Aqualad knows Moby Dick

Aquaman #9 from 1963

Aqualad calls a whale and of course calls it "Moby."

However, this is probably like us calling all dolphins "Flipper" or collies "Lassie." Most modern folk have probably never even seen these television shows. Is t that what we are doing when we say the whale's name? I mean, there is no other name for a whale out there, really. "Moby" is a quick name tag to place on a whale.

Just showing how it is all over, even in the small moments.

Hulk's nemesis was Ahab

I was reading a Hulk comic book and came across a Moby Dick reference.

Fall of the Hulks: Gamma #1 (February 2010)

The Thing of the Fantastic Four is delivering a eulogy for General Thunderbolt Ross, who was killed by the Red Hulk. The Thing says, "Like Ahab, the Hulk was Ross' white whale. S'okay, so, Reed [Mr. Fantastic of the Fantasic Four] wrote that 'Ahab' bit, but I'd bet my last nickel that if Ross were here, there's nothing I said that he wouldn't want said."

This is just in the middle of the comic book. Out of nowhere, this analogy comes up. There is not even a preface for it. Also note how The Thing said that the smart guy had to write the analogy. Not the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing, the "regular guy" on the Fantastic Four. The smart guy had to come up with it. The analogy is spot on, by the way, almost like it was originally conceived that way. I wonder if it was.

Just very interesting where these references come up and how they are used.

It's a prime example

Yesterday while I was at the laundromat, washing and drying our comforters for the new year, I was perusing through a Family Circle magazine from November 2010. Trust me, it was the best choice of magazine they had there...

Anyway, it had one of those little articles that compare and showcase different types of the same product. This one showed different versions of the e-Reader or Kindle product. Some were showing readings of the daily variety--you know, download today's paper and such.

Two showed books. One showed To Kill a Mockingbird, the other showed Moby Dick.

I don't know who set up the shoot. Is Moby Dick really the book you want to push your product?

Granted, that's how I finally finished Moby Dick. I had it on my e-Reader from Sony. I don't know if I ever could have finished it in paper form.

I just find it fascinating that Moby Dick was chosen as one of the books to showcase the entire realm of fiction available to read.

Whales of Atlantis

In searching for anything with the words "Moby Dick" in them, I came across a DVD:

Jules Verne Adventure Expeditions--Whales of Atlantis: In Search of Moby Dick (2007)

Just another tenuous grasp of calling on the name of Moby Dick to talk about whales and ecology. I guess it is the "in" that the producers make to have us feel comfortable talking about it.

However, it was kind of interesting in examining the now-defunct whaling industry of the Azores. They referenced several times that the Azores could be Atlantis.

Narrated by Christopher Lee, the quotes from the book sound so much better in his voice, making Melville give "a harrowing description of these hunts" and you actually believe they are harrowing in his voice.

Like the book, this show talks about the whaling town almost as if Ishmael had seen it from this 2007 perspective instead of 1850. It does not romanticize whaling though, as they quote from Albert I of Monaco about whaling being barbaric.

And then it gets a bit cheesy: "Watching the killing of a whale is a vision of the end of the world."

While it started with a quote from Melville, it ended with a Verne quote from Captain Nemo. I guess it is appropriate, being a Verne expedition. However, it is almost disquieting as they needed to grasp Melville in order to show their dive with a sperm whale. So which author do they really want to track? That's the tenuous connection--whale? oh, gotta say Moby Dick. I am sure they could have steered clear of it and just used Verne's works, even remotely. But no, they have to say Moby Dick if it is a whale.

Not even Cliff read Moby Dick

Et tu, Cliffs Notes? We have nothing against Cliffs in some circumstances.
Let's face it, the last guy in the English-speaking world to actually read Moby
Dick was the guy who wrote the Cliffs.

taken from http://www.wsu.edu:8001/~delahoyd/shakespeare/strumpets.html

I was doing some research for Shakespeare class and online references for the students when I came across that tidbit.

Karl Rove is Ahab?

On 10-20-2010, Karl Rove was on Megyn Kelly’s FOX News show and said comments roughly like:

"I am Ahab, chasing the white whale. I used to say that I was Grendel in Beowulf but nobody remembered that old high school reference."

The fascinating part is not Rove comparing himself to Ahab, but that he had to change the reference, a much better analogy to Grendel, to Ahab because more people understood it. This validates the ultimate reasons that I started doing this blog—we all know Moby Dick but the general populace has not read it. The “all” is the general populace that knows such things, such as Superman’s symbol even in third world countries.

Moby Dick in commercial again

Again proving to me that we all know the story even though we haven't read the book, just the other night I saw this commercial on the Blackberry Torch with AT&T. It was directed by Dennis Liu for the ad agency BBDO.

Complete with a map reference to Nantucket; character names from the book including Ishmael, Stubb, Flask, and Starbuck; the idea of "searching for Moby Dick;" going around Cape Horn, a reference to "Thar she blows;" and, of course, the "white whale."

What do you make of this? The idea that this classic has permeated into our culture enough to be deemed common knowledge enough to reference in a brand new technology commercial. It does lend itself well here, the idea of "searching" with the uses of the internet and the phone, Facebooking with the characters, snapping a pic. What other popular reference do you use?

By the way, the URL for www.att.com/moby-dick does not exist.







See the full ad here: http://www.radicalmedia.com/Commercials/Dennis-Liu/Commercials/#/12948/

Thanks to Librivox for the linkage to the commercial, at http://librivox.org/2010/08/26/librivox-in-att-commercial/. I tried to listen to the Librivox audio, no offense to the reader, but again it was the material! I was trapped in the car almost 50 minutes each way and I didn't want to listen to it!