Representation in Popular Culture
- 1994, John Strand had his play, Ota Benga, produced by the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia.
- 1997, the play Ota Benga, Elegy for the Elephant was written by Dr. Ben B. Halm and staged at Fairfield University.
- 2002, Ota Benga was the subject of the short documentary Ota Benga: A Pygmy in America directed by the Brazilian Alfeu França, who incorporated original movies recorded by Verner in the early 20th century.
- The Brooklyn-based band Pinataland have a song titled "Ota Benga's Name" on their album Songs from the Forgotten Future Volume 1, which tells the story of Ota Benga.
- A highly fictionalized version of Ota Benga appeared as a character in the 2006 fantasy film The Fall.
- Benga inspired the character of Ngunda Oti in the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
- Ota Benga Under My Mother's Roof (2012), a collection of poems by the writer Carrie Allen McCray, whose family had taken care of Benga, and edited by Kevin Simmonds, was published by the University of South Carolina Press.
- A theatrical adaptation of McCray's first poems about Ota Benga debuted at the Columbia Museum of Art in 2007 (with McCray as narrator and original music by Kevin Simmonds).
2012, Ota Benga mentioned in "Behind My Painted Smile" by Akala at 2:05.
Read more about this topic: Ota Benga
Famous quotes containing the words representation in, popular and/or culture:
“People accept a representation in which the elements of wish and fantasy are purposely included but which nevertheless proclaims to represent “the past” and to serve as a guide-rule for life, thereby hopelessly confusing the spheres of knowledge and will.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“... there are some who, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and that to-morrow is necessarily better than to-day, may think that if culture is a good thing we shall infallibly be found to have more of it that we had a generation since; and that if we can be shown not to have more of it, it can be shown not to be worth seeking.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)