Popular Culture
In the classic Czech movie Císařův pekař a pekařův císař (The Emperor and the Golem), "Shemhamphorash" was mentioned as a Hebrew occult word used to wake the Golem of Rabbi Loew. The word itself was inscribed on a metal ball that was to be inserted in the Golem's forehead in order to gain control over the Golem.
In the movie Pi, mathematical experiments done by the main character result in a 216 digit number that appears to be the Shemhamphorasch, attracting the attention of both a shadowy Wall Street firm who believes it could be used to predetermine stock prices, and a group of Hassidic Jews who believe the number can be used to bring about the Messianic Age.
Read more about this topic: Shemhamphorasch
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, 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)
“It is said the city was spared a golden-oak period because its residents, lacking money to buy the popular atrocities of the nineties, necessarily clung to their rosewood and mahogany.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)