Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” comes to The Colbert Report
(part of my ongoing Unexpected Literary References series)
On Monday April 1, 2013, The Colbert Report managed to squeeze in a subtle reference to Shirley Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery” at the very end of the clip below (titled “Health Care Lottery”). What’s especially impressive is that he doesn’t draw attention to the source material. This is ballsy considering that many people probably wouldn’t get the reference (unless of course there was a recent film adaptation or something that I don’t know about).
This isn’t the first time “The Lottery” has made it’s way into popular media. Both South Park and The Simpsons have made references in the past.
We teach “The Lottery” in high school English. It is in most h.s. lit texts. Maybe he was counting on people to remember reading it way back when? It is always one of the more popular stories among students. Loved seeing it on The Report!
That seems likely. Also, I heard recently (maybe on Colbert) that viewers of The Colbert Report tend to have a higher than average intelligence (Here’s the survey: http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/on-facebook-smart-people-like-the-colbert-report-and-curly-fries/ – It’s not conclusive, but I still wanted to show that I wasn’t just projecting), which means maybe he can more reliably hope for those kinds of connections.
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