History Sandbox / UnintentionalPeriodPiece

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Compare this reaction to the following tropes: If the work has elements from across several different decades, you're looking at an AnachronismStew. If a concept was new in its day but is now well-established and evolved beyond that, you're looking at SeinfeldIsUnfunny. If a work feels like it was intended to be the PresentDay, but was actually produced many years after the relevant period it seems to be based on, that's TwoDecadesBehind. If a work's moral elements make it inaccessible to modern audiences, then you have ValuesDissonance. If a dated work's moral messaging manages to feel relevant today, it's an example of ValuesResonance. {{Zeerust}} is when a work's depiction of the ''future'' becomes dated, without necessarily saying anything about the work's present day, so all works with a far-future setting belong there, not here.

Dismissing a work simply because it is "dated" would be an AppealToNovelty. Just because a work is dated in some way [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools doesn't necessarily mean it isn't relevant or entertaining to modern audiences]], even notwithstanding the kitsch or nostalgia factor. Obviously any medium can be dated by their technical limitations, such as older films and TV shows done in black-and-white, but that relies on an audience with highly-specific knowledge. Some audiences (such as those who have spent too long on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki) may find [[DiscreditedTrope the very tropes in use]] may be recognisable of an era -- such as the NinetiesAntiHero. Neither the technical limitations nor the tropes common to an era of storytelling should be used to establish if the work had inadvertently dated itself to a narrow range of years. Instead, these works are judged based on the way their content and plot calls to mind specific cultural trends.

Many works that are intended to be "contemporary" end up displaying so many cultural quirks that later audiences mistake it for a [[PopularHistory deliberate exaggeration of the era by a work made much later]]. Works that are explicitly set in the PresentDay avoid this by proudly declaring the era that the work is intended to reflect, but other works attempt to be more creative in their references, in order to trick the audience into thinking that the current era of the work is supposed to be the same time period of decades later. This describes the effect on audiences when that attempt fails and the audience is ''painfully'' aware of how old the work is.

Just because a work is dated in some way [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools doesn't necessarily mean it isn't relevant or entertaining to modern audiences]], even notwithstanding the kitsch or nostalgia factor. Obviously any medium can be dated by their technical limitations, such as older films and TV shows done in black-and-white, but that relies on an audience with highly-specific knowledge. Some audiences (such as those who have spent too long on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki) may find [[DiscreditedTrope the very tropes in use]] may be recognisable of an era -- such as the NinetiesAntiHero. Neither the technical limitations nor the tropes common to an era of storytelling should be used to establish if the work had inadvertently dated itself to a narrow range of years. Instead, these works are judged based on their content and plot. Dismissing a work simply because it is "dated" would be an AppealToNovelty.

%%* ''Film/AngelsWithDirtyFaces'', due in part to its MisterSandmanSequence.
%%* The 1934 film ''Film/{{Smarty}}'' is a pretty amazing unintentional period piece from a couple of perspectives. First of all, it is wall-to-wall sex talk, non-stop double entendres, Creator/JoanBlondell getting a dress ripped off to expose her body in a negligee -- all the {{Fanservice}} stamps this film dramatically as a memento of UsefulNotes/ThePreCodeEra, the 1930-34 time frame in which for a while Hollywood got very racy indeed. But beyond that, there's the central message of the film, best encapsulated in the line of dialogue "A good sock in the eye is something every woman needs at least once in her life." The movie suggests that women need to be kept in line with the occasional punch in the face. Blondell's character Vicki quite clearly ''likes'' getting punched in the face. At the end of the film, when her formerly wishy-washy husband finally hits her as he means it, her face lights up in joy. The final scene has Vicki on the couch, looking at her husband with bedroom eyes and saying "Tony -- hit me again." {{This doesn't say how the events of the movie could only happen in 1934}}.

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A work set in the PresentDay at the time of its creation, but so full of the culture of the time it resembles a [[PopularHistory deliberate exaggeration of the era in a work made later]].

To provide a concrete example, let's say you're changing channels and come upon a show involving two men sitting at a bar in some tropical country. One in a military-looking uniform with a hammer-and-sickle badge on the side is whispering in heavily accented English about his worries that the Berlin Wall may not last. The other man, sporting a glorious mullet, clips his absolutely gigantic cell phone to his belt before putting his hand on the other man's shoulder reassuringly.

When viewed by someone with even a shaky grasp of history, the historical period is blindingly obvious. Such a scene would have been made at the time with the focus entirely on Cold War politics, but the first thing the modern audience notices are the clunky cell phone and the mullet.

While just about every work becomes somewhat of a period piece after it becomes more than a decade old due to the characters referencing old trends, wearing out-of-style fashions and using out-of-date technology, this trope only really applies to works that wear their dates so blatantly that a viewer can identify the era or even year it was made in as soon as they begin to watch it. For example, while the 1990s sitcoms ''Series/{{Friends}}'' and ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' show their age in many respects, they don't wear TheNineties so blatantly as to have this trope apply to them. On the flip side, a work based heavily around popular music -- such as ''Film/TheLastDragon'' or ComicBook/{{Dazzler}}'s solo comic as a superpowered disco diva -- can become ''painfully'' dated due to the rapidly changing nature of what's considered "hip".

Some jokes fall victim to this when a history lesson is essentially required to explain the joke to folks who weren't around at the time the joke was funny. While a joke about a president who is long remembered may have many years of life, a joke about a news story that isn't well-remembered 20 years later except by the people who were alive at the time or paying attention, or based on a then-popular but now long-gone ad campaign, wouldn't -- inverting DontExplainTheJoke because the explanation is necessary. As the years pass, the number of people who get the joke or remember the reference shrinks until the joke becomes an artifact of the generation. Historians studying an era, however, [[GeniusBonus read the joke and get a good laugh out of it still]] and these jokes can liven up an otherwise dullish history lesson, or amuse a [[SmallReferencePools group of people knowledgeable of the era]], or catch your grandparent off guard: "I haven't heard that joke for years!" A "topical" work can fall victim to this if it has a premise that was RippedFromTheHeadlines -- what was a major news story when the work was made can easily date it to its time period. A real life location [[MonumentalDamage may fall victim to a disaster that rapidly alters the landscape]]. A good example of this is any film with shots of New York City before 9/11.

Note that a work being a product of its time [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools doesn't necessarily mean it isn't relevant or entertaining to modern audiences]], even notwithstanding the kitsch or nostalgia factor ([[ValuesResonance as many of the examples below will demonstrate]]). If the work's severe datedness also makes it inaccessible to modern audiences, then you have ValuesDissonance. However, this trope can overlap with ValuesDissonance if an intellectual fashion was very short-lived. If a concept was new in its day but is now well-established and evolved beyond that, you're looking at SeinfeldIsUnfunny. If somehow the work manages to feel just as relevant today as it did then, if not more so, it's an example of ValuesResonance, not this trope. Obviously, films and TV shows that were done in black-and-white, or non-high definition, as well as video games, will automatically be dated for technical reasons, but if we listed them all we'd be here all day. So it would be best to judge them more by content and plot. If the material's universal but the outfits are dated to the minute, that's FashionDissonance. Compare AnachronismStew, which is one possible way to [[AvertedTrope avert]]/[[SubvertedTrope subvert]] this. Dismissing a work simply on the basis of its "datedness" would be an AppealToNovelty.

'''Important Sidenote''': To avoid questionable examples, do not add a work less than 10 years old unless the situation is especially unusual. (Being completely overtaken by events by time of airing, and being called "instantly dated" by the press, have both qualified in the past.) For most works, it won't be particularly clear which ones really do bleed their production date out of every pore until roughly a decade has passed. Likewise, while works that are OlderThanRadio, or even OlderThanTelevision, technically qualify for this trope by default, they are so numerous that they will not be listed here. Therefore, this page uses the 1920s as its cutoff date.

However -- also remember that while older references zing over the heads of younger consumers, newer references zing over the heads of older consumers, too. So references from modern times can ''sometimes'' be accurate, and [[Administrivia/ExamplesAreNotRecent TV Tropes does not know time]].

NarrowParody is a subset of this trope. Subtropes include FashionDissonance (when this is caused by clothing and hairstyles alone), FailedFutureForecast (which dates the work between the issue in question becoming relevant and it being resolved in real life) and {{Zeerust}} (when it's just the depiction of future technology that's outdated). {{Zeerust}} is when a work's depiction of the ''future'' becomes dated, so all works with a far-future setting belong there, not here. Look for examples of {{Technology|MarchesOn}} and Society marching on, AluminumChristmasTrees, and scenes that would resemble {{Mister Sandman Sequence}}s if they occurred in an ''actual'' period piece. Compare with TwoDecadesBehind, which is when something inadvertently feels like a period piece despite having been made a good time after the period it seems to be based on, and WereStillRelevantDammit, for when long-running series make blatant (and sometimes forced) references to modern culture in an attempt to seem up-to-date or to look more "hip", often resulting in one of these. Sometimes, especially when the viewer has spent too long on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki, [[DiscreditedTrope the very tropes in use]] may be recognisable of an era -- such as the NinetiesAntiHero.

NarrowParody is a subset of this trope. Subtropes include FashionDissonance (when this is caused by clothing and hairstyles alone), DeweyDefeatsTruman (which dates the work between the issue in question becoming relevant and it being resolved in real life) and {{Zeerust}} (when it's just the depiction of future technology that's outdated). {{Zeerust}} is when a work's depiction of the ''future'' becomes dated, so all works with a far-future setting belong there, not here. Look for examples of {{Technology|MarchesOn}} and Society marching on, AluminumChristmasTrees, and scenes that would resemble {{Mister Sandman Sequence}}s if they occurred in an ''actual'' period piece. Compare with TwoDecadesBehind, which is when something inadvertently feels like a period piece despite having been made a good time after the period it seems to be based on, and WereStillRelevantDammit, for when long-running series make blatant (and sometimes forced) references to modern culture in an attempt to seem up-to-date or to look more "hip", often resulting in one of these. Sometimes, especially when the viewer has spent too long on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki, [[DiscreditedTrope the very tropes in use]] may be recognisable of an era -- such as the NinetiesAntiHero.

NarrowParody is a subset of this trope. Subtropes include FashionDissonance (when this is caused by clothing and hairstyles alone), DeweyDefeatsTruman (which dates the work between the issue in question becoming relevant and it being resolved in real life) and {{Zeerust}} (when it's just the depiction of future technology that's outdated). {{Zeerust}} is when a work's depiction of the ''future'' becomes dated, so all works with a far-future setting belong there, not here. Look for examples of {{Technology|MarchesOn}} and [[SocietyMarchesOn Society Marching On]], AluminumChristmasTrees, and scenes that would resemble {{Mister Sandman Sequence}}s if they occurred in an ''actual'' period piece. Compare with TwoDecadesBehind, which is when something inadvertently feels like a period piece despite having been made a good time after the period it seems to be based on, and WereStillRelevantDammit, for when long-running series make blatant (and sometimes forced) references to modern culture in an attempt to seem up-to-date or to look more "hip", often resulting in one of these. Sometimes, especially when the viewer has spent too long on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki, [[DiscreditedTrope the very tropes in use]] may be recognisable of an era -- such as the NinetiesAntiHero.

UPP is getting [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/addpost.php?discussion=1622514681011084000 reworked]] into a YMMV trope. New description:

[[AC:Films]]
* The 1934 film ''Film/{{Smarty}}'' is a pretty amazing unintentional period piece from a couple of perspectives. First of all, it is wall-to-wall sex talk, non-stop double entendres, Creator/JoanBlondell getting a dress ripped off to expose her body in a negligee -- all the {{Fanservice}} stamps this film dramatically as a memento of UsefulNotes/ThePreCodeEra, the 1930-34 time frame in which for a while Hollywood got very racy indeed. But beyond that, there's the central message of the film, best encapsulated in the line of dialogue "A good sock in the eye is something every woman needs at least once in her life." The movie suggests that women need to be kept in line with the occasional punch in the face. Blondell's character Vicki quite clearly ''likes'' getting punched in the face. At the end of the film, when her formerly wishy-washy husband finally hits her as he means it, her face lights up in joy. The final scene has Vicki on the couch, looking at her husband with bedroom eyes and saying "Tony -- hit me again."

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