In Popular Culture
- The Discovery Channel series MythBusters investigated Chinese water torture in the season 3 episode "Brown Note, Water Torture", and found that dripping water on the forehead, by itself, was not particularly stressful. Immobilizing the subject and varying the water drop schedule proved the most stressful of the methods they tried, and cold water intensified the effect.
- American pop singer DeSean references Chinese water torture in his song "Torture."
- In an episode of the animated show Ed, Edd n Eddy, Eddy uses this form of torture on Plank using a water gun.
- In the animated show The Venture Brothers' episode "Return to Malice", Henchman 21 unsuccessfully puts Hank and Dean Venture through Chinese water torture.
- In the film "A Christmas Story" The main character fears chinese water torture as a form of punishment for swearing in front of his father while helping him change a tire.
- In the 49th episode of the British television drama series, Spooks, which aired with the 6th series in 2007, Ros is subjected to Chinese water torture by a French security officer as part of a recruitment exercise.
- In the 2008 Bollywood film Guzaarish, the main character, a paraplegic, has to sleep under a leak in the ceiling which constantly drips water on his forehead, a form of accidental water torture.
- In the 2011 animated film Kung Fu Panda 2, Master Po is distracted by water dripping on his head as he tries to manipulate the drops using his master's inner peace technique.
Read more about this topic: Chinese Water Torture
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“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.”
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“Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.”
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