On 17/10/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
Congratulations, you've nuked half of the television-related articles on
wikipedia.
NOR is fine and good, but pop culture references do help people understand an episode. Instances would be scenes where (for example) the Simpsons rip a scene directly from a Quentin Tarantino movie.
...
But to "nuke it from orbit"? Ouch. As for a source, see if one can be found, and if necessary just use the two sources side by side as your reference.
Maybe I should have been more specific - I'm certainly not advocating the removal of /all/ pop-culture references. The original example quoted was:
"When Shauna, Brian's love interest introduces herself, there's heavenly singing of the name 'Shauna' in the background. This parodies a scene from Ferris Beuller's Day Off when Jennifer Grey's character tells Charlie Sheen's character 'It's Jean, but most guys call me Shauna.'"
That, to me, is not obvious. A scene ripped direct from a Tarantino movie is definitely a cultural reference, but "singing of the name 'Shauna' in the background" doesn't, to my eye, appear to have any relation to the quoted scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off at all, and smells strongly of a fan getting a little too enthusiastic.
There are also cases of repeated cultural references/running jokes in shows that only become clear after a longer period of watching (for example [[1729 (number)]] in Futurama). These might seem harder to prove but are still an order of magnitude better to include than /hidden allegorical meanings/, which was the main point of my post. For example, suggesting that the "Alien" series of movies are actually allegories for the state of American politics, which I actually read in a print publication once.