July 28, 2016

Brexit and Popular Culture

Popular culture references and comparisons are beginning to emerge in the wake of Brexit. Steve Peers @StevePeers invokes a Star Trek: The Original Series reference for a job for Nigel Farage, who has stepped down as the leader of the United Kingdom Independent Party.


Any of the jobs done by any of those guys in red shirts














Oh, feel the burn (not Sanders, or Switzerland, which is not a member state of the EU).

David Allen Green @David Allen Green quotes both Arthur Conan Doyle and Samuel Becket in tweets about failure to invoke Article 50 of the TEU.

David Allen Green ‏@DavidAllenGreen [tweeted July 4] “The curious incident of the Article 50 notification.” - There was no notification. “That was the curious incident,” remarked Holmes. The line occurs in the short story, "Silver Blaze." Here's the excerpt.

Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention.
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.

Holmes notes that a watchdog that alerts on the presence of strangers did not do so when someone approached on this occasion. Thus, the dog knew the person who approached it, This observation has now become so obvious a deduction for pop culture detectives on tv and in film whenever a dog is in a scene that if either a professional or amateur sleuth doesn't mention the dog's behavior, viewers automatically know that the detective is an idiot (and that the screenwriter has never read the literature, or seen any mystery or detective movies or tv over the past 50 years). It would be interesting and novel to substitute a cat or a ferret for the dog in some of these scripts. Monkeys and parrots have been done, BTW (Columbo: Death Hits the Jackpot (1991)) and Perry Mason: The Case of the Perjured Parrot (1958)).

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has also become a Tony-winning Broadway Play.

David Allen Green ‏@DavidAllenGreen Jun 25 ESTRAGON: Well, shall we Leave? VLADIMIR: Yes, let's Leave. (They do not send the Article 50 Notification.)

(Parodying Waiting for Godot). Mr. Green has retweeted it numerous times. He is understandably quite fond of it; it's clever, but also, we've been Waiting For Brexit for a month. It's sort of like Waiting To Brexhale.

And this long hommage to Samuel Beckett, from a number of Tweeters:


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