In Popular Culture
English rock group Jethro Tull has a song "For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me", which appears on the Benefit album from 1970. The song compares the feelings of misfitting from vocalist Ian Anderson (and friend Jeffrey Hammond) with the astronaut's own, as he is left behind by the ones who had the privilege to walk on the surface of the Moon.
The main antagonist 'Friend' in the manga 20th Century Boys describes himself as Collins when asked for his true identity. This is supposed to mean he has been forgotten, even though he grew up with the rest of the characters, not unlike the way Collins is not as well known to the general population as the other members of the Apollo 11 flight.
The mockumentary Opération lune briefly claims Michael Collins to be so deeply disappointed by not having set foot on the moon that he allegedly has retired from any public life and that his current whereabouts are supposed to be unknown.
Swedish writer/illustrator Bea Uusma Schyffert has written the children's book The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins (Chronicle Books, 2003) (original title: Astronauten som inte fick landa, Alfabeta, 2000).
In the 1996 TV movie Apollo 11, Collins was played by Jim Metzler. In the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, he was played by Cary Elwes. In the 2009 TV movie Moon Shot, he was played by Andrew Lincoln.
Read more about this topic: Michael Collins (astronaut)
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)