Is there a name for the category of common misquotations, such that the misquotation is the actually well-known quote? There must be one, but it\u2019s not coming to mind. If there isn\u2019t already a name for them, I\u2019d probably call them Casablanks<\/i>, after Play it again, Sam<\/i>, which has got to be the epitome of the thing.\r\n
Now that I\u2019m thinking of them, I do wonder if that sort of popular misquotations will survive much longer. Why would anyone in the twenty-first century reference Dracula with I want to drink your blood<\/i>? Why would anyone imitate Cary Grant by saying Judy, Judy, Judy<\/i>? Why would someone intone Just the facts, ma\u2019am<\/i>? I personally will continue to ask if the Dodgers are still in the league, but I probably shouldn\u2019t, because nobody will know what I\u2019m referring to, much less that the thing I\u2019m referring to that nobody knows is a misquotation.\r\n
I think I\u2019ve observed that with more recent stuff, the quotations of the internet age, people get the lines right. Mostly because they post the actual clip or screenshot, which makes it easy to get the line right. Plus\u2014particularly for movies and television\u2014they can watch their favorites quote-mines as often they like. People my age saw Casablanca<\/cite> once a year, at most, and when the line got stuck in people\u2019s memory they had pretty much no opportunity to see it even that often. This is the age of looking stuff up, and getting it right.\r\n Having said that, sometimes (as with Play it again, Sam<\/i> and Nice guys finish last<\/i>) the accurate version just isn\u2019t as good as the common one, particularly not for making casual-but-witty references. So maybe there will be Casablanks in the future\r\n I went down this road because I saw someone using the Tony Hanock Casablank Did Magna Carta die in vain?<\/i> It\u2019s a favorite reference of some of the Grauniad<\/cite>\u2019s writers, and pops up with some frequency, but I\u2019d never seen the actual clip<\/a>, which I have to say isn\u2019t as funny as the wrong one. The wrong one works in a bunch of situations\u2014and it is (in my opinion) funnier because<\/I> it\u2019s a misquotation, as the notional speaker is presumably wrong about absolutely everything, including the reference.\r\n\r\n Hancock's Half Hour - Twelve Angry Men (16th October 1959). "Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?". pic.twitter.com\/8nJalIXZb4<\/a><\/p>— Archivetvmusings (@archivetvmus71) June 23, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n Thanks, Did Casa Blanca die in vain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,72,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-quotations","category-television"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18372"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18376,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372\/revisions\/18376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Ed.\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"