# Fiction which is misrepresented in pop culture **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 23, 2013, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683 "2013-06-23T03:17:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/41 "2013-06-24T16:31:25Z")
_Lolita_ is often referenced in a way that would make the view think it’s basic porn along the lines of the image from the movie poster (the young girl looking seductive in the heart-shaped sunglasses), but the novel, while explicit, is much more of an intellectual novel. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/42 "2013-06-24T16:51:10Z")
Jeeves is a valet, not a butler (although he does fill in for a butler on vacation in one novel). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/43 "2013-06-24T17:26:50Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > Everybody knows that Dracula was killed with a stake to the heart. > > Everybody except Bram Stoker, that is. It was a Bowie knife. Well, in the book several people converged on Dracula, and the sun rose (although it wasn’t lethal to him in the book, and he walks around in daylight, at other times he seems immobile and weakened by the sun), so I think the Bowie knife is only one factor. But a wooden stake was not among them. And people can be forgiven for thinking he was staked, since Drac dies pretty spectacularly of being staked in the original Deane and Balderston stage play (and its 1977 Broadway revival). They also staked him in the 1931 Bela Lugosi/Tod Browning movie (although offscreen). He’s died in various other ways in the many other movie adaptations of the story. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/44 "2013-06-24T17:52:13Z")
I’ve never made it all the way through _Atlas Shrugged_ (I’ve started it several times and gotten into the interior a couple, but just cannot connect). However, I’ve found if you describe it using the words “selfishness” or “social Darwinism” or “screw the poor”, all terms that I’ll admit crossed my mind when reading it and apparently the minds of many others as well, you’ll quickly be told- often succeeded by a long rant that’s easy to ignore- how this isn’t the message at all. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/45 "2013-06-24T17:53:13Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > SNF is not a caustic comment on disco culture. Tony is a loser with a dead end job who lives with his parents and is going nowhere. However when he goes to a disco he becomes an important person with influence and recognition because of his dancing abilities. The characters in the film are losers who are not very bright, but the film shows the allure of disco and why people like it. Fair point; it did represent a dream and escape for those characters. I would argue that the music was marketed as part of a new craze that kids could see on Bandstand and which was packaged with their breakfast cereal (I can’t recall, but I remember many brands using disco as part of their marketing to kids like me at that time) - when the movie shows the disco world to be raw, ugly, misogynist and dangerous. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/46 "2013-06-24T20:20:28Z")
> [@delphica](#): > > _Lolita_ is often referenced in a way that would make the view think it’s basic porn along the lines of the image from the movie poster (the young girl looking seductive in the heart-shaped sunglasses), but the novel, while explicit, is much more of an intellectual novel. And it can only be called a celebration of pedophilia/hebephilia if the concept of the unreliable narrator is completely alien to you. > [@Sampiro](#): > > I’ve found if you describe it using the words “selfishness” or “social Darwinism” or “screw the poor”, all terms that I’ll admit crossed my mind when reading it and apparently the minds of many others as well, you’ll quickly be told- often succeeded by a long rant that’s easy to ignore- how this isn’t the message at all. That impression comes from conflating _Atlas Shrugged_ in particular with Objectivism generally, and then lumping a variety of disparate forms of assholery in with the specific form that is Objectivism. ---
**Author:** ![Gedd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gedd/32/4938_2.png) [@Gedd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gedd)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/47 "2013-06-24T20:47:35Z")
It’s been a few years since I’ve read _Frankenstein_ too, but I don’t remember any villagers attacking a castle with torches and pitchforks. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/48 "2013-06-24T20:54:05Z")
> [@Gedd](#): > > It’s been a few years since I’ve read _Frankenstein_ too, but I don’t remember any villagers attacking a castle with torches and pitchforks. Don’t get me started. There’s no Igor (or Fritz), no castle, no “Abnormal Brain – do not use”, or a lot of the other standard tropes. On the other hand, Universal pictures DID create a unique and immediately recognizable image with that flat-topped and bolt-necked Monster, regardless of how non-canonical it is. So why complain? ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/49 "2013-06-24T22:57:44Z")
[This very funny cartoon](http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/) nevertheless misrepresents science fiction. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/50 "2013-06-25T01:46:07Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I’ve never made it all the way through _Atlas Shrugged_ (I’ve started it several times and gotten into the interior a couple, but just cannot connect). > > However, I’ve found if you describe it using the words “selfishness” or “social Darwinism” or “screw the poor”, all terms that I’ll admit crossed my mind when reading it and apparently the minds of many others as well, you’ll quickly be told- often succeeded by a long rant that’s easy to ignore- how this isn’t the message at all. I’m not the staunchest defender, but I can at least give you the short reasoning here: Rand did seem to genuinely believe that Objectivism would indirectly result in either/both there being fewer poor and the poor being better off. The reasoning for this view is…not always very clear. But it seems to be something like a combination of trickle down economics and people having more mobility to find their proper niche. While she couches it differently in most cases, a lot of her arguments come down to the basic idea that selfishness is efficient and natural and honest, and that inefficiency and dishonest altruism ultimately are a net harm to the vulnerable. I think there’s major errors in her reasoning and conclusions, but I understand why this argument rankles Objectivists; for all the talk of selfishness and allowing great people to excel, most genuinely do think their system is better for everybody in the long run. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/51 "2013-06-25T13:46:44Z")
GONE WITH THE WIND is often said to romanticize the antebellum south and perpetuate the “Happy darkies singing in the field” trope. I never saw it that way- especially the book, but even the movie really. The main character is 16 years old at the start and even more self absorbed and immature than most 16 year olds due to being a pampered daughter of the leisure class, and it reflects her world view. Very soon she’s locked in a nightmare and this girl- not really a woman yet- who was raised to be pampered and taken care of in a place where she’s fussed at for eating too much- is having to lead and work her fingers to the bone while having to worry about everything from dispossession to rape to literal starvation. OF COURSE the antebellum world with its riches and abundance and lack of cares (to her, a teenaged girl) becomes idealized to her, as does Ashley; she’s not head over heels with him because he’s all that with a side of pork skins but because he’s her silver cord to a time when her biggest care was whether to wear a rose in her hair or a lily. Scarlett has major PTSD after things settle down and trying to return as much as possible to the world of the 16 year old belle of the ball is a coping mechanism that Mitchell realized beautifully in the novel. The book also makes very clear that Scarlett’s family was rich and that life was not abundance and moonlight and magnolia to everybody. Poor whites were barely getting by when the war started and in the book the character Grandma Fontaine has contempt for how soft the planter class has become and Tara is largely saved by the ‘cracker’ farmer Will Benteen. As for the simplistic portrayals of black characters, Mammy’s not a simple character at all. She’s very complex, in the book especially but also in the movie (thanks in no small part to Hattie McDaniel’s brilliant performance- that was not just a Stepin Fetchit comedic turn at all). Prissy is a silly moron, but she’s also a scared child and there are numerous white silly moron characters (Aunt Pitty, India Wilkes, more in the books). Pork’s never developed much in the movie, but he is in the book and even in the movie it’s shown how important he is to the family (they don’t give him Gerald’s gold watch just because he’s there). As for the slaves being happy singing in the field, while it’s not specifically addressed in the movie you can figure it out: there’s a reason that they leave when Sherman comes through and they don’t come back. (In the novel some do come back, some don’t, and one thing that irritates Scarlett is that the ones who do return as sharecroppers want their own plot of land- they don’t want to work the fields communally anymore- and they want to build their own house, they won’t live in the cabins, so they are quite aware that there’s a difference in being free and slave.) Not to say that Margaret Mitchell didn’t have some prejudices of her time, not just with race but with provincialism and classism, and the opening to the movie about the “land of cavaliers” is disgusting (Mitchell did’t like it either), and a lot of the book of course couldn’t escape the censors of 1939 (the specific mention of Frank and Ashley being involved in the KKK, for instance) but neither the book nor even the movie are total love stories to “the Old South”. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/52 "2013-06-25T14:06:57Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Well, dreams, they feel real while we’re in them, right? . . . . For some people, I’ve heard. I can count the number of times I didn’t know I was dreaming on one hand. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/53 "2013-06-25T14:49:58Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > For some people, I’ve heard. I can count the number of times I didn’t know I was dreaming on one hand. I can’t tell whether I whooshed you with the quote or whether you’re whooshing me with a quote. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/54 "2013-06-25T15:11:55Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Which is, for any who don’t already know it, exactly what happened in the casting call. She thought the movie would be about illegal aliens and showed up dressed as one. Which is funny in its own right, since “Vasquez” was played Jeanette Goldstein, who is Jewish, not Latina. She’s also a muscular lady who did a lot of stunt work, and was ideally cast as a tough Marine. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2013, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/55 "2013-06-25T15:55:56Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > “Vasquez” was played Jeanette Goldstein Nitpicking, but her name is Jenette. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/56 "2013-06-26T02:52:36Z")
> [@typoink](#): > > While she couches it differently in most cases, a lot of her arguments come down to the basic idea that selfishness is efficient and natural and honest, and that inefficiency and dishonest altruism ultimately are a net harm to the vulnerable. I actually did think selfishness was a part of Objectivism (defined in such a way that it’s more reasonable to treat it as a virtue), but I was sufficiently unsure that I feared saying so would spread rather than fight ignorance. I find, however, my impression was correct. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/57 "2013-06-26T06:07:18Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > **The Great Gatsby** and **Saturday Night Fever** - both are caustic commentaries on the cultural niches they portray - the social scene at Gatsby’s party is as silly as the disco scenes in SNF - and yet both were glamorized and held up as cool places to be. A lot of the misunderstanding about Saturday Night Fever comes from the fact that it was released in theaters in two versions, the original rated R version and then a PG-rated version. The impact of removing the stronger material is astonishing. The two versions are practically two different movies. One is dark and serious and the other is “woo, disco dancing!” The movie as shown on TV is obviously the sanitized version. It’s understandable that people think that SNF is all flashy dancing and “don’t touch the hair!” because they never saw the SNF that had the gang rape in it. Details and particulars of the various versions.: [Saturday Night Fever - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Fever#Versions_and_sequel) > [@puddleglum](#): > > SNF is not a caustic comment on disco culture. Tony is a loser with a dead end job who lives with his parents and is going nowhere. However when he goes to a disco he becomes an important person with influence and recognition because of his dancing abilities. The characters in the film are losers who are not very bright, but the film shows the allure of disco and why people like it. So, which version of the movie did you see? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/58 "2013-06-26T07:08:27Z")
Not quite fiction, but : Nietzsche’s philosophy in general, and the concept of the Übermensch in particular. No race stuff about that, guys. It’s also not about nihilism. Or eugenics, either. It’s not necessarily a _nice_ concept (depending on how you interpret it), but it’s not the kind of evil most people think of when they hear the word. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/59 "2013-06-26T12:04:21Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > I actually did think selfishness was a part of Objectivism (defined in such a way that it’s more reasonable to treat it as a virtue), but I was sufficiently unsure that I feared saying so would spread rather than fight ignorance. I find, however, my impression was correct. It really needs a less pejorative term than selfishness; “self-interest” perhaps. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683/60 "2013-06-26T12:52:30Z")
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” Most people who quote it know it’s from Shakespeare, but not which play or the context. It’s not Shakespeare having a jab at the legal profession, but a bad guy saying that’s the first thing a bad prospective king should do. Shakespeare is supporting the lawyers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-which-is-misrepresented-in-pop-culture/661683.md?page=4)