too often I think people staging Shakespeare go for a generic twentieth century kind of fascist set-up - which blurs the point of the plays. We may not believe one monarch is more legitimate in another, but many of the characters in Shakespeare's plays do. As Devereux doesn't quite say, people in the past generally believed their political structures.)
Art exists at a remove
Evocation, at two,
My engagement with Art, when I'm not directly responsible for it, feels as if it happens from lot farther away than a single "remove," whatever that distance is. And I don't assume that the things for which I have been directly responsible (musical events, mostly) weren't susceptible to the same critique by others. I just want to be transported every now and then. and it just doesn't happen.
I'm not sure we can give Shakespeare full marks for historical accuracy. He was closer to our own time than he was to that of Julius Cæsar or Macbeth and he seems to have mostly been engaged in pop history of dubious accuracy in service of whatever was required for the plot to work. Even his more recent historical plays of English monarchs had a certain pro-Lancastrian (and therefore pro-Tudor) bias to them.
My big problem is that I can't engage with most TV drama. I just don't believe it. There is always the voice in my head telling me that I am watching actors who are being paid to mouth someone elses's made up words. For some reason this doesn't apply in sci-fi/fantasy drama. Perhaps because nobody is expected to believe it is "real life."
I suspect it was a very minor thing and might even have been a question of the conductor’s interpretation. Personally I don’t function like that. But this thread has opened my eyes to why folks do.
I’m not a perfectionist. One of my favourite sayings is “the best is the enemy of the good”. That may annoy some of you!
More recently we've been watching (and enjoying) "Moonflower Murders". It is purportedly set in Suffolk but mostly filmed in Ireland. For the most part the illusion worked - except for one road sign that got into the picture, of a kind definitely not used in the UK!
As you may suspect, I get annoyed by wrong railway details!
I simply refuse to watch Father Brown. It gets pretty much every detail of RC stuff wrong, from the actual building to the vestments.
And why (a) are churches always filled with lit candles; and (b) are vicars always skulking around somewhere inside?
And then there's anachronism that's unknowing because the producers are just making it up, through either accidental or deliberate ignorance. That's also annoying.
This is kind of interesting because it illustrates that certain kinds of inaccuracies in art are considered more acceptable than others. Particularly the way we more or less automatically accept the idea of a musical soundtrack in most on-screen art forms. In most real life situations we don't get a sound track following us around, adjusting to the narrative necessities of whatever situation we find ourselves in. (Though it would be helpful to have a musical cue that something important was about to happen.) That's okay, but mediæval nobility dancing to David Bowie's Golden Years is going too far? (Yes, I'm going to flog the Knight's Tale thing to death.)
On a related note, there's the Bill and Ted test.
So Ms. Davidson's standard isn't perfection per se, it's whether you're at least as accurate as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The Bill & Ted test had a Twitter account for a while, but since it's acquisition by Musk it's not terribly accessible to non-Xitter subscribers.
As an ex-nurse, I can’t bear to watch medical dramas…
Many years ago I sat behind two old ladies at a performance of King Lear in Stratford. The scene where they gouge out Gloster's eyes occurred just before the interval. It was dramatic, gruesome and bloody.
As the lights went on, one of the women turned to her friend and said, 'As if he could say all that when his eyes were gouged out!'
To which her friend answered, 'Oh, I don't know, they were a lot tougher in those days.'
What is the point in solving a crime, if the evidence won't stand up in court? THERE IS NO POINT! I hate it when the crime is solved by some vainglorious eejit detective more interested in short term crime solving than actually putting the miscreant away.
I want JUSTICE! My husband is happy with action and clever plot twists, but I want to know that not only has the scofflaw been unmasked, he's also going to proceed to court where, after a fair trial, he's going to end up in jail.
My husband prefers to watch crime drama without me sighing and saying "Oh, the defence lawyer is going to have a field day with that one!"
What makes evidence inadmissible depends on the jurisdiction. In the U.S. police are legally allowed to lie to suspects during investigations, including during interrogations. For example, in the U.S. it's perfectly legal for police to tell suspects that they've been caught on video, or that multiple witnesses have identified them, and to strongly imply that their best option is confession and a plea deal. Even when those are bald-faced lies.
I wonder if in 90+ years people will be quibbling that JRM's double breasted jackets or Corbyn's street market shirts are anachronistic.
Quite apart from the guitar not existing yet, while it might just be possible to push the amp to get the lead tone he uses at the end without blowing a tube, and with enough practice and built up finger strength manage to play the shredding solo on the gauge of strings usual in the 1950s (12s or 13s with wound G) without breaking a string on a bend, someone used to a modern guitar with light strings wouldn’t have a hope.
I remember an OU programme which featured an interviewer dressed in the (then) height of fashion - wide lapels, kipper tie, psychedelic shirt - talking to an academic in any-time-this-last-thirty-years shirt, tie, jacket etc. You can guess which one looks the more anachronistic.
Doublethink, Admin
My old mother in law didn't. She had a bee in her bonnet about Christmas cards showing the Magi visiting the infant Christ, because 'if you read the scriptures you will see he would have been about 18 months old.'
She genuinely thought it would be an obstacle to people finding faith.
Bless her, she seemed to have forgotten the Nativity scene and crib she and my father in law made with my late wife and her sister which shows just this. Handmade shepherds, Magi and the Holy Family.
I get it down from the attic every year and put it out on top of the now long unplaced piano. It cuts me up every time but can do no other.