Zener Cards - Cultural Reference

Cultural Reference

In a humorous scene depicted in the movie Ghostbusters (1984), Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) conducts a clairvoyance experiment using Zener cards and punishment through the use of electric shocks (although he incorrectly terms it "negative reinforcement"), administered where the subject failed to demonstrate clairvoyant abilities.

These cards are also used in the film, "The Gift."

In Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), (as a reference to Zener cards) a young Anakin Skywalker, in an interview with the Jedi Council, had to perceive (in a clairvoyance-like test) a device that projected images on a monitor held by Yoda, in order to examine the power and control of Anakin's Force-wielding abilities.

In the video game The World Ends With You, Shiki Misaki, a partner of the main protagonist, Neku Saruba, uses Zener cards to attack enemy 'Noise'.

Witch house band ∆AIMON named their song '○+☆≋□' after Zener cards in their 2011 release Amen EP.

Read more about this topic:  Zener Cards

Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or reference:

    We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.
    Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)

    If we define a sign as an exact reference, it must include symbol because a symbol is an exact reference too. The difference seems to be that a sign is an exact reference to something definite and a symbol an exact reference to something indefinite.
    William York Tindall (1903–1981)