In Popular Culture
The Glienicke bridge as a venue for prisoner exchange has appeared frequently in fiction, most notably in John Le Carré's novel Smiley's People and the related BBC miniseries, as well as in the 1966 Harry Palmer film, Funeral in Berlin, based on the novel of the same name by Len Deighton.
The popular nickname 'Bridge of Spies' was used by the British band T'Pau as the name of the title track on their first album. The usage is metaphorical, referring to a 'walk to freedom' but in the context of long dreamt-of relationship.
The bridge is also referenced in the popular kid's TV show Codename: Kids Next Door, specifically when a bridge in a local mall is used to exchange a spy from the KND in return for a spy from the Teenagers, a clear parody of the real-life prisoner exchanges.
There is a brief reference to the bridge in episode six, season one of Archer, when Mallory Archer and her long-time lover (and head of the KGB) Colonel Nikolai Jakov mention meeting there "one moonlit night" when they both worked on covert operations in Berlin, presumably during the Cold War.
Read more about this topic: Glienicke Bridge
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“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)
“I’ve finally figured out why soap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown-up women have to deal with all day long.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)