Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2018 April 6

Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 6

Nintendo 3DS on lager screen

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

I was wondering if it is possible to play Nintendo 3DS games on a large screen (I get dizzy from the small screen).

Thank you for your answers--2A02:1205:502E:4030:8DE6:B5D6:1170:ED7F (talk) 18:21, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes. It costs money, but it is possible.

There are video capture kits that connect to your 3DS and output to either a computer or a television.

The catch is they're not cheap. The most common and respected one is the "Katsukity Capture Kit". Amazon sells a 3ds with a Katsukity capture card pre-installed for $600. [1].

Or, if you already have a 3ds, you can send it in to have a capture card installed for a mere $250. [2].

Why so much money? Well, the 3ds wasn't designed to allow this kind of capture, so the hardware is pretty custom, and is mostly purchased by journalists, developers, and the occasional YouTuber.

Good luck. If you go down this route, I'd be interested in hearing how it turned out for you. ApLundell (talk) 04:08, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. I think that I will leave it the way it is. I simply don't have the money to get any of these expensive gadgets. I think I will buy some magnifying glasses;-)--2A02:1205:502E:4030:18D8:7389:9C09:613B (talk) 14:59, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Flashback in stageplays?

Flashback is a familiar device in films (and of course novels, narrative poems, epics, etc.) but I can't think of one stageplay I've ever read or seen or heard of that uses that device. None of the examples in article Flashback (narrative) is from a play. Does anyone know of a play that uses flashback? I'm mostly interested in examples from traditional theaters, Western or non-Western, using techniques that were already established by about 1940. Thanks. Basemetal 18:21, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Patrice Pavis's Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis, in its entry on "Flashback", writes: "Although a "cinematic" technique, it pre-existed cinema in the novel. It has enjoyed a certain amount of popularity in theatre since experiments with the narration or story such as MILLER's Death of a Salesman. One of the first occurrences was in A. SALACROU's l'Inconnue d'Arras in 1935." ---Sluzzelin talk 18:40, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Does telling the story in reverse count? Then Betrayal (play) by Pinter. --69.159.62.113 (talk) 19:21, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Of course it does. Telling a story backwards is essentially a recurring series of flashbacks, each scene being a flashback from the previous one. In every scene of course time moves forward, they're not walking backwards and speaking English backwards. That would be extreme, but what can you not expect with "new theater"? Interesting example. I did expect post-WWII theater experimented with never before used techniques. Thanks. Basemetal 20:20, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I didn't think it was "of course", because usually a flashback is followed by a return to the same time period as before the flashback. --69.159.62.113 (talk) 00:30, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

When you tell the story backwards and you don't periodically come back to reestablish what the "present" is, it would seem as if the "present" recedes further and further back into the past. That's in theory. But I don't think that distinction is in fact that important for whoever experiences the play. For example if you added a 1977 (or even, say, a 1980) scene at the end of Pinter's play that came back to the "present" would it make a lot of difference as far as the perception of time is concerned? (Not saying it wouldn't change the play in other ways). Yet in theory that would make the 1975 to 1968 scenes flashbacks. Even if you inserted scenes regularly coming back to the "present" it still wouldn't make a lot of difference. It would simply be more cumbersome. The way Pinter structured the play is faster than a series of flashbacks but I don't see a big difference in how time is perceived. Maybe if I see that play acted on the stage I'd change my mind though. Basemetal 01:10, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

• A parenthetical note prompted by my thinking about the examples kindly provided by Sluzzelin and IP 69.159.62.113. One thing that's become clear to me is that one should distinguish I think a "real" flashback, where the narration moves to a point in the past where the events have some influence on the events of the present, an explanatory flashback as it were, and flashbacks that are just embedded stories without any influence on the events of the present (as for example in the One Thousand and One Nights or the Mahabharata). You'll notice that while these are also technically flashbacks, because most of the time when you tell a story it's about something that's already happened, or at least is purported to have happened, it doesn't really matter at all that the story is in the past. It might as well be in the future and it wouldn't make any difference, as it has no consequence on the frame story. That's very different from, say, the flashback in the Odyssey, where the stories Ulysses tells the Phaecians are an explanation of how he came to land on their island. In any case, I've just discovered the second kind of (fake) flashback, just an embedded story, does occur in at least one classical play I can think of: Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew where the story is assumed to be staged in front of Christopher Sly. There might be other examples like this in classical theater. If you can think of any let me know. Now does any play within the play then trigger a flashback? Not if the present remains present as for example for the The Murder of Gonzago in Hamlet where Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia, Gertrude, and the rest of the audience, do not "disappear" (compare with the characters of the "Induction" in the the Taming of the Shrew), and you can even hear them talk while the play is going on (such as the famous "the lady doth protest too much"). Finally both kinds of flashbacks may start as a story narrated by one of the characters of the frame story (at some level, if there is a series of embedded levels), but do not necessarily. Or you can, alternatively, just assume that when there's no character that's the explicit narrator, the narrator is the implicit main narrator (that is, the playwright). Basemetal 20:44, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I've only seen the film adaptation, but is there still a flashback in the stage version of Little Shop of Horrors where Seymour relates buying the plant (to the song "Da Doo!")? The article kind of implies that. Matt Deres (talk) 16:49, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

I might have read the question sloppily, as Basemetal mentions techniques established by 1940 (but I thought Bm was looking for old examples). Lots of newer musicals, such as Hamilton or A Very Potter Musical, and TV Tropes' entry on "Flashback" lists the musicals Nine, Miss Saigon, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Merrily We Roll Along, Violet, but also plays such as Arcadia, Proof, and Angels in America. ---Sluzzelin talk 01:39, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

No, I was at first looking mostly for old cases, you were right about that. However I also do find the new examples interesting and I'm grateful for those too. I wonder if we don't see there the influence of cinema. In any case, there's quite a few examples to include in the article now. Basemetal 06:36, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Death of a Salesman has a couple flashback moments. Or at least the two productions I've seen have. The first on a recording in one of my English classes in school many years ago and the second a production starring Christopher Lloyd which I saw live just a few years ago. I've never read the original work though, so I don't know if they are there in the original. †dismas†|^(talk) 13:55, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Edit: Now that I've skimmed our article, I see that the original script does have flashbacks. †dismas†|^(talk)

Mark Twain's works are still performed throughout southern Missouri. He had two forms of "plays". One was the monologue. He would perform alone, telling stories (or "yarns" as he put it). The other was the full performance with other actors. In those, Twain would tell a story about his youth and the spotlight would fade from him to the main stage as actors would perform the story that was a flashback to his childhood. Depending on where you go, you may see one guy dressed as Mark Twain telling stories or you may see a full performance with flashbacks. I personally acted in performances in Branson (long before it was "Branson"). While we did many of his plays, they were all set up as "true" stories from Twain's youth in Hannibal. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 11:57, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

• The Glass Menagerie is told in flashback form; with the narrator Tom speaking in the present, and having flashbacks to earlier vignettes with his sister Laura and the rest of his family. --Jayron32 14:32, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

  Thanks Jayron. This contribution of yours also led me to a whole category of relevant plays I had not heard of, the memory play. So much data. Thanks guys. Basemetal 14:56, 9 April 2018 (UTC)