Tennessee Valley Authority - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

In the 1930s, the building of Norris Dam and the changes it brought to the region inspired films, books, stage plays, and songs. Folk songs from the construction period frequently express enthusiasm for the benefits that the project brought to the region.

TVA continues to be a subject for popular culture:

  • Director Elia Kazan's 1960 film, Wild River, depicts a fictional confrontation between TVA and a Tennessee landowner who refuses to evacuate her soon-to-be-inundated property.
  • The Everybodyfields song "T.V.A.," from the album Halfway There: Electricity and the South rejects the Tennessee Valley Authority, saying "I don't need no dam or no damn FDR."
  • The Drive-By Truckers have recorded a number of songs that either directly or indirectly address the TVA. "TVA," written and sung by Jason Isbell on the band's 2009 album "The Fine Print," praises the TVA while "Uncle Frank," written and sung by Mike Cooley on the band's 1999 album Pizza Deliverance laments the displacement the dams and flooding caused.

Read more about this topic:  Tennessee Valley Authority

Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:

    There’s that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.
    Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)