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While I value research and historical accuracy, I sometimes think that
realism is overrated. Hamlet isn't exactly a realistic depiction of
medieval Danish court life. The Three Musketeers bears only a
superficial resemblance to the real 17th century. Real life is both more
prosaic and significantly less dramatic than fiction. (I can't help but
think of Hob Gadling talking about Renaissance Faires in The Sandman
- "You know what's wrong with this place? Well, the first thing that's wrong
is there's no shit. I mean, that's the thing about the past that
people forget. All the shit. Animal shit. People shit. Cow shit. Horse shit.
You waded through the stuff.... You should spray 'em all with shit as they
come through the gates." - when we write about the past, we mostly leave out
the shit.)
Even realistic fiction is not reality. Characters in
books, movies and tv shows often behave very differently from real people.
The best story is not always the one that most closely duplicates life.
Naturalism can, in fact, be a huge bore, and compelling narratives are often
wildly improbable. Historical accuracy and plausibility are important, but
the best authors privilege what's interesting and engaging over what's
accurate every time.
Certainly this is what the writers of Pirates of the
Caribbean did. The movie is riddled of anachronisms. The historical errors
are part of the overblown, swashbuckling style and don't really bother me
all that much. And because anachronism is canon, some kinds of anachronisms
don't bother me much in PotC fic. For myself, I've found that impeccably
researched and incredibly accurate stories often lose some of the flavor of
the movie, while some that play fast and loose with history often feel more
canonical. As a writer, I sometimes engage in deliberate anachronism in
Pirate fic, as a way of keeping to the tone of the movie.
Because the historical period of the movie is unclear,
I'm less fussed about historical details that are too late/too early, but
still not modern. There's been lots of discussion about exactly when the
movie takes place (scroll down
this page, compiled by
elke_tanzer, for some
suggestions about different criteria and what dates each suggests). My
default setting for pirate fic is 1720, in an AU in which the Port Royal
earthquake never happened. But I'm willing to accept costuming and
technology from about 1650 - 1800 (or even a muddle from various periods)
because that's exactly what the movie does.
I'm willing to forgive some anachronisms and
historical errors if the writing is otherwise good. Small details bother me
less than the overall feel of the piece. I've been struggling with how to
define "feel," and all I can really say is, I know it when I see it. There
are stories that have no glaring anachronisms but the dialogue and character
interactions are modern in subtle ways that grate on my nerves, and
there are stories that get some of the details completely wrong, and yet
capture the feel of the period anyway.
On the other hand, obviously modern
details/dialogue/character interactions do bother me quite a bit. While
some anachronism is forgivable, I do think it's important to get a
general feel for the period. In part, this is simply good characterization
- these characters are the product of their time, after all, and so their
dialogue, internal monologues, and behavior are all dictated by the social
mores and conventions of that time.
It occurs to me that, in many ways, genre conventions intersect
with historical fact to create the parameters for historical accuracy. We
have expectations of the movie based on our ideas about swashbuckling
stories, stories about the supernatural, romances, etc. - the original
writers were able to play with historical facts to the degree that the
changes fit the conventions of those genres. This is why PotC ends, in the
grand tradition of romances and fairy tales, with the poor-but-honest hero
marrying the princess Governor's daughter, despite the fact that
there's no way in hell the real-life, 18th century equivalent of
Governor Swann would have allowed his daughter to marry a blacksmith. The
audience will (for the most part) buy this glossing of the class issues in a
way that we wouldn't have if Verbinski had cast Morgan Freeman as Governor
Swann. Casting a black actor as the Governor would be jarring in a way that
ignoring the class issues in the romance isn't.
Fanfiction set in this same universe may or may not fall into the same genre
classifications as the movie, and the way you tell your story will affect
the degree of historical accuracy your readers expect, as well as the
kind of historical accuracy they expect. A dark horror story will be
able to play fast and loose with a different set of facts than a farcical
romance, but either way, the best course of action is to be familiar with
the historical realities and only change what's necessary to make your story
work. In other words, the best approach to anachronism is to do it
knowingly and with a specific intent.
Getting historical details like costuming and technology right is actually
relatively easy -
permetaform has compiled a
wonderful list of web resources
here. Another great reference is
The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun -
a collection of tables detailing various kinds of developments
(History/Politics, Literature/Theatre, Religion/Philosophy/Learning, Visual
Arts, Music, Science/Technology/"Growth," and Daily Life) from the end of
the Paleolithic period (yearly info starts in 1 CE) to 1990 (later editions
may include more recent years as well). It's useful both for getting a
quick summary of the major events of a given year (for example, I just
discovered that, in 1698, paper was first manufactured in North America),
and for quickly discovering when something happened (I subsequently used the
index to pinpoint the exact year Hamlet was written).
What's harder than getting all those picky historical details right is
getting into historical characters' heads and recreating the way people of
that time would have spoken and thought. We are so immersed in our
own post-modern, post-Freudian, secular world view that it's sometimes
difficult to separate ourselves from that and realize that 18th century
people were not simply people-just-like-us in funny clothes - they really
did think about the world in different ways (of course, one of the joys of
fiction is connecting with characters from different times and places and
discovering the ways in which they were just like us, but that loses
its impact if the story is not grounded in a real understanding of all the
ways in which those characters differ from us).
The first step to making your characters feel like they really belong in the
18th century is to strip them of modern language and thought patterns. As
an example, I've drawn up a quick list of modern ideas that I see crop up in
Pirate fic on a regular basis (I'm sure we could all think of other
anachronistic ideas to add to this list). These ideas may or may not be
completely alien to the characters (many of these concepts were beginning to
take shape at this time); some of the characters (especially the pirates)
may share some of these sentiments to some degree or another, but they were
not givens at that time, the way they are (one hopes) now. In a non-AU
pirate fic, a character who espoused these principles wouldn't fit into
polite society very well, and one who acted on them would sacrifice much of
what was considered a "normal life" at that time.
- "All men are created equal" - Despite the casual
treatment of class issues in the movie, class was incredibly important in
the 18th century. The idea that property owners and men of certain
families were entitled to play a larger role in government and to have a
larger share of the wealth, property and other goodies was still firmly
entrenched. Not that there weren't people arguing against this notion,
but they were widely perceived (even by those who might have benefited
from their ideas) as naïve dreamers at best, and possibly as dangerous
revolutionaries (the best comparison I can think of is the way more
extreme animal rights activists are viewed in modern society). There are
obvious and important class differences between Swann/Elizabeth/Norrington
(and his lieutenants, I suppose) and most of the other characters in the
film, as well as more subtle class distinctions. Note, this doesn't mean
that you can't write, say, Swann/Estrella, but the likelihood of him
marrying her is exactly nil. The best she could hope for is for him to
support any child she conceived - it wouldn't be unheard of for her to be
turned out without a reference in the event of a pregnancy.
- The Civil Rights Movement - Racism was
institutionalized, in the form of slavery. The abolition movement was
becoming more prominent, but even those who opposed slavery would, for the
most part, have viewed non-Europeans as innately inferior. Of course
general ideas about race were often set aside in specific interactions,
and race relations are very, very complex. But all the characters would
be conscious, to some degree or another, of race and its implications.
- Feminism - Gender inequality was also
institutionalized. Married women were treated by the law as an extension
of their husbands and had no property rights, couldn't sign contracts,
etc. Wealthy widows had slightly more autonomy under the law, but not
much. There were very strict expectations of "appropriate" behavior for
women. It's not impossible that someone like Elizabeth could thwart those
expectations (after all Anne Bonny and Mary Read did), but not without a
significant cost.
- The Sexual Revolution - Did people get up to No
Good? Hell, yeah! (Just read Les Liaisons Dangereuses.) But
appearances were kept up to a large degree, and the penalties for getting
caught could be severe. Flaunting illicit sexual connections (especially
homosexual ones) didn't happen in polite society. It's unlikely that Jack
and James' torrid affair would be common knowledge in Port Royal and
viewed fondly by the populace.
- Freudian Psychology - Yeah, Shakespeare wrote
Hamlet's Oedipal complex in 1600, but nobody knew to call it that until
Freud wrote about the Family Romance in the early 20th century. The
majority of the language we use to discuss our emotions is incredibly
modern. 18th century characters should not discuss their emotional lives
in these terms. In fact, long, analytical discussions about everyone's
feeeeeelings are a fairly modern development. It's more likely that James
would reflect on his spiritual development than spend much time wondering
if his father's emotional abandonment is the root of his fear that Jack
will leave him for Anamaria. Note: this doesn't mean that you can't use
modern psychology as you write your characters and their motivations, just
that they shouldn't be aware of the Freudian underpinnings of their
behavior.
Once you've
banished all these modern concepts, how do you fill your characters heads
with appropriately period thoughts? I like
the_stowaway's suggestion of
discovering when words entered common usage (the
Online Etymology Dictionary is your friend
here), and not using words that postdate the period you're working in -
after all, language dictates thought to a large degree. You can also fill
your own head with period language and ideas by reading fiction written in
or set in the 18th century, or by reading biographies of historical figures
or other nonfiction about the period. Although it predates the events of
the movie some, I think
pepysdiary is a good way to
familiarize yourself with that milieu (Pepys' world is precisely the
environment that would have shaped Governor Swann).
Does all of this really matter? I suppose it depends on your audience, and
how you want your story to be received. Obviously, we all have different
goals for different stories - does the smutty PWP drabble you scribbled out
to cheer up your best pal have to be 100% historically accurate? Probably
not. But if you're writing long, plotty stories that focus on character
development, glaringly anachronistic behavior, speech or thoughts are going
to seem ludicrous to many of your readers, and may prevent people from
taking your work seriously. |
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