The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in popular culture
T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is often referenced in popular culture.
Film and television
- In John Boorman's 1974 film Zardoz, the character Zed demonstrates his erudition by quoting the lines: "To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question, / To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'—)
- In Woody Allen's Love and Death (1975), set in Tsarist Russia, protagonist Boris scrawls lines 73-74 of the poem while struggling to make a living as a poet ("I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas"). He abandons his draft, however, dismissing it as "too sentimental."
- Lines from the poem are quoted at several points in the Alan Bleasdale television series G.B.H., by Mr. Weller, who is unable to express his love for the women he encounters.
- Patricia Rozema's 1987 Canadian cult film I've Heard the Mermaids Singing centers on a social misfit and photographer named Polly Vandersma, played by Sheila McCarthy. The title is taken from the line, "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me." (Eliot himself took this image from a poem by John Donne, "Song: Go and catch a falling star.").
- In the 2002 Michael Petroni movie, Till Human Voices Wake Us, (the title coming from the last lines in Prufrock) a man encounters a mysterious woman who reminds him of someone from his past. Throughout the film, references to the poem are made either directly or indirectly through character dialog. Further thematic links are made between the two works through the use of metaphorical imagery representative of aging, death, and decay.
- In Woody Allen's 2011 film Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson's character Gil meets T.S. Elliot in a cab. Gil says that "Prufrock" is like his mantra. Although, Gil tells Elliot that where he comes from (Hollywood), people measure their lives out in coke spoons, rather than coffee spoons.
Music
- The songs "Dark Star" and "Stella Blue" by The Grateful Dead both paraphrase the poem it repeatedly throughout with lines like "Shall we go, you and I?" and "I've stayed in every blue light cheap motel."
- The Australian musical satirist Tim Minchin's "Perineum Millennium" references and makes stylistic uses of this poem and other Eliot works heavily.
- In 1974, the rock group Ambrosia wrote, "why must we continually disturb the Universe with decisions and revision which a minute will reverse?" The song was titled "Time Waits for No One," from their first album.
- American musician James McMurtry sings “I measure out my life in coffee grounds” in the first stanza of his 2005 song “Charlemagne′s Home Town” (see Childish Things). This is a variation of Prufrock′s 51st verse “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”.[2] The title of McMurtry′s previous album Too Long in the Wasteland is also a deliberate reference to the poetry of T. S. Eliot.[3]
- Norwegian pop artist Morten Abel released his album Here We Go Then, You and I in 1999. The title of the album is from the poem, and appears as a line in the song "Be My Lover". (The original line is "Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky")
- American folk singer Sibylle Baier references lines 120-121 in the song "Says Elliott," singing: "'When I grow old, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled,' says Elliott." (The original lines read "I grow old . . . I grow old . . . / I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.")
- Lloyd Cole & The Commotions explicitly refer to the poem in the song "Mr Malcontent" with the line "Should I laugh or should I cry/Should I part my hair behind?"
Literature
- James McLure's one-act play Private Wars features the character Natwick discussing "Prufrock" with another character, Woodruff Gately. Natwick makes reference to the "peach" section of the poem.
- Two characters in Anne Rivers Siddons's novel, Outer Banks, discuss the poem at length at various times in their relationship. Later on one character seems to hear "the mermaids singing, each to each" as she races across a bridge in her car during a hurricane.
- The third novel in James Morrow's Godhead Trilogy is entitled The Eternal Footman.
- David Nicholls quotes the poem in preface to 'The Understudy' and refers to it extensively in 'Starter for Ten'.
- The National Lampoon August 1972 issue featured an article by Sean Kelly's entitled "The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover" which began "We'd better go quietly, you and I." [4][5] A 1997 detective novel by Kinky Friedman uses this spoof title.[6]
References