Joan Baez - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

  • The comedy album National Lampoon's Radio Dinner (1972) includes a Baez parody, "Pull the Triggers, Niggers" (deliberately misspelled as "Pull the Tregroes" on the album's outside liner notes), performed by Baez sound-alike Diana Reed. The satiric song made specific reference to Baez's ex-boyfriend Dylan's defense of Black Panther and convicted murderer, George Jackson.
  • A character based on Baez appears in I'm Not There and is portrayed by Julianne Moore.
  • "Here's to You" (music by Ennio Morricone, lyrics by Baez), a song Baez originally performed for the Italian film Sacco e Vanzetti (1971), became a hymn for the 1960s and 1970s civil-rights movement. It also appears on the soundtrack for the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). The song is also played over the credits of the quasi-documentary film Deutschland im Herbst (1977) and was recently used in the video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and for the trailer of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.
  • Cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the comic strip Li'l Abner, during the 1960s satirized Baez as "Joanie Phoanie". Joanie was an unabashed communist radical who sang songs of class warfare while hypocritically traveling in a limousine and charging outrageous performance fees to impoverished orphans. Capp had this character singing bizarre songs such as "A Tale of Bagels and Bacon" and "Molotov Cocktails for Two". Although Baez was upset by the parody in 1966, she admits to being more amused in recent years. "I wish I could have laughed at this at the time", she wrote in a caption under one of the strips, reprinted in her autobiography. "Mr. Capp confused me considerably. I'm sorry he's not alive to read this, it would make him chuckle". Capp stated at the time, ""Joanie Phoanie is a repulsive, egomaniacal, un-American, non-taxpaying horror, I see no resemblance to Joan Baez whatsoever, but if Miss Baez wants to prove it, let her."
  • Baez was featured in the Joan Didion essay "Where the Kissing Never Stops" (1966), in Didion's compilation Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).
  • Baez has been lampooned multiple times on Saturday Night Live by comedienne Nora Dunn. One skit features a game show entitled Make Joan Baez Laugh! where a dour Baez is ushered onstage while celebrity guests try their hand at getting her to a crack a smile.

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