Verbal anachronisms in period movies

[emigran]

Great thread...

 

[MisterCairo]

a young couple kept saying "we're pregnant." I

I can't stand it when people use that phrase today. "WE'RE pregnant"? No, dopes, SHE is pregnant.

 

[2jakes]

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

The line about “not being an option” strikes me as not something from that period.
Perhaps I’m not bona fide to know for sure!

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

The line about “not being an option” strikes me as not something from that period.
Perhaps I’m not bona fide to know for sure!

This was fully of ironic moments and the anachronisms were doubtless deliberate. The dialogue was so far tongue-in-cheek that it's a wonder you could understand any of it.

By the way, I loved this picture, and the Coen brothers are tops in my book!

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Option" was in common use in the thirties, but was most often used in a business sense -- "taking an option" was used in all sorts of ironic contexts, to the point where there was even a popular song, "I'll Take An Option On You." A bit later in the decade, it became common in the show-business sense of "picking up your option," with radio comedians popularizing that usage. But "...is not an option" comes out of the 1960s space program, not the Depression.

 

[2jakes]

This was fully of ironic moments and the anachronisms were doubtless deliberate. The dialogue was so far tongue-in-cheek that it's a wonder you could understand any of it.

By the way, I loved this picture, and the Coen brothers are tops in my book!

Coen’s love of films from the past, the popular culture, product packaging
(Dapper Dan hair pomade) through period pop music to modes of dress
and politics is great, I get it!
But I wasn’t really sure about a phrase in one scene.
As Lizzie pointed out, “...this is not an option” being of a later period.
Nevertheless, I think this is the nearest thing to a “feelgood” musical movie.


“Tip of the hat" to LizzieMaine...

 

[emigran]

Tarzan the Ape Man... Original with Weismuller and O'Sullivan 1932... Quite adventurous for its time with some excellent wildlife footage (Even if Tarzan was using a vine-covered trapeze in some scenes)
One thing that drove me CRAZY was the use of Native American drumming rhythms throughout the whole movie:
"BUM dum dum dum, BUM dum dum dum... as the sinister background ,music to any threating circumstance...

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

All the MGM Tarzan movies made extensive use of stock footage left over from the filming of "Trader Horn,"(1931). The filming of that movie in East Africa was an epic in itself. The photographers went crazy when they got out on the veldt and shot hundreds of miles of wildlife footage that never got used in the film. It supplied stock footage for jungle movies until the advent of color. Ernest Hemingway said that he was inspired to go to Africa when he saw the fabulous wildlife photography in "Trader Horn."

 

[Stanley Doble]

Whenever I hear someone say "failure is not an option" I feel like saying, "yeah it comes as standard equipment".

 

[Zombie_61]

Tarzan the Ape Man... Original with Weismuller and O'Sullivan 1932... Quite adventurous for its time with some excellent wildlife footage (Even if Tarzan was using a vine-covered trapeze in some scenes)
One thing that drove me CRAZY was the use of Native American drumming rhythms throughout the whole movie:
"BUM dum dum dum, BUM dum dum dum... as the sinister background ,music to any threating circumstance...

The drumming rhythm you describe doesn't really have much to do with actual Native American drumming either, at least not the drumming I've heard. It's just another Hollywood cliché, a sound cue to inform the audience that "natives" (African, American, or otherwise) are nearby. So is Tarzan's "vine swinging", by the way. In Burroughs' novels he described Tarzan as traveling through the upper canopies of the trees rather than trying to fight his way through the thick growth on the ground, but never once mentioned vines as I recall.

Whenever I hear someone say "failure is not an option" I feel like saying, "yeah it comes as standard equipment".

I much prefer Mythbusters' version: "Failure is always an option."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

The technical term is "brachiation": swinging from branch to branch by the arms, like apes. Vine-swinging is pure Hollywood.

 

[emigran]

Zombie... you are 100% correct... and that's exactly what I was thinking when I watched it as well ...Cowboy movie Indian drumming is really only a Hollywood Cliché as well... so I was doubly peeved with one movie...!!!

The drumming rhythm you describe doesn't really have much to do with actual Native American drumming either, at least not the drumming I've heard. It's just another Hollywood cliché, a sound cue to inform the audience that "natives" (African, American, or otherwise) are nearby. So is Tarzan's "vine swinging", by the way. In Burroughs' novels he described Tarzan as traveling through the upper canopies of the trees rather than trying to fight his way through the thick growth on the ground, but never once mentioned vines as I recall.
. "

 

[LizzieMaine]

There used to be a radio commercial for Ballantine Beer that used exactly that same drumming rhythm, and that comes to mind for me whenever I watch a movie in which it's used. "Bal-lan-tine beer, Bal-lan-tine beer..."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Also for Hamm's beer, "From the land of sky-blue water,"with the tom-tom thumping away.

 

[MikeKardec]

The source of a good deal of the slang in the 1930s was military stuff from WWI, plus railroad and maritime references. Sometimes though it's a struggle to create language that works for both then and now in equal measure, just like many translators are poets some creative license is required. You have to be understood, that's the first requirement. It's better if you don't get caught faking it, however.

For all my willingness to forgive, I finally switched off the TV show Public Morals after listening to a criminal character suggest that he not only could provide various American hand guns, he could even obtain Berettas. At the time Italian pistols were held in contempt, heck that lasted well into the 1980s. It was the last of many writing straws on that show, not all of which had to do with anachronisms.

 

[Worf]

The language that struck as being quite anachronistic were the subtitles used in "The Seven Samurai". The old man at the edge of town is often referred to as "Pops" or "Gramps". While I don't doubt Feudal Japan had it's share of slang... some of these folks were made to seem like they'd just sprung from 1940's Brooklyn.

Worf

 

[scotrace]

I appreciated the early Boardwalk Empire episode when Chalky White says MF, and Nucky Thomson, once White was out of earshot, asks someone "What the hell is a Motherf****r?"

 

[Stanley Doble]

From the south, usually shortened to 'mother'. Tom Wolfe reports it as being common slang around Southern stock car racing tracks in the early sixties, as in 'look at that mother go'.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was in common use among US troops of all races during WW2. Norman Mailer sanitized it in "The Naked And The Dead" (1948) into "motherfugger," "motherfuggin" and so forth, consistent with his use of the interjection "fug" and the verb "to fug."

Most linguisitc historians who've studied the matter agree that the whole "fug" family of words became far more common among American men after the war as a result of their constant (unminced) use by servicemen of all ranks during the conflict. This would be consistent with what I observed in my own family -- my grandfather was too old to serve in WW2, and though he was an expert curser with a remarkable vocabulary, he was never heard to use that particular word or its related words.

 

[KayEn78]

It's interesting. Years ago, I read the 1961 book, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. There was swearing in it--mostly g.d. and other milder curse words. However, there was one use of the "F" word.

In the 2008 movie of the same name, there are about 8 to 10 "F" words splattered throughout the movie. Yes, the characters were arguing, but I felt it was a bit much, even for the 1950s. They followed the novel nearly to a T, except for the exta "F" words thrown in that were not in the book.

I can't stand it when writers or screenwriters look at everything through 21st Century glasses and have no clue that yes, language and slang were different back then. If you want to have it authentic to a T, get the dialogue period-correct. The same goes for novels too.

-Kristi