Cultural Influence
In Brazil, under the military dictatorship, some important government officials – previously elected by direct suffrage – were appointed by the President, or elected indirectly, out of a shortlist picked by the President. These politicians were called "bionic" (biônicos), due to the series' popularity, and the association with the perceived extraordinary power and influence held by the appointed officials. Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil came to have "bionic" senators, governors and mayors. With the 1988 Constitution of Brazil, all "bionic" appointments were abolished.
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Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or influence:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”
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