In Popular Culture
- The slangy nature of the term "blockbuster" made it a frequent popular culture reference during World War II, for example the Bugs Bunny cartoon Falling Hare, about a gremlin trying to detonate a blockbuster bomb with a mallet.
- The term "blockbuster", as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular and/or successful production, perhaps derived from the term's use meaning simply "biggest". The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry.
- "Block Buster!" was a 1973 chart-topping song by British rock band Sweet, featuring the wailing sound of air raid sirens.
- In the pharmaceutical industry, blockbuster drug refers to a drug generating more than $1 billion of revenue for its owner each year.
- In the Tom and Jerry cartoon Mouse Trouble, cat Tom uses a "Block Buster" Bomb and many others to try to get rid of mouse Jerry, but miserably fails and ends up killing himself.
- In the 1980s there was a game show called Blockbusters in both the US and the UK.
Read more about this topic: Blockbuster Bomb
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)
“Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you ... take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)