# When did pop-culture references in movies become popular?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 26, 2001, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530 "2001-05-26T00:46:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@moggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moggy)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2001, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/1 "2001-05-26T00:46:46Z")
_WARNING possible SCHREK SPOILERS_
I’m speaking of 'Schrek" (VERY funny movie by the way- I laughed my ass off). There are lots of pop-culture references, Robin Hood & his Merry Men doing Riverdance, a ‘Matrix’- style fight scene. When did movies start doing this? It seems like movies used to be a plot, and things happened or were funny without relating to current events & such. Not that I mind pop-culture references, sometimes they can be funny. But sometimes movies can be overloaded with them and it just gets annoying.
I was trying to think back to movies I’ve seen through the years and I can’t remember when the whole ‘pop-culture referencing’ thing started. Does anybody else, and who started it?
“Everybody loves parfait!”
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### Author:  [@Sir\_Rhosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Rhosis)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2001, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/2 "2001-05-26T04:09:20Z")
“Blazing Saddles” (1973, I believe) certainly had a few.
Sir
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### Author:  [@exchicagoan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/exchicagoan)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2001, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/3 "2001-05-26T04:21:20Z")
I remember it being done in the JERRY LEWIS movie GEISHA BOY–1958. He’s arrived in Japan and is looking at Mt. Fuji, does a double take because it’s become the Paramont Studio “logo”. Then, because SESSUE HAYAKAWA plays the girls father, there are some BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWI references.
I’m pretty sure that there are loads of them in the BOB HOPE/BING CROSBY ones from the 40s. HOPE had some excellent writers, so they did a lot of “ad-libbing”.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2001, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/4 "2001-05-26T05:03:42Z")
Well, the old Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1940s were FILLED with pop culture references- some are still hilarious today, while others are hopelessly outdated (no kid today knows who Jerry Colonna was, so mustachioed characters saying “AHHHH YESSSSS!” just aren’t that funny any more).
Stars like Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Edward G. Robinson regularly popped up in Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2001, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/5 "2001-05-26T17:43:42Z")
Jerry Lewis borrowed the gag from Hope and Crosby from one of their Road pictures.
Even in silent days, movies were made that referred to other bits of artistic and popular culture. Chaplin did a burlesque on Carmen, for instance. Mack Sennett made a lot of parodies of successful films and plays.
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### Author:  [@Tzel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzel)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2001, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/6 "2001-05-26T21:55:51Z")
Is that your final answer?
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### Author:  [@Albert\_Rose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Albert_Rose)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2001, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/7 "2001-05-27T01:40:45Z")
I remember Cary Grant, in _His Girl Friday_ (1940), making a reference to “Archie Leach” telling him something. Archibald Leach was Cary’s real name. In the same film, he cracks that Hildy’s fiancee looks like that fellow from the movies, you know, Ralph Bellamy. Of course, the fiancee _is_ Ralph Bellamy.
The legendary Carol Reed film, _The Third Man_ (1949) featured a chase finale in a sewer. This may have been an allusion to an earlier film, _He Walked By Night,_ which also featured a sewer chase.
This seems like a good MPSIMS thread.
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### Author:  [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2001, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/8 "2001-05-27T03:06:45Z")
I’m not sure when it started, but I think it became annoying in _Forrest Gump_.
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### Author:  [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/9 "2001-05-28T01:08:56Z")
My Communications proffessor would say it was a sign of post-modernism. You might do better to ask “when did this start to become really coomon?” Rather than “when did this start?” I think this goes back _really_ far, to prehistoric times.
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### Author:  [@Swede\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swede_Hollow)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/10 "2001-05-28T04:28:08Z")
Pop references have been around for a long time and are funny when the viewer understands the reference, but it misses the mark for everyone else. What do the younger people think Marty McFly in Back to the Future is asking for in the 1950’s diner when he says “Give my a Pepsi-Free”. How many of them know that it is now simply Caffeine Free Pepsi? Or seeing Pan Am displayed prominently in a movie? Or hearing someone ask for a now nonexistent product (Bromo Sletzer in 1940’s movies)? Or references to older add campains: LSMFT (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco); "So round, so firm, so fully packed… (also Lucky Strike).
It not only dates the movie, but it also dates those of us that know what the reference means. It’s embarrassing to laugh at a joke when no one around me realizes that there even was a joke there (and I’m only 30!).
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### Author:  [@Wyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wyvern)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/11 "2001-05-28T04:32:22Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Tzel \*
> \*\*Is that your final answer? \*\*
**Agggghhhhhh!!! Tzel you dope!**
I come here to get away from stuff like that 😛
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### Author:  [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/12 "2001-05-28T16:38:31Z")
The earliest examples I know of are in Aristophanes, but those, of course, are plays rather than movies.
Plus ca change …
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/13 "2001-05-28T18:41:09Z")
**SCSimmons** beat me to it. I was going to say that in-jokes of this type can be found in Shakespeare (references to political developments, other plays and playwrights, etc.), and go back to the Romans. Then he says Aristophanes, and of course he’s right.
If you want to draw conclusions about the prevalence of the modern phenomenon – i.e., that it doesn’t seem a single movie comes out without some kind of cross-referential nod – it seems you can advance two theories.
First, mass communication has become so prevalent that the creative people who produce our entertainment, in “writing what they know,” don’t know anything beyond the movies, television, music, etc., that everybody consumes. This kind of insular, incestuous recycling can be seen, for example, in the films of Devlin/Emmerich, whose _Godzilla_ and _The Patriot_ are really nothing more than pastiches of their respective genres, cobbled together from bits and pieces of their forerunners. The “pop-culture reference” approach simply makes the allusions obvious, instead of trying to pretend that the material doesn’t originate elsewhere.
The second of the theories recalls Marshal McLuhan, and is also predicated on the notion of mass communication becoming so ubiquitous. When it’s an inescapable aspect of our everyday life, the media itself becomes a topic for exploration, as opposed to the “software.” Movies start turning into examinations of the moviemaking form, as in the propaganda-turned-inside-out _Fight Club._ Again, pop-culture references are simply the most visible artifact of this, as we in the audience are rewarded for knowing as much about the media as possible.
That’s probably a topic for GD, but I thought it was worth mentioning as a partial explanation about why the pop-culture thing, while not a new development by any means, seems to have become so overwhelmingly common.
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/14 "2001-05-28T18:42:44Z")
Woops! That’s **Marshall** , of course. Marshal McLuhan was a little known dictator of a small Mediterranean island, as opposed to the media theorist. 😉
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### Author:  [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/15 "2001-05-28T19:05:19Z")
In reference to Swede Hollow’s complaint(?) believe it or not I think watching old Warner Brothers’ cartoons has broadened my knowledge. I probably know as much about the pop-culture of the 30’s as I do about the pop-culture of the 70’s (when I grew up). I doubt little kids who watch Bugs Bunny now on the Cartoon Network could care less about the subtle in-jokes, but hopefully as they grow older and become nostalgic about the old cartoons they’ll start to wonder what was so funny about a handlebar moustachioed man going “Ah, Yesss.”
PS: I know I’m so much smarter than everybody else whenever I laugh at a joke no one else gets. If you ask me why it’s so funny I’ll gladly explain it to you. 😃
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### Author:  [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2001, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pop-culture-references-in-movies-become-popular/66530/16 "2001-05-28T19:21:50Z")
By the way, it still says L.S./M.F.T. on the bottom of Lucky Strikes packs.