Time Warped: How Not to Write a Historical

No excuses, this comes far too late to be an acceptable movie review, but this article has another purpose— how not to write historicals. Although I wrote this long ago, I pushed it aside as other articles took priority. It dates back to one of John Floyd’s articles, where we found ourselves among the tens of people who kinda, sorta liked the movie, Django Unchained, which I watched with my friend, Sharon. She agreed with the rest of the world that the film was, to put it gently, flawed.

1858

Both Sharon and I were distracted by a staggering number of errors and anachronisms in the movie, especially items from the wrong century. To our disbelief, the DVD came with a Tarantino interview in which he bragged about the historical research. That was, pardon the pun, djarring.

Anachronisms leaped off the screen. They included wrong period clothing, wrong period guns (multiple), wrong period props and accessories, and very wrong period verbal expressions (mother-ƒer? Seriously?). When non-experts notice 20+ errors in a film, that celluloid is in trouble.

Except for two pieces of incidental music, I won’t address the soundtrack beyond saying the modern cuts djangled the nerves. It felt like an amateur YouTube video where contributors slip in unrelated cuts of music and images, without regard to the story. David Frost called out-of-context media the Lord Privy Seal effect.

Likewise, accidental appearances of modern devices aren’t included here. For example, some sharp-eyed viewer noticed a security camera high on the veranda of the antebellum mansion.

Time Warped

1. The movie contained the famous bust of Nefertiti, incorrectly referred to as Cleopatra. It wasn’t discovered until 1907. (I learned of Nefertiti as a child. My mother gave my father a bust for his birthday. I mean she gave him a statuette.)
2. Teddy Bears, associated with President Teddy Roosevelt, wouldn't appear until the 1900s.
3. Thousand-dollar bills weren’t issued until 1861.
4. The Confederacy had not been formed and the Civil War had not begun, so Confederate uniforms wouldn't have existed in 1858.
5. Likewise, the Ku Klux Klan didn’t group until the end of the Civil War.
6. The town of Lubbock didn't exist until 1890, well after the American Civil War.
7. The word malarkey came out of the 1920-1930s.
8. Für Elise famously wasn’t discovered until 1867, four decades after Beethoven’s death and nine years after the movie’s period.
9. The song ‘In the Sweet By and By’ was published in 1868, a decade after the movie.
10. Flip-top beer bottles may or may not have been a German innovation, but at least in the US, they weren’t patented until 1875.
11. Beer pumps were first noted in the UK in 1691 and patented a century later in 1785, but this methodology of draught beer only became popular in the mid 1900s.
12. Drinking straws made of paper were invented in 1888.
13. While cigarette holders were introduced in the 1700s, they didn’t become popular until the flapper era through the 1970s.
14. Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel in 1864 and patented in 1867.
15. Hearing aids weren’t invented until the 1900’s and miniature aids didn’t appear until the latter half of the 20^th century.
16. Attendant to the previous, the first primitive plastics weren’t introduced until 1907 and materials suitable for hearing aids and chin straps took another half century to come about.
17. Even some guns were out of place and time.
1. The Remington New Model Army revolver, used by Django and Billy Crash, weren’t manufactured until 1860.
2. The Remington double-barreled Derringer, used by Django and Dr. Shultz, weren’t manufactured until 1866.

Bonus Points

Sharon caught most of the following:

18. Cool looking sunglasses and contacts weren’t available in 1858.
19. Hats with cord locks and eyelets were a 20th century invention.
20. Likewise, trousers with belt loops weren’t an 1850s convenience.

I can’t think of another movie that flooded the screen with historical inaccuracies. What about you? Do you have such a film in mind?