Meaning of Life - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The mystery of life and its meaning is an often recurring subject in popular culture, featured in entertainment media and various forms of art.

In Douglas Adams' popular comedy book, movie, television, and radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is given the numeric solution "42", after seven and a half million years of calculation by a giant supercomputer called Deep Thought. When this answer is met with confusion and anger from its constructors, Deep Thought explains that "I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." In the continuation of the book, the question is proposed to be the song of Bob Dylan "How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man." In the sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, it states that the question is 6x9. While 6 x 9 = 54 in base 10, it does equal 42 in base 13, which author Adams claimed was completely serendipitous.

In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, there are several allusions to the meaning of life. At the end of the film, a character played by Michael Palin is handed an envelope containing "the meaning of life", which he opens and reads out to the audience: "Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations." Many other Python sketches and songs are also existential in nature, questioning the importance we place on life ("Always Look on the Bright Side of Life") and other meaning-of-life related questioning. John Cleese also had his sit-com character Basil Fawlty contemplating the futility of his own existence in Fawlty Towers.

In The Simpsons episode "Homer the Heretic", a representation of God agrees to tell Homer what the meaning of life is, but the show's credits begin to roll just as he starts to say what it is.