Humanities desk | ||
---|---|---|
< January 1 | << Dec | January | Feb >> | January 3 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives |
---|
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
Yesterday I watched a re-run of Parrish, a 1961 Troy Donahue/ Claudette Colbert/ Karl Malden movie, which I’d heard of but never seen. I’m not at all sure I’m any better off for having done so. But anyway, my question is about names of movie characters.
Dean Jagger played a man named Sala Post (Sala pronounced like a non-rhotic Sailor). The only Sala I’d ever heard of is a surname (pronounced Sah-luh). I checked and found there are three Wiki-notable people with the first name Sala, but one’s a woman, one wasn’t even born till 1976 (the film was based on a 1958 novel), and the other was hardly well-enough known to have influenced the novelist. So, we have a character with a particularly unusual given name (nothing wrong with that per se).
Now, unusual given names are things that people in real life notice and often comment on or ask questions about. There would be a point in having a character with such a name if the name itself played some role in the plot, or at least there was some acknowledgement in the movie of its oddness. But if it’s treated as if it were a perfectly normal name like Bill or Harry or Mary or Jane, then what actually is the point of going to the trouble of giving the character such a name to begin with? The title character Parrish Maclean is another case in point. Maybe in this particular case the novel went into the name issue but that explanation got lost in the translation to the screen. Nevertheless, I’ve often noticed this tendency, particularly in American movies, of characters with given names that virtually nobody has ever heard of but everyone treats them as perfectly normal and never asks how they're spelt. I could probably produce quite a long list if I had the energy.
I can see some sense in making a character stand out from the crowd by giving them an unusual attribute – but to then treat it as if it was not remotely unusual is sort of giving out a confused message.
So, what am I missing here? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:15, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Mwalcoff's made a good distinction. There are many names that are unusual as given names, but very well known as surnames and so are not uncommon per se. For example, if I were to meet an Anderson Jones or a Smith Johnson or a Cartwright Kennedy, I'd have no doubt how to spell their names. But watching that movie yesterday, every time I heard someone say "Say-lah", I was thinking "Sailor", forgetting that they'd be pronouncing that word rhotically if it were really Sailor. But even if that had dawned on me, I'd still be wondering how to spell this "Say-la" name. It seems to me that's an unreasonable burden to place on a viewer. It's one thing to have a list of the characters and players at the end (this movie didn't do that), but for reasonably intelligent viewers to have to depend on seeing such a list to work out how characters' names were spelt seems a bit much. This movie was made decades before google. --
Jack of Oz
[your turn] 06:46, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
I once owned a set of books called the Blue Books which were volumes of children's poems, fairy tales, and stories. They were published in the USA in the 1950s. I recall one of my favourites was a story called Little Diamond and the North Wind. Does anyone have any information regarding that lovely tale? Thank you.-- Jeanne Boleyn ( talk) 09:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
During episode 4 of series 6 of Top Gear, Richard Hammond describes an outdoor wedding as an "American style outdoor wedding". I'm American and I wasn't aware that we had pioneered the concept of the outdoor wedding. ;-) Seriously though, what was meant by this? What's particularly "American" about this? Dismas| (talk) 12:03, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
If you're a regular Top Gear watcher I hope that you have noticed that part of their approach to humour is, in effect, sending up the tendency of the British (and the people of many other countries) to condemn what those strange foreign folks do. They make fun of the French, the Australians, the Japanese, and not surprisingly, Americans. All the while they are really sending up themselves, because the "attacks" are so silly at times. In this approach Americans are usually identified as being over the top in lavishness and the size of their vehicles. Could the line in question from the show be part of this approach? HiLo48 ( talk) 23:37, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
In Britain, mechanical copyright on recorded works exists for a term of 50 years from that work's creation. This means that music recorded in 1960, for example, is currently out of copyright in Britain – and therefore that the earliest recordings of the Beatles will come out of copyright in just a couple of years.
However, the entire Beatles catalogue has recently been remastered. Are these remasters a last throw of the dice by the copyright holders to maximise their revenue before the expiration date, or is it understood that the remasters count as "new recordings" under the law, thereby conveniently extending the mechanical copyright by another few decades? 87.112.177.117 ( talk) 12:42, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
When did January 1 become a bank holiday in England? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.31.226.65 ( talk) 20:15, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
How do the males in this family refer to each other when they have family reunion when they are all named Heinrich? -- Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy ( talk) 20:23, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Humanities desk | ||
---|---|---|
< January 1 | << Dec | January | Feb >> | January 3 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives |
---|
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
Yesterday I watched a re-run of Parrish, a 1961 Troy Donahue/ Claudette Colbert/ Karl Malden movie, which I’d heard of but never seen. I’m not at all sure I’m any better off for having done so. But anyway, my question is about names of movie characters.
Dean Jagger played a man named Sala Post (Sala pronounced like a non-rhotic Sailor). The only Sala I’d ever heard of is a surname (pronounced Sah-luh). I checked and found there are three Wiki-notable people with the first name Sala, but one’s a woman, one wasn’t even born till 1976 (the film was based on a 1958 novel), and the other was hardly well-enough known to have influenced the novelist. So, we have a character with a particularly unusual given name (nothing wrong with that per se).
Now, unusual given names are things that people in real life notice and often comment on or ask questions about. There would be a point in having a character with such a name if the name itself played some role in the plot, or at least there was some acknowledgement in the movie of its oddness. But if it’s treated as if it were a perfectly normal name like Bill or Harry or Mary or Jane, then what actually is the point of going to the trouble of giving the character such a name to begin with? The title character Parrish Maclean is another case in point. Maybe in this particular case the novel went into the name issue but that explanation got lost in the translation to the screen. Nevertheless, I’ve often noticed this tendency, particularly in American movies, of characters with given names that virtually nobody has ever heard of but everyone treats them as perfectly normal and never asks how they're spelt. I could probably produce quite a long list if I had the energy.
I can see some sense in making a character stand out from the crowd by giving them an unusual attribute – but to then treat it as if it was not remotely unusual is sort of giving out a confused message.
So, what am I missing here? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 03:15, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Mwalcoff's made a good distinction. There are many names that are unusual as given names, but very well known as surnames and so are not uncommon per se. For example, if I were to meet an Anderson Jones or a Smith Johnson or a Cartwright Kennedy, I'd have no doubt how to spell their names. But watching that movie yesterday, every time I heard someone say "Say-lah", I was thinking "Sailor", forgetting that they'd be pronouncing that word rhotically if it were really Sailor. But even if that had dawned on me, I'd still be wondering how to spell this "Say-la" name. It seems to me that's an unreasonable burden to place on a viewer. It's one thing to have a list of the characters and players at the end (this movie didn't do that), but for reasonably intelligent viewers to have to depend on seeing such a list to work out how characters' names were spelt seems a bit much. This movie was made decades before google. --
Jack of Oz
[your turn] 06:46, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
I once owned a set of books called the Blue Books which were volumes of children's poems, fairy tales, and stories. They were published in the USA in the 1950s. I recall one of my favourites was a story called Little Diamond and the North Wind. Does anyone have any information regarding that lovely tale? Thank you.-- Jeanne Boleyn ( talk) 09:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
During episode 4 of series 6 of Top Gear, Richard Hammond describes an outdoor wedding as an "American style outdoor wedding". I'm American and I wasn't aware that we had pioneered the concept of the outdoor wedding. ;-) Seriously though, what was meant by this? What's particularly "American" about this? Dismas| (talk) 12:03, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
If you're a regular Top Gear watcher I hope that you have noticed that part of their approach to humour is, in effect, sending up the tendency of the British (and the people of many other countries) to condemn what those strange foreign folks do. They make fun of the French, the Australians, the Japanese, and not surprisingly, Americans. All the while they are really sending up themselves, because the "attacks" are so silly at times. In this approach Americans are usually identified as being over the top in lavishness and the size of their vehicles. Could the line in question from the show be part of this approach? HiLo48 ( talk) 23:37, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
In Britain, mechanical copyright on recorded works exists for a term of 50 years from that work's creation. This means that music recorded in 1960, for example, is currently out of copyright in Britain – and therefore that the earliest recordings of the Beatles will come out of copyright in just a couple of years.
However, the entire Beatles catalogue has recently been remastered. Are these remasters a last throw of the dice by the copyright holders to maximise their revenue before the expiration date, or is it understood that the remasters count as "new recordings" under the law, thereby conveniently extending the mechanical copyright by another few decades? 87.112.177.117 ( talk) 12:42, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
When did January 1 become a bank holiday in England? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.31.226.65 ( talk) 20:15, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
How do the males in this family refer to each other when they have family reunion when they are all named Heinrich? -- Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy ( talk) 20:23, 2 January 2011 (UTC)