Closets in Pop Culture
Figuratively, a closet is a place where one hides things; "having skeletons in one's closet" is a figure of speech for having particularly sensitive secrets. Thus, closet as an adjective means secret—usually with a connotation of vice or shame, as in "a closet alcoholic" or "a closet homosexual," though sometimes used as a humorous exaggeration for any potential embarrassment, as in "a closet comic book fan." To "come out of the closet" is to admit your secrets publicly, but this is now used almost exclusively in reference to homosexuality. The documentary film The Celluloid Closet uses this reference to gay people in its examination of how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuals on the screen. This is also extensively used in a controversial episode of South Park.
Psychologically, bedroom closets are the center of many childhood fears. Children fear during the night that a monster or any other paranormal creature hides inside the closet, and is destined to frighten the child. The Bogeyman is one prominent example. This is a common theme in films. In the first Poltergeist movie, the closet was where ghosts hid. The "monster in the closet" fear was developed for comedic possibilities in film Monsters, Inc.. In the newspaper comic Bloom County, the character Binkley had an "anxiety closet" in his bedroom, from which his fears would manifest themselves, while he was sleeping. Similarly, the strip Opus also has a closet which houses his worries. Recently a closet was one of the focuses of the film Sex and the City.
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Famous quotes containing the words pop culture, closets, pop and/or culture:
“There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)
“Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,—
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,—
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;—”
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—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
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