In Popular Culture
The Quinlans published two books about the case: Karen Ann: The Quinlans Tell Their Story (1977) and My Joy, My Sorrow: Karen Ann's Mother Remembers (2005).
A 1977 TV movie, In The Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan was made about the Quinlan case, with Piper Laurie and Brian Keith playing Quinlan's parents.
The eponymous heroine of Douglas Coupland's novel Girlfriend in a Coma is Karen Ann McNeil. She collapses after a party where she has taken Valium as well as some alcohol. Like Karen Ann Quinlan, she also has deliberately stopped eating in order to fit into an outfit (in this case, a bikini). For these reasons (and the frequent nostalgic references to events from the 1970s in Coupland's works) the character is thought to be based loosely on Quinlan. In the novel, Karen awakens after being comatose for nearly eighteen years.
Read more about this topic: Karen Ann Quinlan
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)