References in Popular Culture
During the height of the Bridey Murphy craze, two popular songs were "For The Love of Bridey Murphy" and "Do You Believe in Reincarnation". There was a Bridey Murphy dance, "come as you were" parties and a Reincarnation cocktail. The 1956 film I've Lived Before was inspired by her story.
Stan Freberg recorded a satire in 1956, with June Foray, titled The Quest For Bridey Hammerschlaugen, wherein Freberg hypnotizes Goldie Smith to regress to different eras with humorous interruption by Foray. At the end, Foray hypnotizes Freberg, who becomes Davy Crockett; when Foray tells him that he won't be able to profit on the recent Davy Crockett products, Freberg says that in his next life, he would become Walt Disney.
In Thomas Pynchon's V. (1963), a character called Esther is reading The Search for Bridey Murphy as she is sitting on a bus. This occurs in the fourth chapter of the novel, "In which Esther gets a nose job".
In The Haunting (1963 film) Luke refers to Theo and Eleanor as "Miss ESP and Bridey Murphy, some combination!"
Bridey Murphy was the name of a band consisting of Bill Cowsill, Paul Cowsill, Barry Cowsill, and Waddy Wachtel. In 1974 Capitol released one single, "The Time Has Come."
In Passage (novel) by Connie Willis (2001) the main character, Joanna Lander, references Bridey Murphy several times as she attempts to explain to her fellow researcher that she's certain of what she sees in the NDEs she's experienced. In an earlier Novel Lincoln's Dream (page 31) the main character references Bridey Murphy, too.
In Time Out of Mind (novel) by John R. Maxim (1986) Bridey Murphy is referenced as an example of genetic memory.
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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)
“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)