Oliver (chimpanzee) - Oliver in Popular Culture

Oliver in Popular Culture

The decades long speculation about Oliver's origins and the possibility that he was a human-chimp hybrid have led to numerous references in popular culture. Many of these are satirical in nature or at least intended to be humorous. For example, the popular Church of the SubGenius assigns a feast day or holy day (sometimes several) to every day of the year and has seen fit to assign October 20 as The Feast of Saint Oliver the humanzee.

In addition, there are musical outfits appearing in North America referencing Oliver's legacy, such as The Humanzees from Ontario, as well as a New Mexico Jam band calling itself Oliver and The Humanzees. Pop culture depictions like these generally ignore or predate the more recent proof that Oliver is not a hybrid. Oliver has been regularly talked about by Karl Pilkington on The Ricky Gervais Show on a feature called "Monkey News".

The character Caesar in the 1972 film "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" is actually based on Oliver, according to the actor Andy Serkis who played the character in a 2010 remake.

Read more about this topic:  Oliver (chimpanzee)

Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, oliver, 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)

    And he had an ethical bypass at birth.
    Stanley Weiser, U.S. screenwriter, and Oliver Stone. Marvin (John C. McGinley)

    An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.
    Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)

    There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)