In Popular Culture
In the 1930s, the building of Norris Dam and the changes it brought to the region inspired films, books, stage plays, and songs. Folk songs from the construction period frequently express enthusiasm for the benefits that the project brought to the region.
TVA continues to be a subject for popular culture:
- Director Elia Kazan's 1960 film, Wild River, depicts a fictional confrontation between TVA and a Tennessee landowner who refuses to evacuate her soon-to-be-inundated property.
- The Everybodyfields song "T.V.A.," from the album Halfway There: Electricity and the South rejects the Tennessee Valley Authority, saying "I don't need no dam or no damn FDR."
- The Drive-By Truckers have recorded a number of songs that either directly or indirectly address the TVA. "TVA," written and sung by Jason Isbell on the band's 2009 album "The Fine Print," praises the TVA while "Uncle Frank," written and sung by Mike Cooley on the band's 1999 album Pizza Deliverance laments the displacement the dams and flooding caused.
Read more about this topic: Tennessee Valley Authority
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“The very nursery tales of this generation were the nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from west to east; now expanded into the “tale divine” of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)