Unintentional Period Piece cleanup

Some major problems I have with this trope when applied to Back to the Future

• People who are too young to meaningfully remember either the Cold War or Gaddafi’s Libya will be bewildered as to why it is Libyans who are after Doc Brown since the Cold War ended in the early 90s and Gaddafi's regime collapsed in 2011.

The movie being set explicitly in The '80s, instead of some vague present day, is intentional, since one of the main points of the movie is to contrast the 1980s with The '50s, so that alone should disqualify everything in this list. The preoccupation with Gaddafi is just an example of that: yes, it's the 1980s and it's supposed to be the 1980s

• The lack of technologies like cell phones and computers that were rare in the 1980s but that have become more common since the 21st century. If the movie were made today Marty in the opening scene would be surrounded by computers and would be seen editing his songs on a laptop.

To be honest, and meaning no disrespect to whoever wrote this, "They don't have cellphones in a movie made before there were cellphones" is technically true, but so what? Almost every movie ever would be Unintentional Period Piece.

However, if the concern is felt because this is a movie dealing with tech, a part of this entry could be reused under Zeerust or something to account for a mad scientist's laboratory that is analogical.

• The Mc Flys at the beginning of the movie are depicted as poor losers. Millennials who've endured several recessions and a cost of living crisis would see the lifestyle of the original Mc Flys as pretty luxurious.

This is an interesting observation, but I'm not sure I'd call that Unintentional Period Piece. There is a smell of Values Dissonance, or "Friends" Rent Control, or something. Thoughts?

• Doc keeps a portrait of Thomas Edison alongside similar portraits of Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Benjamin Franklin (the 1955 Doc addresses his Edison portrait when he's shocked that it takes 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux capacitor). In later years, it became more well-known that many of Edison's "inventions" were actually created by his European immigrant employees (most notably Nikola Tesla's work on the electric lamp), his sole output in many cases being taking the credit for them, and his generally less-savory behaviors (i.e. patent-trolling in the film industry or his propaganda campaigns against alternating current) became more well-known. While it isn't implausible for the 1955 Doc to idolize Edison, it's doubtful that the 1985 Doc would still do so, at least not without Marty mentioning something about it.

Interesting observation, but Yeah, I don't think Doc Brown idolizing Edison screams a particular time period. Could be an entry for Dated History.

• This all stems from the fact that the film was very deliberately setting itself in 1985, playing up everything that would ground Marty as a teenager from from that specific year. In that vein it was kind of intentional. We are talking about a time travel movie, after all.

Finally, we have this piece by a wise troper saying why it's a bad idea to apply Unintentional Period Piece to Back to the Future.

So, I'm thinking of removing the whole thing, and creating entries for Dated History, Zeerust, a couple of others.

Agree? Disagree? Suggestions?

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 12th 2024 at 9:52:17 AM

Agree 100% on all counts. "Complaining about a movie set in the 80s being set in the 80s" sums it up.

The only ones that would fit would be Thomas Edison and the McFlys living well-off, but besides that the rest could be removed since as you pointed out, Back to the Future explicitly takes place in 1985.

As a side note, I’ve always had a pet peeve towards Unintentional Period Piece being just "there’s a reference to [insert politician or dictator here]". I understand why it could be troped, but I’ve always found it needless.

^ It's one of my pet peeves too.

But really, the way people use Unintentional Period Piece is more like "Time Period Specific Element", since they single out a couple of elements in the work, sometimes something as flimsy as a reference to a politician. If the trope were renamed, then most examples would fit.

But as described, the trope means a work being inundated with such elements PLUS not being intentionaly set in the Present Day.

That's my issue with Unintentional Period Piece. It expects movies by default to have some "timelessness" that just doesn't exist - Everything that steps out of that "timelessness" immediately makes it an Unintentional Period Piece.

There doesn't seem to be any clear, defined line to determinate when an 80s movie is simply a movie portraying the reality as it was then, and when it falls under Unintentional Period Piece.

The expectation seems to be "Oh, if I can't fool myself to think this might be set in 2024, then it's an Unintentional Period Piece".

There are writers who go for a timeless feel, but that's so rare that not doing that is basically Chairs.

Agree with the above tropers too.

Very few creators go for some sort of explicit timelessness, those who do are the guys that are very much intent in creating their own "worlds" stylistically. Tim Burton, David Lynch, etc.

On the opposite corner, some present day works are very explicit about the year they're set, such as Back to the Future.

The great majority of movies sit in some sort of gray area. Matters of intentionality are also difficult to judge, barring Word of God or some omniscient narrator. Did the creator meant this movie to be about high schoolers of "today" or about the high school experience in a more "timeless" fashion (whatever that might mean). Probably some plots in the movie will be "timeless" and some will reflect the present of the movie.

And if there is no intentionality to set the movie in the "present", then how to judge if the creator "failed" it? The very lack of something that could never be in the movie in the first place, like cellphones or the Internet?

I also dislike the negative spin of the trope. I would have far less trouble with a trope that more or less spoke of the same phenomenom in less negative terms and also did away with the "unintentional" test.

Simply something like "Zeitgeist Work" for a work set in the present day when it was made, and that, either intentional or unintentional, managed to capture the spirit and look of that time period.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 13th 2024 at 4:55:26 AM

Okay, I've cut Unintentional Period Piece from Back to the Future. I also included entries for Dated History and Informed Poverty, to address those points in Unintentional Period Piece that were actually valid.

This time, I'm setting my sights on Superman: The Movie:

• The films are usually good about avoiding it, but the first guy who sees Superman in costume is a guy in Pimp Duds unquestionably from the '70s.

This example encapsulates what often goes wrong with Unintentional Period Piece. It should be about works that are brimming with references to the time they were made. Here we have a movie that does have a timeless feel, and the trope is still evocked on account of the rare instance where The '70s setting is apparent.

• Clark wearing a hat and a three-piece suit is a bit anachronistic, though it makes sense when one realizes that men wearing hats with suits went out of style in the mid-sixties, shortly after the time (based on the 12 years Superman spent at the Fortress of Solitude) that Clark last was around normal people. So, while it was already an anachronism for 1978, it would have seemed normal to him. It shows he's already a little old-fashioned.

This is a weird example, because Clark's old-fashioned fashion sense is anachronist for the 1970s, causing the movie to inch closer to the "timeless" feel. If anything, this one element is an inversion.

So, we're talking about superheroes, this one is for JLA (1997):

• Unintentional Period Piece: This was DC Comics during The '90s, where they were knee-deep in experimenting with how much they could screw around with the status quo at the time. This means that JLA ends up being a premiere time capsule for everything about 90s DC from Superman's infamous mullet, to his Blue electric form, to just Kyle Rayner's presence in general (and calling his generation "the Jerry Springer generation"), to Aquaman's barbarian look, etc.

This is another problem I have with the trope. Most of this is in-universe trivia. A character with a barbarian look, a character with electric powers, a newbie as Green Lantern, etc., aren't inherently the stuff The '90s were made of. It requires the reader to have a wider knowledge of the history of the DC Universe. It's a bit like saying a 1950s movie is Unintentional Period Piece because it features an actor that was active in the 1950s.

Furthermore, in superhero comics things are cyclical. After the Aquaman movies, a new reader would find Aquaman's barbarian look to be 'contemporary', because it is reminiscent of Jason Momoa.

The only thing that is undeniably 1990s is Superman's mullet in the early parts of the run, but you know, one single element doesn't make the entirety of it to be an Unintentional Period Piece.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 13th 2024 at 11:27:13 AM

Fair assessments.

Since you brought up the first Back to the Future film, here's the example from the franchise YMMV page:

• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The 1985 scenes, by being so current at the time of filming, fall headlong into this. Justified, in that the differences in eras wouldn't be nearly as significant if they'd been downplayed. Same issues you brought up.
  • The DeLorean itself wound up being a huge flop (the DeLorean Motor Company went bankrupt three years before the first film was released), and is now remembered solely because of this franchise. ^note  Justified in that part of the reason the DeLorean was chosen was that John DeLorean was on trial for accusations of cocaine trafficking at the time, and choosing a DeLorean would've been the most eccentric choice Doc Brown could have made for a car in 1985. As mentioned, it was already considered a flop by 1985.

There's also this from Back to the Future Part II:

• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • While the creators weren't trying to create a serious prediction of life thirty years down the road, depicting 2015 with flying cars, hoverboards, and waste-to-energy powering home electronics isn't at all what life in 2015 would be.
  • Marty working for a Japanese boss was keeping the 1980s view that Japan was returning to superpower status and would overtake the United States. But just after 1989, Japan would enter its Lost Decade and has remained in an economic and social spiral.

Unsure about the second, but in the first, as it points out, the depiction of the future was intentionally supposed to be Zeerust.

Edited by costanton11 on Apr 13th 2024 at 3:28:49 AM

The Japanese thing would fit better under Failed Future Forecast.

What Vampire Buddha said.

This used to be called The Great Politics Mess Up.

It's also a little bit of Japan Takes Over the World, on a micro-level, the belief in the 1980s and early 1990s that the future would be Japanese.

About the Zeerust, yeah, it's intentional, comedic, and you know, what you'd expect in an universe where time travelling mad scientists are possible.

Oh, and by the way, yeah. Cut them in the franchise page.

- Removed Unintentional Period Piece from Superman: The Movie and JLA (1997).

- Added Pimp Duds to Superman: The Movie, remarking on the only scene that causes us to remember hard that the movie was made in the 1970s.

- Superman's mullet in JLA already was noted on the entry for '80s Hair.

So, under Star Trek: The Original Series, we have this:

• Unintentional Period Piece: Depending on the episode, the series has this going on alongside its Zeerust. Between the color palette, the miniskirts, the Cold War Fed/Kling politics, the civil-rights-era Aesops and Chekhov's Davy Jones hair, it comes across as some kind of Neo-'60s even when they aren't confronted with space hippies.

Now, I have to admit it, this is one of the rare occasions I would be inclined to agree. Original Star Trek is so, so, so very sixties. It's pratically dripping with the stuff the sixties were made of.

And yet, when you look at the definition of Unintentional Period Piece, it means works trying to be set in a nebulous time period that is meant to remain "contemporary", but failing at this and instead appearing to be set in the year it came out.

I don't think it includes works explicitly set in the past or the future.

Though I totally agree with the original writer here that ST:TOS is the 1960s wearing futuristic drag. And that is part of the fun of the show.

So, conflicted. Technically, this should go under Zeerust only, right?

I'm of the opinion that works intentionally not set in the decade of release can still qualify for UPP. That's not the problem Star Trek has; the problem is that it being placed as UPP would be circular reasoning, because of how much it culturally defined the decade in retrospect (despite being set in the far future).

Also, rare case of a reverse Chekov's Gun problem...

Edited by bwburke94 on Apr 17th 2024 at 1:09:10 PM

Interesting perspective. I know Star Trek is influential and all, but is it influential to the point of defining the decade?

Since the Back to the Future films were previously discussed here, thoughts on this example from UnintentionalPeriodPiece.The80s?

• Back to the Future is very strongly '80s, to the point where the sequence introducing the "present day" of 1985 is now counted as an unintentional "Mister Sandman" Sequence like the introductions to 1955 later in the film, 2015 in the second, and 1885 in the third. The over-the-top portrayal of 2015 in the second film also demonstrates a particularly '80s flavor of Zeerust, which was entirely intentional on the part of the filmmakers, who wanted to avoid a cyberpunk image that they felt would date the film in a less flattering way. And within that scene, the '80s-themed café is uncannily prescient about which pieces of pop culture would remain firmly identified with the decade.

It all seems completely intentional, so IDK how it could possibly be UPP.

Yeah, cut it, as it was completely Intentional.

These are found on YMMV.Good Times.

• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • JJ's denim cap. While other decades had their fill of denim-dominant fashion, the denim hat remains one piece of clothing that hasn't gotten as popular again.
  • In the opening credits video montage, the 6000 series Chicago "L" train cars shown running are a treat for rail enthusiasts (these cars were in use until 1992).
  • The notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects where the series was set were all torn down by 2011.

The latter two subbullets are a bit iffy and I think should be cut. Don't know about the first one.

I'm unfamiliar with the show, so I couldn't say if it is really an UPP, but regarding the bullet points...

IMO, for something to be an UPP, it should have many elements that tie it to the time it was made. It's not enough if these elements are no longer present in 2024.

For instance, to say that a certain kind of train or some specific housing projects no longer exist isn't enough, if the train or housing projects did exist across multiple decades. From what they're saying, the trains were there in the 1970s, in the 1980s, and in the early 1990s, until 1992. So they're not exclusive to the 1970s.

As for the denim cap, I'm no expert in fashion, I'm not sure if that cap is specific to the 1970s and tied to it culturally. But in any case, if all the series has is some hat, then it isn't enough to make it an UPP. To be an UPP, a show must have LOTS of period-specific elements.

Yeah, I'm not an expert either, but it feels weird to have an entry for a single item of clothing.

I think UPP ought to have some baseline of “notability”. Such might be rather amorphous, but I think a reasonable baseline would be “regular people can tell that this is dated”. All works of the past are going to dated in one way or another, so we should preferably learn towards more “obviously dated” aspects (retrograde fashion, lack of technology that would significantly alter the setting, etc.).

To me that is just People Sit on Chairs. Particularly the "Lack of tech" you mention.

People interpret UPP too broadly. The trope, as written, is this: "this work was supposed to be timeless, but it really shows that it was made in year XXXX". It isn't "this work can't pass as made in 2024."

A lack of tech may never tie something to a specific time period, it can only make it obvious that it happens before X (with X being cell phones, internet, whatever). "They don't have cell phones" will never make something an UPP, IMO.

However, the use of a kind of cellphone that became synonymous with an era (like the brick cellphones of old) can be one sign of an UPP. But even so, that would be one sign. I'm leery of works being labelled UPP just on account of a couple of scenes with such tech, or clothes, etc.

The first sentence in the trope says it all: 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.

The cultural quirks have to be many, and it must look like a deliberate exxageration of period X, not just "I guess I notice it's not 2024 because they have this one thing in this one scene."

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 19th 2024 at 8:48:09 AM