# What are some earlier examples of fiction showing a sanitized, cliched, etc. recent history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 14, 2022, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525 "2022-12-14T18:24:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/1 "2022-12-14T18:24:15Z")
I never watched Happy Days, so cannot comment there. But often when people talk about past decades they talk about what the decade is now famous for moreso than the actual daily realty. And in fiction, especially comedy, that’s dialed up to 11. Like in Back to the Future - no way, no how should Marty not know how to open a bottle with a bottle opener. While not as as common as they used to be, those types of battles were still around, and would have been even more so 5 years earlier. My question isn’t specifically about the depiction of the super-idealized 1950s America (though I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be the answer for the US), but rather when the first time mass media showed a generation or so ago not as a period piece that happens to take place then, but as something of an era of cliches or a parody thereof. I don’t know that westerns really qualify, as they were works of mythology even back when they were supposedly happening contemporaneously (the real-time stories of Buffalo Bill, etc.). They’re certainly mythologizing, but it started as mythology about place that sort of evolved in place-and-time, if you know what I mean? ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/2 "2022-12-14T18:32:10Z")
Doesn’t that happen every 20-30 years when a generation gets older and starts reminiscing about the good old days. The roaring 20’s and the gay 90’s idealized speakeasys and Victorian style in movies in a way that varnishes overs the realities of crime and corruption that was prevalent in those days. ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/3 "2022-12-14T18:39:15Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > Doesn’t that happen every 20-30 years when a generation gets older and starts reminiscing about the good old days. The roaring 20’s and the gay 90’s idealized speakeasys and Victorian style in a way that varnishes overs the realities of crime and corruption that was prevalent in those days. I can’t speak to the '90s, but the Roaring '20s I would certainly say _today_ often at least hits on mobsters. But I will absolutely agree that, as depicted today, it’s a very stylized time in period-fiction, overwhelmingly about wealthy urban people partying and over-represent the more sexually liberal set, rather than anything approaching reality. But I don’t know when that aspect became the primary aspect in fiction set in the 1920s - almost the ones that I’ve seen were written in the 1980s or later (which is likely simply an aspect of my own viewing habits). ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/4 "2022-12-14T19:23:59Z")
Surely [Birth Of Nation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation) is the classic early example of this. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/5 "2022-12-14T19:34:15Z")
I saw a film probably made in the early 1900’s of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show crammed full of all the stereotypes you’d expect. Shakespeare seemed to love dramatizing historical figures. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/6 "2022-12-14T19:45:59Z")
Tara in _Gone with the Wind_ was filled with happy slaves. Tom Mix portrayed a version of the Wild West that didn’t exist. His first film was in 1909. ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/7 "2022-12-14T20:11:39Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > I saw a film probably made in the early 1900’s of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show crammed full of all the stereotypes you’d expect. Right, but all those stereotypes were (as far as I know) already a thing in the 1870s - like I said, “the West” was a bit of myth even in real-time. They weren’t looking _back_ on another time as different. Westerns since just build on that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2022, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-earlier-examples-of-fiction-showing-a-sanitized-cliched-etc-recent-history/976525/8 "2022-12-14T20:32:18Z")
I’m really tempted to say every single movie about the past made in Hollywood ever. Seriously, name one exception from the 20th century. Classic Hollywood made hundreds of movies set in the past. Lots of classic literature. Lot of nostalgia pieces. Lots of pirates. They were all sanitized, cliched, etc. BTW, so were all the movies made about the present. You might argue that movies started getting less cliched after the movie studio era ended in the 1970s. I’d argue back that’s wishful thinking.