The Raven in popular culture

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Edgar Allen Poe's poem "The Raven" has been frequently referenced and parodied in contemporary culture.

1 Print
2 Film
3 Television
4 Music
5 Other
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Print

Will Elder's absurd illustrations of "The Raven", from Mad Magazine #9, March 1954.

Illustration by Edouard Manet from an 1875, French-language version of "The Raven"

In Mad Magazine issue 9 (March, 1954), "The Raven" is reprinted in full with absurd illustrations by Will Elder. A parody by Frank Jacobs, titled "The Reagan", appeared in issue 265 (September 1986).
"The Raven" has been the subject of constrained writing. Georges Perec's novel A Void (1969), written entirely without the letter 'E' in French and subsequently translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the same constraint, contains a full-length "translation" of "The Raven" entitled "Black Bird".
Mathematician Mike Keith has also referenced the poem in three examples of constrained writing:
- "Near a Raven", a reworking of Poe's poem in which the length of words correspond to the first 740 digits of pi (1995)
- Cadaeic Cadenza, a longer work under the same constraint (1996)
- "Raven-Two", a poetic anagram of the original (1999)
Black House, a novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub, features a talking crow reminiscent of the raven in Poe's poem.^[1] In addition, Part III of the novel is entitled "Night's Plutonian Shore."
A raven named Quoth is a minor character associated with Death in Terry Pratchett's fictional Discworld universe, although on a matter of principle he "doesn't do the N word." He is currently in the employ of a Wizard; his job mainly entails sitting on a talking skull and croaking a lot.
Writer James Russell Lowell references to "The Raven" in his poem, "A Fable for Critics": "Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three fifths of him genius, two fifths sheer fudge." This mention alludes to the belief^[2] that Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty may have inspired Poe to write "The Raven".
In Robin Jarvis's Tales from the Wyrd Museum trilogy, Woden has two raven servants named Thought and Memory. Memory is known as Quoth throughout the stories, and occasionally says "Nevermore".
In Joan Aiken's novel Arabel's Raven (and further books from the Arabel and Mortimer series), a young girl named Arabel has a pet Raven named Mortimer who often says the word "Nevermore!" Ironically perhaps, Aiken won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1972.
Neil Gaiman references "The Raven" in two of his works:
- In the novel American Gods, the protagonist, Shadow, asks one of Odin's ravens, "Hey, Hugin or Munin, or whoever you are. Say 'Nevermore.'" The raven responds, "Fuck you."
- The comic book series The Sandman features a raven named Matthew, who has been transformed into a raven as an alternative to death. At one point in the series, he flaps his wings and screams, "Nevermore!", only to explain that he was "being Peter Lorre in that one Roger Corman movie".
Level Ground Press and artist Bill Fountain published an illustrated re-imagining of "The Raven" in 2005. The book incorporates raven myths and legends from around the world into the visual interpretation of the story.
In Stephen King's novel Insomnia, Ralph compares an omen to the raven of the poem.
In the seventh book of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Vile Village, a tree in the center of the village covered with birds is called the "Nevermore Tree."
In the Donald Duck 10-pager "Raven Mad" by Carl Barks, published in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #265 in 1962, Huey, Dewey and Louie play with a raven who can only say "Nevermore." As in the poem, the raven often repeats the word throughout the story.

[edit] Film

In 1942, Fleischer Studios created a two-reel Technicolor cartoon based upon "The Raven" which turned the story of the poem into a lighthearted comedy.
Roger Corman's 1963 film The Raven is derived from this poem.
In 1989's Batman, Jack Nicholson (as The Joker) quotes "The Raven" to Kim Basinger's Vicky Vale when he says, "Take thy beak from out my heart."
Hannes Rall directed an animated, German-language version of The Raven (Der Rabe) in 1998.
A Spanish short film, with English dialogues, directed by Tinieblas González appeared in 1999.
The poem was translated to film by Trilobite Pictures and director Peter Bradley in 2003. The short film was released on DVD in 2005 by Lurker Films.
In the 1994 film The Crow, Eric, the tragic main character, references "The Raven" before blowing up Gideon's pawn shop: "Suddenly, I heard a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. You heard me rapping, right?"
The stop-motion short film Vincent (1982), by Tim Burton, features a protagonist named Vincent Malloy, whose "favorite author is Edgar Allan Poe." As Vincent lies, seemingly dying, at the end of the film, he quotes the final couplet of "The Raven".

[edit] Television

The Simpsons version of "The Raven" (3rd segment of the first Treehouse of Horror special): Homer cries out "Be that word our sign of parting,"

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror parodies the poem in its third segment, with Homer as the narrator and Bart in raven form.
Garfield and Friends parody the poem in the form of a U.S. Acres short titled "Stark Raven Mad", in which Orson narrates, to the tune of the poem, guarding the harvest against Roy's attempts to steal it. Lenore is featured as Orson's ex-girlfriend.
Tiny Toon Adventures parodies the poem, with Sweetie Pie playing the role of the raven.
The Histeria! episode "Super Writers" featured a sketch in which a Peter Lorre-esque Poe attempts to pitch his poem to Sammy Melman, who wants a brighter poem with a happy narrator and a bunny instead of a raven. This frustrates Poe to no end and eventually drives him to publish the poem independently.
The 1960s sitcom The Munsters featured a cuckoo clock with a raven instead of a cuckoo, which would emerge and say, "Nevermore, Nevermore" - usually as a comic foil for Herman Munster.
The cartoon series Beetlejuice featured Poe as one of the eccentric residents of the netherworld. Poe mourns his "lost Lenore" until it is revealed that she has just been staying with her mother.
In 1979, Roto-Rooter Plumbing and Drain Cleaning Service created an animated television commercial entitled "The Raving," in which the protagonist faced a blocked drain rather than a lost love. The commercial's raven recommended the drain service.
An episode of Teen Titans entitled "Nevermore" follows two of the main characters, Beast Boy and Cyborg, as they use a magical mirror to enter the mind of their friend Raven.
In the Cartoon Network show My Gym Partner's a Monkey, during the episode "Gorilla of my Dreams," Principal Pixiefrog has a girlfriend named Lenore, and a raven flies into the window.

[edit] Music

Jean Sibelius allegedly based an early conception of his fourth symphony on "The Raven".
The Alan Parsons Project album Tales of Mystery and Imagination includes a song based on "The Raven" and entitled the same, but with only two verses.
The black metal band Carpathian Forest used the first two verses of the poem for "The Eclipse / The Raven" on their EP Through Chasm, Caves and Titan Woods (1995).
The gothic metal band Tristania released a track titled "My Lost Lenore" on Widow's Weeds (1998). It is clearly inspired by this poem, but does not incorporate the poem as part of the lyrics. The entire album is in fact reminiscent of The Raven.
A song based on "The Raven" appears on the Grave Digger album The Grave Digger (2003), alongside other songs based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
Lou Reed's 2003 album The Raven is based on Poe's work, including his own version of The Raven in a song by the same name.
Rapper MC Lars released the track "Mr. Raven" on The Laptop EP, quoting some lines directly from the poem and modifying others (e.g. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I kicked it [sic] weak and weary").
The song Kremlin Dusk, from Japanese pop star Utada Hikaru's English-language album Exodus (2004), begins "All along, I was searching for my Lenore/In the words of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe/Now I'm sober and "Nevermore"/Will the Raven come to bother me at home."
The German black metal band Agathodaimon paraphrased a verse from "The Raven" in the song "Les Posédes" on their 1999 album Higher Art of Rebellion.
The Christian third-wave ska band Five Iron Frenzy quotes many of Poe's lines in "That's How The Story Ends", from The End Is Near, and alludes ironically to the mysterious and somber mood of "The Raven".
The song "Campanas en la Noche" ("Bells in the Night") by the Argentine rock band Los Tipitos, the tale of a man wishing for the return of his lover, is loosely based on the poem. This relationship is even more evident in the song's video, which features the bust of Pallas and the titular raven itself.

[edit] Other

Lord Buckley recorded a "hipsemantic" version of "The Raven" in 1956 ("It was a real drugged midnight... dreary.").
Computer scientist Guy L. Steele, Jr. wrote a parody entitled "The HACTRN" about a hacker haunted by a phantom process [1].
The episode "Fry Hard II: The Chicken", of the cooking show Good Eats, has a fried chicken theme. As the host, Alton Brown prepares his chicken, he parodies "The Raven": "Quoth the chicken: fry some more!"
The song "Run-Around" by Blues Traveler begins, "Once upon a midnight dearie...", a reference to the opening of The Raven.
Holly Black quotes the poem in her novel Valiant : A Modern Tale of Faerie, alluding to it as the source for the name of the drug called 'Nevermore'. However, this is later contradicted, when one of the characters asserts that the name comes from the limitations of its use: "Never more than once a day, never more than a pinch at a time, and never more than two days in a row."
The Raven Society, founded 1904, is the University of Virginia's most prestigious honor society, combining requirements of high-level scholarship, service, leadership, and "promise of further advancement in the intellectual field." New members must supply a parody of the poem for initiation, which takes place in the room where Poe lived when studying at the University, now under the curatorship of the Society. The Society also owns and maintains several other Poe sites, including the grave of his mother in Richmond, Virginia.
Professional wrestler Raven (Scott Levy) takes his stage name from the title of the poem, and often quotes from the poem in interviews.
The background for Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 miniatures wargame gives the last word spoken by Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard Space Marine Legion, as 'Nevermore'. Corax is the Latin species name of the common raven.
The comic strip Shoe ran a strip in which a large, strange, black bird was sitting at Roz's bar, uttering random words starting with "never-" or ending in "-more" (e.g., "Livermore!"; "Nevertheless!"), when one of the regular characters announced that the raven was bombed.
Baltimore residents elected to name their NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens, after the poem. Thus, they honor Poe, who is buried in Baltimore.^[3]