In Popular Culture
In the 1930s, the building of Norris Dam and the changes it brought to the region inspired films, books, stage plays, and songs. Folk songs from the construction period frequently express enthusiasm for the benefits that the project brought to the region.
TVA continues to be a subject for popular culture:
- Director Elia Kazan's 1960 film, Wild River, depicts a fictional confrontation between TVA and a Tennessee landowner who refuses to evacuate her soon-to-be-inundated property.
- The Everybodyfields song "T.V.A.," from the album Halfway There: Electricity and the South rejects the Tennessee Valley Authority, saying "I don't need no dam or no damn FDR."
- The Drive-By Truckers have recorded a number of songs that either directly or indirectly address the TVA. "TVA," written and sung by Jason Isbell on the band's 2009 album "The Fine Print," praises the TVA while "Uncle Frank," written and sung by Mike Cooley on the band's 1999 album Pizza Deliverance laments the displacement the dams and flooding caused.
Read more about this topic: Tennessee Valley Authority
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)