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)
“If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“He was one whose glory was an inner glory, one who placed culture above prosperity, fairness above profit, generosity above possessions, hospitality above comfort, courtesy above triumph, courage above safety, kindness above personal welfare, honor above success.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)