Culture
Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction short story "Water is for Washing" (Argosy, November 1947) was based on the premise that an earthquake had catastrophically shattered the range of deposits separating the Imperial Valley from the Gulf of California, precipitating a tidal wave moving north to transiently drown these lowlands. At the beginning of the story, Heinlein uses the character of a bartender in El Centro to establish the danger of the quake and inundation:
- "You've heard about the 1905 flood, when the Colorado River spilled over and formed the Salton Sea? But don't be too sure about quakes; valleys below sea level don't just grow — something has to cause them. The San Andreas Fault curls around this valley like a question mark. Just imagine the shake-up it must have taken to drop thousands of square miles below the level of the Pacific."
Heinlein's perspective character is a traveling businessman who had picked up two chance-encountered children and a vagrant while driving frantically to higher ground, and the dramatic arc centers on the efforts of the men to survive and save the youngsters from drowning.
Due to its desert environment and proximity to Los Angeles, California, movies are sometimes filmed in the sand dunes outside the agricultural portions of the Imperial Valley. These have included
- Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
- Independence Day
- Stargate
- The Scorpion King
- Into the Wild
- The Men who Stare at Goats
- The original "Flight of the Phoenix" (1965) was Filmed outside of Holtville.
- The Tom Cruise Movie "Losin' It" (1983) was filmed in Holtville and El Centro.
Additionally, portions of the 2005 film Jarhead were filmed here because of its similarity to the desert terrain of Iraq. Mountains that were visible in the background during filming were digitally removed during postproduction.
Read more about this topic: Imperial Valley
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“All our civilization had meant nothing. The same culture that had nurtured the kindly enlightened people among whom I had been brought up, carried around with it war. Why should I not have known this? I did know it, but I did not believe it. I believed it as we believe we are going to die. Something that is to happen in some remote time.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)
“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)