# Insane interpretations that you have seen about media?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/insane-interpretations-that-you-have-seen-about-media/1012236>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [December 27, 2024, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/insane-interpretations-that-you-have-seen-about-media/1012236 "2024-12-27T18:45:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 38

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**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2024, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/insane-interpretations-that-you-have-seen-about-media/1012236/38 "2024-12-29T13:36:28Z")

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There is always this anecdote about a wrong interpretation of a work(credit SciFiSam):

> [@What are stories of incidents where someone got the wrong end of the stick?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-stories-of-incidents-where-someone-got-the-wrong-end-of-the-stick/849310/12):
>
> I wish I could remember the name of the academic. He wrote about his own mistake in some article I read way back in the 90s.
> 
> He had written an entire book based on a mishearing. It was a John Wayne movie, and he thought that Wayne said that the fight between the families was “feudal.”
> 
> So he wrote a whole book about how Westerns presented fights between families, and society in general, as feudal, like in the middle ages. He had some good arguments for it, too, and the book was fairly well-received.
> 
> Years later he realised that John Wayne hadn’t said feudal at all. He’d said _futile_. In the UK that’s pronounced /ˈfjuːtʌɪl/, like fyoo-tie (like Thai food) - ul. It’s not very similar to the American pronunciation at all, so it’s an understandable mishearing, but to write an _entire book_ based on one mishearing is pretty unusual. Wayne’s line was a throwaway comment without nearly as much meaning as the academic assigned to it. He had wondered why nobody else had picked up on it, and now he knew.

[https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-stories-of-incidents-where-someone-got-the-wrong-end-of-the-stick/849310/12](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-stories-of-incidents-where-someone-got-the-wrong-end-of-the-stick/849310/12)

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