Timewarp: Would it be better to live in a different time?

Have you ever watched movies set in different times, and thought nothing would be cooler than to live in that time? I have. In fact every time I watch Chicago, A Knight’s Tale or even Hairspray I imagine the clothes and all the awesome stuff I could do. Sadly, this isn't the case at all.

Medieval times? Knights and damsels is distress? Not likely. Mid fourteenth century you were more likely to see 25 to 50% of the population in Europe die from the black plague. If you reached your thirties, you were an old person. So much for forty is the new twenty right? Doctors, if you could even call them that, were pretty useless and many took the chop it off approach. Also, woman didn’t have any rights and that doesn’t work for me. Not to mention the terrible clothes they squeezed or girdled you into. No wonder those women fainted all the time.

Chicago is set in the 1920’s. The time of flappers and, according to the movie, glitz and glam and showbiz. Realistically, after some research, I wouldn’t want to live in that time if you paid me. LEGAL SALES OF ALCOHOL STOPPED? When did they ever think it was a good idea? Illegal sales must have gone through the roof! Further, inflation was so high many people couldn’t afford every day groceries. Farms went bankrupt, presidency was poor and of course the stock market known as Wall street crashed leading to the Great Depression. Suddenly all the images of Catherine- Zeta Jones and the ladies of the Cell block Tango disappear and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men seems more appropriate.

Even the frivolous Hairspray is deceptive. Sure everything looks bright and perky, but it actually wasn’t all song and dance. Segregation and oppression was the norm and John F Kennedy was assassinated. The Ku Klux Klan, a racist faction, attacked people of colour and struck terror into the hearts of the citizens. My parents were born (kidding). The pointless war in Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr is assassinated for having a dream. Does this in anyway sound like the happy chappy musical? Not quite.

We all may wish to live in a different time every once in a while. But maybe that’s how they should remain. Wishes.