Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2023 April 14

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April 14[edit]

I have a question about the DC tv show called Doom Patrol[edit]

Has the tv show Doom Patrol ended? Because it says on it's Wikipedia article that it's original release is from February 15, 2019 to present. Does that mean there's still more episodes of this show to be released? 2001:569:58BE:D400:CF4:3324:B4E3:4847 (talk) 00:22, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Evidently, Doom Patrol was cancelled. As of Jan. 26 2023, there were still episodes to be released, so maybe its still "present".: [1] --136.56.52.157 (talk) 03:06, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Or, and this is also possible, the Wikipedia article could be wrong. Wikipedia articles only become right when 1) a person 2) notices a mistake and 3) fixes the mistake. I will note that you are a person, and that you have noticed the mistake. If you just did the third thing as well, the Wikipedia article would no longer be wrong. --Jayron32 15:40, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This person thought about that, but didn't make a change since the source stated: The release date for the second half has not yet been revealed. --136.56.52.157 (talk) 16:52, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there you go. Problem solved. --Jayron32 17:53, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Who would have made this?[edit]

Who would have made/drew this cover art (or i assume other external promotional art if such exists) for the snes game Verne World?

It is the first image here (boxart) Verne World 31.143.90.142 (talk) 10:22, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you can find a copy, it appears This book has articles about numerous cover art from Super Famicom games and that one appears to be in it. --Jayron32 13:23, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! 178.240.172.196 (talk) 18:47, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What is the difference between Historical Accuracy and Historical Authenticity?[edit]

What is the difference between historical accuracy and historical authenticity in films? 95.144.204.68 (talk) 17:29, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure either term has a precise enough definition for there to be a distinction. Accuracy means "conformity to truth" while Authentic means "worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact" If there's a difference, it's certainly so slight as to be not worth discussing. The overlap in meaning between the terms is surely greater than any distinction, and I can't really think of a situation where one would be true and not the other. There may be contexts where one or the other is more appropriate, but not because they have different meaning, merely because they hold slightly different idiomatic usages. --Jayron32 17:49, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So there's not much of a difference then. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 18:36, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Historical accuracy" is usually about real historical events like what happened, who were there, what did they say and do. For films, "historical authenticity" is often more about whether the setting is realistic regarding things like language (often ignored), clothing, technology (e.g. weapons), architecture, general behaviour, and daily life and society. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:15, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. One could be a subset of the other. Historical inaccuracy could be setting Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in 1776. Historical inauthenticity could be setting the Gettysburg Address in 1863 but showing Lincoln taking Air Force One to the location of the speech. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:42, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's known that Lincoln travelled by train and didn't have an airplane so Air Force One would lack both historical accuracy and historical authenticity. An unknown worker driving his car there to help set up chairs would be about lack of historical authenticity. The automobile had been invented at the time but it's completely unrealistic that a random worker would have one. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if any critic or journal has nominated the "least historically authentic film of all time"? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.213.18.208 (talk) 00:18, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One Million Years B.C.? MinorProphet (talk) 07:41, 15 April 2023 (UTC) [reply]
10,000 BC (film)? -- Egyptian pyramids built using woolly mammoths during the ice age, etc. 136.56.52.157 (talk) 08:33, 15 April 2023 (UTC) [reply]

. We are straying a bit but caveman movies actually have a tendency to lead us astray. A film that is, for example, filmed in the biopic genre, claiming to more or less accurately represent real historical events, opens itself up to criticisms based on historical inaccuracy. A completely fictional film, set boldly in years, decades or centuries past, opens itself up to criticisms of historical inauthenticity. A filmmaker may consciously choose to reject such conventions, as Quentin Tarantino and other innovative filmmakers have done. Such films can consciously erase such distinctions, and many filmmakers have chosen to portray historical events metaphorically rather than accurately. The "rules", such as they are, do not apply to such films. Cullen328 (talk) 08:56, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Events of 1812 were not photographed. Hitler did not escape to Argentina and did not die there of old age. Spanish galleons sailing back and forth from the Philippines to Mexico, quite amazingly, never stumbled across Hawaii despite sailing to the south or to the north of Hawaii annually or more often, for 150 years. A filmmaker may consciously choose to reject such conventions, as Quentin Tarantino and other innovative filmmakers have done. Such films can intentionally erase such distinctions, and many filmmakers have chosen to portray historical events metaphorically rather than accurately. The "rules", such as they are, do not apply to such films. Cullen328 (talk) 09:13, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can say that again. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:26, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And for some reason I did. Cullen328 (talk) 18:18, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The 1995 film Braveheart famously depicted William Wallace having a fling with Isabella of France, who would actually have been a small child at the time of Wallace's death, as well as inexplicably showing the Battle of Stirling Bridge without a bridge or even a river. Alansplodge (talk) 12:49, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the real WW was a pedophile. Depicting the infant as the She-Wolf she was yet to become may be not just a historical inaccuracy but also a cover-up.  --Lambiam 21:08, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not get needlessly insulting about it. If you want to rile up a Scot, point out that Wallace was a Norman aristocrat, which is close to true. (In fact his family were likely Bretons who were allied with William the Bastard, and were assigned lands in Wales because their Breton was close enough to Welsh to make communications easier. They then acquired land in SW Scotland whose people had ethnic and linguistic links with Wales, which is how William ended up as a "Scot". A Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RGjMP0QM2w). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.213.18.208 (talk) 16:24, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Coincidentally, I just stopped watching Elizabeth: The Golden Age for this very reason. Although seemingly "authentic", the cinematic liberties taken with actual history (metaphorical or otherwise) was too much to bear. That one gets my vote. I noticed the WP article describes it as "biographical period drama" (whatever that means). 136.56.52.157 (talk) 03:24, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've heard writers and directors explain in great detail why it's virtually impossible to present a historically accurate drama on screen. In other words, to make the story work visually and for the purpose of cinematic narrative, adhering to historical accuracy doesn't work. They have to take liberties in some form or another to move the story along and make the characters rise and fall and progress towards the denouement. Like you, I was once upset at this, but as I became more acquainted with the perspective of the writers I began to warm up to the idea. In a nutshell, a story must have a certain structure, whereas accurate history very often does not. To tell that story efficiently and effectively, and to appeal to emotion and evoke the necessary amount of pathos, catharsis, and all the rest, one has to mold history into drama, not the other way around. Once you accept that is the way it has to be, it becomes easier to enjoy art of all kind. Two of my favorite illustrations of this problem come from Star Trek, particularly the much maligned Voyager series. The writers played to this idea in two separate episodes, illustrating how it works and how the accuracy of history is sacrificed in favor of the story. Those two episodes are "Living Witness" (4x23) and "Muse" (6x22). Those two episodes speak directly to the problem under discussion. Viriditas (talk) 23:33, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
U-571 (film) is so bad it was a topic of discussion between the UK prime minister and US president. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:24, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nonsense. In effect it was criticized for being a work of fiction. Fiction is not supposed to tell true stories. --174.89.12.187 (talk) 21:26, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not so fast. Is The Birth of a Nation beyond reproach for being a work of fiction? Or imagine someone producing a film, presented as "historical fiction", in which the stab-in-the-back myth is treated as if it was real history and the rise to power of the NSDAP enabled a much-needed cleanup. How valid would the defence be that the film is a fictional work of art? There is an interesting essay, entitled "The Puzzle of Historical Criticism", published in the Spring 2012 issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (JSTOR 42635519; doi:10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01513.x). The "puzzle" of the title stems from the incompatibility of two intuitions: (1) historical inaccuracies in "realistic" works of fiction diminish their value; (2) works of fiction should be free from the constraints of historical truth. A quote from the concluding section: "While a work's being a work of fiction allows for certain propositions to be true in it that are false in the actual world, and I, the audience member, understand this to be the case, I still feel unwilling to let certain cases of historically inaccurate works of fiction off the hook. U-571 bothers me. I find it tragic and troubling that history can be so ill treated simply for the sake of entertainment. And yet I know that U-571 is at bottom a work of fiction."  --Lambiam 10:55, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the intent of the fiction. If the fiction is trying, in some way, to represent real events, or presents itself in that way, then yes, it should be criticized when and if it gets things wrong. If the work of fiction is clearly a farce or a satire, then no, it isn't held to the same standards. Inglourious Basterds is clearly a farce, and no one expects events in it like the assassination of Hitler in the climax of the film, to be accurate. U-571 presents itself as a realistically fictionalized account of World War II, unlike Inglourious Basterds, and presents its fictional events as plausible. It can certainly be criticized for its inauthenticity insofar as that was a clear intent of the film-makers. --Jayron32 16:31, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this is not the place to debate the intent of a particular movie, and I apologize for doing so. (I just snapped at the NPOV "bad".) --174.89.12.187 (talk) 05:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, historical authenticity is generally favored over historical accuracy when it comes to filmmaking. There's a lot written about this, particularly in production sections on Wikipedia. This is because historical accuracy is often jettisoned during the development process as it interferes with narratology in whole or in part. I spent a great deal of time listening to podcasts with writers and directors and reading scripts, and the one thing I learned is that historical accuracy is the very first thing to go because it doesn't let the writer tell a good story. Now, historical authenticity is an entirely different beast. Most of the production team is committed to some form of historical authenticity, and this is especially true when it comes to period props and costume design. I can say more, but I think you get the point. Viriditas (talk) 21:40, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]