- For the card strategy game, see Anachronism (game).
An anachronism (from the Greek "ανά," "against," and "χρόνος,"
"time") is anything that is temporally incongruous—that is, it appears in a temporal context in which it seems sufficiently out of place as to be peculiar,
incomprehensible or impossible. The item is often an object, but may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea,
a musical style, a material, a custom, or anything else closely enough bound to a particular period as to seem odd outside
it.
Two types
An anachronist or an eccentric might prefer quill pens to modern like ink
ballpoints.
Another sort of parachronism arises when a work based on a particular era's state of knowledge is read within the context of a
later era with a different state of knowledge. For example, many scientific works that rely heavily on theories that have later
been discredited have become anachronistic with the removal of their underpinnings, and works of speculative fiction often find their speculation quickly outstripped by real-world technological
development. (see Future anachronism below)
A prochronism, on the other hand, occurs when an item appears in a temporal context in which it could not yet be
credibly present (the object had not yet been developed, the verbal expression had not been coined, the philosophy had not yet
been formulated, the technology had not yet been created). A mild example might be Western movies' tradition of placing firearms not introduced until the 1870s, such as the
Winchester 1873 rifle or the Colt
Single Action Army, in frontier society of antebellum and Civil War years. Mild prochronisms such as this
may not be noticeable to the uninformed, but severe prochronisms are often comic in their effect (e.g., a ninth-century British
peasant earnestly explaining his village as an anarcho-syndicalist collective in the movie Monty Python and the Holy
Grail, or a Beatlesque band called the "Bedbugs"
appearing in the American Civil War–era TV comedy F-Troop).
Artifacts
An anachronism can be an artifact which appears out of place archaeologically or geologically. It is sometimes called OOPArt, for "out of place artifact". Anachronisms usually appear more technologically advanced
than is expected for their place and period.
However, an apparent anachronism may reflect our ignorance rather than a genuine chronological anomaly. A popular view of history presents an unfolding of the past in which humanity has a primitive start and progresses toward
development of technology. Alleged anachronistic artifacts demonstrate contradictions to this idea. Some archaeologists believe
that seeing these artifacts as anachronisms underestimates the technology and creativity available to people at the time,
although others believe that these are evidence of alternate or "fringe" timelines of human history.
If one envisions human technological advancement as being roughly parallel to the expansion and decline of human civilizations
— that is, progressing in a "three steps forward, two steps back" sort of manner — then at least some (perhaps even many)
apparent "anachronisms" are to be expected. A good example of this would be concrete, being
used in the past by various ancient cultures only to be forgotten about and then re-invented at a later time by another culture,
until the present, at which point the technology is employed globally and unlikely to slip into obscurity again.
Art and fiction
Anachronism is used especially in works of imagination that rest on a historical basis. Anachronisms may be introduced in many
ways, originating, for instance, in disregard of the different modes of life and thought that characterize different periods, or
in ignorance of the progress of the arts and sciences and other facts of history. They vary from glaring inconsistencies to
scarcely perceptible misrepresentation. It is only since the close of the 18th century that
this kind of deviation from historical reality has jarred on a general audience. Anachronisms abound in the works of
Raphael and Shakespeare, as well as in those of
less celebrated painters and playwrights of earlier times.
In particular, the artists, on the stage and on the canvas, in story and in song, assimilated their characters to their own
nationality and their own time. Roman soldiers appear in Renaissance military garb. The
Virgin Mary was represented in Italian works with Italian characteristics, and in Flemish works with Flemish ones. Alexander the Great appeared on
the French stage in the full costume of Louis XIV of France down to the time of
Voltaire; and in England the contemporaries of Joseph
Addison found unremarkable (in Pope's words)
- "Cato's long wig, flower'd gown, and lacquer'd chair."
Shakespeare's audience similarly did not ask whether the University of Wittenberg had existed in Hamlet's day, or whether clocks that struck time were available in
Julius Caesar's ancient Rome.
However, in many works, such anachronisms are not simply the result of ignorance, which would have been corrected had
the artist simply had more historical knowledge. Renaissance painters, for
example, were well aware of the differences in costume between ancient times and their own, given the renewed attention to
ancient art in their time, but they often chose to depict ancient scenes in contemporary garb. Rather, these anachronisms reflect
a difference of emphasis from the 19th and 20th
century attention to depicting details of former times as they "actually" were. Artists and writers of earlier times were
usually more concerned with other aspects of the composition, and the fact that the events depicted took place long in the past
was secondary. Such a large number of differences of detail required by historic realism would have been a distraction. (see
Accidental & intentional anachronism below)
Authors sometimes telescope chronology for the sake of making a point. Bolesław Prus does this at several junctures in his 1895 historical
novel, Pharaoh.
In recent times, the progress of archaeological research and the more scientific spirit of history have encouraged audiences
and artists to view anachronism as an offense or mistake.
Yet modern dramatic productions often rely on anachronism for effect. In particular, directors of Shakespeare's plays may use
costumes and props not only of Shakespeare's day or their own, but of any era in between or even those of an imagined future. For
instance, the musical Return to the Forbidden Planet crosses
The Tempest with popular music to create a science fiction musical.
A celebrated 1960 stage production of Hamlet, starring Richard Burton, was set on a bare New York stage in contemporary rehearsal clothes: the audience could
have been watching the rehearsal before the dress rehearsal. The point of the staging was apparently that the story of Hamlet is
a universal one that was equally credible in the 20th century as in the 17th. [citation needed]
Other popular adaptations of Shakespeare's plays that relied on anachronisms in props and setting were Titus (1999) and [[William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet]]
(1996). A similar approach was used in the 2001 film
Moulin Rouge!, in which a diverse selection of 20th-century music is used over a
fin de siècle backdrop. Other films, such as Brazil, A Series of Unfortunate
Events, or Richard III may create worlds so full of various
conflicting anachronisms as to create a unique stylistic environment that lacks a specific period setting. This use of stylistic
anachronism also often appears in children's movies, such as Shrek and Hoodwinked, where it is used for satirical effect. (see Comical anachronism below)
Sometimes a director may use anachronisms to offer a "fresh" angle on an already established story. Thus Andrew Lloyd Webber created two popular musicals, Jesus
Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat, which filled traditional biblical stories with modern-day
sensibilities; and on a similar note, Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story shows a field of maize-corn in a Nazareth farming scene. Maize-corn is native
to Mesoamerica; until the late 15th century it was grown only in the Americas.
Comical anachronism
Comedic works of fiction set in the past may use anachronism for a humorous effect. One of the first major films to use anachronism was Buster
Keaton's The Three Ages, which included the invention of Stone Age
baseball and modern traffic problems in classical Rome.
Mel Brooks' 1974 film Blazing Saddles, set in the Wild West in 1874, contains many blatant anachronisms from the 1970s, including a stylish
Gucci costume for the sheriff, an automobile, a scene at
Grauman's Chinese Theater, and frequent references to Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000). The cartoon The Flintstones depicts
many modern appliances in a prehistoric setting—and depicts a dinosaur as a household pet, even
though the last dinosaur died 65 million years ago, and the earliest humans date to 7 million
years ago; the Stone Age is usually dated between 1,000,000 and 5,000 years ago. (Some
scientists regard birds as late dinosaurs, but they don't resemble Dino.)The Disney movie Aladdin, in particular,
featured many brief jokes where the Genie briefly changed into caricatures of many famous people from all across time, including
many twentieth-century figures and comedians, for the purpose of quoting lines to make jokes at the film. Series 3 of
The Micallef Program included a sketch by the name of 'Billy Anachronism' in which a janitor was sent back to multiple time periods before returning to the 70's with
several items of clothing depicting the places he had been.
Future anachronism
Even with careful research, science fiction writers risk anachronism as their works
age. For example, many books nominally set in the mid-21st century propose the continued
existence of the Soviet Union. However, it is widely accepted that the aim of speculative
ficiton is not to to "predict" the future. So accidental anachronism typically has no bearing on the artistic themes of a work.
Futuristic movies, such as A Clockwork Orange, sometimes have
anachronisms, such as the fact that in that movie a 1960's Volkswagen Beetle is run
off the road, and listening to microcassettes in a movie set deep into the
21st Century. This can happen another way as well: William
Gibson's Sprawl trilogy depicts a cyberpunk
world of fantastically advanced technology in which personal mobile phones do not exist and characters rely extensively on pay
phones or exotic satellite-based communication. (Mobile phones already existed at the time
of the works, but they were big, clunky, and expensive; and Gibson did not foresee their miniaturization and ubiquity. He
probably knew Moore's Law but didn't follow it to its conclusions.) A more subtle example
may be found in the 1989 film Back to the Future II, where it is assumed that
fax machines are ubiquitous as of 2015 instead of email. If the film had been set in Japan, this would have been more credible,
because fax machines were more widely used than computers in the 1980's, because of the pictographic nature of Japanese writing. Computers can now cope with Japanese, thanks to Unicode, but email is still mostly ASCII-bound.
Another work where anachronisms are annoying but not fatal to credibility is David Brin's
1990 novel Earth. Brin foresees the ubiquity of the computer networks (but
not the term Internet), but he was writing the year before the World Wide Web was
introduced. He therefore refers to documents that are readily available to computer users but called by clumsy numeric
identifiers, rather than URL's. He also imagines that personal video recorders,
like camcorders, would influence civil liberties by making it possible for ordinary
citizens to film crimes committed by police, as well as by holligans. He doesn't foresee the ways in which both still photographs
and video can be transmitted, making it possible for amateur reporters to cover breaking news stories and get their stories
televised. [citation needed]
Accidental & intentional anachronism
With the detail required for a modern historical movie it is easy to introduce anachronisms. The
1995 hit film Apollo 13 contains numerous
errors, including the use of the incorrect NASA logo and the appearance of The Beatles' Let It Be album a month before it was
actually released. Another example is the film Grounding, about the collapse of the
airline Swissair. The film is set in September
2001, yet computers are shown using Windows XP, which didn't
come for another month and some VW Phaetons are being used, despite the fact that
they weren't released for another year. [1]
Sometimes movie anachronisms are intentional, while appearing accidental. An example is the
musical score of the Best-Picture-winning film The Sting. The ragtime piano music by Scott Joplin was composed in the 1890s and 1900s, while the setting of the movie was the 1930s Great Depression. Although Joplin's music is not contemporary with the 1930s, its
use in The Sting evokes a 1930s gangster film, The Public Enemy, which
had also used Scott Joplin theme music. The presence of Joplin's music might give the impression that the movie's backdrop and
music are from the same period or, conversely, be mistaken as an unintentional anachronism by viewers unaware of the allusion to
the earlier film.
Anachronisms can show up when filming on location, since buildings or natural features
may be present that would not have been at the time the film was set (think of movies that have already been filmed, that are set
in the future and contain footage of the World Trade Center in New York), or may be missing in the film while they existed at the time the movie was set.
In the case of films made in the past but set in the future, a building or feature may be seen that is known to no longer
exist. Especially with regards to historical items and vehicles, anachronisms can stem from convenience, for example a
historically accurate item might be replaced with a later but fairly similar item, especially if a historically accurate item
cannot be sourced. In the case of replicas, signs of modern construction techniques may be visible. In some cases, though, due to
technological entrenchment, anachronisms cannot be helped, such as in the British television show Life on Mars (set in the 1970s), where removing present-day public amenities like park benches
and satellite dishes in outdoor scenes would be impossible or absurd.
There are directors who have made valiant and generally successful efforts to recreate the past. For example, Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather movies have scenes set
in New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century. In the 1970's, Coppola took
over several blocks in Manhattan, covering storefronts with period replicas, replacing streetlamps, and keeping inhabitants from
their homes and businesses for weeks at a time. It would have been much easier to use a Hollywood back
lot, but there would have been visible differnces; so his team (and the local inhabitants) went to unprecedented lengths
for realism. (He explains his methods in detail in the Bonus Materials DVD of the Godfather DVD Collection boxed
set.)
Those computerized adventure games in which a player moves about on a computer screen
solving puzzles that are set at a given historical date often have brazen technological anachronisms. The reason for this is that
mechanisms, such as instant-message pagers and GPS devices from which one's
coordinates on the globe can be instantly read out, are handy devices to hang the gameplay on, and the players could be expected
to have heard of them, so an equivalent based on antiquated media is often hypothesized.[citation needed] The backdrop and style of the items
are considered just a sort of "local color".
Language anachronism
Language anachronisms in films are quite common. They can be intentional or unintentional.
Intentional anachronisms let us understand more readily a film set in the past. Language changes so fast that most modern people
(even many scholars) would not easily be able to understand a film set anywhere in the English-speaking world of the 18th century; thus, we willingly accept characters speaking an updated
language. Unintentional anachronisms include putting modern slang and figures of speech into the
mouths of characters from the past. Modern audiences want to understand George
Washington when he speaks, but if he starts talking about "the bottom line" (a figure
of speech that did not come into popular language until almost least two centuries after Washington's time), that is an
unintentional anachronism.
Other anachronisms
Other possible anachronisms include:
- 1. References to places that did not exist at the time of the story. Amsterdam,
Prague, Munich and Madrid might
be large cities today, but in a story set in Imperial Rome, references to any of them would be anachronisms because those cities
were not founded until after the Roman Empire had been toppled.
- 2. Juxtapositions of people who could not have ever met, for example Isaac Newton and
Albert Einstein. The anachronism could include people of the wrong age; for example a
meeting between Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, the latter as an adult, would be
inappropriate because Albert Einstein died when Stephen Hawking was twelve years old.
- 4. Indirect evidence of technologies then not in existence occasionally appears in film. Vapor
Trails from jet aircraft occasionally appear in films set long before the time of jet aircraft. Tracks from modern
automobile or truck tires would be inappropriate at any time before about 1900. Aluminum objects, often objects of inexpensive trade in the latter part of the 20th century, would be
prohibitively expensive for common commerce before the 20th century. An ATM
receipt as trash picked up in 1965 (when automated teller machines did not exist) might not be as blatant as an ATM itself, but
it would be evidence of cinematic carelessness.
Sometimes a lack of understanding of language differences can lead the reader to detect a false anachronism. For example, the
Oxford World Classics translation of Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Civil War mentions the 'corn situation' in Rome. To North American
ears this might sound anachronistic (since American corn or maize did not reach Europe until over 1,500 years after Caesar's
death), but in British English the word corn is a synonym of the word grain and
normally refers to wheat.
Scholarship
In academic writing, there is no place for deliberate anachronism, and here anachronism is regarded as an error of scholarly
method. For example, we now know that the concept of Translatio imperii was first
formulated in the 12th century. To use it to interpret 10th century literature, as early 20th century scholarship did, is
anachronistic, an error which (once we see it) is obvious as such. Other examples are less obvious: to refer to the
Holy Roman Empire as "the First Reich" is to view
medieval history through National Socialist glasses and as such is anachronistic. However, the
boundaries are often difficult to draw. Some would suggest that Marxist, feminist, or Freudian approaches to literature written
before these philosophies were developed are necessarily anachronistic; others argue that modern insights on the human condition
are applicable to all times and cultures.
A common example is the critique of ancient science:
"Writings about fossils, gems, earthquakes, and volcanoes date back to the Greeks, more than 2300 years ago. Certainly, the
most influential Greek philosopher was Aristotle. Unfortunately, Aristotle's explanations of the natural world were not derived
from keen observations and experiments, as in modern science. Instead, they were arbitrary pronouncements based on the limited
knowledge of his day."
Indeed, Aristotle stated many things in conflict with both modern science and the findings of pre-Socratic philosophers like Democritus, as
Carl Sagan observed in Episode 7 of Cosmos: A
Personal Voyage and in Chapter 7 of Cosmos (book).
See also
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
