Frogs in popular culture

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Frog and Mouse by Getsuju, a Japanese artist of the Edo period
Frog and Mouse by Getsuju, a Japanese artist of the Edo period

Frogs feature prominently in folklore and fairy tales in many cultures, such as the story of The Frog Prince, up to modern-day popular culture. Pop culture tends to portray frogs as benign, but ugly, and often clumsy, but also with hidden talents. David P. Badger's Frogs (S.l.: Voyageur Press, 2001) includes chapters on "frogs in popular culture, their physical characteristics and behavior, and environmental challenges."[1]

Michigan J. Frog, featured in a Warner Brothers cartoon, will only perform his singing and dancing routine for his owner. Once another person looks at him, he will return to a frog-like pose, and begin calling. The Frog Prince is a fairytale of a frog who turns into a handsome prince once kissed. Slippy Toad, a character from the Star Fox series of computer games, is a talented mechanic, but mediocre pilot, who often ends up needing to be rescued by his team mates. Kermit the Frog, on the other hand, is a conscientious and disciplined character of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show; while openly friendly and greatly talented, he is often portrayed as cringing at the fanciful behaviour of more flamboyant characters.

The theme of transfiguration of and into frogs also features prominently, as in The Frog Prince, but also in fantasy settings such as in the Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger videogames that sometimes include magic spells that turn people into frogs.

Frogs are popular subjects of experimentation, as in scientific demonstrations of nerve action and diamagnetism, and cruelty, as in video games such as Frogger and Ribbit King.

Frogs are also used as symbols of disgust due to their moist skin that can be perceived as slimey, and the sometimes repugnant secretions, especially of toads. In the Bible (Exodus 8:6) the Second Plague is one of frogs is sent upon Egypt. They are also associated with unclean spirits in Revelations 16:13.[2]

Frogs are eaten, notably in France. One dish is known as cuisses de grenouille, frogs' legs, and although it is not especially common, it is taken as indicative of French cuisine. Thus frogs are sometimes used to represent French people.

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[edit] Urban myths

The behavior of frogs illustrating nonaction is a myth, typically expressed in the story of the boiling frog:

Take a pot of hot water and a frog. Throw the frog into the pot. What do you think will happen? The obvious, of course: the frog will jump out. Who likes hanging around in a pot of hot water? Now ... take a pot of cold water, put the frog in it, and place the pot on the stove. Turn on the heat. This time something different will occur. The frog, because of the incremental change in temperature, will not notice that it is slowly being boiled.[3]

This myth was also referenced in Ian Fleming's novel You Only Live Twice.

Professor Doug Melton, Harvard University Biology Department, says this of the myth: "If you put a frog in boiling water, it won't jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot -- they don't sit still for you."[4]

Frogs fall from the sky in various urban myths. This may derive from incidents when frogs are picked up by a tornado, or when a sudden migration of frogs happens overnight. This has also happened with fish.

In medieval Europe the frog was a symbol of the devil due to the Catholic church associating the frog as one of the animals witches use as a familiar.[5]

[edit] Ancient beliefs

[edit] Egyptian mythology

To the Egyptians, the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual inundation of the Nile, which brought fertility to the otherwise barren lands. Consequently, in Egyptian mythology, there began to be a frog-goddess, who represented fertility, named Heget (also Heqet, Heket), meaning frog. Heget was usually depicted as a frog, or a woman with a frog's head, or more rarely as a frog on the end of a phallus to explicitly indicate her association with fertility.[2]

The Ogdoad are the eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis. They were arranged in four male-female pairs, with the males associated with frogs, and the females with snakes

Hapy, was a deification of the annual flood of the Nile River, in Egyptian mythology, which deposited rich silt on the banks, allowing the Egyptians to grow crops. In Lower Egypt, he was adorned with papyrus plants, and attended by frogs, present in the region, and symbols of it.

[edit] Ancient Greece and Rome

The Greeks and Romans associated frogs with fertility and harmony, and with licentiousness in association with Aphrodite.[2]

  • The combat between the Frogs and the Mice (Batrachomyomachia) was a mock epic, commonly attributed to Homer.
  • The Frogs who wanted a King is a fable, attributed to Aesop. The Frogs prayed to Zeus asking for a King. Zeus set up a log to be their monarch. The Frogs protested they wanted a fierce and terrible king, not a mere figurehead. So Zeus sent them a Stork to be their king. The new king hunted and devoured his subjects (as many human kings also do).
  • The Frogs is a comic play by Aristophanes. The choir of frogs sings the famous line: "Brekekekex koax koax."

[edit] Ancient China

The frog represents the lunar yin, and the Frog spirit Ch'ing-Wa Sheng is associated with healing and good fortune in business, although a frog in a well is symbolic of a person lacking in understanding and vision.[2]

[edit] Frogs in media

[edit] Manga and anime

  • Sgt. Frog (ケロロ軍曹 Keroro Gunsō?, title character portrayed by Kumiko Watanabe) features humorous frog-like alien invaders who wind up on Earth in the manga and anime series of the same name created by Mine Yoshizaki in 2004. Keroro licensed product merchandise is immensely popular on both sides of the Pacific.
  • Yokozuna is a Sumo-Wrestling Frog in the manga/anime series One Piece.
  • The character Jiraiya in the manga/anime series Naruto calls himself the Toad Hermit. He has an established blood contract with the toads and can summon them at any time. In the series, the giant Chief of the Toads is the powerful Gamabunta. His son is Gamakichi, whom Naruto saves from Gaara. This leads to Gamabunta helping Naruto to fight against Gaara.
  • The character Anita King in the manga series Read or Dream and the anime series R.O.D. the TV has an obsession with collecting frog-themed items such as stuffed toys and clothing with frog designs.


[edit] American comic books

[edit] Literature

[edit] Film

  • Flip the Frog, star of an Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation. Also a character in some of Eric W. Schwartz's animations, inspired by the MGM character but with more anthropomorphism.
  • Tijuana Toads
  • Frog is a 1987 film featuring the frog Prince Giuseppe (aka Gus), voiced by Paul Williams[6].
  • In the 80's, the French satirical version of the Muppet Show, named Le Bébête Show, portrayed socialist president François Mitterrand as Kermitterand in reference to Kermit the Frog.
  • In Spirited Away, the male workers at the bath-house Aburaya, where the main character Chihiro is employed, appear to be half-humanoid, half-frog hybrids, though one of the workers is a normal frog, dressed in blue, who can talk.
  • In the popular Flash Cartoon Awesome Dome, the mascot of the dome is a creature named Ugly the Frog.
  • In the poorly-known animated film Freddie as F.R.O.7, the title character is a prince transformed into a frog working as a secret agent.
  • The 2006 Little Red Riding Hood spoof, Hoodwinked, features an anthropomorphic frog, named Nicky Flippers, who is on the woods' police force.
  • In the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, the boiling frog was cited as an allusion to the situation humans and global warming.
  • Max Keeble's Big Move featured a frog character dressed in full Scottish regalia including kilt and bagpipes, named McGoogles, who had been the entertainment at Max Keeble's birthday party (really Max's father in a McGoogles costume). Troy McGinty, a bully, was deathly afraid of McGoogles since the birthday party and Max took advantage of Troy's McGoogles-phobia as a means of retaliation.
  • Meet the Robinsons features a swing band/mob group of genetically enhanced frogs, the group led by a frog named Frankie.
  • Jabba the Hutt in the Star Wars series looks like a frog and has a name that means "frog" in Yiddish.
  • In the Shrek series of films, Shrek's father-in-law is a King who used to be a Frog, and reverts to his Frog form. He dies, in fact, as a Frog.
  • In the 2006 fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth, Ofelia, the main character, encounters a giant toad

[edit] Television

[edit] Music

[edit] Video games

[edit] Frog proverbs

  • "You can't tell by looking at a frog how high he will jump." - proverb.
  • Vietnamese people have a saying: "Ếch ngồi đáy giếng coi trời bằng vung" ("Sitting at the bottom of wells, frogs think that the sky is as wide as a lid") which ridicules someone who is narrow-knowledged but arrogant. It is similar to the Chinese language sayings "坐井觀天" and "井底之蛙".

[edit] Frogs in scientific demonstrations

A live frog levitates inside a 32 mm diameter vertical bore of a Bitter solenoid in a magnetic field of about 16 teslas at the Nijmegen High Field Magnet Laboratory. Movie
A live frog levitates inside a 32 mm diameter vertical bore of a Bitter solenoid in a magnetic field of about 16 teslas at the Nijmegen High Field Magnet Laboratory. Movie

Frogs have been featured in studies of diamagnetism in biological organisms. As such those organisms were submitted to a large magnetic field (several Teslas) produced by a Bitter electromagnet and found levitating due to the diamagnetic features of water (as well as any other substance that is). Apparently a frog was used for the following reason as described by a researcher: "We were amazed to find out that 90% of our colleagues did not believe that we were not joking that water can levitate. It became obvious to us that it was important to make scientists (as well as non-scientists) aware of the phenomenon. We levitated a live frog and other not-very-scientific objects because of their obvious appeal to a broader audience and in the hope that researchers from various disciplines, not only physicists, would never ever forget this often neglected force and the opportunities it offers."[9]

[edit] Frogs in confectionery

[edit] Frogs and the French

  • The French custom of eating frog legs is the source of the English use of the derogatory nickname "frogs" for French people. It may also stem from the fact that, before they adopted the Fleur de Lis as their symbol, the frog served as an avatar for the French kingdom. [10]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ aRE THERE FEWER FROGS?
  2. ^ a b c d Cooper, JC (1992). Symbolic and Mythological Animals. London: Aquarian Press, 106-08. ISBN 1-85538-118-4. 
  3. ^ Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane, Manfred Kets de Vries.
  4. ^ Next Time, What Say We Boil a Consultant. Retrieved on 2006-03-10.
  5. ^ The Continuum Encyclopedia of Symbols
  6. ^ Frog (1987) (TV)
  7. ^ Peter, Paul & Mary, I'm In Love With a Big Blue Frog, YouTube
  8. ^ Muppet Show, I'm In Love With a Big Blue Frog, YouTube
  9. ^ (Russian) HFML, Levitation
  10. ^ BBC NEWS | UK | Why do the French call the British 'the roast beefs'?

[edit] External links

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