Unintentional Period Piece cleanup

I think we DO have a "This x piece of media was DEFINITELY made before cell phones" and if we dont have it, we should to put all the "THERE ARE NO CELLPHONES" Unintentional Period Piece misuse there.

Edited by AegisP on Apr 19th 2024 at 9:06:54 AM

Yes, that's Technology Marches On, which has a Cell Phones subpage.

• The main gimmick - that Austin and Sam only know each other anonymously through internet chat rooms - firmly roots the movie to the 2000s. Their cell phones are also the now-outdated flip phones of the time. Additionally, social media doesn't play any part in the story, and it would have factored into the plot had the movie been made even five years later. The lack of attention paid to the bullying at school roots the movie to the 2000s as well. Astrid is also dressed in the typical early 2000s Pop Punk style. It’s basically your typical 2000s high school comedy with a fairytale-type plot.
• The movie just barely missed the Great Recession and it shows, especially the idea of portraying the unemployed as lazy and people who work for family as victims and not the lucky ones. It's tempting to think if the movie came out a few years later, Fiona would have given her daughters cushy hostess jobs at the diner and kept Sam as a housemaid. Or got away with mistreating her by claiming she was an unpaid intern. There'd probably even be a throw-away line with Shelby working at her father's company.
• Given how bad New Jersey was impacted by the recession, Sam's dream of running away to Princeton seems unbelievably stupid in hindsight.

A Cinderella Story Unintentional Period Piece.

EDIT: I just checked and A Cinderella Story came out in 2004. Unless the film states which year it's set in, that feels more like a cut to me.

Edited by fireheart on Apr 21st 2024 at 1:33:15 AM

Looks like all the usual misuse of UPP, complaining about the film being set in the year it was made when it never claimed to be anything else. I'd cut everything.

Always feel unsure when talking about movies I haven't watched, but I'd say a lot of those, taken in isolation, feel more like Technology Marches On (the flip phones, the rudimentary internet) and Values Dissonance (the attitudes towards bullying, unemployment, etc.).

I'm not sure if the movie has enough of those attitudes and elements to make it an UPP. Probably not, mainly because outdated attitudes towards bullying and the unemployed, for instance, are not exclusive to 2004, something that folks always miss. It's not enough for a movie to be not-2024, it also must proudly, repeatedly and excessively display that it is 2004.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 21st 2024 at 3:29:38 AM

The second bullet, the one about the Great Recession, seems weak. It's been a while since I've watched the movie, but when it's talking about unemployed people being lazy, I think it's referring to Sam's stepsisters. They weren't people struggling to get a job. They were spoiled brats being pampered by their mother. At the same time, Sam wasn't being given a cushy waitressing job. She was being forced to work there, along with having to do other chores for the family. Fiona even sabotaged her Princeton application to keep her at the diner.

Thoughts on this entry from YMMV.Ferris Buellers Day Off?

• Unintentional Period Piece: The film is a time capsule for the 1980s.
  • The cars, fashion, and the lack of people using laptops or smartphones date this movie to an earlier time period. The computer in Rooney's office had really outdated graphics.
  • With school security becoming more pronounced since the late 90s, Ferris' hooky would be a lot harder to pull off then today.

the first point reads like Technology Marches On at best for some of those, so could be cut. As for the second, while I get the film is set in the USA and that needs to be accounted for, the comment also feels very Americancentric in general and is extremely vague. Also, is it a universal practice across the USA for school security to be that drastically beefed up that playing hooky is impossible? (I know in Australia it's very much YMMV - while security has been beefed up since the 90s, it's more around reducing vandalism and basic safety eg high fences and such)

I don't think the film clearly identifies what year it's in either?

We know Ferris Bueller takes place on June 5, 1985, but that's because of circumstantial evidence; the intent was to be generic present day, so in theory it can qualify for UPP.

However, everything except the "school security" point is clearly Technology Marches On or No New Fashions in the Future, not UPP itself.

I don't entirely agree. Haven't seen the film, but the entry mentions a computer, and that's something that would date it to a specific decade rather than just "not 2024".

Also, it's not Technology Marches On because it doesn't have the "show makes reference to something, usually a form of technology, that is 'the next big thing' or 'state of the art'" aspect of that trope.

Does anyone actually take that part of TMO's definition seriously? In practice, it's just "then-current technology is now outdated", without the requirement to be clearly identified as current, and 99% of TMO examples would fail that point.

Except UPP is not about works being dated on account of one small detail, like a computer's presence in one scene, it's about works that are so full of cultural quirks of their time that they feel like a "deliberate exaggeration" of that time.

The entry seems poorly written, IMO, with the vague stuff about cars and fashion, and the silly bit about laptops and cellphones. The school security being lax also doesn't quite scream 1980s to me.

So, to me that is a big CUT IT.

However, to the greater point of whether Ferris Bueller and other John Hughes movies are UPP, regardless of how poorly written and poorly reasoned the entry is, I'm on the fence.

These movies have come to be seen, in retrospect, as big definers and most beloved examples of the 1980s teen movie. But that is sort of a circular definition, right? "This movie is very 1980s because it came to define a decade in its genre", instead of "this movie used so many elements associated with the decade".

The high school trickster that Ferris embodies came to be seen as an archetypical 1980s figure, but I dunno... Tom Cruise in Risky Business feels more 1980s to me, with his "nervous teen morphs into sexually successful entrepreuner" stuff. Ferris's cheerful flouting of authority could as well be seen as a 1970s thing.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 26th 2024 at 8:20:51 AM

Speaking of John Hughes, Home Alone 1 has its own dedicated page.

Home Alone has had many many many articles and jokes about how it couldn't have been made today, to the point it's not even a joke. But also it seems obvious Home Alone is set in one specific time (the series also shows off gadgets and attitudes of it's time period).

Yeah.

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on Apr 26th 2024 at 11:54:59 AM

"Couldnt have been made together?"

I think they meant "today".

Wow. Looking at the page for Home Alone 1 makes me despair of ever fixing or cleaning up Unintentional Period Piece.

Everything in the page is written with a mentality of "if this were set in the 2010s or 2020s, such and such tech or set piece or thing would be different or non-existent or whatever".

None of it is about stuff that screams The '90s specifically.

Honestly, I think the trope is so universally misused, that the best thing to do would be to concede defeat and consider renaming the trope and re-writting it to account for how it is actually used, as a sort of Values Dissonance for material/physical/non-moral/shout out elements.

So that every tiny element in the setting of a work that is "not-current-anymore" can be listed under it, because that is the way the trope is used. No one really uses it for "this work just screams the decade it was made". For all the works we analyzed so far, only Star Trek: The Original Series has the correct use, presumably because it would be too silly to say Kirk and Spock should have had laptops and the security of the Enterprise would have been far more strict post-9/11.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 26th 2024 at 1:05:20 AM

Of course, there’s the issue that “work features (without focusing on) contemporary technology or styles that have since been replaced” seems like it could be People Sit on Chairs. Not to mention that if would require TRS.

Well, yeah. It's totally People Sit on Chairs. And that is my problem with how UPP is used. Smartphones not appearing in the 1980s, lack of post-9/11 security concerns, standards of living incongruous with 21st-century recessions and inequality, etc. It's always this kind of stuff and I think it's totally silly.

But, well... if people are having fun listing this sort of omnipresent stuff in works, who am I to tell them no? Let them have their fun, I guess.

There is even unintentional comedy to be found on how this sort of stuff creeps up even in works like Rear Window. Instead of making a case for why this classic movie is very The '50s, the entry lists the absence of stuff or details of how the phones work. Like, Jeff doesn't own a television. The medicine is not up to the stuff we have today. So Unintentional Period Piece.

Weird, as I think "not having TV" isn't the kind of cultural quirk people associate with the 1950s. The 1950s stereotypical cultural depiction is of nuclear families sitting around a TV. But the troper couldn't resist listing "absence of tech". At least he didn't say "if Rear Window were set in the 2020s, Jeff would be posting dad jokes in social networks on his phone instead of spying on his neighbors."

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 26th 2024 at 2:11:21 AM

I don’t think misuse being prevalent should be a reason for keeping it around. It just indicates that not enough work has gone into cleaning it up. And again, changing the definition to allow it would require TRS and I’m not sure if it would pass there.

Edited by costanton11 on Apr 26th 2024 at 3:59:08 AM

Yeah, technically you're not even supposed to discuss these things on a cleanup thread.

Okay, I'm sorry, moment of weakness there, because it is a big job.

By the way, my vote is to get rid of the whole page for Home Alone 1

I also officialy offer Rear Window for appraisal:

Jeff's only entertainment in his apartment is sitting by the window people-watching. Five years later, he'd probably be watching television instead, but T Vs still weren't universal in 1954.

Absence of TV isn't something that sets something in the 1950s.

Later advances in medicine would have required a far more severe injury than a broken leg to confine him to his home - if anything, getting out and staying active would be encouraged

Another fact that sets it in "not-today" age, but not specifically in the 1950s.

It's scandalous in 1954 for Lisa to stay over at her boyfriend's apartment. It's a big moment for both of them, and they have to keep it a secret from his landlord. When Doyle pieces it together, his disapproval (and perhaps jealousy) is palpable, and Jeff has to warn him twice to not even acknowledge it.

Good point. But seems more suited to the Values Dissonance entry, that makes a good job of covering this point. I'd want to hear more evidence of other archetypical 1950s quirks to classify the movie as UPP.

Thorwald's phone number begins with a telephone exchange name.

Too technical and small a detail? Also, wikipedia says it wasn't until the 1980s that they had all-number calling in some cities, so this isn't a 1950s-only element.

One of the examples on the Home Alone page stuck out to me as an easy cut:

• Kevin just believes Buzz's (made-up) story about Marley being the "shovel slayer". Nowadays, he could just Google it to see if it was true or not.

This seems to imply that there's no misinformation on the internet or people haven't been falsely accused of crimes on social media.

Edited by SharkToast on Apr 26th 2024 at 4:43:13 AM

And, well, wasn't part of it that he supposedly was never arrested? Good luck googling info on a crime that maybe happened that nobody was tried for lol

I could be misremembering of course but I swear Buzz said something about how he got away with it or something

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 26th 2024 at 7:46:25 AM