Popular Culture
In Catch-22, the medics are portrayed as using gentian violet on feet and gums as a panacea. This may be because of the fact that in World War I American soldiers returning after a leave were irrigated with Gentian violet to prevent sexually transmitted disease.
In Picnic at Hanging Rock, the orphan Sara recounts how she was once punished by an orphanage's matron, who 'painted my head with gentian violet'.
Engineering students in Canada use gentian violet to dye their skin and jackets, a tradition started by Queen's University engineering students and known colloquially as 'purpling'.
Read more about this topic: Crystal Violet
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)
“For the people in government, rather than the people who pester it, Washington is an early-rising, hard-working city. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)