In Popular Culture
English rock group Jethro Tull has a song "For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me", which appears on the Benefit album from 1970. The song compares the feelings of misfitting from vocalist Ian Anderson (and friend Jeffrey Hammond) with the astronaut's own, as he is left behind by the ones who had the privilege to walk on the surface of the Moon.
The main antagonist 'Friend' in the manga 20th Century Boys describes himself as Collins when asked for his true identity. This is supposed to mean he has been forgotten, even though he grew up with the rest of the characters, not unlike the way Collins is not as well known to the general population as the other members of the Apollo 11 flight.
The mockumentary Opération lune briefly claims Michael Collins to be so deeply disappointed by not having set foot on the moon that he allegedly has retired from any public life and that his current whereabouts are supposed to be unknown.
Swedish writer/illustrator Bea Uusma Schyffert has written the children's book The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins (Chronicle Books, 2003) (original title: Astronauten som inte fick landa, Alfabeta, 2000).
In the 1996 TV movie Apollo 11, Collins was played by Jim Metzler. In the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, he was played by Cary Elwes. In the 2009 TV movie Moon Shot, he was played by Andrew Lincoln.
Read more about this topic: Michael Collins (astronaut)
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The very nursery tales of this generation were the nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from west to east; now expanded into the “tale divine” of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)