Dinosaurs in popular culture
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As they are popularly understood, dinosaurs were creatures of fantastic appearance and often enormous size. As such, they have captured people's imagination and become an enduring part of popular culture. Dinosaur exhibitions, park and museum exhibits around the world both cater to and reinforce public interest. The popular preoccupation with dinosaurs also is reflected in a broad array of fictional and non-fictional works.
Notable examples of older fictional works featuring dinosaurs include Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Lost World; the 1933 film King Kong; and Godzilla. The depiction of humans and dinosaurs living together has been a recurring theme in fiction. Films which famously portrayed this idea include The Valley of Gwangi (1969) and One Million Years B.C. (1966). Ray Harryhausen brought the dinosaurs to life in both films using models and stop motion animation. Older films and literature generally depict dinosaurs as sluggish, unintelligent, lizard-like creatures.
More recently, the portrayal of dinosaurs in works intended for popular consumption has tended to reflect a more nuanced, modern scientific understanding of the animals. In particular, the development and refinement of computer-generated imagery has led to a revolution in the depiction of dinosaurs on film. Perhaps the most prominent example of CGI dinosaurs remains the film Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg and featuring special effects by ILM. The success of Jurassic Park and its two sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, demonstrates the continued popularity of dinosaurs. The falling cost of computer-generated effects also has recently allowed the production of documentaries for television; the award-winning 1999 BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs is a notable example.
Dinosaurs are often anthropomorphized in fiction. In works intended for young children, they are imbued with friendly, even loving personalities. Examples of this trend include the 1960s cartoon The Flintstones, the 1970s show Land of the Lost, the 1988 film The Land Before Time as well as the late 1980s Dino-Riders and Denver, the Last Dinosaur, and the 1990s Dinosaurs and Barney & Friends, along with the live action Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and one of its reincarnations, Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. The Dinotopia series of books depicts a mixed human-dinosaur society, with dinosaurs being the social and intellectual equals of humans on a utopian island.
Cartoons, comic books, and comic strips also regularly depict dinosaurs. The cartoon The Flintstones showcased a stone age family living with dinosaurs (although in reality, humans did not appear until tens of millions of years after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs). Comic strips such as Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side often feature dinosaur-oriented content. The comics entitled, Dinosaurs for Hire, portrayed anthropomorphic dinosaurs in a very unusual way; its trio of gun-toting, trigger-happy dinos were notable for their "Who's Extinct?" t-shirts and their love of "Kojak". Dinosaur Comics is another comic that uses dinosaur exclusively as characters. There also is a comic book just for dinosaurs, titled Age of Reptiles. In the toyline and series known as Transformers, some characters transform into various dinosaurs, percifically the Dinobots a group of Autobots, a few Predacons from Beast Wars also transform into Dinosaurs such as Megatron. Some Digimon are based on Dinosaurs, some noticable ones are Agumon and Tyrannomon. Some Pokemon greatly resemble Dinosaurs, such as Trideps and Rampard.
Many computer and console games also have featured dinosaurs as characters. The Jurassic Park films inspired multiple computer games (see Jurassic Park video games). Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Ape Escape, the Turok series, the Dino Crisis series, the Super Mario series with Yoshi, and even Zoo Tycoon have involved dinosaurs in their story lines. A stage in Sonic and the Secret Rings called Dinosaur Jungle features a few Dinosaurs including a few pterodactyls and three triceratops which chase Sonic the Hedgehog (character), some are also seen in some of the minigames.
Fine art is not exempt from featuring dinosaurs. For thirty years the sculpture exhibition, Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs traveled around the world to be featured in fine art museums, natural history museums, historical sites, botanical gardens, and international automobile shows. [1] Although the dinosaurs only were part of his artwork, first being featured among his more conventional sculptures, soon the exhibition was being booked as a solo show to attract great public attendance to the venues. The term, Garysauruses, was coined in 2006 to describe the dinosaur sculptures Jim Gary created. [2]
Because dinosaurs were a highly successful, imposing group of creatures which, abruptly and completely, became extinct, they are often evoked in metaphor. In order to explain the sudden disappearance of the creatures when they were first discovered, religious scientists in the 1800s took the view that their divinity made dinosaurs extinct because of imperfections in the creatures; This led to the derisive use of "dinosaur" to mean people, styles, and ideas that are perceived to be out of date, and on the wane. For example, members of the punk movement derided the "progressive" bands that preceded them as "dinosaur groups".
[edit] See also
- Living dinosaurs
- Religious perspectives on dinosaurs
- Pterodactyls in popular culture
- Dinobots (Group of dinosaur robots from Transformers (fiction))
