From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Benjamin Franklin
, one of the
Founding Fathers
of the
United States of America
, has appeared in
popular culture
as a character in novels, films, musicals, comics, and video games. His experiment, using a kite, to prove that lightning is a form of electricity has been an especially popular aspect of his biography in fictional depictions.
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
Biographical works
[
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]
Historical fiction
[
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]
- Franklin appears in
Janice Meredith
(1924), played by Lee Beggs.
- Franklin appears in
Lloyd's of London
(1936), played by Thomas Pogue.
- Franklin appears in
Marie Antoinette
(1938), played by
Walter Walker
.
- Franklin appears in
Royal Affairs in Versailles
(1954), played by
Orson Welles
.
- Franklin appears in
John Paul Jones
(1959), played by
Charles Coburn
.
- Franklin appears in
La Fayette
(1961), played again by Orson Welles.
- Franklin appears in the 2008 miniseries
John Adams
, played by
Tom Wilkinson
.
- Franklin is a character in the 2015 play
Mr Foote's Other Leg
by
Colin Stinton
.
- Proud Destiny
(1947) by
Lion Feuchtwanger
, a novel mainly about
Pierre Beaumarchais
and Franklin beginning in Paris in 1776.
- Franklin appears in the 1986
Fred Saberhagen
novel
The Frankenstein Papers
, and part of the novel is written as letters to Franklin.
- Franklin is a character in the 1997
Thomas Pynchon
novel
Mason & Dixon
.
- A young Franklin appears in
Neal Stephenson
's 2003 novel of 17th century science and alchemy,
Quicksilver
.
- Franklin appears in several episodes of
Histeria!
, voiced by actor
Billy West
similarly to
Jay Leno
. He is frequently shown flying his kite in a lightning storm and being electrocuted as a
running gag
.
- Franklin appears as a main character in every episode of
Liberty's Kids
, voiced by
Walter Cronkite
. In the series, he is frequently addressed as Dr. Franklin.
Alternate histories
[
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]
- Franklin appears in
The Remarkable Andrew
(1942), played by George Watts.
- The
Walt Disney
cartoon
Ben and Me
(1953), based on the book by
Robert Lawson
, counterfactually explains that Franklin's achievements were actually the ideas of a mouse named Amos.
- Stan Freberg
's comedic audio recording,
Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Volume One: The Early Years
, depicts all of Franklin's accomplishments as having been made by his young apprentice, Myron.
- The 2004 film
National Treasure
has the main characters trying to collect clues left by Franklin to discover a treasure that he hid.
- Franklin has been portrayed in several works of fiction, such as
The Fairly OddParents
, as having lightning-and-kite-based superpowers akin to those of
Storm
from
X-Men
.
- The anime
Code Geass
takes place in an alternate universe where Great Britain is known as the Holy Britannian Empire. Franklin, who was responsible with appealing to France for aid in the American war for independence, is instead bribed by the Duke of Britannia with promises of territories in the colonies and becomes an Earl. As a result,
George Washington
is killed during the
Siege of Yorktown
and the American movement for independence fails.
- Sixteen-year-old Ben Franklin plays a significant role in
The Age of Unreason
, a series of four
alternate history
novels
written by American
science fiction
and
fantasy
author
Gregory Keyes
.
- In
Bentley Little's
short story
The Washingtonians
and the
Masters of Horror
episode of the same name, Franklin was revealed to have been a composite of the accomplishments of several different people as opposed to one real individual.
- In
Assassin's Creed III
, Benjamin Franklin appears as a non-playable character. The player has the optional side-quest of retrieving lost pages from
Poor Richard's Almanack
for Ben. Also, he is present in the cutaway scenes involving the raising of George Washington to leader of the Continental Army and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In
Assassin's Creed: Rogue
, he has a small role as inventor and American ambassador in Paris.
- Benjamin Franklin's ghost appears in several Marvel comics as a companion to the Mercenary
Deadpool
. In the comic, Franklin found a way to harness the power of electricity to turn himself into a ghost.
- Also in
Marvel Comics
,
Dr. Strange's
girlfriend
Clea
was seduced by
a wizard (Stygyro)
disguised as Ben Franklin during a time travel story arc. The "real" Ben Franklin made an appearance at the end of the story.
- In the alternate history short story "The Father of His Country" by
Jody Lynn Nye
contained in the
anthology
Alternate Presidents
, Benjamin Franklin is elected as the first
President of the United States
in the
1789 election
over his sole opponent
George Washington
with
John Adams
becoming his
Vice President
. As a result of this, he creates a more
democratic society
.
- In the science fiction/alternate history short story "Existential Trips" by William Bevill, Benjamin Franklin appears, and is referenced throughout, as the inventor of a secret society of ghosts who fight crime in time and other dimensions of space, using items from Franklin including a stove and spectacles. Franklin's agents include Beatnik writers
Jack Kerouac
and
William S. Burroughs
.
Time-travel scenarios
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- The time-travel card game
Early American Chrononauts
includes a card called Franklin's Kite which players can symbolically acquire from the year 1752.
- In
The Jack Benny Program
episode "
Alexander Hamilton Show
",
Jack Benny
dreams that he is
Alexander Hamilton
;
Don Wilson
plays Franklin.
- In an episode of
The Flintstones
titled "The Time Machine" (season 5, episode 18, original airdate January 15, 1965), the Flintstones and the Rubbles travel by time machine to various periods in the future (from their perspective). One of those stops is in Philadelphia, where they meet Benjamin Franklin as he is conducting his kite-and-key experiment. When
Wilma
says something Franklin deems worthy of writing down, he asks
Fred
to hold the kite string. Naturally, the lightning picks that moment to strike the kite, electrifying Fred. In turn,
Barney
,
Betty
, and Wilma try to separate Fred from the kite string, only to be electrified themselves. "So that's how electricity works, eh?" says Franklin. "I'd better write this down."
- In season 3 of
Bewitched
, Aunt Clara accidentally brings him forward in time to repair a broken electrical lamp.
- The science-fiction TV show
Voyagers!
had the main characters helping Franklin fly his
kite
in one episode and save his mother from a fictionalized
Salem witch trial
in the next episode.
- Franklin appears in the
LucasArts
Entertainment Company Game
Day of the Tentacle
.
- A 1992
Saturday Night Live
spoof
of
Quantum Leap
, "Founding Fathers", had Franklin traveling through time with
George Washington
and
Thomas Jefferson
to help modern day Americans with
deficit
reduction, only to find twentieth century
reporters
are only interested in
scandal
and
sensationalism
.
- The
children's novel
Qwerty Stevens: Stuck in Time with Benjamin Franklin
has the main characters using their
time machine
to bring Franklin into modern times and then to travel back with him to 1776.
- In a 2004 sketch on the TV show
MADtv
, Franklin, played by
Paul Vogt
, sends
Samuel Adams
, played by
Josh Meyers
, to the future in a
time machine
he made from a
rolltop desk
. Franklin wanted to know if the
American Revolution
was a success, but gets frustrated when Adams only comes back to tell him that
Samuel Adams Beer
is a success. The time machine also brings back a man named Jerry, played by
Ike Barinholtz
, who is little help to Franklin.
- A
Saul of the Mole Men
episode titled "Poor Clancy's Almanack" uses Benjamin Franklin and
Thomas Jefferson
to explain the true mainstream conflict while revealing Clancy Burrows' past. Both Franklin and Jefferson appear again in the spin-off
Young Person's Guide to History
.
Dana Snyder
portrayed Franklin in both series.
- In the webcomic
Spinnerette
, Franklin is pulled through time by a machine into present day. Because the timeline dictated he died in 1790, he was rendered effectively invulnerable to danger by way of preternatural luck in order to avoid temporal paradoxes. He took up hero-work and became a leading member of the American Superhero Association.
- In the animated series
Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot
, the titular characters secure Franklin's aid to power a damaged time machine that has brought them to colonial America on the first night of the Revolutionary War.
- Though he doesn't appear, Franklin is referred to in the
Ben 10: Omniverse
series finale "A New Dawn", in which he is revealed to have crafted various tools for George Washington's use as part of a secret society predating the series' Plumbers, a galactic law enforcement division that deals with various alien and supernatural threats.
- A character clearly based on Franklin appears in Norm Novitsky's time-traveling film,
In Search of Liberty,
which was released in 2017.
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- In the Kids' TV show
The Fairly OddParents
, Franklin appears as a side character in some episodes.
People compared to Franklin
[
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]
- Manuel Torres
, the first Colombian ambassador to the United States, was called "the Franklin of the southern world" by newspapers on his death in 1828. He was a revolutionary, scholar and diplomat.
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Characters based on Franklin
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Characters named after Franklin
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As portrayed by fictional characters
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Other
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"It's a feeling of freedom, of seein' the light
It's Ben Franklin with a key and a kite!"
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- Hamilton
creator
Lin-Manuel Miranda
wrote a song intended for the musical, "Ben Franklin's Song", that was entirely about Franklin, but it was not included in the finished production. In 2017, it was recorded and released by
The Decemberists
.
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See also
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References
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]
- ^
Schocket, Andrew M. "Benjamin Franklin in Memory and Popular Culture." in
A Companion to Benjamin Franklin
(2012): 479-498.
- ^
Nian-Sheng Huang, "Benjamin Franklin in American thought and culture, 1790-1990" Vol. 211. (American Philosophical Society, 1994)
online
and also "Benjamin Franklin in American thought and culture, 1790-1938" (PhD dissertation Cornell University;?ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, ?1990.?9018099).
- ^
Smart, Karl Lyman.?"A man for all ages: The changing image of Benjamin Franklin in nineteenth century American popular literature" (PhD dissertation, ?University of Florida;?ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, ?1989.?9021252.
- ^
BODZIN, EUGENE SAUL.? ?"THE AMERICAN POPULAR IMAGE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 1790-1868' (PhD dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison?ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, ?1969.?6922351).
- ^
O’Neil, Ted (June 16, 2016).
"Movie crew filming scenes in Richmond Hill"
.
Bryan County News
. Archived from
the original
on July 20, 2016
. Retrieved
June 16,
2016
.
- ^
Garcia, Emily (2016).
"On the Borders of Independence: Manuel Torres and Spanish American Independence in Filadelphia"
. In Lazo, Rodrigo; Aleman, Jesse (eds.).
The Latino Nineteenth Century: Archival Encounters in American Literary History
. New York: New York University Press. pp. 71?88.
ISBN
9781479855872
.
- ^
Billy Mays vs Ben Franklin. Epic Rap Battles of History - YouTube
- ^
Original Broadway Cast of "Hamilton" & Renee Elise Goldsberry ? Satisfied
, retrieved
2021-10-19
- ^
"Hear the Decemberists' 'Ben Franklin's Song' From 'Hamilton' Project"
.
Rolling Stone
. Retrieved
2017-12-15
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Mulford, Carla. "Figuring Benjamin Franklin in American Cultural Memory."
New England Quarterly
72.3 (1999): 415-443.
online
[
permanent dead link
]
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