[EXTENDED] Poison in Popular Culture: Representations, Aesthetics, and Meanings
From natural to synthetic, from accidental to administered, poison is entangled with our human history, and its presence has a lot to say about not only our customs and laws, but also our ways of storytelling. Poison likes to adapt itself to situation: the definition of what poison even ‘is’ changes according to time and place, and to the cultural groups and sub-groups that are being consulted. Poison is malleable, mutating, and culturally slippery. In its ability to conquer the imagination, poison is a crafty narrative weaver. From Shakespeare’s plays to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Eco’s The Name of the Rose, from iconic cinematic examples such The Princess Bride to global phenomena such as J.K.