Cockroach - Cultural References

Cultural References

Because of their long, persistent association with humans, cockroaches are frequently referred to in art, literature, folk tales and theater and film and real life. In Western culture, cockroaches are often depicted as vile and dirty pests. Their size, long antennae, shiny appearance and spiny legs make them disgusting to many humans, sometimes even to the point of phobic responses. This is borne out in many depictions of cockroaches, from political versions of the song La Cucaracha where political opponents are compared to cockroaches, through the 1982 movie Creepshow and TV shows such as the X-Files, to the Hutu extremists' reference to the Tutsi minority as cockroaches during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 and the controversial cartoons published in the "Iran weekly magazine" in 2006 which implied a comparison between Iranian Azeris and cockroaches. The second part of the Harry Hole crime novels written by Jo Nesbø is called The Cockroaches (Kakerlakkene in Norwegian). In the movie Men in Black a giant alien cockroach is shown as a predator who eats a farmer and then uses his skin to disguise itself as a human being. In Oliver Twist, the children, Mr. Bumble, and Widow Corney sing about feeding Oliver cockroaches in a canister. Award-winning computer and video game series Fallout takes place in a postatomic bomb war universe, in which enlarged, irradiated cockroaches are present as early enemies. This is a nod to the notion of their nuclear fortitude. Also, in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, a man, Gregor, is transformed overnight into a monstrous insect with cockroach-like features. He views himself as repulsive in his new identity. Ayn Rand in her early novel "We the Living" compared the Soviet Union to a huge pile of cockroaches. During Australian Rugby League State of Origin matches, it is common slang to refer to Queensland as canetoads and New South Wales as cockroaches.

Not all depictions of cockroaches are purely negative, however. Twilight of the Cockroaches depicts the extermination of cockroaches as a holocaust, and presents a happy ending as the pregnant lead cockroach, Naomi, escapes to mother many generations. In the Pixar film Wall-E, a cockroach that has survived all humanity is the best friend of the lead character (a robot), and waits patiently on him to return. The same cockroach survives getting squished twice. In the film Joe's Apartment, the cockroaches help the titular hero, and the narrator of the book archy and mehitabel is a sympathetic cockroach. In the book Revolt of the Cockroach People, an autobiographical novel by Oscar Zeta Acosta, cockroaches are used as a metaphor for oppressed and downtrodden minorities in US society in the 1960s and 70s. The image of cockroaches as resilient also leads people to compare themselves to cockroaches. Madonna has famously quoted, "I am a survivor. I am like a cockroach, you just can't get rid of me." "Cockroach", or some variant of it is also used as a nickname, for example Boxing coach Freddie Roach, who was nicknamed La Cucaracha (The Cockroach) when he was still competing as a fighter. The album The Lonesome Crowded West by rock group Modest Mouse features a song with the title and lyric "Doin' The Cockroach". In the Netherlands 'Zaza the cockroach' becomes a buddy of the boy called Pluk in a popular Dutch book for children, Pluk van de Petteflet, written by Annie M.G. Schmidt. In Suzanne Collins's Underland Chronicles series, giant cockroaches are allies of humans in the Underland, and they and a toddler named Margaret (a.k.a. Boots, or "the princess," as the cockroaches call her) love each other.