Unintentional Period Piece cleanup

Note: This OP was made using portions of the OP of the TRS thread, which was written by The Mayor of Simpleton.

Unintentional Period Piece is a ridiculously misused trope. The trope is supposed to be for when a work is full of things that make the work firmly dated to its era, such as fashion, technology, societal attitudes, etc.

Instead, it is used for anything even remotely dated in a work, along with merely dated settings and, in some cases, intentionally dated things. It is ridiculously misused. The trope is supposed to be for when a work is so ridiculously dated and full of culture at the time it was written, that it becomes a Period Piece despite not intending to be one. However, it instead gets used for anything that is dated in a work, as well as sometimes intentional Period Pieces. It was also moved to YMMV by TRS because of its subjective nature.

Cleanup work for the TRS thread was deferred here, with the following work to do:

• Examples are only valid if a work is full of things that make the work firmly dated to its era, such as fashion, topical references, societal attitudes, etc. Example need to be moved thusly:
  • Valid examples on Trivia/ subpages need to be moved to the corresponding YMMV/ subpages due to Unintentional Period Piece being reclassified as an Audience Reaction instead of Trivia.
  • Examples that take place in Present Day without being particularly dated should be moved to the work's main page under Present Day.
  • Examples that revolve entirely about the technology present in the work being dated should be moved within Trivia as an example of Technology Marches On.
  • Works that take place in either an Alternate History or a completely fictional world do not count for either Unintentional Period Piece or Present Day and should be removed.
  • Since this is YMMV, examples are only allowed on YMMV pages, per What Goes Where on the Wiki.
• Progress is being tracked using the Intentional Wick Cleaning Piece sandbox.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 27th 2023 at 8:17:45 AM

Grand Theft Auto IV features an entire UPP page, which I think is invalid. The game was released in 2008, and is set in 2008.

The series also has a fairly lengthy entry on UPP's Special Cases page: I think the GTA III example is valid, since 2001 was a major cultural turning point ant it's noteworthy that the game covers the end of an era, but the GTA V entry I think doesn't count for similar reasons to GTA IV.

Hey ~GastonRabbit — since you used parts of my OP for this cleanup OP, you wouldn't mind partially crediting me, would you?

Thanks Gaston!

Anyway, on with the cleanup. When I get a chance I'll see what I can do.

How valid are these examples on YMMV.Animaniacs 2020? Some of them read as overly nitpicky.

• Unintentional Period Piece: The first episode openly acknowledges that the show was written in 2018 while debuting in 2020, preventing any truly current cultural references, leading to:
  • Mentions of 2020 being an election year, but acknowledging that the show can't make any jokes about it because the writers can't predict the outcome. Perhaps even more than the Presidents involved, it especially stands out how Dot's song about the First Ladies makes no mention of Dr. Jill Biden, who had became First Lady-elect only a couple of weeks prior to the series' premiere. The second half of this bullet is just "Thing wasn't mentioned", which feels like misuse to me.
  • References to the The X-Files and Murphy Brown revivals, neither of which made it past 2018. Yes, they didn't make it to 2020, but they were still valid examples of revivals that the public was aware of.
  • Olympics jokes, which were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Olympics are still a thing, just not for that year.
  • Also due to the pandemic, the Manny Manspreader segment became completely irrelevant due to the fact that most people hadn't been able to properly conduct man-spreading for the past 8 months prior due to a majority of theaters still being closed when the show premiered, and how the theaters that were open had to follow social distancing guidelines and space out the people that are watching the movies in the process. This only temporarily became not a thing. I assume manspreading is back by now.
  • Fidget spinners get referenced in a Pinky and the Brain short, immediately putting the viewer right back to the time it was written. While they do joke about the fact it was indeed a fad, people weren't removed far enough from their demise to feel nostalgia for them yet and as a result it comes across as this. Reads as a nitpick. If the show references them as a passing fad, shouldn't that be enough?
  • Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that this also applies a bit to The Apology segment, with a subtly-hidden joke where the like to dislike ratio for the Warners' video starts to favor the latter when they take it back halfway towards the end. Less than a week after its premiere, YouTube announced a permanent disabling of the dislike count in the public view as a result of what they claimed to be an overly strong abuse of the feature. Such a small detail that you'd have to hunt for.
  • Lampshaded in "The Warner's Vault", where a heavy-handed lecture about "current" economic turmoil is complimented with a blinking sign that reads "DATED MATERIAL WARNING."

UPP for Covid-related reasons will almost always turn out to be a shoehorn. This is why it's NREP; we don't want knee-jerk reactions.

As for the Trump/Biden stuff, that's lampshaded Production Lead Time. The show specifically mentioned that they were about to be outdated, which is as intentional as you can get.

Okay, so I can cut the Covid examples and the bullet about the election. Any thoughts on the others?

I know it seems like it's been forever, but 2020 was in fact less than 10 years ago, so we're only looking for "instantly dated" examples. (I've considered making a TLP of Instantly Dated and shoving the recent examples over there, which would allow us to change this one over to a strict ten year limit.)

To go down your list:

• I'm of the opinion that lampshaded Production Lead Time (#1 and #7) doesn't qualify as UPP. Cut.
• If the context was just "these got revivals," then #2 wouldn't be good enough. Cut.
• The Olympics (#3) still exist, and IIRC the jokes in question weren't even specifically about the Olympics. Cut.
• The manspreading "controversy" (#4) has mostly died out even after people began interacting in person again, but it was too early to tell at the time of release. it might be fine to return as an example in seven years once the NREP time limit expires. Cut for now.
• Fidget spinners (#5) only lasted a few months in 2017 as a fad. Production could have been during this fad, but I have to know how "major" a reference it was in order to know if it qualifies as instantly dating the segment. Unsure.
• YouTube dislikes (#6) are too minor a reference. Cut.

That TLP was adopted by someone else.

Great minds think alike (and this also shows how long I procrastinated on this...)

But no, this wouldn't become a strict ten-year limit even if Instantly Dated launches. The "exceptional circumstances" clause should still exist.

Alright, I've removed them all from the page except for the fidget spinner one, pending further discussion. I don't recall how the segment references fidget spinners, but I'm willing to guess that it was just for a throwaway gag.

The problem came about because every editor decided that their example was "exceptional."

What "exceptional" examples within ten years wouldn't be covered by Instantly Dated?

Those which are dated by events which happened after the work's release.

And yes, I see your concern with abuse of the clause, which is why I think "exceptional" examples would have to be approved, either on the forum or on discussion.

Been removing a few of these from intentional examples like the Scream series (which outright mentions the year a ton of times, and intent by the authors on making something that fit the zeitgeist of the decade) and Simpsons episodes where the writers acknowledge that the episode would end up outdated in a few years.

Does anyone else think that South Park examples should be removed entirely? The show is famous for being almost entirely based on topical humor and Matt and Trey have acknowledged it.

https://www.npr.org/2010/05/28/127210540/making-fun-of-everyone-on-south-park

Because of the nature of our show, a lot of people by now kind of know [that] we really do the show almost like a live show," explains Parker. "Like an SNL kind of schedule. We come in on a Thursday and then that episode airs the next Wednesday. And so in our show what happens that week ends up going on in the show."

I was thinking of adding Videodrome to the UPP 80s page, but would that count more as Technology Marches On? My justification was that the film revolves around videotapes and cable tv (and as a side note, the main character also has an Atari 2600 and several games for it on top of his tv set).

That's indeed Technology Marches On.

This is a covid example for a film (Three Thousand Years of Longing) that came out less than a year ago, so it fails the ten-year rule right?:

• Unintentional Period Piece: The movie was clearly made post-COVID-19 as at the in-story present day, you have many people wearing face masks, including the entire crowd at Alithea's presentation and Alithea herself in shots of her going about her life. Also the majority of the present day scenes involve a maximum of 3 people onscreen at any given time. Not so noticeable with the Djinn's stories though, as they tend to involve decent sized crowds.

For now, cut it.

We've reached the point where masking has become unusual; however, that alone would not trigger any "exceptional circumstances" clause.

Edited by bwburke94 on Apr 2nd 2023 at 5:09:38 AM

Uuuuuuuh... iffy phrased example on Superhero Movie YMMV.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/SuperheroMovie

Unintentional Period Piece: The film might outdo Seltzer and Friedberg in this department due to how different the landscape of Superhero movies is now compared to the 2000s. Aside from the fact that the entire plot is copied wholesale from the Spider-Man Trilogy, the high school is played up as a Spider-Man parody rather than a My Hero Academia one, which would probably be the case had the film been made in more recent times. The X-Men Film Series is given high billing and the Fantastic Four are not portrayed in a negative light while Marvel Cinematic Universe icons like Iron Man and Captain America are completely absent, clearly dating the film to 2008.

Um...

I hate to break it to the troper who wrote this but My Hero Academia is not the mainstream instantly on everyone's minds example ripe for parody this entry thinks it is. The rest I could take it or leave it.

Edited by AegisP on Apr 21st 2023 at 1:56:51 AM

Definitely agree that it's overstating how mainstream MHA is. Most Americans don't watch anime and will think of Spider-Man was before MHA for "superhero in high school".

Regardless, a film in the vein of Seltzer and Friedberg can't be UPP because it's an intentional capsule of the time.

Iron Man

• Unintentional Period Piece: Besides the fact that Tony is in Afghanistan during The War on Terror, as he prepares for a picture with the soldiers, he says to them "I don't want to see this on your MySpace Page." At the time of filming, MySpace was the social network, but by the time that the movie premiered, Facebook had usurped its title. Avengers: Endgame features a subtle Call-Back gag toward the beginning of the film, where Tony says not to release a recording on "social media" instead of mentioning any specific social network, as if to future-proof that movie from running into the same issue.
  • These films also use the latest in tech, which, even a mere few years later, is all out of date. In a world full of smartphones, Stark's high tech flip phone is adorable, and the soldier getting a selfie a few seconds before that is using a digital camera instead of, again, a smart phone.

I feel like the first example is nitpicking about a single line of dialogue. And the second one is simply about smartphones not being in a movie released in the 2000.

Yeah, those can go.