Frogs in popular culture
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Frogs feature prominently in folklore and fairy tales in many cultures, such as the story of The Frog Prince, up to modern-day popular culture. They tend to be portrayed as benign, but ugly, and often clumsy, but also with hidden talents.
Michigan J. Frog, featured in a Warner Brothers cartoon, will only perform his singing and dancing routine for his owner. Once another person looks at him, he will return to a frog-like pose, and begin calling. The Frog Prince is a fairytale of a frog who turns into a handsome prince once kissed. Slippy Toad, a character from the Star Fox series of computer games, is a talented mechanic, but mediocre pilot, who often ends up needing to be rescued by his team mates. Kermit the Frog, on the other hand, is a conscientious and disciplined character of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show; while openly friendly and greatly talented, he is often portrayed as cringing at the fanciful behaviour of more flamboyant characters.
The theme of transfiguration of and into frogs also features prominently, as in The Frog Prince, but also in fantasy settings such as in the Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger videogames that sometimes include magic spells that turn people into frogs.
Frogs are popular subjects of experimentation, as in scientific demonstrations of nerve action and diamagnetism, and cruelty, as in video games such as Frogger and Ribbit King.
Frogs are also used as symbols of disgust due to their moist skin that can be perceived as slimey, and the sometimes repugnant secretions, especially of toads. In the Bible (Exodus 8) a plague of frogs is sent upon Egypt.
Frogs are eaten, notably in France. One dish is known as cuisses de grenouille, frogs' legs, and although it is not especially common, it is taken as indicative of French cuisine. Thus frogs are sometimes used to represent French people.
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[edit] Urban myths
- The behavior of frogs illustrating nonaction is a myth:
- Take a pot of hot water and a frog. Throw the frog into the pot. What do you think will happen? The obvious, of course: the frog will jump out. Who likes hanging around in a pot of hot water? Now ... take a pot of cold water, put the frog in it, and place the pot on the stove. Turn on the heat. This time something different will occur. The frog, because of the incremental change in temperature, will not notice that it is slowly being boiled. (from "Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane" by Manfred Kets de Vries)
Professor Doug Melton, Harvard University Biology Department, says, "If you put a frog in boiling water, it won't jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot -- they don't sit still for you."<ref>Next Time, What Say We Boil a Consultant. Retrieved on 2006-03-10.</ref>
- Frogs fall from the sky in various urban myths and notably in the movie Magnolia. This may derive from incidents when frogs are picked up by a tornado, or when a sudden migration of frogs happens overnight. This has also happenned with fish.
[edit] Frogs in Egyptian mythology
To the Egyptians, the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual inundation of the Nile, which brought fertility to the otherwise barren lands. Consequently, in Egyptian mythology, there began to be a frog-goddess, who represented fertility, named Heget (also Heqet, Heket), meaning frog. Heget was usually depicted as a frog, or a woman with a frog's head, or more rarely as a frog on the end of a phallus to explicitly indicate her association with fertility.
The Ogdoad are the eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis. They were arranged in four male-female pairs, with the males associated with frogs, and the females with snakes
Hapy, was a deification of the annual flood of the Nile River, in Egyptian mythology, which deposited rich silt on the banks, allowing the Egyptians to grow crops. In Lower Egypt, he was adorned with papyrus plants, and attended by frogs, present in the region, and symbols of it.
[edit] Frogs in fiction
[edit] Manga and anime
- Sgt. Frog (aka Sergeant Keroro [ケロロ軍曹 "Keroro Gunsō"], portrayed by Kumiko Watanabe) is a humorous frog-like alien invader who winds up on Earth in the manga and anime series of the same name created by Mine Yoshizaki in 2004. Keroro licensed product merchandise is immensely popular on both sides of the Pacific.
- The character Jiraiya in the manga/anime series Naruto calls himself the Toad Hermit. He has an established blood contract with the toads and can summon them at any time.
[edit] Literature
- Daniel Webster, title character of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, a short story by Mark Twain
- The Frog Prince and The Frog Princess, from traditional fairy tales. "The Frog Prince" is a fairy tale of a frog who turns into a handsome prince once kissed.
- The Frog King and frog warriors in Batrachomyomachia
- Jeremy Fisher in a story by Beatrix Potter.
- Toad of Toad Hall or Mr. Toad, from the children's book Wind in the Willows.
- Mowgli, the name given by the wolves to the central character in The Jungle Book, means "frog".
- A Harry Potter sweet, the wizard-card including Chocolate Frog.
[edit] Film
- Flip the Frog, star of an Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation. Also a character in some of Eric W. Schwartz's animations, inspired by the MGM character but more anthropomorphism.
- Tijuana Toads
- Frog is a 1987 film featuring the frog Prince Guiseppe (aka Gus), voiced by Paul Williams<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162334/</ref>.
- In the 80's, the French satirical version of the Muppet Show, named Le Bébête Show, portrayed socialist president François Mitterrand as Kermitterand in reference to Kermit the Frog.
- In Spirited Away, the male workers at the bath-house Aburaya, where the main character Chihiro is employed, appear to be half-humanoid, half-frog hybrids, though one of the workers is a normal frog dressed in blue that can talk.
- In the popular Flash Cartoon Awesome Dome, the mascot of the dome is a creature named Ugly the Frog.
- In the poorly-known animated film Freddie as F.R.O.7, the title character is a prince transformed into a frog working as a secret agent.
- The 2006 Little Red Riding Hood spoof, Hoodwinked, features an anthropomorphic frog, named Nicky Flippers, who is on the woods' police force.
[edit] Television
- Froggy the Gremlin, from the Buster Brown television show in the 1950s
- Hoppity Hooper, star of an animated series.
- Probably the most famous frog in the entertainment world is the Muppet character Kermit the Frog. Another frog muppet is Robin.
- Until recently, the American TV network The WB (Warner Brothers) used Michigan J. Frog, a frog in a tuxedo as their logo. Michigan J. Frog was the singing, dancing star of the 1955 Warner cartoon, "One Froggy Evening".
- The frog was the ninja power source of Adam Park in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
- Willy, Dennis the Menace's pet frog
[edit] Music
- The Crazy Frog is a cartoon creature resembling a frog, the character of the most downloaded ringtone in the UK.
- Jer The frog in the traditional song "Froggy would a-wooing go".
- Jeremiah the bullfrog, of "Joy to the World (Hoyt Axton)" by Three Dog Night.
- Froggy Mix is the name of a Europop band.
- The Doors recorded a song called Peace Frog; however, it does not have anything to do with actual frogs
[edit] Video games
- Battletoads
- Beltino Toad
- Frog is a playable character in Chrono Trigger
- Frogger is an early electronic arcade game which features a frog that must cross a busy road and river. Frogger was an arcade game later made for the game console Atari 2600. Other Frogger games were made for the PlayStation and other various consols, some in which were made in 3D.
- Ribbit King is a videogame released in June 2004 for PlayStation 2 and GameCube. The game is based on the fictional sport of Frolf, which is a golf like game that is played with frogs. The frogs sit on catapults, which the player whacks with a mallet to send the frog flying into the air.
- Slippy Toad is a playable character in the Star Fox series of games for various Nintendo consoles.
- Superfrog, the title character of a Team17 computer game
- Froggy from the Sonic the Hedgehog series is the best friend of Big the Cat. In most of Big's appearances, Froggy goes missing somehow.
- Poliwag, Poliwhirl, Poliwrath and Politoed in Pokemon.
[edit] Frogs in scientific demonstrations
Frogs have been featured in studies of diamagnetism in biological organisms. As such those organisms were submitted to a large magnetic field (several Teslas) produced by a Bitter electromagnet and found levitating due to the diamagnetic features of water (as well as any other substance that is). Apparently a frog was used for the following reason as described by a researcher: "We were amazed to find out that 90% of our colleagues did not believe that we were not joking that water can levitate. It became obvious to us that it was important to make scientists (as well as non-scientists) aware of the phenomenon. We levitated a live frog and other not-very-scientific objects because of their obvious appeal to a broader audience and in the hope that researchers from various disciplines, not only physicists, would never ever forget this often neglected force and the opportunities it offers."<ref>http://www.hfml.ru.nl/froglev.html</ref>
[edit] Frogs in confectionary
- One of Australia's favourite chocolates, the Freddo Frog.
- Crunchy Frog, a ficticious confectionary from a Monty Python skit of the same name
[edit] Trivia
- The French custom of eating frog legs is the source of the English use of the derogatory nickname "frogs" for French people. It may also stem from the fact that, before they adopted the Fleur de Lis as their symbol, the frog served as an avatar for the French kingdom.
[edit] References
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