Aluminum in Pop Culture
Books, television, video games and paranoid conspiracies, just some of the ways Aluminium has made its way into our hearts and minds.
Tinman
[Note that the aluminum is contained in the Tinman actor's makeup]
Most commonly recognised by Jack Haley's depiction of him in the 1939 MGM film, The Tinman?s origins lie almost four decades beforehand in the children?s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baulm and illustrated by W. W. Denslow in 1900.
In this tale we learn of The Tin Woodsman who is stuck in a field until fate smiles upon him in the form of a young girl named Dorothy Gale. Dorothy oils the Tinman?s rusted joints allowing him to move again, joined by a cowardly lion and a not-so-bright scarecrow, Dorothy and The Tinman make their way down the Yellow Brick Road to see the Wizard of Oz where each member of their party will have their wish granted; The Tinman's wish of course is to have a heart.
Although it is never brought to our attention in the MGM film, there is a dark and gruesome story told throughout the original books as to how the Tinman came to be. Originally a human by the name of Nick Chopper, The Woodsmen made his living in his father's footsteps, cutting down the trees of Oz. This was until The Wicked Witch of the East cursed Nick's axe to prevent him from ever marrying the girl he loved. One by one, the cursed axe severed Nick's limb's and each time a limb was removed Nick would replace it with a prosthetic one made of tin, until there was nothing left but tin. Unfortunately in the process of replacement Nick's heart was forgotten and he could no longer care for the girl he had once loved.
Professor Chaos
If you are unfamiliar with the comedy central animated sit-com South Park then there is probably a whole lot of things that have passed you by, but, if you are familiar with the show you will probably at least know it is about a bunch of young boys (Kyle Broflovski, Stan Marsh, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick) and their day-to-day adventures in their hometown of South Park, Colarado. During season five of South Park, poor Kenny dies (at least semi-permanently) which leads the rest of the boys in search of a new friend to join their group. Their search leads them to young Butters Starch.
Appearing as part of the group for several episodes, Butters is soon told that he is no longer needed or wanted. Feeling Rejected and spiteful mild-mannered Butters creates a suit of aluminum foil and adopts the personality of his tyrannous alter-ego, Professor Chaos. With the assistance of his partner in crime, General Disarray, Professor Chaos engages on a series of futile attempts to destroy the world including trying to cause global flooding with a garden hose and more akin to the subject-matter of this issue, spraying aerosol cans into the air to destroy the atmosphere.
Mythbusters
In the year of 2003 the world was introduced to two men with a mission, those men were special effects experts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, their mission; to sort out the fact from the fiction in the world of urban legends. Using modern science and trial-by-experiment methods, Jamie, Adam and their crack-team of builders, technicians and mechanics have become a huge success. Throughout the series the Mythbusters have used aluminum in almost every conceivable manner, from building a tin-foil boat to float on invisible water to building a giant paintball gun to paint a Mona Lisa.
The Foil Hats
The Tin Foil Hat or has long been seen as an effective and inexpensive way of protecting the wearer's mind from evasive elements such as electromagnetic fields and radio waves used by the government, or even possibly aliens (M. Night Shyamalan's Signs), to control or read the minds of unsuspecting civilians. Although the idea of a tinfoil hat is based on the scientific concept of a faraday cage (a conductive enclosure designed for blocking out external electric fields), the image of the hat is generally used in popular fiction to characterise a particular stereotype, "the paranoid-delusional type". These characters are generally under the belief that they are constantly being watched and/or listened to and more than often are seen to be mentally ill.
The idea of the Tin Foil Hat was also used by Blizzard Entertainment in their massively successful online role-playing game World of Warcraf. In WoW, the tinfoil hat was rumored to be a rare item available to high level characters, if obtained the item would hide the characters statistics from any other player wishing to inspect them and also remove the player's profile from The Armoury (an online user database). It was later revealed that the Tinfoil Hat was no more than an elaborate April Fool's Joke.