Summer Of 42
I finally got around to seeing 42, the story of Jackie Robinson. It's a story worth telling, and the movie does a reasonable job of it. But, as so often happens, I'm watching a scene and suddenly taken out of it by an anachronistic phrase.
A bit later, one of the ballplayers wants to make sure he and Jackie are "on the same page." Remember, these are the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
I can understand if a film is set in the 1400s and you want them to talk a bit more like we do today so we understand them. I can even understand using words widely accepted today--like "racism" or "racist"--that weren't so common in the 1940s. But specific slang that wasn't widely used until decades later? The filmmakers spent a lot of money to get the look right--costumes, hair, sets, cars. Is it too much to ask them to let a linguist read through the script and red flag a term or two? I mean, they wouldn't say Jackie Robinson played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, would they?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
2 Comments:
I thought ASAP was a military acronym/slang dating from World War II (or earlier= maybe to save on telegraph clicks?) but I can't find a source for that right now.
I do recall SNAFU and FUBAR date from the same era (though they were fed up GI's acronyms relating to army procedure not official abbreviations which ASAP is)
I just checked and the phrase ASAP has, indeed, a military origin. However, the earliest instances found are in the mid-50s.
I didn't need to do this research for my post, though, since I can personally testify that people were not saying ASAP in general conversation when I was a kid. Nor do you find it in TV shows or movies from the 60s and 70s. (Really that's why it got to me--I've seen a lot of films from the 40s and no one says ASAP, and suddenly here it was in a film set in the 40s.)
It's been common enough for a couple decades, but if someone said it, say, in 1965, they'd probably get a quizzical glance.
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