1. The main characters' tastes in music would all tend towards 18th century classical music. Occasionally, characters would get into arguments over one person's preference for Mozart over Bach, which the other dismisses as "just noise".
2. Foolish characters or great wits would be referred to as "a regular Thomas Betterton/Elizabeth Barry"; a particularly wacky or comedic situation would be referred to as "like something Thomas Sheridan would have come up with."
3. At least one character would have an eccentric fondness for leyden jars or spinning jennys, building them in his spare time as a quirky character touch.
4. At least one character would have a desire to travel by paddleboat, horse, or railway carriage, feeling that cars and planes "lack romance".
5. Characters would frequently and casually analogize events in the present-day as being "somewhat akin to the Treaty of Westminster helping to cause the Seven Years War". Nobody would ever need the Treaty of Westminster explained to them. Nobody would ever confuse it with the Treaty of Westminster that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War, either.
6. In a related issue, people would recognize the Prussian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian flags on sight.
7. Everyone would exclusively quote Shakespeare. EXCLUSIVELY.
8. When not wearing their professional outfits, people would dress in slightly more utilitarian versions of waistcoats, ruffs, and powdered wigs. (The powdered wigs would be smaller, for example, to show the changing times and fashions.)
9. Sports fans would follow cricket, boxing or horse racing, and would occasionally express a longing to be able to travel back in time to the days when Lumpy Stevens beat John Small only for the ball to pass through the wicket without being disturbed. They would, on occasion, insist that the sport was better before they added the third stump to the wicket.
10. If anyone ever did reference a modern-day piece of pop culture, whether in the form of music, books, comedy, theatre, movies, or television, it would be only in reference to an actual celebrity in that particular field visiting them. The celebrity in question would never actually perform in their chosen field, but at least one character would always have been a fan.
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7 comments:
For me, Will Smith's paranoid distrust of technology and 20th century fetishism in I, Robot completely broke my suspension of disbelief. How would such a cranky Luddite even function in society?
I was on #4 before I knew what the joke was :/ I thought "Series Set In the Modern Day" was a clever new British series you were watching.
My personal theory is that the RIAA still exists and nobody has SEEN anything produced from the mid 20th century onward due to an ever extending copyright period. Society in general has given up on creating anything new in fear of someone copyrighting their work and screwing them out of it, so they just go watch alien art where saner laws apply.
Everyone would always cite three examples of everything: one from classic Greek/Roman times, one from the 17th or 18th century, and one from last week that nobody's heard of. "A statement in the same league as Augustus of Rome, Washington of America, and Taur Matan Ruak of Timor."
it's real easy to explain. In Star Trek, the 21st century was a pit, the 22nd was trying to get out of that pit and the 23rd was all about the stuff they in the 24th were doing right then
It's a bit over-specific, but if a series set in the modern day were written like the first season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the characters would spend a lot more time being smug about how much better society is now. "These vegetables are delicious, and made with advanced agricultural techniques. We no longer allow famine to kill millions."
Although I have never met anyone for whom every element you listed were true, I have met numerous people for whom many of them were true.
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