Babylon in Popular Culture
- Fritz Lang's film Metropolis interpreted Revelation's "Whore of Babylon" as the android Maria.
- In William Shakespeare's play Henry V, Falstaff's dying words refer to the Whore of Babylon. This is probably a final touch of comic relief in Falstaff's career, since he intends a spiritual or Biblical meaning, while Mistress Quickly takes it to mean a literal prostitute, one he knew and she had not.
- The Avenged Sevenfold song "Beast and the Harlot" is based on the Whore of Babylon.
- In the CLAMP work X/1999, an apocalyptic-genre manga, Tokyo is based on Babylon in that it is the center of all the world's evil.
- Babylon is an important Rastafari term that is used at Rainbow Gatherings, the term refers to human governments and institutions, that are seen as in rebellion against the rule of God, or in a more general sense, to any system that oppresses or discriminates against any race. It is a commonly used term in reggae music.
- The Heptones song, "Mystery Babylon" was produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry in 1976
- It was used to depict New York as a Babylon-like city in the 1997 film The Devil's Advocate.
- Mystery Babylon is the title of a film produced by film company ACT 2 CAM in 2011
- The influential hardcore punk band Bad Brains recorded a song called "Destroy Babylon." It appeared originally as a single in 1982 and then again on the Rock for Light album in 1983. To the listener, its message is of bringing down a system of corruption (i.e., a cold and heartless government that rewards profit over humanity).
The considered opinions as to the identity of Babylon in the New Testament need also factor in biblical references to a close-by geographical feature; the "great river Euphrates", see Revelation 9:14 and Revelation 16:12 for the specific references.
Read more about this topic: Babylon (New Testament)
Famous quotes containing the words babylon, popular and/or culture:
“The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.”
—Linda Goodman (b. 1929)
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)