In Fiction and Popular Culture
- The Gingerbread Man is a fairy tale about a living gingerbread man that gets devoured by a fox.
- In Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's famous ballet The Nutcracker (1892), the eponymous hero leads an army of gingerbread men against the Mouse King and his fellows.
- The Gingerbread People are the main characters in the game Candy Land (1945).
- "Sweet Gingerbread Man" was a 1971 popular song first heard in the film The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, performed by the Mike Curb Congregation, with music by Michel Legrand and lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman.
- Gingerbread Man is a 1994 album by the avant-garde music group The Residents.
- The Gingerbread Man is a 1998 film directed by Robert Altman and starring Kenneth Branagh, Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall.
- Gingy (2001) is a talking gingerbread man character in the Shrek series of movies. He is derived from the children's story The Gingerbread Man.
- The Gingerbread Men were featured in The Muppet Show. In the "Don Knotts" episode, the Gingerbread Men sing the song "Sweet Gingerbread Man" as the opening number. The lead Gingerbread Man is a Hand-Rod Muppet performed by Frank Oz while the Full-Bodied Gingerbread Men were performed by Jim Henson, Dave Goelz, Richard Hunt, and Jerry Nelson.
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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, fiction, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“My mother ... believed fiction gave one an unrealistic view of the world. Once she caught me reading a novel and chastised me: “Never let me catch you doing that again, remember what happened to Emma Bovary.””
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you’d never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)