The Wit’s Guide to Anachronisms
Or, Colville’s PlayStation
When you hire a cast of thousands to be in your movie, you need to get them to set on time. And so it should come as no surprise that your centurions end up wearing wristwatches, a phenomenon so prevalent in sword-and-sandals epics that it inspired the 1996 book Roman Soldiers Don’t Wear Watches: 501 Film Flubs. The word anachronism means time out of place; you can’t get much more on the wrist than a gladiator’s Casio.
“Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms.”
— Jorge Luis Borges
But wait: Why do all those people in ancient foreign lands speak BBC English? Why do they conform to our standards of beauty? Where did Alexander Hamilton learn to rap? And why does even the most downtrodden peasant have gleaming white teeth? The answer, per the Anachronism Stew entry on All The Tropes, is that if Robin Hood’s ivories were the colour of emeralds, we couldn’t handle it.
“People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.”
— G.K. Chesterton
And so everything that already happened merges into Before Times. And the best part is, even residents of the Before Times did this! Caravaggio’s paintings of Biblical scenes show everyone in Renaissance clothing; Shakespeare threw a clock into Julius Caesar. In terms of years elapsed, it would have been much less egregious to give Woodward and Bernstein access to the Internet in All the President’s Men (and the movie would have been over in 15 minutes.)
“If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.”
— Tom Stoppard
When sifting through quotation dictionaries for the gems I sprinkle herein, I weed out all the Before Times stuff. Sorry, Shakespeare, you lost me at forsooth. But once a quip is translated, it gets a modern shine. This is why the Stoics are still making bank in the influencer economy. An 1862 translation of Marcus Aurelius sounds like classic Before Times: “Near is thy forgetfulness of all things; and near the forgetfulness of thee by all.” But the same line became Nowish in 1958: “Always reflect that soon you will be no one and nowhere.”
“Ever since I was a boy, I regarded opera as a ponderous anachronism, almost the equivalent of smoking.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright“People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what’s wrong with it.”
— Noel Coward
And for a real mindbender, consider the anachronistically contemporary: When artwork looks like it comes from the future.
collected some of these in his 8 Ball newsletter, notably Qing dynasty vases that look like they could be sold on Etsy and the fact that Great Canadian Artist Alex Colville’s eerie compositions capture the aesthetic of early PlayStation games:
An art history thread on Reddit tried to figure out why his paintings have that “poor rendering/PS2 graphics look.” Of the above painting, they say it “looks like a first-person video game screenshot. Like out of Goldeneye or something!” and “Get ready for that sign to explode if you shoot it.” All of which leads to an obvious conclusion well suited to these nationalistic times: Alex Colville invented the PlayStation!
April’s Riposte Card is by
, a Polish-Canadian illustrator and art director who does wonderful things with typography. He chose to interpret a great line on the creative process by Raymond Chandler, and the result is a clever little artwork you can stare at for a few seconds to reset the old cranium. I mailed it out to my paid subscribers earlier this week, but if you pay up now, I can include a few in the next delivery of these gorgeous subscriber perquisites.
“It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.”
— Theodor Reik
Lent’s almost done and we’ve still only managed two of the Seven Deadly Sins. Gotta get another one done before the Easter Bunny comes to exact vengeance!
That was Get Wit Quick Issue No. 302, which could have been sent as issue 102, 202, or 402 and probably worked just fine. The newsletter’s mascot is a magpie named Magnus after the magician in Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. The title font is Vulf Sans, the official typeface of the band Vulfpeck, which was modelled after IBM Selectric typewriters. The book was Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Tap the ❤️ below to remind your future self that you were here.
dear benjamin,
thanks as always for these! some of my fave quotes this week:
“People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.”
— G.K. Chesterton
“If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.”
— Tom Stoppard
“People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what’s wrong with it.”
— Noel Coward
much appreciated!
love
myq
Heh!
That's all you'll get out of me this week.
I enjoy'd it but am distracted by spring. The doves are fluttering and flirting in the beechtrees outside my balcony. Mr. Dove chases her from branch to branch like a sexpest. The pervert.