There are two reasons I know who Zane Grey was despite never having read a thing he wrote. One is that he lived the last years of his life in Altadena, California, not far from the library I used as a child. This was a matter of some local pride, and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. I think I was in it once. But the main reason I have any idea who he was is that Colonel Potter read his books all the time on M*A*S*H, so I knew a lot about them simply from knowing a lot about Colonel Potter.
Some people have their pop culture status absorbed by another character, as we’ve discussed before. Practically no one today is at all familiar with the character of Senator Claghorn, and if they are, it’s because they have heard that Foghorn Leghorn is a parody of him. Others, though, have their status extended by some other pop culture reference to them, as with Colonel Potter’s favourite cowboy books. Who was Zane Grey? Obviously someone who wrote cowboy books, because that’s what Colonel Potter read.
Sometimes, the results are spectacular. It gives me great joy that Freddy Mercury lived long enough to have the Wayne’s World “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene played for him and that he enjoyed it; in that case, the film’s reference to a seventeen-year-old song gave it such a resurgence that it charted again and became a radio staple, something it hadn’t been in years. That’s a great example of the phenomenon. Not only did it get a new lease on life, it’s likely that far more people these days are familiar with the song than Wayne’s World.
It doesn’t always work. In part because Leverage is itself kind of obscure, one episode’s casual mention that Nate Ford is dressed as Ellery Queen did not spark any kind of revival there. And sometimes, it can seem more as though a work is trying to ride on a popular work’s fan base, because the important thing here is that the new work must already be more popular than the thing it’s referencing. Otherwise, it’s more of a “how do you do, fellow kids!” moment.
There is no reason for fictional characters to be prevented from their own pop culture preferences. Indeed, it only makes sense that they’d have them. And, to be sure, it’s possible to simply create a fictional pop culture for your fictional character, and if your world is fantastical enough, that’s your only choice. See, for example, Zuko’s childhood associations with the Ember Island Players. But if your characters are supposed to be in something approaching the real world, well, it’s not impossible that they’d know “Stuck in the Middle With You.”
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