UPP is getting reworked
into a YMMV trope.
Many works that are intended to be "contemporary" end up displaying so many cultural quirks that later audiences mistake it for a deliberate exaggeration of the era by a work made much later. Works that are explicitly set in the Present Day 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 article describes the effect on audiences when that attempt fails and the audience is painfully aware of how old the work is.
To provide a concrete example, imagine 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. Just about every work can be dated to an era of two decades, but very few works go so far as to include short-lived trends, clothing from a specific year (or fashion season), and or using gimmicky technology.
However, if the work is willing to date itself to the Present Day, those highly-specific inclusions mean that the creators were aware of the era in which the work was being created and intended audiences to recognize the highly-specific culture/era being referenced as part of their enjoyment of the work. That reflects more of an intentional style of Period Piece, which just happened to be around the time of the work's production.
Topical humour can be especially vulnerable to changing trends/fashions, as they rarely include a dating method. Such jokes often invert Don't Explain the Joke because the explanation is necessary to make it funny again. As the years pass, the number of people who remember the reference shrinks until the punchline becomes an artifact of their generation ("I haven't heard that joke for years!"). Historians studying an era, however, may find it hilarious and these jokes can liven up an otherwise dullish history lesson as you become one of the few people knowledgeable of the time period.
Dismissing a work simply because it is "dated" would be an Appeal to Novelty. Just because a work is dated in some way 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 This Very Wiki) may find the very tropes in use may be recognisable of an era — such as the '90s Anti-Hero. 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.
Compare this reaction to the following tropes: If the work has elements from across several different decades, you're looking at an Anachronism Stew. If a concept was new in its day but is now well-established and evolved beyond that, you're looking at Once Original, Now Common. If a work feels like it was intended to be the Present Day, but was actually produced many years after the relevant period it seems to be based on, that's Two Decades Behind. If a work's moral elements make it inaccessible to modern audiences, then you have Values Dissonance. If a dated work's moral messaging manages to feel relevant today, it's an example of Values Resonance. 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.
Subtropes include Failed Future Forecast (which dates the work between the issue in question becoming relevant and it being resolved in real life) and Fashion Dissonance (when this is caused by clothing and hairstyles alone).
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. 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 TV Tropes does not know time.
Examples:
Theatre
- The Children's Hour was produced in the 1930s (1960s in the second film) and its plot could not occur much later than that. The concept of two teachers becoming social pariahs due to allegations of being in a same-gender relationship doesn't work in modern times, where LGBT people are much more accepted. As a result, revivals depict it as a period piece.
- Classic Disney Shorts:
- The 1946 short "All The Cats Join In", with its jazz soundtrack produced by Benny Goodman, features teens partying in a malt shop and doing swing dancing as a jukebox plays.
- Donald Duck's short, "Wide Open Spaces", showed Donald refusing to pay the expensive price (at the time) of $16 to stay at a hotel. These days, it makes Donald look really cheap, which is actually almost funnier.
- Merrie Melodies:
- "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs": On top of the rampant Values Dissonance, this 1943 Short Film has some elements that clearly date it to World War II, such as the hitmen who advertise that they kill "Japs" for free and the Queen's piles of wealth including rationed goods like sugar and rubber.
- "Hollywood Steps Out" made in 1941 bears particular mention for featuring 46 then-contemporary celebrities at a ritzy nightclub party costing $50 a plate (roughly equal to $830 in 2020 money). What was intended to poke fun at the pop culture of the time has become something of a '40s time capsule.
- Terry Toons made "Landing Of The Pilgrims", a 1940 Short Film, where a pilgrim spares a Thanksgiving turkey's life because of a presidential proclamation that Thanksgiving was last week. Then the narrator says, "And to this day, dear children, no one knows just when to celebrate Thanksgiving." This dates the short to the three-year period when Franklin Roosevelt wanted Thanksgiving to be a week earlier and only half the states agreed to change the date.
- The Tom and Jerry short "The Zoot Cat" not only included very 1940s-era fashions, but also slang and dances which were only popular during the 1940s.
Theatre
- One Touch of Venus has a few throwaway lines and walk-ons that betray the fact that it was written and produced during World War II (which figures not at all into the plot). The 1948 film adaptation chose to remove these references.
Film
- A Face in the Crowd is set in a time when rock-and-roll and television were obviously new national crazes, and when TV programming was mostly produced in New York and was dependably wholesome. Also features numerous cameos by television celebrities of the era.
- Guys and Dolls, subtitled as A Musical Fable of Broadway, is telling a love story between a crook and a virtuous lady, but embraces the 1940s era by describing in detail the fashion that characters are expected to be wearing (such as bobby soxers, watch chains, and vests), slang from the era (well-heeled shooters with lettuce), as well as the technology and crimes of the era.
- The Seven Year Itch (1955) is a time capsule of the mid-1950s due to Values Dissonance and other reasons. For starters, the entire plot is set in motion when the wives and children of New York City leave for New England to escape the summer heat, which would not be necessary just a few years later when air conditioning became more prevalent and reliable. The female characters, almost without exception, are seen wearing the high-waisted, long-skirted "New Look" style of dress that was already starting to pass out of fashion when this movie was made. The script is littered with subtle and not-so-subtle references to the popular culture of the time period, some of them bordering on (and in one case even crossing) the Celebrity Paradox: the characters going to a theater to see Creature from the Black Lagoon, a pretty blatant parody of From Here to Eternity, etc. Perhaps most striking, however, is the characters' discussion of the Marilyn character wearing nothing but a bikini for a U.S. Camera photoshoot: we are told that police had to show up at the beach to keep the crowd under control, and until we actually see the photo, the way the characters refer to it leads us to believe that The Girl had actually been posing nude.
- White Christmas is set in an America where nightclubs are places where people dress up, dance formally, and hear live entertainers perform what are today called standards. Those entertainers gain stardom by appearing on regular radio shows and starring in Broadway revues (variety shows). They travel from Florida to Vermont, and thence to New York, by train; once in New York, they appear on prime-time, live-broadcast, black-and-white TV, and at home the whole family gathers around to watch. And the whole plot is centered around men doing things "for an old pal from the Army" — the bond created amongst a generation by World War II.
