Tuesday, November 9th, 2010...2:04 am
William Blake in popular culture
So, here you can read about all the cultural fields that Blake has influenced:
Literature. Blake’s illustrated books were much imitated in the early twentieth century, and the emergence of radical ideas about alternative futures heightened the appeal of Blake’s prophetic literature. Aldous Huxley took up the idea of The Doors of Perception, in a 1954 book of the same name about mind expansion through ingestion of mescaline. C. S. Lewis took up the theme of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in the preface of his book The Great Divorce, in which he describes Blake as a “great genius.” William Butler Yeats edited a collection of Blake’s poetry and considered himself the inheritor of his poetic mission.
Blake’s painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun (1806-1809) and the poem “Auguries of Innocence” both play a prominent role in Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon (1981), in which the killer Francis Dolarhyde has an obsession with the painting. Dolarhyde imagines himself ‘becoming’ a being like the Red Dragon featured in the paintings. In Hannibal, a copy of Blake’s painting The Ancient of Days is owned by Mason Verger, a reference to Verger’s Urizenic qualities.
Blake and his wife Kate are the major characters in Ray Nelson’s science fiction novel Blake’s Progress (1975), which subsequently was extensively rewritten and republished as Timequest (1985). William Blake’s mapping of London in Jerusalem inspired London psychogeography in the work of novelist Iain Sinclair, biographer Peter Ackroyd and poet Aidan Dun, and his epic Milton a Poem was adapted by J. G. Ballard’s 1979 novel, The Unlimited Dream Company.
Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses (1988) contains a brief episode in which the characters discuss Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Visual arts, comics, and graphic novels. Blake is often cited as an inspiration in comic literature. Alan Moore cites Blake’s work in V for Vendetta (1982-5) and Watchmen (1986-7). As an apparent homage to Blake’s importance in Moore’s work, a framed copy of Blake’s watercolor “Elohim Creating Adam” can be seen when Evey first explores V’s hideout in the film version of V for Vendetta. William Blake also becomes an important figure in Moore’s later work, and is a featured character in From Hell (1991-98) and Angel Passage (2001). In From Hell, Blake appears as a mystical and occultic foil to William Gull’s aristocratic plot to murder the prostitutes of Whitechapel in London. Gull appears to Blake in two visions over the course of Moore’s comic, and becomes the inspiration for “The Ghost of a Flea.” Angel Passage was performed at the 2001 Tate Gallery exhibition of Blake accompanied with art by John Coultart.
Grant Morrison, R. Crumb, and J. M. DeMatteis have all cited Blake as one of their major inspirations. Comic designer William Blake Everett claims to be descended from Blake. Blake’s Urizen appears in an early issue of Morrison’s Invisibles, as well as Todd McFarlane’s occult superhero comic Spawn. Garth Ennis also cites Blake’s work in the Punisher MAX one-shot titled “The Tyger.”
Films. Blake’s poetry and art has been referenced many times in films, and in some instances has had an extremely important part to play in development of some films. In Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 western Dead Man, the central character, played by Johnny Depp, is named William Blake and allusions to Blake’s poetry appear thematically as well as explicitly. A native American, called “Nobody”, saves William Blake’s life, and actually thinks that the person whose life he has saved is, in fact, William Blake the poet.
Probably the most popular use of Blake occurs in the film versions of the novel Red Dragon, Manhunter (1986) and Red Dragon (2002), include images of Blake’s “The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun”. In the first film the character played by Tom Noonan sports a tattoo on his chest based on Blake’s image of the dragon hovering over the woman. The second film has the character (played by Ralph Fiennes) display a stylised version of the dragon tattooed on his back. Likewise, in Hannibal (2001), when Mason Verger wishes to convince agent Clarice Starling that Hannibal Lecter wishes to contact her, he sends a postcard of Blake’s The Ghost of a Flea.
Blakean motifs have a substantial role in other American independent films since 2000. Hal Hartley’s The New Math(s) (2000), in which two students fight with their teacher over the solution to a complex mathematical equation, takes as its inspiration Blake’s The Book of Thel, with music by the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Similarly, Gus Van Sant’s Last Days (2005), which is loosely based on the final hours of Kurt Cobain, has a central character called Blake. The Blakean allusions are subtle throughout the film and include Hildegard Westerkamp’s “Doors of Perception” soundscape, itself a response to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. At the end of the film, having committed suicide, Blake’s soul ascends from his body in a scene that directly references the illustrations to Robert Blair’s The Grave, which was illustrated by Blake in 1808.
Classical music. Blake’s poems have been set to music by many composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten. In the early twentieth century British Classical song writers regularly set his work for voice or choir. The most famous musical setting is Hubert Parry’s hymn Jerusalem, which was written as a patriotic song during World War I.
Contemporary classical composers have also continued to set Blake’s work. Composer William Bolcom set the entire collection of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1984, a recording of which was released in 2006. John Mitchell has also set songs from the Poetical Sketches as “Seven Songs from William Blake”. Eve Beglarian has written a piece called “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” inspired by and using quotations from Blake’s work of the same name.
Popular music. With the emergence of modern popular music in the 1950s and 60s, Blake became a hero of the counter culture. Dylan’s songs were compared to Blake. Dylan also collaborated with Allen Ginsberg to record two Blake songs. Ginsberg himself performed and recorded many Blake songs, claiming that the spirit of Blake had communicated musical settings of several Blake poems to him. He believed that in 1948 in an apartment in Harlem, he had had an auditory hallucination of Blake reading his poems “Ah, Sunflower,” “The Sick Rose,” and “Little Girl Lost” (later referred to as his “Blake vision”).
The lines “Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night” from Blake’s poem “Auguries of Innocence” are quoted by Jim Morrison in the song “End of the Night” from The Door’s debut album.
The Fugs set several of Blake’s songs, and performed a “Homage to William and Catherine Blake,” celebrating their sexual freedom. Atomic Rooster used Blake’s painting “Nebuchadnezzar” for the cover of their 1970 album, Death Walks Behind You.
Games. In Fallout 2, if Lt. Col. Dr. Charles Curling is convinced that his research, if used as others plan, will result in genocide, he recites “The Tyger”.
The online game Lost Souls uses the Proverbs of Hell as magical control phrases for a kind of enchanted wand created by the Aligned, a group of artist-philosopher-magicians.
The RuneScape character Bill Blakey, a musician and poet, is a William Blake homage.
The art for the Yu-Gi-Oh! card “Red Dragon Archfiend” appears to be an intentional homage to the Great Red Dragon Paintings.
Assets for the game Dante’s Inferno draw upon Blake’s illustrations to Dante as well as those by Gustave Doré and Auguste Rodin.
David Axelrod’s “Holy Thursday”, from his album Songs of Innocence (inspired by Blake’s work of the same name), is included on the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto IV.
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