Statue of Liberty in popular culture

The Statue of Liberty depicted on the logo of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization

After its unveiling in 1886, the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) quickly became iconic, and began to be featured on countless posters, and in pictures and books. The statue's likeness has also appeared in motion pictures, television programs, music videos, and video games, and its likeness has been used in logos, on commemorative coins, and in theatrical productions. It remains a popular local, national, and international political symbol of freedom.

Books and stories

Statue of Diana

• A 1911 O. Henry story relates a fanciful conversation between "Mrs. Liberty" and another statue;^[1] "The Lady Higher Up" relates a fanciful dialog between the statue and the then-famous Statue of Diana at Madison Square Garden. In the story, Diana asks "Mrs. Liberty" why she speaks with what Diana terms a "City Hall brogue." Liberty answers: "If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye'd not need to ask. If ye wasn't so light-headed and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government for the purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New York."^[1]
• In Amerika by Franz Kafka, the author inaccurately depicts the statue as holding aloft a sword rather than a torch.
• During the 1940s and 1950s, the iconography of science fiction in the United States was filled with images of ancient, decayed Statues of Liberty, set in the distant future. The covers of famous pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories and Astounding Science Fiction all featured Lady Liberty at one time, surrounded by ruins or by the sediments of the ages, as curious aliens or representatives of advanced or degenerate humans of the future gazed upon her remains. The February 1941 cover of Astounding showed a primitive man and woman approaching on a raft a Statue of Liberty surrounded by wild growth.
• In the final scene of Maggie-Now (1958) by Betty Smith, two characters scatter Maggie's late husband's ashes from the statue's torch.
• Jack Finney's 1970 novel Time and Again takes advantage of the presence, in 1882, of just the arm and torch of the statue in Madison Square Park – where they were exhibited to help raise funds for the pedestal – for an important plot development.
• The final chapter of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach (1981) reveals that "The Glow-worm became the light inside the torch on the Statue of Liberty, and thus saved a grateful City from having to pay a huge electricity bill every year."
• Ellen Kushner's 1986 Choose Your Own Adventure book Statue of Liberty Adventure has the protagonist exploring the statue to find its original inspiration.
• In the disaster novels Her Name Will Be Faith^[2] and Category 7: The Biggest Storm in History,^[3] hurricanes cause storm surges that topple the statue into the Hudson River.
• In the first volume of the Southern Victory series How Few Remain (1997) by Harry Turtledove, the Statue of Liberty does not exist in New York City, as relations between the United States and France are poor. This is due to France supporting the Confederate States in the War of Succession and the Second Mexican War. However, in the novel American Empire: Blood and Iron, Liberty Island (still called Bedloe Island in the series) is taken up by a similar but more grim-looking statue called "The Statue of Remembrance", which is German-influenced rather than French. This statue carries a sword in its right hand and a shield in its left. Its full name is Remembrance, holding aloft her bared sword.
• Nevada Barr's 1999 mystery novel Liberty Falling is set on Liberty Island and Ellis Island, and features deaths caused by falling from the Statue of Liberty.
• The history of the Statue of Liberty is told in the 2008 book Lady Liberty: A Biography., written by Doreen Rapppaport, illustrated by Matt Tavares.
• Giannina Braschi's dramatic novel United States of Banana (2011) takes place after the September 11, 2001 attacks, at the Statue of Liberty, where a political prisoner from Puerto Rico is trapped in the dungeon of liberty beneath the 11-pointed star that serves as the base of the Statue.
• The 1999 children's book Disasters by Ned Halley has an illustration of a future New York City behind a seawall, to prevent flooding by sea level rise because of global warming. Liberty Island is seen submerged in the ocean up to the top of the statue's pedestal.^[4]
• The 1996 children's book Incredible Comparisons by Russell Ash uses the statue throughout the book as a height and weight comparison. It is mentioned on one page that if the sea level rose because all the world's ice melted (possibly due to global warming), that the statue would be submerged in the ocean up to the bottom of her torch.^[5] This scenario was later depicted in the 2001 sci-fi movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

The Statue of Liberty is on the reverse of all Presidential $1 coins

SMS Sankt Georg commemorative coin showing the Statue of Liberty

Coins and currency

• The Statue of Liberty has been depicted on several coins, not only in the USA, but all over the world. One of the most recent silver coins is the 20 euro SMS Sankt Georg commemorative coin. The obverse shows the armored cruiser SMS Sankt Georg sailing into New York Harbor on May 17, 1907; passing right in front of the Statue of Liberty. This was to be the last visit of an Austrian naval vessel in the U.S.A.
• The Statue of Liberty was also depicted on the Freedom Tower Silver Dollar coin minted in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
• From January 2, 2001 to 2008, the Statue of Liberty was on the reverse side of the New York state quarter in the 50 State Quarters series.^[6]
• Since 2006, the United States ten-dollar bill has featured two drawings of the Statue's torch on the obverse.

Comics

• In the first issue of Atomic War! published in November 1952, New York City is hit with a Soviet atomic bomb in 1960 and causes the Statue of Liberty to topple into New York Harbor and collapses onto the RMS Queen Mary, which was passing the statue at the time of the bombing ^[7].
• In a 1970s issue of DC Comics' Wonder Woman, villainous sorcerer Felix Faust turns the Statue of Liberty into a living enemy of the Princess.
• In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures issue "Something Fishy Goes Down", Shredder tries to destroy the Statue of Liberty.^[8]
• The DC Comics superhero Miss America was originally granted her powers by the Statue in a vision. This was later retconned to have been a dream; she had really gained her powers from an experiment.
• In the Marvel Comics universe, the torch of the Statue of Liberty is the secret meeting spot between superheroes Spider-Man and his friend and confidant Human Torch.
• The cover^[9] of the fourth volume of the comic series Universal War One depicts a shattered shell of the Statue of Liberty to represent the destruction of Earth by the Colonization Industrial Companies.
• In the Sinfest webcomic "Lady Liberty", a humanized version of the Statue, is the spouse of a similarly humanized Uncle Sam. Owing to their iconic status as embodiments of current America, while Uncle Sam is shown as often worried, affected by financial woes and bouts of depression, Lady Liberty is shown as a quiet, nurturing and loving spouse, doing her best to help her husband around, but still prone to overreaction.
• According to his autobiography, Disney Studios illustrator Bill Peet was asked by Walt Disney to draw some storyboards for an animated sequence that was to be included in the 1943 documentary film Victory Through Air Power showing a hypothetical enemy air raid on New York City. The last scenes of the sequence were to show the Statue of Liberty sinking into New York Harbor. Ultimately, the sequence was never animated and used in the film.^[10]

Films

2000 — present

• The Statue and Liberty Island are featured prominently in the final climax of the 2000 superhero film X-Men
• The Statue is briefly seen submerged in the ocean up to her torch in the 2001 science-fiction film A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• The Statue appears in the ending of the 2002 science-fiction film Men in Black II
• The Statue is hit by a massive storm surge in the 2004 science-fiction film The Day After Tomorrow
• The Statue's parts before construction are featured in the 2004 adventure film Around the World in 80 Days.
• The 2008 monster film Cloverfield features the Statue getting decapitated by a giant monster.
• The Statue and Liberty Island are prominently featured at the beginning and end of the 2008 science-fiction comedy film Meet Dave.
• The Statue appears in the 2011 science-fiction film The Adjustment Bureau
• The Statue is briefly seen buried up to her torch in a canyon in the 2013 science-fiction film Oblivion
• The Statue appears prominently in the 2013 drama film The Immigrant
• The Statue can be briefly seen with its original copper color in a scene set in 1895 in the 2014 romantic fantasy film Winter's Tale
• The Statue is featured in the 2015 film The Walk. The movie features Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Phillippe Petit, who narrates the events of the film from the torch. The film is set in the 1970s, so it includes the original torch before restoration.
• The Statue appears in the 2016 animated film Ballerina under construction at Gustave Eiffel's workshop. It should be noted that the film is set in the late 1880s, so the Statue should have been sent over to the United States by this point.

Central of New Jersey's logo

• The Statue appears in the virtual reality world called the Oasis in the 2018 science fiction film Ready Player One.

Liberty Mutual's logo

Logos

• The US Army 77th Sustainment Brigade, originally the 77th Infantry Division, has used a gold Statue of Liberty on a blue background as its shoulder patch, since its activation for World War I from draftees and recruits mostly from the New York City area.
• In March 2011, Nike SB released a two-layer sneaker featuring the Statue of Liberty logo on the tongue. When skated, the sneaker turns the oxidized color (seagreen) back to copper.^[11]
• New York and New Jersey have both featured the statue on license plates. The statue was on the regular New York plate from 1986 until 2001. A New Jersey speciality plate^[12] celebrating Liberty State Park has been available for many years and is still available as of 2005.
• The Central Railroad of New Jersey used the national monument as its logo. Its main station, Communipaw Terminal, is located on Upper New York Bay nearby.
• The Japanese entertainment company Amuse has a replica of the Statue of Liberty above the word "Amuse" as its logo.
• The mission flight patch worn by the crew of STS-51-J (the debut launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis) has the Statue of Liberty embossed on it.
• The statue appears in the logo of the insurance company Liberty Mutual. A series of television commercials for the company began in 2013 which show the statue in the background, with each commercial being shot from a different angle from places in New York City and New Jersey.

Music videos

• Toward the end of Michael Jackson's video for "Black or White", Jackson can be seen standing at the top of a replica of the statue.

Joseph Pennell, That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth (1918)

• The Statue of Liberty was featured in the music video for "Walk Like An Egyptian" by The Bangles, walking like an Egyptian.

Political symbolism

• The artist Joseph Pennell created a poster for the fourth Liberty Loans campaign of 1918, during World War I, showing the statue headless and torchless, while around her the New York area was in flames, under attack by air and by sea. The poster is sometimes referred to as "That liberty shall not perish", after the first words that appear on it.^[13][14][15]
• Many libertarian organizations use the statue as their symbol.^{[16][17][18][19]}
• The Conservative Party of New York uses the statue's torch and flame as its symbol.
• The German magazine Der Spiegel, on the cover of their edition of February 4, 2017, showed the statue beheaded by Donald Trump.^[20]

Pranks

• In 1978, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Jim Mallon and Leon Varjian of the "Pail and Shovel Party" won election by promising to give campus issues "the seriousness they deserve." In 1979 (and again in 1980), they created their own version of the Planet of the Apes scene by erecting replicas of the torch and the top of the head on the frozen surface of Lake Mendota, creating a fanciful suggestion that the entire statue was standing on the bottom of the lake.^[21][22]

Sports

• The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League used the head of the Statue of Liberty as their logo on their third jersey from 1996 to 2007. Goaltender Mike Richter also featured the head of the statue on his mask throughout his career with the Rangers.
• The New York Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association use the Statue of Liberty image in their team logo.^[23]
• In American football, the "Statue of Liberty play" is a trick play in which the quarterback holds the ball over his head and slightly behind, as if to throw a pass – thus looking somewhat like the Statue – and then does a stealthy handoff to a running back, who plucks the ball out of the quarterback's hand.

Television

• On April 8, 1983, CBS broadcast a program, the fifth in a series featuring the illusionist David Copperfield, in which he made the statue 'vanish'. The effect took place at night. The program showed the statue from the point of view of an audience seated on a ground-level platform, viewing the statue between two scaffolding towers in which a large curtain was raised.^[24]
• In the series Fringe, Liberty Island is the militarized stronghold of the Department of Defense in an alternate universe, and scenes from several episodes take place on or around the island. In the alternate universe, the statue has not acquired a green patina due to a special cleaning process^[25] and has retained its original copper color and the original torch, which has not had windows cut into the flame.^[26] In the penultimate episode of the series, "Liberty", which takes place in a dystopian future in the prime universe, Liberty Island has been converted into a detention facility, and the statue has been dismantled down to its feet.
• In the Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda episode "The Sum of Its Parts", Captain Dylan Hunt quotes the poem on the Statue.
• In the Doctor Who episode "The Angels Take Manhattan", the statue is depicted as a colossal Weeping Angel.
• In the Family Guy episode "Death Has a Shadow", the Statue is shown on television at a stag party and all the guys there drink until she "looks hot". In the episode "I Take Thee Quagmire", Peter gets Quagmire one of the Statue's feet as a wedding present, leading Mayor West to believe that the Statue was blown up.
• In Courage The Cowardly Dog the statue can be seen in a few episodes.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a statue seen in Applejack's flashback in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" and in "Rarity Takes Manehattan" greatly resembles the Statue of Liberty, but in the form of a mare instead of a woman.
• The statue can be seen numerous times in Futurama. In the opening theme song sequence of every episode, Liberty Island is seen submerged in the ocean up to the top of the pedestal (possibly due to sea level rise because of global warming), and the statue is holding a raygun instead of a torch in her right hand. In the pilot episode Space Pilot 3000, the statue is holding a transport tube in her right hand instead of a torch. It is also seen normally and is damaged in the episodes "When Aliens Attack", "That Darn Katz!", and "The Late Philip J. Fry".
• In the end credits of every Sesame Street episode, the statue is seen dancing to the theme song.
• In The Simpsons episode "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson", the Simpson family visits the statue.
• In the CSI: NY Season 4 episode "Can You Hear Me Now?", a murder takes place at the statue.
• The statue appears frequently in Schoolhouse Rock!, sometimes seen alive.
• In the alternate-history television series The Man in the High Castle, the statue's destruction makes up a significant part of the Season 3 Finale, Jahr Null, where it is destroyed by missiles fired by Nazi aircraft as part of a campaign to destroy American icons.

Theme parks

• Epcot's The American Adventure attraction ends with Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain standing on the Statue's torch, relishing their view of America. The attraction used a replica of the statue from its 1982 opening until its 1986 renovation.
• The Statue of Liberty is featured in The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man attraction located at Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida and Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, Japan. In the queue, it is known from "live" TV coverage in the Daily Bugle building that the evil Sinister Syndicate captures the Statue of Liberty with an anti-gravity gun and use it as a leverage against New York City. In the ride, parts of the Statue of Liberty are torn off and at the end, the statue is recovered by authorities with its parts fully restored and taken back to its rightful place while Spider-Man ties up the Syndicates in a web-like cocoon.

Typography

• The statue has its own Unicode character: 🗽

Video games

• In 1992's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, the statue is stolen by Krang, setting the game's story into motion.
• In the 2000 video game Deus Ex, the statue appears damaged during the first mission which is set on Libery Island.
• The 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV features a parody of the statue called the Statue of Happiness, which holds a coffee cup instead of a torch. The coffee cup is the tribute to the infamous Hot Coffee mod in San Andreas. Additionally, the statue's face is modelled to look like Hillary Clinton, and its' otherwise hollow chest contains a massive beating heart suspended by chains. The Statue of Happiness also appears in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, however, it is downsized in order to be more visible in the game's top-down angle. While the structure retains the star fort base, the pedestal was removed and the statue is smaller.
• In the 2014 video game Assassin's Creed Unity, the statue appears in a time distortion Rift Mission which features 1889 Paris as a paradox; the statue should have been shipped from France to America by that year as mentioned in the game.
• It is a playable character in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, and Lego released a minifigure of it at the same time.
• It appeared in the final downloadable content for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare as a map on multiplayer.
• The statue is a buildable landmark in Sim City 3000, Sim City 4, and SimCity DS.
• The statue is a buildable world wonder in Civilization IV.
• The statue is a buildable landmark in Cities: Skylines.
• The statue appears in World in Conflict and World in Conflict: Soviet Assault.
• The statue appears in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, destroyed by Soviet Union at the beginning of the game.
• On the New York level of Twisted Metal 2, players can ignite the statue's torch by firing missiles at her. Further missiles will blow off her robe, revealing a bikini underneath. Still more missiles will destroy her.
• In Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, the statue is destroyed by German bombers when they invade the East Coast in an alternate 1953.

Visual arts

• Working on the Statue of Liberty, a 1946 painting by Norman Rockwell, shows workmen cleaning the torch held aloft by the statue. Originally created for the Saturday Evening Post, the painting resides in the Oval Office of the White House.
• Liberty, by contemporary artist Mark Wagner, is a large-scale collage of 14 individual panels created from 1,121 dollar bills—a 17-by-six-foot découpage homage to the Statue of Liberty.^[27] George Washington, whose face is on the bill, is prominently featured throughout the work engaged in a variety of unexpected, humorous activities taking place from top-to-bottom of the statue. Beyond its humor and craftsmanship, however, Liberty addresses issues of civil liberties, economics, and American identity.^[28]

As damaged and destroyed

As a famous landmark, damage and destruction of the statue has been used to symbolize the end of mankind or the destruction of New York City. The table below lists some examples of movies which feature the statue damaged or destroyed.

There have been questions raised about how the statue would hold up for thousands of years, based on her current corrosion patterns. Studies done during various repairs in the past hundred years show that the copper "skin" of the statue herself will hold up, but her insides may not.^[29] The copper has aged and chemically changed to create a patina, which on metal is a coating of various chemical compounds such as oxides, carbonates, sulfides, or sulfates formed on the surface during exposure to atmospheric elements. It is this patina that gives the statue her sea-green coloring, due to the oxidation of the copper. It also means that the statue's deterioration by seawater and winds is greatly slowed. The only thing that still poses a threat to the patina is acid rain, which has the power to corrode the surface.

The joints holding the statue together have withstood some damage by seawater, and have been periodically replaced or repaired. The greatest damage comes in the form of a weakening to the arm holding up the torch, one of the areas of the statue that supports the most weight over a relatively small area.^[30] This arm weakness was most recently repaired in the mid-1980s. The torch that the statue holds was also replaced then, because the original torch had been irrevocably damaged by water and snow seeping in through the windows. The old torch now sits in the Statue of Liberty Museum. The stone at Liberty's feet has also needed repair in the past. Fifty years after the statue was first erected, in 1937, it was discovered that water was leaking in to the pedestal that the statue stands upon. A giant copper apron (250 ft. tall) was placed over the pedestal to prevent future damage. Overall, the majority of the statue would likely survive the test of time if an apocalyptic event happened on Earth, as it does in many of the following movies.

References