The Leper Colony in Popular Culture
The Belgian missionary-priest Father Damien brought considerable attention to the leper colony both in the late 19th century but also in subsequent literature and popular culture. (He would be canonized in 2009 as a Catholic saint.) Robert Louis Stevenson described the Molokaʻi leper colony as a "prison fortified by nature". Jack London visited in 1908 and wrote the Lepers of Molokai and Koolau the Leper in response. The 1999 movie Molokai featuring Peter O'Toole and Kris Kristofferson focuses on the story of Father Damien and the leper colony.
Long after the death of Father Damien, Belgian missionary priests from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary continued to devote their lives to work on Molokai and assist its ex-leper flock, most recent figures including Henri Systermans and Fr. Joseph Hendricks whose death in November 2008 marked the end of this 140 year old tradition.
A leper colony in Hawaiʻi, possibly the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement and National Historical Park, appeared in "Little Big Mom", an episode of The Simpsons. Bart and Homer were sent there after Lisa faked leprosy using oatmeal.
Read more about this topic: Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement And National Historical Park
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, leper, colony, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Being thrown out of this place is significantly better than being thrown out of a leper colony.”
—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)
““Tall tales” were told of the sociability of the Texans, one even going so far as to picture a member of the Austin colony forcing a stranger at the point of a gun to visit him.”
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“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.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)