Popular Culture
The fires were the subject of a 1992 IMAX documentary film, Fires of Kuwait, which was nominated for an Academy Award. The film includes footage of the Hungarian team using their jet turbine extinguisher. The Kuwaiti oil fires are also featured in Werner Herzog's 1992 film Lessons of Darkness. There was also a flyover as well as some ground shots of the oil fires in the movie Baraka, which was shot on 65mm.
The 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate included a scene set in Kuwait in February 1991, with burning oil fields visible in the background.
In the movie Jarhead, the oil fires burn continuously throughout the invasion of Iraq, and its effects--an unceasing rain of unburned oil and smoke-filled skies, feature prominently in the story.
The 2012 music video for "Bad Girls" by M.I.A. features scenes in which a burning oil field in the desert is visible in the background of a few scenes. These scenes were likely influenced by the Kuwaiti oil fires without actually referencing the historic event.
Read more about this topic: Kuwaiti Oil Fires
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)