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Misrepresented professions in fiction?

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Timbuktu

Member
Architects seem to be a go to profession in movies like rom coms where it's not at all about the work. I guess it is sort of self explanatory, a quick way to describe someone as a professional, creative, but you don't really cares what he/she builds, because the audience don't know how to judge it. The architect being at the centre of 12 Angry Men does feel good though.
 
Architects seem to be a go to profession in movies like rom coms where it's not at all about the work. I guess it is sort of self explanatory, a quick way to describe someone as a professional, creative, but you don't really cares what he/she builds, because the audience don't know how to judge it. The architect being at the centre of 12 Angry Men does feel good though.

Architect for a man. Woman owns a small, cute shop selling something like books or cupcakes that she only needs to be at or deal with when it's plot convenient.
 
Not quite a profession, but it always annoys me when people play chess in movies/TV. They're always one move away from checkmate and the other person has no idea until it happens.
 

Zoe

Member
Very few legal cases hinge on surprise witness testimony and Encyclopedia Browning the evidence timeline during one's closing argument.

Fun fact, My Cousin Vinnie is considered one of the best illustrations of an actual trial and is even shown to law students

So does that apply to Mona Lisa's testimony too​?

Not a film, but E.R. was lauded for its correct depiction of hospital work and certain parts were shown at medschools to students.

Really? I remember back in the day it was criticized for giving too much credit to the doctors and taking away from the nurses.
 

error4041

Member
I'd say retail workers are fairly accurate.We're apathetic to a point, and we really don't care about the customer's problems, we just smile and pretend to care because we have too.
 

spons

Gold Member
Everything psychiatry. 50s American mental health hospitals are not exactly realistic in this day and age.
 

Trance

Member
the-accountant-movie-teaser-poster.jpg



I'm in corporate finance, and this movie gave me a taste of what medical professionals must feel watching doc shows. There's a scene where he spends all night dramatically writing out numbers on every available wall space in an office trying to figure out a missing account. That would take less than an hour to do in real life with an Oracle report. Minutes on SAP.
 

CLaddyOnFire

Neo Member
I'm an analytical chemist. No, CSI, a GC-MS is not a magic instrument that tells you everything from a dude's DNA sequence to how much mercury (!) is in somebody's blood. Also please stop putting blood in the GC-MS.
 
So does that apply to Mona Lisa's testimony too​?



Really? I remember back in the day it was criticized for giving too much credit to the doctors and taking away from the nurses.

I read that people praised ER for having actual nurses and medical technicians as side cast.
 
Yeah, probably science.

But if movies used real science, nobody would watch. It'd just be hours of someone staring through a microscope and occasionally cursing.

And then repeated like that for years until mid-way through an excel spreadsheet there'd be a "huh".
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Teachers are either portrayed as:

-Incredibly charismatic

-Incredibly apathetic

-Incredibly antagonistic

-Able to give a lesson/lecture without anyone in the room talking

All of which are extremes, and the last of which is the most unrealistic of all
 

BumRush

Member
Fun fact, My Cousin Vinnie is considered one of the best illustrations of an actual trial and is even shown to law students

another fun fact is that the scene in the jail cell when the friend doesn't know who Vinny is is one of the greatest scenes in film history
 

moist

Member
Gonna echo those citing mental health occupations, it usually ends up being a bad depiction of psychotherapy.

With that said I kind of understand why, it's an easy and cheap(cost wise) way to add exposition or narrative to move a plot along.
 
Doesn't quite fit the topic, but outdoor survival shit. Any movie where people are stranded in the wilderness, every remotely manly dude is like "I'll just start a fire with not so much as a flint, rig up a few animal traps with some rope, and gather some edible roots and mushrooms from memory." Nobody knows how to do that shit.
 

Sunster

Member
The people making your pharmaceutical drugs.

It's always portrayed as like, bespectacled young scientists pipetting purple liquid into PCR trays

The reality is it's pretty much like any other manufacturing crowd. Mostly scruffy, coarse older dudes with associates degrees or high school diplomas.

I don't say that as a jab at them either, some of the smartest people you'll ever meet. They'll look at a bioreactor or a chromatography column and tell you what's wrong with it in 5 minutes

foreal? What's their pay like?
 

Jintor

Member
Very few legal cases hinge on surprise witness testimony and Encyclopedia Browning the evidence timeline during one's closing argument.

in fact doing so would get the whole thing thrown out (in common law systems anyway) for gross procedural fuckups
 

EVOL 100%

Member
Translation / Interpretation (and which is which)

Also probably cryptography.
oh my fucking god

This actually offends me.

The "Eureka moment" is rare. Science is collaborative.

Science is mostly paperwork and procedures. And, mostly trying to find funding.

This applies to music writing as well, from my own experience and by seeing much more accomplished musician friends/acquaintances. The reality isn't that romantic
 
I think the only professions that are consistently portrayed fairly accurately are service/retail. It fucking sucks and movies do a pretty good job at depicting that.
 

Bleepey

Member

Bleepey

Member
The Wire is probably the best at it. I believe its actually used in some criminal justice programs and such. I do remember where I was watching a clip where actual drug dealers were watching the Wire and mentioning what was accurate and wasn't accurate. Needless to say they couldn't believe a dude like Omar would be alive for so long especially as a gay man.

Link? I recall there being a medical show that was filmed at my old university and whilst they got some parts right like how dry the school parties were. The streamlined admissions process brought everyone to tears of laughter. "Can i fill out a form for medical school please?" haha. Fuck off. I recall a film with Kelly Kapowski a while back, that had an epidemiologist that needed to have to have the principles of a RCT explained to her which whilst I understood having to explain why shit should be double blind and the use of a placebo to the audience. The fact someone who went through at least 10 years of medical education was unaware of this is fucking impossible to put it politely when I could have explained this shit from the age of 16 and have had that shit repeatedly taught to me through my two science degrees.
 

Alrus

Member
As a med student, Grey's Anatomy is one of the most inaccurate depiction of the profession I've seen. I still enjoy watching it as a guilty pleasure from time to time though.
 

Hyun Sai

Member
The Wire is probably the best at it. I believe its actually used in some criminal justice programs and such. I do remember where I was watching a clip where actual drug dealers were watching the Wire and mentioning what was accurate and wasn't accurate. Needless to say they couldn't believe a dude like Omar would be alive for so long especially as a gay man.

Agree on Omar, even without him being gay, the "stealing drug dealers for a living" was too much on the super hero / vigilante stuff.

The other supernatural entity was Brother Mouzone, no wonder they ended up working together ^^
 

Fbh

Member
Yeah hacking/PC/IT stuff is so badly represented its funny

Lawyers too. I love how it all comes down to having an emotional opening and closing statement.


I have to say though. I studied advertising and that's pretty realistically represented. Specially when they show parodies of how ad agencies work


I'd say retail workers are fairly accurate.We're apathetic to a point, and we really don't care about the customer's problems, we just smile and pretend to care because we have too.

Hey! We all cared at some point.
But after the 6000th customer entitled idiot complaining about some bullshit "issue" you slowly stop caring...At first it's just the bad customers you no longer care about, then all customers...Then people in general.
 

gfxtwin

Member
Firefighters. Most of the calls you get involve things that paramedics are mainly there for, but when there is a fire and you're in a burning building it's not like it is in movies/tv - aside from the heat and the house falling apart your biggest challenge involves knowing where you're going/navigating through the building because all the smoke is blinding and the gas masks aren't quite as effective as you'd think.
 

Wvrs

Member
Linguistics. Hardly any of my PhD Linguist tutors spoke a second language, and second language learning is not at all an aspect of the discipline. But in popular culture, without fail, every fictional Linguist is a hyper-polygot and can learn mandarin etc. after an hour of study.
 

LakeEarth

Member
Scientists in shows love to stare into liquid in glass tubes. While you do have to do that sometimes, it's usually just to make sure that you mixed the solution well enough. There's very rarely any insight you can gain by it.
 

vonStirlitz

Unconfirmed Member
the-accountant-movie-teaser-poster.jpg



I'm in corporate finance, and this movie gave me a taste of what medical professionals must feel watching doc shows. There's a scene where he spends all night dramatically writing out numbers on every available wall space in an office trying to figure out a missing account. That would take less than an hour to do in real life with an Oracle report. Minutes on SAP.
But that would make for a shit movie.
 
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