Entirely Fictitious

You know those disclaimers at the end of films, “The events of this film are entirely fictitious, any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental, etc.”? What, exactly, is the point of them? I can’t imagine they carry much legal weight; if someone seriously thinks your film is slandering them, the fact that you stuck a little note at the end of the credits saying that you’re not slandering anyone probably isn’t going to meaningfully help your defence… Plus, even if the disclaimers ever had any real benefits, I have to assume that the fact that every single film has an identical disclaimer has probably destroyed whatever meaning they had.

I bring this up only because I happened to notice the other night that Dreamgirls, of all films, has such a disclaimer. I would like to see someone argue with a straight face that the resemblances to real people in that film are purely coincidental…

Personally, I've Always Liked The Sound of Sapphist...

There was a story on the news about the island of Lesbos's quixotic effort to reclaim the term 'Lesbian', and it got me thinking - how many other words are there that originally referred to a place or a people but now have completely unrelated meanings? I can only think of Lesbian, Philistine, Vandal, and Laconic...