On 17/10/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster(a)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.
--
Earle Martin
http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/