Contemporary Media Coverage and Popular Culture
In the years after Bernhard died his life story still fascinates many and is the inspiration for literature, theatre, television and even comic books. In 2010 fact and fiction of the life of Bernhard is portrayed in a Dutch television series. In the series it is insinuated that writer Ian Fleming, who personally knew Bernhard from their war efforts in London, based some features of his fictional character James Bond on Bernhard, who was for instance known to enjoy a vodka martini shaken and not stirred. Next to his reputation as a womanizer Prince Bernhard was also well known for his love for fast planes, fast cars and speeding. Among the villain's henchmen in the novel and film "Thunderball" one of them is named Count Lippe. He only knew of one person who was having a great time during World War II, and that it was Prince Bernhard.
In a biographical dissertation by Dutch journalist and historian Annejet van der Zijl published in March 2010, Bernhard was called "a failure" in the history of the Dutch royal family and a "creature of his own myths". With his lifestyle and the "myths" that he created around his own person would have done "permanent damage to the integrity of the monarchy".
Read more about this topic: Prince Bernhard Of Lippe-Biesterfeld
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, contemporary, media, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn’t make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.”
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“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)