# Pop Culture Stuff Everyone Seems to Misunderstand **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 22, 2021, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564 "2021-04-22T19:51:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/201 "2021-04-24T22:00:59Z")
Mega Mind would have said Hyd-roc-it-y. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/202 "2021-04-24T22:36:21Z")
> [@mikecurtis](#): > > Of course, but even in Shakespeare’s day the courtiers and the groundlings in the same audience are going to be seeing different plays. Who’s to say which is right? I think of it less in terms of which opinion is right, and more in terms of which opinion is more useful. The opinion of a peasant about a Shakespeare play is about as useful as the opinion of a noble - they are both likely to provide you insights into the play that you might not have reached on your own. On the other hand, the opinion of someone who’s taken the time to research what nobles and peasants thought about Shakespeare is more useful than the opinion of someone who slept through half the play. The idea of the intentional fallacy isn’t that the intent of the author is irrelevant, it’s that the author’s intent isn’t controlling. If you read a book, and come away with one meaning, and the author says he actually intended a different meaning, you aren’t required to discard your interpretation. But it’s still worthwhile to find out the author’s opinion, because you might find that you like his intended meaning more than your original interpretation. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/203 "2021-04-24T22:48:29Z")
Somewhat tangentially about _The Little Mermaid_… I was in high school when it came out, on the school newspaper. We had a film review column, and the reviewer ADORED it, to an extent that we all (including said author) agreed was a bit silly. Some teasing ensued. Years later, I was thinking about the movie, and it suddenly occurred to me that Ariel’s dilemma was at least adjacent to some form of body dysmorphia… Ariel thinking she would be more comfortable with legs rather than the fins she was born with. And I wondered if it was a movie that was adopted by the trans community. And then I suddenly remembered… my co-staffer and pal from the high school newspaper who loved the movie so much had, in the years since, come out as a trans woman. Coincidence? ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/204 "2021-04-24T22:53:01Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I don’t know if anyone misunderstands this, but I don’t see it spoken of. > > Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Wizard Of Oz, and Labyrinth are all dreams. They represent a young girl’s journey out of childhood. Can’t agree. Alice and the sequel both show her as a little girl. She doesn’t change at all. Dr Deth gets it right about the other two as well - they weren’t dreams. The Disney _movie_ of Wizard of Oz was clearly a dream, though, and was partly about no longer being a child; Labyrinth was definitely about letting go of childhood, but it definitely wasn’t a dream. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/205 "2021-04-24T23:14:43Z")
Nitpick - MGM not Disney for “The Wizard of Oz” ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/206 "2021-04-24T23:35:19Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > > [@Galactus](#): > > > > The meaning I took from Unforgiven was that there were no good guys. One of my favorite westerns. > > And again, that’s pretty much said out load in the film, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Just because “deserve’s got nothing to do with it” doesn’t mean there are or were no good guys as a judgment either on life in general or the characters in the film specifically (although I’ll grant there weren’t any in that film), it just means it doesn’t matter if you’re good or not (according to the protagonist’s moral viewpoint, while on a drunken murder spree—so one might also consider the source). But even taken at face value, it only really proposes that outcomes are not necessarily indicative of character. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/207 "2021-04-24T23:37:10Z")
> [@anny\_m](#): > > Many people (and I admit I was for decades one of them) think that the little piggie went to market in order to do his shopping. I’ve heard this, and I don’t have a lot of investment in what the pigs were up to, but it never really scanned for me. All the other piggies are doing human things: staying home, eating roast beef, lamenting their lack of roast beef and running home (these are not complicated pigs) so “going to the market” as in going shopping just makes more sense in context than “these pigs are living at their homes and cooking beef products; oh and this one was slaughtered and sold”. That’s not even counting the whole “played on baby’s toes” aspect. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/208 "2021-04-24T23:38:51Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > I am 70 years old and never realized this until now. I hadn’t either but the third little piggy eating roast beef kind of puts paid to the idea that these are your ordinary porcine entities. Edit: Dammit **Jophiel**! ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/209 "2021-04-24T23:47:08Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > That’s not even counting the whole “played on baby’s toes” aspect. But do you know how godawful morbid children’s stories are? Piggies going to market are the least of it. (Otherwise you make a compelling case.) ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/210 "2021-04-24T23:55:08Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > But do you know how godawful morbid children’s stories are? Piggies going to market are the least of it. Sure, but I think we in the modern age like to lean a little too into it. Like how everyone “knows” that _Ring Around the Rosies_ is actually about the Black Death when… really, it’s probably just about [kids playing with flowers](https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/07/ring-around-the-rosie-metafolklore-rhyme-and-reason/). (That sort of feels like a reverse pop culture misunderstanding: A bunch of people thinking that they know the _real_ meaning of RAtR unlike those common people when the surface explanation is likely the actual correct one) ---
**Author:** ![anny\_m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@anny\_m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anny_m)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/211 "2021-04-24T23:58:44Z")
I suspect that baby’s older siblings knew exactly what was meant when Dad said, “I’m going to take Wilbur to market next week.” At the Illinois State Fair, there’s an exhibit called “Piglets on Parade” that includes all the piglets (and of course their sows) who were born during the fair. A couple of tents down is the Illinois Pork Producers tent that sells most excellent Pork-Chop-on-a-Stick. I don’t think any of the farm kids have any doubt that one of this year’s piglets may end up on a stick (a misnomer, they are butchered so that there’s a longish bone to hold while munching on the delicious meat) at a future fair. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/212 "2021-04-25T00:02:08Z")
> [@anny\_m](#): > > I suspect that baby’s older siblings knew exactly what was meant when Dad said, “I’m going to take Wilbur to market next week.” Sure, but the line isn’t “This little piggie was taken to market”, it’s “This little piggie went to the market”. If Dad said “Your mom went to the market”, they wouldn’t all assume Mom was being sold for meat. I’m not saying that the line _can’t_ mean that – it just makes no sense in context when all the other piggies are being treated like porcine people a la The Three Little Pigs. Maybe it it were “This little piggie went to market, this little piggie stayed in his pen, this little piggie was fed slop…” ---
**Author:** ![anny\_m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@anny\_m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anny_m)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/213 "2021-04-25T00:15:17Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Sure, but the line isn’t “This little piggie was taken to market”, it’s “This little piggie went to the market”. Actually, it’s “This little piggy went to market” – there’s no article. At any rate, I’m not the only one who now believes the biggest of the little piggies (it’s the big toe that gets wiggled during this line) is off to the slaughterhouse. [[Social media post reveals the unsettling truth about the first little piggy](https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-perspec-zorn-piggies-nursery-rhyme-market-grim-0829-20180828-story.html)]([https://Chicago](https://Chicago) Trib column) ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/214 "2021-04-25T00:19:19Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Can’t agree. Alice and the sequel both show her as a little girl. She doesn’t change at all. > > Dr Deth gets it right about the other two as well - they weren’t dreams. The Disney _movie_ of Wizard of Oz was clearly a dream, though, and was partly about no longer being a child; Labyrinth was definitely about letting go of childhood, but it definitely wasn’t a dream. I knew as I wrote it that I should elaborate, but I wanted to simplify. I meant the movie of Wizard of Oz. I meant imagination more than just dreams. I meant a child’s reaction to the world of adults and learning about responsibilities rather than just journey out of childhood. My point was that, thematically, they cover similar ground, which I simplified for brevity’s sake. Turns out, after multiple reactions with multiple paragraphs, brevity should not have been my intent. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/215 "2021-04-25T00:21:55Z")
The little piggies is more obvious in the actual words, “this little piggie went to market,” than if you add “the” (and that is an addition - it doesn’t scan). Going to market is being sold, going to the market is usually buying things. Although, when looking it up, one site refers to Mary Mary Quite Contrary as being dark because supposedly “silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture.” However, they’re also things you use when gardening - bells to deter birds, and cockle shells to deter slugs and snails (which both do help even today). I think that rhyme is actually about gardening. I can’t talk about Ring a ring o’ Roses because Americans have a different version to Brits, and there is little more annoying than people singing a different version of a childhood rhyme and acting as if theirs is right. > [@Andy\_L](#): > > Nitpick - MGM not Disney for “The Wizard of Oz” Thought I might well be wrong but knew I’d be corrected quickly 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/216 "2021-04-25T00:25:08Z")
> [@anny\_m](#): > > Actually, it’s “This little piggy went to market” – there’s no article. I’d never heard it that way but I don’t know if there’s a canonical source to point to, either. > [@anny\_m](#): > > At any rate, I’m not the only one who now believes the biggest of the little piggies (it’s the big toe that gets wiggled during this line) is off to the slaughterhouse Sure, see my earlier reference to how everyone “knows” that _Ring Around the Rosies_ is about the Plague for how convinced I am by random “I was today years old when I learned…” social media posts. Maybe there’s some scholarly article about it with cites and evidence and stuff. My response would be “Huh, ain’t that a corker”. I don’t think the current evidence (“Well, it could be read this way and pigs were sold in a market”) is very convincing in context. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/217 "2021-04-25T00:26:38Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Although, when looking it up, one site refers to Mary Mary Quite Contrary as being dark because supposedly “silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture.” However, they’re also things you use when gardening - bells to deter birds, and cockle shells to deter slugs and snails (which both do help even today). I think that rhyme is actually about gardening. Yeah, the article I linked earlier mentions people trying to force a grim “Mary Queen of Scots” connection into that one and, again, it doesn’t hold up. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/218 "2021-04-25T00:28:39Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > there is little more annoying than people singing a different version of a childhood rhyme and acting as if theirs is right. Imagine my horror when I streamed some children’s songs for my son and the singer began : _the incy wincy spider climbed up the waterspout…_ ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/219 "2021-04-25T00:32:25Z")
A weird one I see people repeat commonly, even on dedicated James Bond podcasts. In **The Spy Who Loved Me** (1977) when the freed submarines crews escape I heard a number of podcasts including **James Bonding** claim that the Americans and Brits deliberately don’t let the Soviet submarine crew out, making the Westerners out to be bad guys. The problem is, this doesn’t happen. Bond frees the British crew, tells them to “Release the other crews” and you immediately see the British crews go into two other rooms and freeing the crews in those rooms. The problem is that the Soviet submarine crews also wear all-white uniforms causing people to confuse them with the British crew, but you can see the difference as the Soviets wear a white overshirt with a blue and white striped undershirt. There’s even a nod to Cold War Cooperation when Bond runs out of ammo for his SMG and a Soviet crewman behind him hands him another magazine. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-stuff-everyone-seems-to-misunderstand/940564/220 "2021-04-25T00:34:53Z")
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