In Popular Culture
- Pittsburgh Steelers iconic middle linebacker of the 1970s, Jack Lambert, had a nickname of "Jack Splat" that played on the nursery rhyme. He was noted for his excellent tackling skills as well as intense play, hence opposing ball carriers would go "splat" when tackled.
- In a scene deleted from Mel Brooks's film Young Frankenstein, the Monster encounters a cowardly English highwayman somewhat inexplicably named Jack Sprat.
- In the comic book series Fables, Mrs. Sprat is briefly seen. She is, as the rhyme tells, very fat indeed. Her Jack (not the Jack Of The Tales), seen standing behind his wife on page 13 of issue #30, is later mentioned as one of the victims of the zephyr son of Snow White and Bigby Wolf. She also appears in later story lines as a Nurse assisting Dr. Swineheart.Her role in the series becomes much more important from the moment she encounters Mr Dark.
- In Jasper Fforde's novels The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear, Jack Spratt is the protagonist. Jack is a Detective Inspector in Reading, investigating crimes committed by nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters. He also possesses traits of Jack the Giant Killer and Jack from "Jack and the Beanstalk". True to the rhyme, Spratt hates fat, often going to great lengths to trim it from his food. Spratt has remarried, following the death of the wife mentioned in the rhyme; Jack cites it as a result of eating too much fat .
- In G. Paul Lucas's artworks, mixed-media photomontage is used to offer a contemporary interpretation of Jack Sprat and his rotund wife. Inspired from early childhood by this Mother Goose rhyme, Lucas creates a world in which the slovenly, beer-drinking Jack is "taken care of" in more ways than one by his dissatisfied, hot-tempered wife.
- Episodes of both television series Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide use the name Jack Sprat. Sabrina uses it as a fake name when she drinks "Boy Brew" to become a guy to listen in on conversations Harvey has with his friends. The new kid janitor who tries to take over Gordy's job is named Jack Sprat in the episode "New Kid".
- In a segment of "Vital Information" on an episode of All That, one of the bits of information was, "Contrary to popular belief, Jack Sprat can eat fat. You just gotta hold Jack down and shove that fat down his throat!".
Read more about this topic: Jack Sprat
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)