Needs Help: Artistic License Law

We've got Artistic License – Law, which appears to be a Useful Notes section on law, whereas Hollywood Law lists misuses of actual law in media. On the other hand we've got Artistic License – History which lists historical errors shown in media, versus Hollywood History, just a Long List of tropes regarding history. Is it just me, or might a rename somewhere be in order? Perhaps Artistic License – Law should become a "Useful Notes Law" page, and the examples listed in Hollywood Law should go into the Artistic License – Law page? I'm not sure about the Artistic License – History and Hollywood History pages. Any ideas?

While I am too sleepy to offer any ideas about the pages, I think we should discuss only Hollywood Law and Artistic License – Law in one thread, and Hollywood History and Artistic License – History in another thread.

Ok, I was just trying to show the inconsistency of their naming.

The difference is:

• Artistic License - Whatever: List of inaccuracies in a work, on the subject of Whatever.
• Hollywood Whatever: The pattern of how Whatever is represented in media.

"The pattern of how Whatever is represented in media"... otherwise known as "A trope about Whatever." Which is why Hollywood X is ridiculously broad as a family and whi it's used for so many conflicting things.

There's a [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13407809880A03920100&page=1#10 thread] about all the ways the tropes are misused.

Hollywood <whatever> is supposed to be " a complex <whatever> is consistently simplified to a much less diverse representation of it".

The "Artistic License - X" pages are for "errors commonly made in depicting X because accuracy doesn't work as well for the story."

That would be nice to have on the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions.

edited 12th Nov '13 4:11:20 PM by crazysamaritan

I think we should fix the problem instead of codifying it. "Hollywoood" is not a good trope prefix for "simplified representation."

• It is too broad: not all Hollywood productions use simplified representations
• It is too narrow: such representations are also used by non-Hollywood films, by non-American films and by works that aren't films at all
• It is misleading: "Hollywood" connotes glamor more than simplicity. It is why, for example, we used to have a page called "Hollywood Sex" - it was not just for sex that was more simple than reality but for IDEALIZED sex, sanitized sex
• "Hollywood" is already used an a prefix for established terms that have nothing to do with this concept (Hollywood Accounting, Hollywood Hype Machine)

edited 12th Nov '13 10:54:21 PM by AmyGdala

I have to dispute the latter point: People naming things in certain ways don't always use the same word consistently. I don't think that having something named Hollywood Accounting disqualifies us from using it for Hollywood Science, for example.

Beyond that, I do not see much evidence that the usage of "Hollywood" is a problem.

If which is the catchier, more interesting name is any factor here, then Hollywood Law beats Artistic License – Law by a mile.

The Artistic License tropes are pretty badly named. It seems to me there's a difference between Alfonso Cuaron using artistic license to put everything in Gravity in the same orbit and Ed Wood saying "sunlight is made out of many particles" in Plan 9 from Outer Space because he doesn't know any better. You could say that there's no really good way to know in may instances whether inaccuracies in any field are deliberate or out of ignorance, but the use of Artistic License by this wiki classes all those inaccuracies as deliberate intent by the author.

Well, it usually is deliberate intent. Either deliberately doing things in a way that is known to be inaccurate (because it benefits the story) or deliberately not finding out what the accurate way would be (because it's already been decided it's going to be done a certain way regardless of realism).

While this sort of ambiguity about whether it has to be intentional or no is a problem with the AL-X name, it's been discussed before without success. I don't see the point of trying again.

It's only a problem for those people who want to sneer at what an author got wrong and demonstrate how much smarter they are. When the pages were cast as a place to complain about errors, they were filed with complaining and one-upsmanship. So the decision was made to give the creators the benefit of the doubt across the board instead of having some pages that assumed "he made a choice for artistic reasons, knowing it was inaccurate" and others that assumed "he couldn't be arsed to look up how it really works".

But they aren't always deliberate Artistic License decisions. We know that. So the name is inaccurate.

We rarely know for sure why a creator made the choice he did. Very occasionally, we'll get Word of God, the creator saying "<This> is why I did it that way." Very, very, very rarely. Without that, all we can do is guess, and which way each of us guesses depends on how kindly they feel toward the creator, the work, or the error.

So, while assuming that it's always deliberately invoking artistic license isn't entirely accurate, the old names for the same pages ("You Fail X Forever" and "Somewhere A(n) X Is Crying") are just as inaccurate but in the other direction — they presume that the only reason the creator did what he did is that he didn't know any better. Those pages invited bitching and complaining, and nose-in-the-air disdain for anyone who was so stupid as to not know the fine points of whatever the example was about. They reeked of bile, and were filled with Natter.

edited 16th Nov '13 8:06:04 PM by Madrugada

Clock is set.

Clock's up; locking for inactivity.