Popular Culture
The Avro Lancaster featured prominently in the 1955 film The Dam Busters, and a number of B VII Lancasters in storage were modified to the original configuration of the B III (Special) for use on screen. The Lancaster also plays a central role in Bomber, the 1970 novel by Len Deighton about a night raid on a fictional German town by a formation of RAF bombers. It also featured in a 1989 British commercial for Carling Black Label lager which reused footage in a Dam Busters parody sequence in which a German soldier on top of a dam was catching the bombs in the manner of a football goalkeeper. The pilot of the attacking Lancaster then delivers the brand slogan: "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label!" The commercial ran for many years, frequently appearing in commercial breaks during broadcasts of both the The Dam Busters and of documentaries about Operation Chastise. The Avro Lancaster was also featured in the UK TV series Pathfinders, airing in 1972 and released on DVD in 2006, concentrating on the lives of the aircrew of a fictional Pathfinder squadron during the Second World War. Other films in which the Lancaster appeared include Appointment in London (1952) and The Guns of Navarone (1961).
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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)
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.”
—Richard Rodriguez (b. 1944)