Popular Culture
The jumpers worn by David Bain during the original trial, knitted by Margaret Bain to his own designs, became a symbol of the Bain case. During the retrial T-shirts inspired by the jumpers were sold on TradeMe and on the Mr Vintage website. Although 10% of the profits from the T-shirts were donated towards a charity dedicated to combating family violence, they were condemned by several fashion label founders as being in bad taste.
Reflecting the high level of public interest in his case, in 2009, David Bain was named by internet search engine Google as the most-searched for New Zealander of the year.
The December Brother, a 2010 play produced by Tim Spite for Wellington's Downstage Theatre, depicted re-enactments of the Bain family killings. It presented two scenarios – the first with David Bain murdering his family, and the second with his father, Robin Bain, carrying out the killings, then taking his own life. The play was based on the theories put forward by the legal teams for the defence and prosecution during the trials.
Read more about this topic: David Bain
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)
“Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)