Popular Culture
Jazz and Euro Dance musician Scatman John wrote the song "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)" to help children who stutter overcome adversity. Born John Paul Larkin, Scatman spoke with a stutter himself and won the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's Annie Glenn Award for outstanding service to the stuttering community.
Fiction character Albert Arkwright from British sitcom Open All Hours, stammered and much of the series' humour revolved around this. Recurring character Reginald Barclay from the Star Trek television franchise and the Emperor Claudius from the I, Claudius series by Robert Graves and acted by Derek Jacobi are portrayed as suffering from and overcoming their stuttering.
Cartoon character Porky Pig has a notable stutter. This arose because his original voice artist, Joe Dougherty, had an authentic stammer. However, Dougherty's stutter caused recording sessions to take longer than otherwise necessary, and so Warner Bros. replaced him with Mel Blanc, who provided Porky's voice for the rest of his life. Porky's stutter is probably most pronounced when he says "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!" Also a person who stutters is the cartoon character Keswick from TUFF Puppy.
Read more about this topic: Stuttering
Famous quotes related to popular culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)