My job occasionally requires me to publically handle reptiles. For several years I routinely helped to present an educational display featuring a family of leopard geckos. Maybe one in three hundred people knew what they were; other guesses ranged from ‘salamander’ to ‘baby alligator’ (!) Then, all of a sudden, everybody recognized them. The reason, of course, was the mascot featured in the Geico TV commercials. Of course, afterwards everybody thought it was hilariously original to ask if they could save money on car insurance, so this phenomenon kind of cut both ways.
The other day a similar thing occurred. Sometimes I have to carry snakes around, and since a lot of people are kind of jumpy if you approach them holding a snake, I try to give folks a heads-up when I move about. ‘Snake coming through!’ I’ll holler out, and other such phrases. Since the purpose of this shouting is to get people to notice my approach rather than to communicate any sort of meaningful information, I vary the actual content largely for my own amusement. One of the things I’ll yell is, “Ophidiophobes be warned!” For years this has never garnered anything other than blank looks, but the other day I noticed people smiling and laughing in recognition. It appears that the reason for this is the advertising for the upcoming movie Snakes on a Plane, in which the term for phobia of snakes is mentioned. So the movie evidently does have at least some marginal educational value.
I know movies and TV are notorious for perpetuating incorrect information, but what are other instances where a previously obscure fact suddenly becomes common knowledge?
when I was in high school, we had to take a course called “Problems of Democracy.” The class was pretty much worthless. One assignment we had was each of us had to get up in front of the class and recite the Preamble to the Constitution. All of us could do it beautifully because we all knew Schoolhouse Rock. We just had to remember to add an “of the United States” to the first line. Oh, and not to sing.
But since Schoolhouse Rock was designed to teach, it probably doesn’t fit your OP. Sorry.
There used to be this TV series based on a series of books called “The Straight Dope” that I heard was killer as far as disseminating knowledge, almost as good as “Ripley’s Bleive It or Not,” but it didn’t last long.
When I applied to get on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” a couple of months ago, one of the questions was “What is a quahog?” There’s no way in hell I would have known that if it weren’t for Family Guy.
Another from the animal kingdom, I feel like meerkats were suddenly popping up everywhere after there was a meerkat character in Disney’s The Lion King. I don’t think this was an animal that the average person would have recognized prior to that.
Not common knowledge by a long shot, but I know tons of people in my demographic (that would be people who spent their high school years wearing a lot of black, being dramatic, and languishing away in the cultural void of the suburbs in the 80s) who read The Stranger by Albert Camus because it is referenced in a song by The Cure.
“Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by They Might Be Giants helps me remember which is the the present-day name of the city and which is the former name, and I suspect other people as well.
(hijack) Dude, you carry snakes around at work! That’s crazy. Every time I see a person with a snake at the zoo or whatever, I think “hey, I like animals, I’m going to go see that snake.” Everything goes well until I get about two feet away from the snake, and then some other part of my brain takes over and I have a complete “Eek! Snake! It doesn’t have legs! Run, run for your life!” freak out.
Did they ever point it out on the show? If you were going with Family Guy knowledge alone, the answer would probably be “The fictional Rhode Island town where Family Guy takes place” rather than “a type of clam.”
I didn’t know what the fear of spiders was called until Arachnophobia came out.
People who’ve never seen The Lion King but who watch indie movies would know what a meerkat is from Junebug. That’s not quite popular culture, but Amy Adams was nominated for an Oscar, so it’s not totally obscure.
I came in here to mention the They Might Be Giants song but you beat me to it.
I keep hoping Kate Bush’s song “Pi” from her newest album will be released as a single and get big. It would teach a bunch of people at least some of the numbers of Pi (yes, she sings a good many of the numbers in the song, and it’s quite beautiful and catchy too). But then, Kate’s songs are a fountain of tidbits that send fans to the dictionary and encyclopedia and elsewhere to learn more about words, literary references, film references and history references in her songs.
Some fairly obscure rites in the Catholic church are well-known because of movie titles, like “The Exorcist” and “Bell, Book and Candle.” (Although the latter wasn’t actually about excommunication…)
Prior to a cheesy 1973 movie, “The Clones,” the term “clone” wasn’t widely known outside of biology labs.
Thanks to that kid from “Jerry Maguire,” more people today know what a human head weighs than used to.
I learned about the perils of explosive decompression from “Goldfinger.”
No, of course not. It’s about driving spirits away from the entrance to Hades, so you can go get the crystal skull.
…Right?
While we’re at it, I can add the Monty Python song about “Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving and revolving at 1000 miles per hour”, etc. The speed (in MPH) at which the planet is revolving varies by where you are on the planet, but near the equator, 1000 MPH is indeed the right figure, and all of the other numbers in that song are correct, as well, to the precision given.
Also the They Might Be Giants songs “Mammals” and “The Sun is a mass of incandescant gas” (the latter being quite popular in my department; we have a very large solar physics group).
Also a few songs in similar veins from The Animaniacs, though I think those were deliberately meant to be educational. Apparently there are some sort of benefits to being able to describe a show as having educational value.
Jesus, you’re really the toast of Broadway
And what a proper Superstar you look.
A goldie oldie, a blast from the past.
It’s great to see you’ve come back at last.
And someday I just have to read the Book!
–Tom Paxton’s “Jesus Christ SRO”
Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell were partly responsible for the whole “Jesus Movement” of the 1970’s, which did get some young people to read the Book. And I’m sure millions of people wouldn’t know who Eva Peron was without “Evita.”
Unfortunately, Billy’s track record on spreading information through pop music is spotty. In contrast to We Didn’t Start The Fire, his song The Ballad of Billy The Kid is more or less completely made up factually: The Kid did not come “from a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia”, for example, nor “rob his way from Utah to Oklahoma”, starting with “a bank in Colorado” (he is thought to have been born in New York, and grew up and “worked” mostly in New Mexico, rustling cattle and not robbing trains/banks), nor is it true that he “always rode alone”, etc., etc.
I read an interview once with Billy Joel where he described the song (which I love, by the way) as an exercise in “legend-making”, the idea that the essence of why we love the figure of a Billy The Kid character transcends mundanities such as, well, historical fact. He continues this playfulness by apparently referring to himself, another “Billy”, at the end (From a town known as Oyster Bay, Long Island / Rode a boy with a six-pack in his hand…), when in fact he was born in the Bronx and grew up in Levittown.
OK, BJ, you had your fun, but I definitely walked around for years thinking I had learned something about Billy The Kid when I hadn’t!!
