Although it is often reported that A Clockwork Orange was ‘banned’ in the United Kingdom, the removal of the movie was actually Kubrick’s own choice. … The association of real-world acts of violence with the movie was deeply upsetting for Kubrick, and he decided to pull A Clockwork Orange from the British market.
Not movies, but Stephen King has taken his novel Rage (written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) out of print for fear it would inspire real-life school shootings.
Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther supposedly inspired copycat suicides that led to it being banned in the 18th century.
Not withdrawn by the maker, but the subject of various bans and cuts, Blackboard Jungle. It’s kind of part of the British mythology that youths who should have been doing national service anyway indulged in copycat rioting and we’ve been going to hell in a handcart ever since.
Late last year (2019) in the UK, the film Blue Story depicting London based gang violence was blamed for some gang violence at showings in Birmingham (also in England.) A cinema chain banned the film while rivals contnued to show it. The ban was questioned as racist since the gangs in Blue Story were black while violent films with white characters (The Joker, The Irishman) were not being banned. The cinema chain then resumed showing the film.
One of the earliest examples of the impact on public behavior was from It Happened One Night. In the motel scene, Clark Gable undressed, revealing he wasn’t wearing an undershirt. Undershirt sales reportedly declined 40-450% in the year following the film’s debut.
Hollywood movies sometimes depicted gangsters wearing black shirts with white neckties (notably, Harry Lewis’ character in Key Largo ). Supposedly, real-world mafiosi started imitating them.
A lot of organized crime figures started imitating The Godfather when it came out.
When The Adventures of Superman was on the air, there was a fear of kids grabbing their capes and jumping out windows. One episode even had Superman stressing that only Superman could fly.
Similarly, James Barrie added “fairy dust” to Peter Pan because there were reports of kids trying to fly like in the play.
It’s very common for names to become popular after they’re used in a movie. Madison was almost unknown until Splash in 1984. Linda spiked after Katherine Hepburn in Holiday in 1938.
Sorry if my reply was confusing. Snopes says that they found no good evidence for or against the proposition that Clack Gable made people stop wearing undershirts. It doesn’t really address dress standards otherwise relaxing except insofar as it speculates that they may have been.
I’m purely speculating here, but I don’t think it’s a crazy notion that Dennis Hopper rescued a moribund brand of beer in Blue Velvet, and made it suddenly cool (while simultaneously rendering a different brand untouchable).
Well, I sometimes go out with college students, and they do like PBR tallboys. Though one of their friends will inevitably accuse them of being a hipster…
Side note: Haven’t seen anyone order a Heinekken since '77. Back then it was the “Classier than Bud” beer. Now we have billlions and billllions of craft beers better than Bud.
Oh, and I’ve had friends reference Sideways when buying “a Pinot”.