# What Major Misconceptions Did You Have About Creative Works? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 4, 2014, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868 "2014-01-04T09:40:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/41 "2014-01-08T22:17:02Z")
I used to think prowrestling was real, and thus refused to watch it as I hate sports. Then I found out it wasn’t and became a huge fan. ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/42 "2014-01-08T22:29:07Z")
I thought _Bat Out of Hell_ was a heavy metal album. ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/43 "2014-01-08T22:35:38Z")
I assumed **As I Lay Dying** would be the novel-length stream-of-consciousness final thoughts of a Civil War soldier who’d been fatally shot. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/44 "2014-01-08T22:37:01Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > I was a teen when\*\*\* Saturday Night Fever \*\*\*came out, and I refused to see it because I thought it was just a piece of junk aimed at teenyboppers who wanted to see dreamy John Travolta disco dancing. > > I didn’t see it until I was an adult, and only then did I realize it was a very good, very gritty movie that didn’t glamorize Travolta OR the disco scene. I had much the same reaction to this movie. I was quite surprised at how \*anti-\*disco this film was; the movie depicts the whole disco scene as banal, vacuous, and full of shallow, misogynist jerks. (Actual quote from the movie: “You’re a loser, Vinnie. You’re going nowhere.”) I almost didn’t go see **Rabbit Proof Fence** because I mistakenly assumed from the title that this was a kiddie cartoon movie with ani-morphic animals (basically, I thought it was going to be a remake of “Watership Down.”) ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/45 "2014-01-08T22:43:26Z")
Based on the trailer for **Greenberg** , I thought Ben Stiller would be playing a blissed-out, inspirational slacker who’d teach everyone a feel-good message about the importance of “just doing nothing for a while.” Yeah…not quite. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/46 "2014-01-08T22:50:40Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Aren’t you like 35? Did you really walk around berating The Simpsons as some “crass, vulgar cartoon show” at age 11? I’m younger than that, but that’s what I thought, too. Why? Because that’s what my parents told me, and I believed them. My relationship with South Park is pretty much the same, save for my opinions being formed on their own. My opinions on Family Guy went in reverse, especially after it returned. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/47 "2014-01-09T10:16:22Z")
> [@delphica](#): > > I had somehow gotten the idea that Norman Mailer’s \*The Naked and the Dead \*was a book **about a zoologist doing fieldwork to study monkeys in the Philippines**. You know, sort of like a Jane Goodall thing, but with a Southeast Asian monkey population. > > It’s really a novel about WWII, based on the author’s time in the army in the Philippines. At least I had the location right. But I swear, I was like 5/6 through the book and still vaguely wondering when the part about going to study monkeys in the wild was going to start. Might you conceivably have got that notion by having in your mind, at some level of consciousness, the old armed-forces song about the tail-less monkeys in Zamboanga? ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/48 "2014-01-09T10:38:39Z")
> [@Don\_Draper](#): > > I almost didn’t go see **Rabbit Proof Fence** because I mistakenly assumed from the title that this was a kiddie cartoon movie with ani-morphic animals (basically, I thought it was going to be a remake of “Watership Down.”) My sentiments there, were the exact opposite. Was initially attracted, because it seemed that the film must be about rabbits. I then discovered that the subject matter concerned humans, in a very depressing way; and steered clear of the film. For sure, it deals with issues of dreadful institutionalised abuse, which it is imperative to address – it’s just that such is not my personal idea of a fun night out at the cinema. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/49 "2014-01-09T10:56:30Z")
> [@LawMonkey](#): > > Similarly, I thought Holmes was an absolute drug fiend, and that his drug of choice was morphine. Newp. (He did smoke like a chimney, though. :eek:) What’s the misconception here? Holmes’s intravenous use of cocaine and opium is explicitly described at the start of the second book, _The Sign of Four_. This passage really surprised me, as I had always assumed that his drug use was something ambiguous, that one could never be sure about, like his possible homosexuality. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/50 "2014-01-09T11:49:13Z")
> [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](#): > > What’s the misconception here? Holmes’s intravenous use of cocaine and opium is explicitly described at the start of the second book, _The Sign of Four_. This passage really surprised me, as I had always assumed that his drug use was something ambiguous, that one could never be sure about, like his possible homosexuality. _Nitpick_ Holmes doesn’t do opium. At the start of The Sign of the Four, Watson at first suspects he does morphine but Holmes explains it’s cocaine to keep his mind alert when he’s not working on a case. As far as I know the only time he takes morphine is as a painkiller when he’s injured in The Adventure of the Illustrious Client. It’s clear that Holmes is a junky, though. His primary drug is work, and when he can’t get a fix, he turns to cocaine. > [@](#): > > Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction. > > Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/51 "2014-01-09T12:04:20Z")
Yes, Holmes’ cocaine use is very explicit in _The Sign of the Four_, but I think there is very little (if anything) about it in any of the other stories. There may be a handful of other places where it is briefly mentioned, but you could read most of the Holmes canon and never get any sort of impression that he was a drug user at all. IIRC it is also _The Sign of the Four_ that prominently features the Baker Street irregulars, who rarely, if ever, get mentioned anywhere else. The Holmes stories are, of course, full of inconsistencies like this, especially about the characters and histories of Holmes and Watson themselves. Like the significance of Moriarty, Holmes’ cocaine use is something that has frequently been made much more prominent in non-canonical works by later writers, and theatrical (and radio, movie, and TV) portrayals, but plays only a very small role in Conan Doyle’s original works. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/52 "2014-01-09T12:31:12Z")
I had the idea that Mark Rothko was a great artist…till I saw his “best” works. They remind me of the marks that painters make on walls (test strips). I also thought that James Joyce’s Ulysses"was about ancient Greece. I tried reading it…and stopped. I still don’t know what it is about. ---
**Author:** ![Turek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/turek/32/18782_2.png) [@Turek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turek)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/53 "2014-01-09T12:54:47Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Oh my God! Somebody else remembers _Holmes and Yo-Yo_? Man, you mentioned it, and my brain immediately went, “The bunco squad. The bunco squad.” How sad is that? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/54 "2014-01-09T13:33:10Z")
> [@jovan](#): > > _Nitpick_ Holmes doesn’t do opium. At the start of The Sign of the Four, Watson at first suspects he does morphine but Holmes explains it’s cocaine to keep his mind alert when he’s not working on a case. As far as I know the only time he takes morphine is as a painkiller when he’s injured in The Adventure of the Illustrious Client. > > It’s clear that Holmes is a junky, though. His primary drug is work, and when he can’t get a fix, he turns to cocaine. I wrote opium when I should have said morphine, but in my edition of TSO4 Watson says “Which is it today, […] morphine or cocaine?”. That shows that he sees Holmes taking morphine as frequently as he sees him taking cocaine. ---
**Author:** ![Wakinyan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wakinyan/32/352_2.png) [@Wakinyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wakinyan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/55 "2014-01-11T11:26:16Z")
Until I read him, I would never have guessed that Dostoyevsky was funny. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/56 "2014-01-11T17:42:03Z")
> [@Turek](#): > > Man, you mentioned it, and my brain immediately went, “The bunco squad. The bunco squad.” How sad is that? That is kinda sad, but I’m right there with you. Odd that a series that only ran 13 episodes almost 40 years ago can stick in your head like that. However, John Schuck stills shows up on TV from time to time, notably as some high ranking police official on _Law & Order: SVU_. (He’s the one who comes, in dress uniform, to bawl out Capt. Kragen whenever someone in the squad pisses off city hall.) I just tell myself that Det. Yoyonovich has been promoted way up the ranks and then laugh my ass off. That idea improves both shows simultaneously. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/57 "2014-01-11T18:13:22Z")
> [@Turek](#): > > Man, you mentioned it, and my brain immediately went, “The bunco squad. The bunco squad.” How sad is that? I remember a couple of lines. Now see if you remember any jokes from “Quark” or “When Things Were Rotten”. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/58 "2014-01-11T18:14:55Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I had the idea that Mark Rothko was a great artist…till I saw his “best” works. > They remind me of the marks that painters make on walls (test strips). > I also thought that James Joyce’s Ulysses"was about ancient Greece. I tried reading it…and stopped. > I still don’t know what it is about. That’s ok. Nobody else does either. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/59 "2014-01-11T18:18:52Z")
> [@Wakinyan](#): > > Until I read him, I would never have guessed that Dostoyevsky was funny. I think most people would say that of a lot of Literature they were taught in school. To be fair, a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of [the good jokes](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CountryMatters) probably aren’t appropriate for explanation to children. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868/60 "2014-01-11T20:17:35Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > I remember a couple of lines. Now see if you remember any jokes from “Quark” or “When Things Were Rotten”. “The pretty one is the clone.” \“I am not.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-major-misconceptions-did-you-have-about-creative-works/677868.md?page=4)