Editing 771: Period Speech

{{comic
| number    = 771
| date      = July 26, 2010
| title     = Period Speech
| image     = period_speech.png
| titletext = The same people who spend their weekends at the Blogger Reenactment Festivals will whine about the anachronisms in historical movies, but no one else will care.
}}

==Explanation==
The actors on this stage are using language and technology from wildly different time periods: 
* "Forsooth" is an interjection from {{w|Elizabethan era|Elizabethan times}} (1558–1603).
* "{{w|Grok}}" is a word from the 1961 {{w|Robert Anson Heinlein|Robert Heinlein}} novel {{w|Stranger in a Strange Land}}.
* "Jive" is African American slang from the 1940s to the 70s.
* "Me Hearties" is popular 'pirate speak', which purports to come from the {{w|Golden Age of Piracy}} (1650-1726) but was actually popularized by the 1950 film {{w|Treasure Island (1950 film)|''Treasure Island''}}, based on Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel of the same title. Actor Robert Newton played the pirate Long John Silver with an exaggerated "West Country" accent (his native dialect) and it became associated with all pirates.
* "Ten-Four" is {{w|Ten-code|police code}} for "Yes" and was popular during the 1970s CB radio craze.

Put together, the exchange roughly translates to "Do you truly understand what I'm saying, my friends?"/"We understand!".) The characters also combine archaic weapons like a spear and a sword with a presumably modern handgun and a laptop, adding to the growing heap of anachronisms.

[[Randall]]'s contention is that hundreds of years from now, people will make similar errors that we do today when depicting historical items and language. Modern movies, fiction, and other forms of media that depict history often confuse terms, items, and equipment that were in one place and time period and place them in another, but few people notice because to them, all of it fits under the very broad category of "old, historical things" - only those with an interest in history really notice or seem to care. Thus following this trend, in the future, things like laptop computers and "grok my jive" will seem just as historical and "old-timey" as a spear or the saying "Forsooth!", except to those who participate in such things like "Blogger Reenactment Festivals", as mentioned in the title text.

For instance, take a suit of full plate armor. To most people, plate armor is a "Medieval thing". So thus, when depicting King Arthur, a figure from 500 to 800 AD (if he even existed at all), one would (and has) put him in a suit of full plate because he is "medieval" and that is the stereotypical equipment of a Medieval figure. In actual fact, plate armor only came about after 1350, many centuries after King Arthur would have lived, and it coexisted alongside firearms for a very long time. King Arthur would have worn chainmail, but all of this would be lost on an average person watching a movie about King Arthur, to whom chainmail and full plate are interchangeable under the label of "historical armor" in their minds. It is not much of a jump from a span of 500 to 800 years of equipment being considered interchangeable to 1500 years of equipment and language being interchangeable. A similar confusion of "interchangeably old things" is seen in the title text to [[2396: Wonder Woman 1984]].

The title text likely refers to [[239: Blagofaire]], which features the said "Blogger Reenactment Festivals".

==Transcript==
:[A sword-wielding Cueball on a stage addresses three others; one has a spear, another a handgun and a knife, and the third a laptop.]
:Cueball: Forsooth, do you grok my jive, me hearties?
:Actors: Ten-four!
:[The caption below.]
:A few centuries from now, all the English of the past 400 years will sound equally old-timey and interchangeable.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]