In Popular Culture
- Mentioned by Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's 1966 film The Fortune Cookie. Impersonates painting pose to his estranged wife
- A painting of Whistler's Mother is seen in multiple episodes of The Simpsons.
- In "Rosebud", it's seen in Mr. Burns' bedroom .
- In "The Trouble with Trillions", the painting can be seen when Mr. Burns gets arrested by two IRS agents.
- It can also be seen in "The Burns and The Bees" when Mr. Burns' shoots an arrow at the picture in the "Billions Club".
- In Bean, the portrait of Whistler's Mother is used as a plot device by having Burt Reynolds purchase the painting for $50,000,000 (USD) and return it to America. Within the story, Mr. Bean ruins the painting by using paint thinner and surreptitiously replacing the painting.
- Part 6 of Don Delillo's "Underworld" is titled "Arrangement in Gray and Black."
- John Lennon's album "Shaved Fish" features a cover for his song "Mother" which shows him in the position of Whistler's Mother.
- In the musical Anything Goes by Cole Porter, Reno Sweeney refers to Billy Crocker as "Whistler's mama."
Read more about this topic: Whistler's Mother
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“But popular rage,
Hysterica passio dragged this quarry down.
None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part
Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“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)