Let's have some fun this week. :D
Next up: Just 1998 things!
I think I was 22 before I realized Calvin and Hobbes the cartoons were named after (although only sometimes made reference to) John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes
I'll start with a slam dunk: although the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars trilogy is rife with Nazi parallels (they're called stormtroopers for a reason), Lucas used Nazi propaganda film techniques to celebrate Our Heroes. NSFW to be safe
This is cheating a little bit, because The Witcher 3 is nothing if not a reference machine, but one that may have flown under the radar is in the royal palace at Vizima. There are statues there that do not have a head on top of them, but instead are carried in the hands of the statues.
Seems pretty clear to me that its a reference to a certain headless saint
More literary than historical, but The Wire was consciously (and sort of famously) modeled after Greek tragedies.
"Not funny boy—not Aristophanes," said David Simon, who described his writing process as either "ripping off" or "stealing from Euripides and Socrates and Aeschylus. Those are the guys." It was kind of his PR rap after a while, came up in interviews all the time.
More recently, Sons of Anarchy got hard to watch because it was so closely modeled on Hamlet - you could kinda tell which supporting characters were going to die if you were familiar with Shakespeare. Spoilers from five centuries ago?
The politics of unified Italy seldom likes to look backwards, and when it does, it is very often to the heroes of the Risorgimento; those activists who fought for Italy to be unified. Only occasionally are references to the artistic and cultural flourishing of the Renaissance are woven into local political narratives. Never is Communal Italy, the pivotal period when the Holy Roman Empire was stripped of all effective control over the peninsula, brought up. Predictably, the reason why is that the period also enshrined Italy's centuries of disunity, lending itself poorly to the political narratives of modern, national, political parties. Except for one that is: the Northern League.
Traditionally, regionalist parties had only ever existed in Italy’s multilingual border territories: The Union Valdôtaine in the northwest, and the Südtiroler Volkspartei in the northeast. Both have long histories of uninterrupted rule in their respective regions, and have generally acted as guarantors of the generous concessions of autonomy the postwar constitution afforded their provinces. But in the 1980s, a copycat party emerged in Lombardy, however it initially only attracted an eclectic following of oddballs interested in preserving local culture and dialect. In spite of the meticulous elaboration of a national myth based on a romanticized history of the Medieval Italian city-states, the “Lombard League” initially grew slowly; after the 1987 elections, the party counted three members of parliament and a majority in one town council.
However, after the national election five years later the situation was much different: the League managed to elect fifty-five members to the Chamber of Deputies and twenty-five of its members to the Senate. This victory was no doubt a manifestation of revulsion with regards to the existing political system. In the early 90s, the Italian party system was upended by a series of high-profile investigations bringing down the Christian Democracy Party, which had ruled without interruption since the Second World War. Moribund since at least the 1980s, the Christian Democrats had generously conceded the office of Prime Minister to the Socialist Party leader, Bettino Craxi, in order to secure continued participation in government; although the Christian Democrats retained a plurality, the increasingly slim margin on the Italian Communist Party created a tangible fear that the Communists would form a coalition government with the Socialists and Social Democrats. But although he and his broad coalition were popular during his tenure, by the early 90s Craxi was at the center of a number of investigations. The Socialist Party agenda had called for subsidies and incentives for domestic industries, but it emerged that campaign contributions and kickbacks had guided this policy more than economics. The Christian Democrats fared no better; select industries — including iron and steel, construction, transport, and telecommunications — were majority-held by the state holding company, Istituto di Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) or the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano (IMI) the state-owned investment bank. It emerged that the long ruling Christian Democrats had been able to politically motivate managerial appointments, turning industrial policy into what amounted to extended welfare.
So if in the 80s, Northern Italy had been most representative of the Christian-Socialist alliance; with the Socialists popular in bourgeois cities like Turin, Milan, and Venice, and the Christian Democrats remaining popular with rural voters (and the Communist Party relegated to working class suburbs) all three of these forces were in political free-fall by 1992. The Northern League discovered it could appropriate large blocks of voters by pandering to Northern Italian frustration with the less prosperous South, disgust with the excesses of the government in Rome, and doubts tied to immigration which, more often than not, could take a nasty turn towards outright xenophobia and racism.
All this was framed by the imagery of the Carroccio; the medieval war-wagons of the Northern Italian cities, which quickly became a metonym of the party. You can read more about the historic carroccio here. The narrative of the historic Carroccio was adapted to the modern political debate: no longer were the northern Italians fighting against the Holy Roman Empire, but instead they were fighting from the suffocating corruption and incompetence of the government in Rome. The party adopted as its symbol an image of Alberto da Giussano, the mythical leader of the historic Lombard League against Emperor Barbarossa, and holds its yearly rallies at Pontida, the town where the representatives of the Northern Italian cities and towns signed a pact to oppose the Empire. The imagery of the autonomous Communes was coupled with a weaker although no less vocal narrative of imminent cultural oppression, not by the government, but from growing African immigration; a narrative to which the League's historic founder, Umberto Bossi, later admitted was a shameless ploy to rouse hysteria.
I'm, eh, unenthusiastic about the Northern League (putting it mildly). But the carroccio constitutes a powerful political force, and is one of the historic backers of Silvio Berlusconi’s periodic returns to government between 1994 and 2008. Although I won't get into the League's more recent political history, the fact that the two Italian Regions where it holds a majority in the governing council staged two consultative referendums on differentiated regionalism in October of 2017 would seem to indicate that the League, and the narrative it constructed, isn't going anywhere.
Mark Gilbert dedicates a chapter to The Lega Nord in his The Italian Revolution, the End of Politics, Italian Style?
I'm very certain that it is pure coincidence, but I cannot help but feel that this line from Xenophon's Education of Kyros (4th century BC) may be somewhat recognisable to viewers of Game of Thrones:
I see forces coming against us that we do not have the power to fight. Winter is coming.
-- Xen. Kyr. 6.1.13-14
In the song “black skinhead*” by everyone’s favourite Kanye West, the line “keep it 300 like the Romans” actually references CCC ( cool, calm and collected) also 300 in Roman numerals. No need to be triggered anymore I hope.
Corrected
Arnold Schwarzenegger first rose to super-star status with the hit film Conan the Barbarian (1981), which was based in part on the Conan the Barbarian (1970) comic book series and ultimately the original source material, the stories of Texas pulp writer Robert E. Howard. The stories contain a number of names of people and places that readers of history might find familiar - Conan is a Gaelic name, the Cimmerians were a real people mentioned in Herodotus' Histories, etc. - this is because Howard would often taken inspiration from Herodotus and other historians when writing his tales. As it was once put in One Who Walked Alone (92):
Bob said that if you used a book to make more money or to add something to your profession, it was worth it, no matter if you had to pay fifty dollars for it.
This tendency toward historical inspiration occasionally earned him a little flak from his friends, who thought it was poor form to use historical names in fantasy fiction.
There is no such name as Stygia … the adjective Stygian being derived from the name Styx—the River of the Dead. Two-Gun Bob misuses the word-root when he speaks of a country called “Stygia”. Indeed, he takes frequent & unwarranted liberties with classical names ( or variants of names) in devising a nomenclature for his prehistoric world. Price & I have laboured with him in vain on that point.
The only flaw in this stuff is REH’s incurable tendency to devise names too closely resembling actual names of ancient history—names which, for us, have a very different set of associations. In many cases he does this designedly—on the theory that the familiar names descend from the fabulous realms he describes—but such a design is invalidated by the fact that we clearly know the etymology of many of the historic terms, hence cannot accept the pedigree he suggests. Price & I have both argued with Two-Gun on this point, but we make no headway whatsoever. The only thing to do is to accept the nomenclature as he gives it, wink at the weak spots, & be damned thankful that we can get such vivid artificial legendry. Howard is without question the most vigorous & spontaneous writer now contributing to the pulps—the nearest approach (although he wouldn’t admit it himself) to a sincere artist. He puts himself into his work as none of the regulation hacks do.
With Star Wars already mentioned, I might add that one can do a Kevin Bacon and trace it back to James I's patronage of the arts. It is probably well-known that one of George Lucas' key influences was Akira Kurosawa; as has been noted, Darth Vader's armour was inspired by samurai pieces, and Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958) in particular has effectively the same basic plot as A New Hope, revolving around two peasants and a general escorting a defeated clan's princess back to safety. However, one of Kurosawa's previous films was Throne of Blood (1957), which is often hailed as one of the best film adaptations of Macbeth (and yes, it is also set in feudal Japan). Macbeth (1606) itself contains numerous oblique references to James I & VI, who had not only been King of England since 1603, but also the patron of Shakespeare's company, the King's Men.
The movie Oldboy (2003) is full of references, which isn't surprising given its debt to Greek tragedy and classics like The Count of Monte Cristo. Perhaps the most obvious is the quote on the painting on the prison wall (the painting itself is Man of Sorrows by James Ensor):
Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone.
This is the opening of Ella Wheeler Wilcox' poem Solitude (1883).
More subtle, however, is the titling of the original soundtrack. Apart from Vivaldi's Winter, every track is an original composition by Yeong-Wook Jo. Every one has a title that is simultaneously a famous classic film (most of them film noir) and a succinct description of the scene that the music goes with. It's a beautiful testimony to the makers' love of cinema.
(Vivaldi)
"Room at the Top"
"Cries and Whispers"
"Out of Sight"
"For Whom the Bell Tolls"
"Out of the Past"
"Breathless"
"The Old Boy"
"Dressed to Kill"
"Frantic"
"Cul-de-Sac"
"Kiss Me Deadly"
"Point Blank"
"Farewell, My Lovely"
"The Big Sleep"
"The Last Waltz"
Sort of obvious (and based in literature), but Clueless is a faithful adaptation of Emma.
The "Paris Holds The Key" sequence in Anastasia features Josephine Baker, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Lindbergh (among others).
The scene in Pocahontas where John Smith is saved from execution by Pocahontas is based on real events, although in reality, it was believed to be staged.
You consider me the young apprentice
Caught between Scylla and Charybdis ...
Mephistopheles is not your name ...
The Police, "Wrapped Around Your Finger", 1983. How modern is "modern pop culture"?
The songwriter, a gentleman called Sting, taught at St Paul's Catholic School, but I don't know about that school's reputation.
Oh wow! I just made a post about this: Are any actual songs from the Golden Age of Piracy known today?
"According to folklore in the city of Veracruz in Mexico, the traditional folk song La Bamba, famously performed by Ritchie Valens in 1958, has its origins in a satirical song written in 1683 about the Spanish inhabitants who pretended to resist Dutch and French buccaneers sacking the town. Benerson Little writes:
Few people today know of the sack of Veracruz, the personalities involved, or the horrors suffered by the inhabitants. One exception is found in a popular song, although most people do not realize that it refers to the sack of Veracruz. ... The guitar was also the instrument of the Spanish balladeer, who wrote and sang songs about everything from true love to pompous fools, the latter typically in witty satire. According to the folklore of Veracruz, shortly after the sack of the city a local musician composed a song ridiculing those who pretended to prepare to drive off the attacking pirates. The Mexican folk song, of a musical form permitting improvisation, is known today throughout much of the world thanks to singer Ritchie Valens: "La Bamba." (*The Buccaneer's Realm, 185)
Translated into English the song contains these lines:
I'm not a sailor,
I'm not a sailor, I'm a captain.
I'm a captain, I'm a captain.
Bamba, bamba,
bamba, bamba,
bamba, bamba, bam..."
Monty Python's Life of Brian is, by all appearances an entertaining and completely fictional movie, set in Judea under Roman rule (or Ivdaea, if you want to make words look cool). However, there are two scenes which directly parallel passages in the Talmud, indicating that it is in fact a clever parody of the Talmud, and the members in Monty Python were in fact learned crypto-Jews. Or they were just very clever, though there's another way they could've gotten one of them (more on that below), but that's less entertaining. For the record this is not my discovery, this is mostly from a Talmud teacher of mine Rabbi Aryeh Klapper who apparently both saw Monty Python and was reminded of the Talmud and occasionally makes the (I think) non-serious claim that the members of Monty Python based these scenes on their knowledge of the Talmud (which is I think a wry critique of a certain genre of source criticism that comes up in study of religious texts).
One memorable scene in the movie is the trial of the blasphemer, where a man is to be stoned but his execution is made difficult by people involved in the trial themselves blaspheming. The Talmud is actually very concerned with this--how could people testify about blasphemy without themselves blaspheming? The solution is fairly simple, explained in the 7th chapter of Sanhedrin in the Mishnah. For the trial, the witnesses use a euphemism. Instead of the divine name, they say "Yosi", which was a personal name. The only reason seems to be that they are both four-letter names which begin with yod, so they're vaguely similar.
But, a court can't sentence someone to death just with testimony using a nickname. So after the witnesses are questioned and the court votes the defendant guilty, everyone leaves the courtroom except the judges and witnesses, and the judges tell the first witness to repeat exactly what the defendant said. Upon hearing the blasphemy they tear their garments. The other witness(es) then affirm that that is indeed what the defendant said. The Mishnah does not elaborate on cases of witnesses accidentally blaspheming too early, and judges having to rend their garments over and over until they are wearing rags.
Another entertaining scene is the "what have the Romans ever done for us" scene. This, too, has a parallel in the Talmud. From the Koren/Steinsaltz Translation, copy-pasted from Sefaria because I am lazy (with minor alterations by me) with the beginning and ends chopped off because they're not relevant to this discussion, but with the original Hebrew/Aramaic so people who skim think I'm erudite and bothered to translate it myself:
ואמאי קרו ליה ראש המדברים בכל מקום דיתבי רבי יהודה ורבי יוסי ורבי שמעון ויתיב יהודה בן גרים גבייהו פתח ר' יהודה ואמר כמה נאים מעשיהן של אומה זו תקנו שווקים תקנו גשרים תקנו מרחצאות ר' יוסי שתק נענה רשב"י ואמר כל מה שתקנו לא תקנו אלא לצורך עצמן תקנו שווקין להושיב בהן זונות מרחצאות לעדן בהן עצמן גשרים ליטול מהן מכס הלך יהודה בן גרים וסיפר דבריהם ונשמעו למלכות אמרו יהודה שעילה יתעלה יוסי ששתק יגלה לציפורי שמעון שגינה יהרג
...when Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosei and Rabbi Shimon were sitting, and Yehuda, son of converts,sat beside them. Rabbi Yehuda opened and said: How pleasant are the actions of this nation [the Romans] as they established marketplaces, established bridges, and established bathhouses. Rabbi Yosei was silent. Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai responded and said: Everything that they established, they established only for their own purposes. They established marketplaces, to place prostitutes in them; bathhouses, to pamper themselves; bridges, to collect taxes from them...
...which is actually somewhat more politically sophisticated than the Monty Python sketch, since they're not just saying "besides xyz...", the argument is that the Romans suck despite that because their good actions are only to further their imperialist ends. It also has parallel texts about whether nations get credit for good things they did for their own reasons, but this is the direct one about the Romans. And the opinion there is probably right, since Tacitus said that was an explicit aim in Agricola. The Latin is posted again so those who skim will now think I know another classical language I am actually totally unfamiliar with, and the translation is the Church and Brodribb one from 1877 that google found for me.
Namque ut hominēs dispersī ac rudēs eōque in bella facilēs quiētī et ōtiō per voluptātēs adsuēscerent, hortārī prīvātim, adiuvāre pūblicē, ut templa fora domōs extruerent, laudandō prōmptōs, castīgandō sēgnēs: ita honor et aemulātiō prō necessitāte erat. Iam vērō prīncipum fīliōs līberālibus artibus ērudīre, et ingenia Britannōrum studiīs Gallōrum anteferre, ut quī modo linguam Rōmānam abnuēbant, ēloquentiam concupīscerent.
Inde etiam habitūs nostrī honor et frequēns toga; paulātimque discessum ad dēlēnīmenta vitiōrum, porticūs et balinea et convīviōrum ēlegantiam. Idque apud imperītōs hūmānitās vocābātur, cum pars servitūtis esset.
For, to accustom to rest and repose through the charms of luxury a population scattered and barbarous and therefore inclined to war, Agricola gave private encouragement and public aid to the building of temples, courts of justice and dwelling-houses, praising the energetic, and reproving the indolent. Thus an honourable rivalry took the place of compulsion. He likewise provided a liberal education for the sons of the chiefs, and showed such a preference for the natural powers of the Britons over the industry of the Gauls that they who lately disdained the tongue of Rome now coveted its eloquence. Hence, too, a liking sprang up for our style of dress, and the “toga” became fashionable. Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.
...which is a somewhat more likely thing for the members of Monty Python to have read, especially that John Cleese apparently was a Latin teacher.
Anyway, both of those are kind of cheating since it is almost certain that the cultural reference is a coincidence, not a reference to the Talmud, though that would be cool. So I should probably put in here the common one, about how the "live long and prosper" hand thing is the hand thing that priests do when performing the priestly blessing, which a young Leonard Nemoy snuck a glance at as a child in a synagogue (you're not supposed to look at their hands, and often people look down and cover their faces and their kid's faces with prayer shawls).
Also, in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, perhaps the most memorable scene is the face-melting bit at the end. Belloq dresses in what appears to be a High Priest's outfit. It is unclear why in the Indiana Jones universe he would've gone through all the trouble of doing that when he is not a member of the Jewish priesthood, nor is it clear even a real high priest could just open the ark if he happened to find it on some random island. No mention is made of the massive expense to produce the me'il, which is a tunic-thing dyed with tekhelet, a snail-based dye which is extremely expensive (the identity and production of which is a whole area of research). Perhaps there should be a prequel about Belloq being an expert in Jewish texts with a big project to recreate the priestly garb as described in various Jewish texts, because actually doing that requires serious knowledge.
Anyway, he mutters an incantation in what sounds like gibberish before opening it. It sort of is gibberish, it's a garbled version of bits of the last few lines of an Aramaic prayer from the Jewish liturgy for the removing of the Torah from the Ark (maybe that's why they picked it?). It's from the Zohar, and while dating the Zohar is a whole big question it is certainly several centuries after the Ark was lost. Also while the Ark zapping Nazis and melting their faces is entertaining, there is no historical evidence for it, sadly.
Isn't there a movie called The Ten Thousand which is about a pop-culture version of the March of Cyrus but in... New York and through their mafias? (Although, let's be honest, satraps were kind of that, or not? depending on their own personality, but it is not hard to see many abusing their powers as long as it does not perjure the... EMPIRE)
Strange Brew is a reworking of Hamlet. Odd to think that the SNL guys pulled off a Shakespeare play
Everyone knows the obvious Jesus parallels with Anakin Skywalker but there is a pretty low key parallel with the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as well. The planet where Obi Wan and Anakin fight in Revenge of the Sith is called Mustafar, Mustafa means the Chosen One in arabic and is a common name to refer to the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in islamic poetry and nasheeds. Anakin himself is referred to as the chosen one through out the prequel trilogy, Also the Jedi robes themsevles are inspired directly by the attire of North African Sufi Muslims, this is most likely due to the fact that A New Hope was filmed in Tunisia and must’ve just taken inspiration from local culture.
Not sure either how "pop" or how "surprising" this is, but:
Dante's Inferno shows up in many places, which is perhaps a bit odd given that it's not as commonly studied these days as Greek drama or Shakespeare, at least as far as I know. The polish black metal band Mgła referred to it in a song of theirs:
It is an unlikely alliance of assorted failures
Various degrees of deceit, doomsday prophets
The clenched teeth, the vinegar down the veins
A stylish pit right next to Judas, Brutus and Cassius
In addition, the design of the final battle in Final Fantasy VI is rife with references to the Inferno. The characters begin by fighting a giant demon (Hell), then a shifting mass of bodies and faces (Purgatory), then a Mary-like angel looking down on a Jesus-like figure (Heaven), and finally the villain Kefka himself descends from the sky (God). The music features plenty of organ and Baroque flourishes, and the art style mimics Renaissance and Baroque sculpture.
The shark-person Prince Sidon you meet in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is named after the ancient Phoenician trade city; rather fitting, considering their maritime prowess.
I dont know how surprising it is given that all their songs are based on history, but in the song "Hearts of iron" Sabaton multiple times quotes the german commander of the 10th army. Also, and i dont knowbif this is historical or surprising, their song "To hell and back" is roughly based on "The crosses grow on anzio" a poem by Audie Murphy.
Edit:Btw, sabaton got a lot of references to historical events in their songs that might not be obvious at first glance (and i know to many og them). For example the name "Night witches" comes from the Nachthexen, the nickname given to the 588th night bombing regiment of the red airforce by the german soldiers.