In Popular Culture
- Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children mentions Gustavus Adolphus several times in the earlier scenes during which the characters are traveling with the Protestant Army. The Cook lampoons the "Hero King" by pointing out that first he sought to liberate Poland from the Germans, then sought to liberate Germany from the Germans, and made a profit on the deal. His irreverence for the king also includes the fact that, unlike Mother Courage and the Chaplain, the Cook is a Dutchman not a Swede.
- In the Ring of Fire series of novels by Eric Flint and others, Gustavus Adolphus is a major character, having not died in the Battle of Lützen. He helps a community of West Virginians, cosmically transported back into time, bring about a revolution of democracy throughout the Germanies. They in turn help to grow the Swedish empire through their technological knowledge of modern day warfare and the capabilities of mankind. They introduce many ideas to 17th century Europe such as radio, submarines, and airplanes. Gustavus Adolphus is portrayed as a tough, yet compassionate king with tolerant tendencies toward religion and the rights of the people to establish their own civil liberties.
- The Swedish Power Metal Band Sabaton made a song about Gustav Adolphus called The Lion from the North in their new Album Carolus Rex
- Gustav Adolphus is featured as a playable character in the turn-based strategy game, Civilization V: Gods and Kings.
Read more about this topic: Gustavus Adolphus Of Sweden
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says, I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)