Talk:Artistic license

Iambic Pentameter
Isn't it the case that adding the extra syllable in fact breaks the meter?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Riocard (talk • contribs) 21:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC). To be tolerated by the [audience]? According to whom? People are as allowed to criticise use of artistic licence, and there is no-one who can tell them they can't. I think that needs to be removed or replaced with something more accurate.

The Shakespeare example is rubbish. Without the word "and" the line still scans like / / x / x x / x x /. Clearly in this instance Shakespeare couldn't give a toss about producing perfectly regular iambic pentameter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8801:3284:D100:EC38:5F42:B2B7:62E0 (talk) 02:22, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Has any artist portrayed St. Pauls Cathedral and Parliament together?
Cuz that would be a cool picture. And if we could get it (and if it were in the public domain), it would make a great picture for this article. A visual example of artistic licence.
 * Yes. See for example Great Fire of London. Usually the fact of being divided by landmarks principally the Savoy Hotel, Somerset House and formerly Whitehall Palace does not put them side-by-side or blur out everything between.- Adam37   Talk  16:04, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Dan Brown reference
More recently, the commercial success of Dan Brown's novels such as The Da Vinci Code proves that, despite multiple examples of misinformation and complete fabrication, the general public have a high capacity to willingly suspend their disbelief.

I removed this because it came across more as a swipe at Dan Brown than anything to do with artistic licence. To the extent that Dan Brown's work is intended as fictional entertainment, its success doesn't prove anything about WSOD that wasn't already known; the public were happily reading Beatrix Potter's stories about talking rabbits a century before Brown hit the bestseller lists.

And if one supposes that Brown's books are attempting to mislead their readers (yes, a work of fiction can also be dishonestly meant), then we're no longer in the territory of 'artistic license'; that would have more to do with propaganda.

FWIW, Brown annoys me no end, I just don't think this is the place to be venting that. --Calair 23:18, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Illustration
The image caption for "The Death of General Wolfe" should make clear how the painting is related to the subject matter of this article (does it exemplify "artistic licence" and if so, how?). Currently it does not, so the image may even seem completely irrelevant here. --Jonik 22:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

License vs Licence
The title of this article is "Artistic licence" and "Artistic license" redirects to here; yet throughout the article it's consistantly spelled, "license". Per WP:ENGVAR, some sort of consensus needs to emerge. Urania3 11:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Problems / Controversy
Might be worth adding a section describing times when artistic licence caused controversy or problems.--Flying Canuck 23:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

used to denote the distortion or complete ignorance of fact
This simply is not true —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnvile (talk • contribs) 18:47, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

What?!
Can someone explain this to me: "Conversely, on the next line, the end of "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him" has an extra syllable because omitting the word "him" would make the sentence unclear, but adding a syllable at the end would not disrupt the meter."

I've read this line 10 times now and I can't figure out the example it's trying to make.

Consensus to edit this biased article to make more neutral (and less artist-worshipping)
This article does not adhere to a neutral point of view. It views the subject from the artist's point of view, and implies that anyone who complains about it is some old fogey who doesn't like his cherished traditions changed. This is inaccurate and in my opinion is also a narrow-minded generalization. More specifically:


 * The example of Shakespeare is in my opinion very poor. Much of what is considered "artistic license" in Shakespeare's histories and historical tragedies is the effect of his lack of access to reliable neutral third-party sources. He doesn't make Lady Macbeth a power-hungry sociopath because of artistic license but because his only source for the play made her a power-hungry sociopath. He doesn't make Richard III a monster because of artistic license but in part because Thomas More made Richard III a monster.


 * It can be used as an excuse for propaganda. Richard III is an excellent example, but some modern propagandists have also used the artistic license excuse when distorting history for political reasons. One movie produced under Franco, for instance, depicted the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews as bloodless and necessary. This was specifically described as artistic license by the director when in reality it was meant specifically to distort the public's view of Isabella, but also to reinforce the Francoist belief that Spain should be one culture, one language, and one religion.


 * It can also be used as an excuse for increasing the commercial value of a work of art to the detriment of its honesty. It's hard to justify making everyone in the past young, thin, and conventionally attractive on an artistic basis: it's usually done only so that the work earns the artist more money. (See "The Tudors" for a blatant example, but at least they're upfront about their reasons for turning Henry VIII, of all people, into a hunk.)


 * Many people resent excess artistic license not because they cherish tradition but because they cherish truth. Artistic license when taken too far distorts the truth and can lead viewers to believe that more accurate depictions are lies. How many people today still think that Isabella pawned her jewels to pay for Columbus's voyages, or that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree? Yet both of these - I'm sorry, blatant lies - were created by someone using artistic license to show what they considered "a deeper truth". The only truth they showed was that artists are untrustworthy.

I'd like to spur a discussion on editing it to address some of these concerns (and not to wave them away, either - in my opinion all are valid concerns). --NellieBly (talk) 20:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Friends, romans, countrymen
Is it really the case here that an 'and' was dropped to preserve meter? Could this not just be apposition (presumably, it is a unitary audience, or does he have many nonroman friends?) and mean an 'and' would be entirely unnecessary? Given that it can be read in ways which do not require, or indeed require that no 'and' be used, it might not be a good example. Just saying, like. 60.240.207.146 (talk) 09:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)