Everything about Anachronisms totally explained
An
anachronism (from the
Greek "
ανά", "against", and "
χρόνος", "time") is anything that's temporally incongruous in the time period it has been placed in—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.
Types
An anachronist prefers older, often obsolete cultural artifacts over newer ones. For example, a modern-day anachronist might choose to wear a top-hat, use quill pens, or use a type-writer. This choice may reflect an
eccentricity,
aesthetic preference, or an
ethical acceptance or rejection of the societal role of that artifact.
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 couldn't yet be credibly present (the object hadn't yet been developed, the verbal expression hadn't been coined, the philosophy hadn't yet been formulated, the breed (especially of dogs or livestock) hadn't been bred, the technology hadn't 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 (for example, a tenth-century British peasant earnestly explaining his village as an
anarcho-syndicalist commune 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,
geologically or
temporally. 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 (for example
Antikythera mechanism).
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 without major upheaval.
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 didn't 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 and 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, set in the
Egypt of 1087–1085 B.C.E. The ancient "
Suez Canal," proposed by Prince Hiram (chapter 55), had existed in
ancient Egypt's
Middle Kingdom, centuries
before the period of the novel. Conversely, the remarkably accurate calculation of the
earth's circumference by
Eratosthenes, and the invention of a
steam engine by
Heron, both ascribed in chapter 60 to the priest Menes, had historically occurred in
Alexandrian Egypt, centuries
after the period of the novel.
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.
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's 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. 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 1970s with several items of clothing depicting the places he'd been. In
The Boondocks episode
The Story of Catcher Freeman an example of the use of anachronism is the mention of
Batman by one of the slaves, as Batman was created in 1939.
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 or later depict the continued existence of the
Soviet Union, defunct in
1991, or that the city in northwestern Russia is still known as
Leningrad, as appears in . H. Beam Piper's novels, largely set in the 7th century "Atomic Era" (circa 2600 A.D.) envision anti-gravity drives and
super-luminal travel, but still depict analog tape-based recording. Futuristic films, such as
A Clockwork Orange, sometimes have anachronisms, such as the fact that in that film a 1960s
Volkswagen Beetle is run off the road, and listening to
microcassettes in a film set deep in the late 20th century. (Similarly, in the
1982 anime series
Super Dimension Fortress Macross, set in the year
2009, '80s style pop music is still favored and
LP records are still widely available.) 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 don't 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 didn't foresee their miniaturization and ubiquity.) Also,
floppy disks are used in the
Futurama TV series (set in the 31st century), even though such disks are already obsolete. (However,
Futurama began airing in 1999, long after floppies were obsolete in real-time; such an anachronism is obviously intentional.) A more subtle example may be found in the 1989 film
Back to the Future II, where it's assumed that fax machines are ubiquitous as of 2015 instead of email. Shows like
The Jetsons also tend to have a number of them, like
visiphones (which never officially came to be), or that 1960s style rock music would still be unacceptable to adults, or that media of any kind would still be recorded on tape.
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
URLs. 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 hooligans. 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.
Accidental and intentional
With the detail required for a modern historical movie it's 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, released a month later, and some
VW Phaetons are being used, which were released a year later. Many movies about
World War II depict
CPR being performed, despite the fact that cardiopulmonary resuscitation was more widely described and popularized in the late 1950s.
Cinematic anachronisms that result from inappropriate objects in a film or television program are commonplace even if they're unintentional. Often these are faults of costume, especially for a television series filmed with a low budget. Thus episodes of a 1960s series relating to the frontiersman
Daniel Boone have been shown with 20th-century hairdos and clothing with plastic buttons. At times some modern actor unwilling to put aside a prized wristwatch during a filming of an epic of ancient times is shown with the bulge of the wristwatch under a
toga even if the watch or its band isn't partially exposed.
A number of accidental anachronisms occur in
Franc Roddam's 1979 film
Quadrophenia. Based on
Pete Townshend and
The Who's 1973 double album about a troubled London teenager trying to fit into the hedonistic early 1960s
Mod scene, the film is widely believed to be set in 1964, as it depicts the
Mods v Rockers seaside battle on
Brighton beach and shows Jimmy's newspaper cuttings of similar battles at Hastings and Margate that same year. The numerous mirrors, lamps and chromed frames adorning Jimmy's
Lambretta scooter also suggest 1964 rather than the stripped-down scooters of later years. However, 1970's car models are seen in street scenes, such as the
Austin Allegro. At a house party, the sleeve of Who LP
A Quick One is on the top of the record player, yet it wasn't released until the end of 1966. Also, in a scene on Brighton promenade, a cinema is advertising the film
Heaven Can Wait which was made over a decade later than Quadrophenia's setting. Further, while Jimmy is watching an episode of
Ready Steady Go! on TV in 1964 (a pop-music programme aired 1963-66), The Who appear, singing
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere, a song not released until May 1965.
Sometimes movie anachronisms are intentional, while appearing accidental. An example is the musical score of
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 isn't 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 wouldn't 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, such as
Vanilla Sky), 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's 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 can't be sourced. In the case of replicas, signs of modern construction techniques may be visible. In some cases, though, due to technological entrenchment, anachronisms can't 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 1970s, 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
backlot, as was done in the
Back to the Future trilogy where
Courthouse Square was used to represent
downtown Hill Valley in various time periods. However, there would have been visible differences; 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.)
Many computerized
adventure games featuring characters 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 useful devices for gameplay, and the players could be expected to have knowledge of them, so that an equivalent based on antiquated media can be hypothesized. 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) wouldn't 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 didn't come into popular language until almost two centuries after Washington's time), that's an unintentional anachronism.
At the most blatant, linguistic anachronisms can demonstrate the fraudulence of a document purportedly from an earlier time. The use of terminology from
19th Century and
20th Century antisemites demonstrates that the so-called
Franklin Prophecy is a forgery, as
Benjamin Franklin died in 1790.
Other
Other possible anachronisms include:
- References to places that didn't 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. Similarly, a dispatch from Chicago during the American Revolution would be impossible because the city wasn't founded until 1833.
- Juxtapositions of people who couldn't have ever met, for example Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. The anachronism could include people of the wrong age; for example a physical 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.
- Affiliations and organizations from a later time. Barring time travel in a science-fiction setting, an FBI agent could never interrogate Jesse James for a bank robbery because the FBI didn't come into existence before Jesse James died. Likewise, a Roman Catholic priest couldn't have given Last Rites to Julius Caesar or his assassins.
- Objects and creatures geographically misplaced in time. Potatoes, tomatoes, and maize in any form or such a creature as a turkey or cougar anywhere in Europe before 1492 are anachronisms even if they were commonplace in North America and South America.
- 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 didn't 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 didn't 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's 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 by Carl Sagan:
"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 and in Chapter 7 of the book
Cosmos.Further Information
Get more info on 'Anachronisms'.
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