Editing 1491: Stories of the Past and Future
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 15: | Line 15: | ||
For works set in the past, there's an opposite and somewhat more subtle effect. Once the work itself is old enough, audiences tend to forget that they were intended as historical fiction in the first place. If an old work is set in the past, it's often assumed that they were set in their own time, not in the still more distant past. That impacts how we experience the work, because we tend to assume that it's a faithful representation of its own time, not a later interpretation that was intended to be old (and possibly nostalgic) even in its own time. | For works set in the past, there's an opposite and somewhat more subtle effect. Once the work itself is old enough, audiences tend to forget that they were intended as historical fiction in the first place. If an old work is set in the past, it's often assumed that they were set in their own time, not in the still more distant past. That impacts how we experience the work, because we tend to assume that it's a faithful representation of its own time, not a later interpretation that was intended to be old (and possibly nostalgic) even in its own time. | ||
− | |||
− | |||
To demonstrate those impacts, this chart sorts various works by the year they were created, graphed against how far in the past or future they were originally set. Lines on the chart are added to separate when each work ceases to work as either a prediction or as a [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PeriodPiece period piece]. For future works, the cut-off is obvious: if it was set in a year prior to the current year, we know that the predictions are obsolete (and can easily determine how accurate or inaccurate that future is). Hence, at the time the chart was written (in 2015), works like ''1984'' and ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' are obsolete, while works like ''Star Trek'', which take place in a more distant future, are still theoretically possible. (''Back to the Future Part II'' is deliberately right on the line, as it was set in 2015). | To demonstrate those impacts, this chart sorts various works by the year they were created, graphed against how far in the past or future they were originally set. Lines on the chart are added to separate when each work ceases to work as either a prediction or as a [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PeriodPiece period piece]. For future works, the cut-off is obvious: if it was set in a year prior to the current year, we know that the predictions are obsolete (and can easily determine how accurate or inaccurate that future is). Hence, at the time the chart was written (in 2015), works like ''1984'' and ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' are obsolete, while works like ''Star Trek'', which take place in a more distant future, are still theoretically possible. (''Back to the Future Part II'' is deliberately right on the line, as it was set in 2015). |