An article about Roseanne on the AV Club web site reminded me about how almost everyone seems to misunderstand the finale of Roseanne. They say that the reveal that the series was a novel the “real” Roseanne was writing was only applying to the crazy final season but what she actually says is the entire series we had been watching was that novel. She talks about how she made changes from her “real life” where, for example, Jackie is a lesbian instead of their mother and the brothers Darlene and Becky married were reversed because she thought she knew what was better. She says that the final season got crazy because the real Dan died and sending her novel into fantastic directions was how she coped with that.
It’s pretty clearly stated in the show but for some reason almost everyone makes that mistake. Any other examples in TV, Movies or Books where almost everyone seems to have the wrong idea (not including misquotes because that could probably be a thread in itself)?
What’s the point of the wooden stake? It’s because when there’s a dead corpse, and you know at night it’s going to claw itself out of the grave to feast on the blood of the living, what the heck are you supposed to do? Howabout you take a giant stake and NAIL that fucker into its fucking coffin? How you like me now?
The wooden stake is just to staple that rotting corpse to the ground so it can’t wander around any more. It doesn’t kill them–how can you kill that which has no life? It doesn’t turn them to dust. It’s just a wooden stake that literally stakes that fucker to the ground.
That is indeed one interpretation, but ( as the great Master himself pointed out in a long-ago column) there are many methods of killing vampires, and some of them involve putting stakes through parts of the body and in ways that don’t actually work as if you’re really trying to staple the vampire to the ground, like driving the stake sideways through the head. A lot of these seem to be pure magic, with no “rational” basis to them. One of the more interesting “rational” solutions was to bury the vampire face-down, so that when it tries to dig itself out of the ground it’s really just digging itself deeper. Reminds me of some people I know.
Besides, there are plenty of old fictional examples where the staking was done with a coffin out of the ground, as in one scene in Varney the Vampire, or in Carmilla, both 19th century stories predating Dracula. The misunderstanding, if that’s what it is, has been around about as long as Vampires have been pop culture (as opposed to superstition and legend).
A lot of people seem to think the entirety of Lost was set in Purgatory/Limbo/Doors to Heaven/Whatever, but really it was only the flash-sideways of the final season that was.
The thugs who love Scarface because they think it’s all awesome. It’s about the most tragic saddest dude in the world whose mountain of cocaine can’t cheer him up, bro.
Doctor Who. As everyone who has ever watched it at all knows, there is no character named “Doctor Who.” The protagonist is simply called “The Doctor,” causing some people who meet him to wonder, “Doctor who?”
Quantum Leap. People who weren’t regular watchers often seem to think that Sam Beckett’s mind occupied the bodies of the people he “leaped into.” But the premise of the show is that he physically replaced those people, while a kind of holographic (or telepathic?) illusion gave him the appearance of the people he replaced.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I often hear people say that 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. HGttG never claimed this. It clearly states that 42 is the answer to* the ultimate question of* life, the universe, and everything. A subtle but significant distinction. It took three books to find out exactly what that question was.
which is sometimes cited to describe a rule that is broken more often than it is followed. In the original, Hamlet was saying that it was more honorable to break the rule than to observe it.
Exactly. Hamlet isn’t talking about something like speeding, where a law is commonly broken. He’s talking about something like running an underground railroad for slaves and hiding Jews in Nazi Germany - a situation where it’s morally better to break the rule rather than follow it.
This is true, that people use the name “Frankenstein” for the monster as well as the creature. But, again, this isn’t a recent error, as some seem to think. It was being done in reviews and the cast credits even in Shelley’s lifetime. As many writers on the topic have pointed out, there’s an implied duality between the Creature and the Creator that makes this a pretty natural thing.
I think this sort of thing is related to the idea of a supernatural creature that has placed its heart in some sort of protected location, and so becomes immortal, and the only way to destroy it is to locate the heart. And so you can’t kill a vampire by normal means, there’s some secret key to killing them. Also related is the idea that since vampires are supernatural beings, they are vulnerable to natural things–sun, water, earth, wood.
How about a couple of film misconceptions?[ul][]Jason Voorhees is not the killer in the original Friday the 13th[]There are no undead zombies in 28 Days Later[/ul]
Rocky loses in the original Rocky. That was the whole point. No one expected him to be able to last more than a couple of rounds with the champ but he went the whole 15 rounds and lost only to a fairly close decision.
The “Thin Man” was not played by William Powell in the first movie. But after it was a success, sequels used the “Thin Man” in the titles presumably to show some continuity of the Nick and Nora Charles characters.
Interesting. I never realized that the whole series was her novel. I (like most others, apparently) thought it was just that last season, and after Dan’s heart attack. I do recall the first narrative line she says is, “I lost my husband Dan…” which led me to believe that the book began when Dan died.