Life imitating art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Life imitating art is the reverse of the normal process whereby art is made to resemble life. The concept derives from an Oscar Wilde aphorism, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life." Wilde follows Ovid who, in Book 3 of the Metamorphoses, depicts a scene where "Nature in her genius had imitated art." (He is describing Diana's grotto in the story of Cadmus:"arte laboratum nulla: simulaverat artem / ingenio natura suo.")
Many examples exist in history. For example Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio, known as the "poet-warrior", scripted the epic Cabiria (1914), which used the Roman salute. D'Annunzio appropriated the salute when he occupied Fiume in 1919. D'Annunzio has been described as the John the Baptist of Italian Fascism, as virtually the entire ritual of Fascism was invented by D'Annunzio during his occupation of Fiume and his leadership of the "Italian Regency of Carnaro". Besides the Roman salute, these included the balcony address, the cries of "Eia, eia, eia! Alala!", the dramatic and rhetorical dialogues with the crowd, and the use of religious symbols in new secular settings. Like other neo-Imperial rituals utilized by D'Annunzio, the salute became part of the Italian fascist movements symbolic repertoire and later adopted by Nazi Germany as the Hitler salute.
Examples
- The 1898 novella Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about a supposedly indestructible ocean liner which sinks after colliding with an iceberg, has been noted to contain a remarkable number of parallels with the real-life sinking of RMS Titanic, which occurred in 1912 - fourteen years after the story's publication.
- It has been reported that the prevalence of CSI and other crime investigation TV shows have changed criminal behavior. For example, the use of bleach to destroy DNA evidence has increased, as a result.
- Astronomers who took a picture of the star V838 Monocerotis remarked that it seems to imitate Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night.
- The release of the 2006 film Night at the Museum, which depicted the American Museum of Natural History in New York City as having its attendance increase dramatically at the end of the film, resulted in the real American Museum of Natural History's attendance increasing after the film's release. Christmas season attendance increased by 20% over the previous year.
