Owen Stanford

Pop culture references in the media we consume are not hard to come by these days. A cynic would argue that all these references are the logical endpoint to a self-cannibalizing culture and while there is a kernel of truth in that statement, the whole situation is far more nuanced in my eyes. There is such a thing as a good pop culture reference; when a movie, tv show, book, etc. points to something outside of its own canon, either for humor or to make some larger point. When done well it can be very effective. When done poorly it can cause a lethal amount of eye-rolls in the viewer or otherwise general cringe. My go-to example of a singular pop culture reference done badly comes from the novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett. In a novel full of elements that could be considered offensive, the thing that offended me the most personally was when the main white lady Skeeter is “driving back over the Lake Pontchartrain bridge with the radio playing a band called the Rolling Stones…” A tip for aspiring writers, especially one wanting to write historical fiction like The Help: please don’t do that. It will show everyone just how much of a hack you are. 

But if that’s how a reference can be done badly, then how can a reference be done well? The way I see it, a writer writing in a pop culture reference into their story is a bit like a sniper perched up somewhere, patiently waiting to take out a target, viewing them with the scope of the gun, finger on the trigger, and preferably a silencer attached to the muzzle, like Bradley Cooper in American Sniper. The sniper with their finger on the trigger is the author of a book or the movie or show we’re watching. The bullet firing out of the rifle is the reference itself. And the soon-to-be-dead target is the audience. If the piece of media is LHO, then the audience is JFK.

The thing about snipers is that all they really need is one shot. The bullets they use are so large and the speed at which they fire out of the gun is so fast, it doesn’t require much else to successfully take out a target. If a sniper is patient, trained well, and aims right at the target in the right place at the right time, boom. Target down. A good pop culture reference works the same way. It’s a fundamental rule of comedy as well; timing is everything. This is why many pop culture references are used for laughs. In Avengers: Infinity War, just as an example, when Ebony Maw first arrives on Earth searching for the Infinity Stones, Tony Stark bluntly tells him to “get lost, Squidward!” This is a reference that hits it right on the target. Much like how a sniper may be taking part in an assasination attempt for any number of reasons whether political, for revenge, or for a sense of duty to restore order in the world. He also may have been hired to carry out the assasination by a third party for their own convoluted reasons. There’s a lot going on in this reference. More than meets the eye.

For one, there’s the surface level humor in that Ebony Maw does in fact look a bit like Squidward. Secondly, it is a little bizarre to hear someone like Iron Man reference a kids’ show, adding a hint of absurdity into this bit. It also implies a lot of things; it implies that in this universe of superheroes, aliens, gods, alternate dimensions, and even some magic, somehow SpongeBob SquarePants exists. Like I said, right on the target. 

Speaking of SpongeBob, another good reference can be found in the episode “Graveyard Shift” where, after showing that the “hash-slinging slasher” that Squidward had been teasing SpongeBob about in order to frighten him as they work the night shift was just a nervous guy looking to work at the Krusty Krab (it all makes perfect sense), that leaves them to wondering “who was flickering the lights?” The lights on cue start flickering again and when they all turn to see who it is, it’s revealed to be Count Orlok, a vampire from the 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu, flipping the light switch up and down. The gang reacts to him with a chummy, humorous “Nosferatu!” The vampire smiles and then the episode ends. This reference works mainly due to how random it is. For something to reference Nosferatu, especially a show directly aimed at children, it takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of guts  to write that and put it out on television for everyone to see (unless you didn’t have cable). Like, why would Count Orlok be in Bikini Bottom messing with SpongeBob and Squidward like that? Doesn’t he have better things to do? Also, what kid would understand what this is referencing? Even an adult from the time this episode aired, 2002, would they be able to get the reference to a silent film from eighty years before? On paper, this reference shouldn’t work. And yet, for some odd reason, it does, and it has since endured as one of the show’s most iconic jokes. Direct hit. 

Much like how a successful hit by a sniper can inspire conspiracy theories about what actually happened or discussions and debates about whether the assasination was even ethical, a good pop culture reference has layers. It makes you think about why the reference works and what specifically causes it to work. However, much like a pop culture reference, a sniping attempt can go badly. You might just accidentally hit someone else, like when Moneypenny accidentally shot James Bond off a train in Skyfall. Or, not as directly bad as shooting an innocent bystander but still not very good, the bullet might just whizz past your target and hit an inanimate object, giving away your position and cementing yourself as a failure of an assassin. The example from The Help I gave earlier is one such bullet that totally misses the target. There’s no creativity, no imagination, no curiosity to it. It’s just the book going “Hey, we’re in the sixties, and The Rolling Stones were also in the sixties. Funny how that works, right?” Sure, speaking purely in cold hard facts, The Rolling Stones did get their start around this time so it makes sense that someone from the deep south wouldn’t have heard of them yet. But that’s basically all there is to this reference: pointing out The Stones were just getting their start at this time like that’s somehow clever. It’s like when a comedian does a bad routine and then waits for the audience to react before going “Eh? Eh? See what I did there?” If the Nosferatu SpongeBob reference is Lee Harvey Oswald, the Help Rolling Stones is John Hinckley Jr.

But what do you do if you miss? If you only had the ability to take one shot, you would probably just cut your losses and move on. But if you are determined to take out the target, you can always try again. And even if you did hit the target, it may not have been enough to kill them. Maybe you got them in the arm or the leg or even the stomach; areas that will stop them in their tracks but aren’t necessarily fatal. Sometimes, a second bullet is required. And in fiction, you do have the ability to put in more than one pop culture reference and still be okay. Back in Avengers: Infinity War, before the Squidward line and when Tony Stark and Bruce Banner reunite, Tony tells Bruce that the Avengers have broken up. Banner reacts with incredulity and confusion. “Broke up? Like a band? Like the Beatles?” To once again needlessly overanalyze a pop culture reference (because everyone loves it when someone does that), this one works because Bruce is essentially comparing a group of people who broke up for reasons concerning politics, violence, and betrayal to a rock band who broke up mainly for creative differences and just needing a break from each other. 

Now while those two references in Infinity War work, they work in part because of how decently spaced they are between each other. They’re a good spread apart and in between them are other kinds of jokes and the actual story progressing. This is key; you shouldn’t need to overload your story with pop culture references much like how a sniper doesn’t need to overload his target with bullets from his rifle. At that point, the sniper’s cover would already have been blown and everyone would think that they’re just sloppy. Media with way too many references are like this; think of something like Ready Player One or any episode of The Big Bang Theory. Works where the references aren’t a bonus addition or a fun, once-in-a-while thing; they essentially are what they reference, with not a lot of other substance to them. No sauce under the cheese. If I listed every reference in Ready Player One, the list would be longer than the book and movie combined and The Big Bang Theory doesn’t so much celebrate nerd culture and references as it does utterly mock and ridicule them (every goddamn reference the show does ends in an obnoxious laugh track signaling the nerdiness should be mocked and ridiculed). Worse yet, projects like these and their references could potentially cause the viewer to just stop watching them. Because after all, why would you watch something that just references other works when you could just as easily watch the references themselves?  

But excessive violence can serve a purpose in some extreme instances. You ever wonder why, during hits or whacks carried out by the mob, they shoot a person so many times to the point where you have to pull out the Simpsons clip of a kid screaming “Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!”? It’s to show that this is what happens if you ever do the mob wrong. Do you really want to end up with so many holes in you? Like Sonny Corleone in The Godfather? Then don’t fuck with the mafia. The excessive violence has a point. It may be hard to do with a sniper rifle, but a tommy gun? It can be done. 

An example of this in the pop culture sphere would be a show like Stranger Things. The show is often criticized for having way too many references to 1980s pop culture, to the point where it overtakes whatever substance the show has. And, sometimes, it does. But do the references serve a larger point? What is the show actually saying with these references? The media that the characters in Stranger Things consume, from Dungeons & Dragons to the music of the Clash and Kate Bush (among various other needle drops) to, because it’s the eighties, obviously, Star Wars, is how they understand and come to terms with the frequently bizarre and disturbing world events around them. The monsters and villains from Dungeons and Dragons are the given names of the actual monsters plaguing Hawkins, Star Wars allows the kids to describe certain adult things or other inexplicable phenomenon they might not understand (Hopper’s “betrayal” in season one being compared to Lando, Eleven’s powers being compared to Yoda), and the songs often serve as an escape device for their characters to help them out of dire situations whether at home (The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”) or from an actual nightmare dimension (Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”). Can the references be a little cheesy, trite, and eye-rolley? Yes, they can. But I believe they come from a real place of love and sincerity for the past and the characters who reference them. And honestly, it’s a real thing people do. Consuming media is often a way to both escape and understand the ever increasing cruel world around us. Stranger Things is just the idea pushed to an extreme point. I’ll take it any day over other works whose references seem to only serve for cheap laughs and causing the viewer to reenact the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme. 

There are other metaphors and analogies I could make comparing the art of making a pop culture reference to the act of sniping. For example, if a work seems to reference its past self in a less than sincere way (anything Disney farts out these days), it would be the equivalent of a sniper turning the rifle on themselves and blowing their brains out. But since that’s kinda gross and depressing I won’t talk about it. I think I’ve said enough; hopefully, you get what I’m trying to say. Making a pop culture reference and making it well takes a lot of work, more than seems apparent. Much like how sniping takes a lot of work. There is one key difference between making a pop culture reference and sniping though. If you make a pop culture reference badly, you’ll be made fun of, endlessly ridiculed online for years to come. If you fail at assassinating someone, I don’t think people will even remember your name, let alone what you did. However, just like making a pop culture reference in a way that’s good, if you succeed at hitting your target, you may just go down in the history books. 

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