The Butterfly Effect On Pop Culture
Would you believe me if I told you 9/11 caused Ellen DeGeneres’s downfall?
Stemming from chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes how a tiny change in one part of a system can cause a huge, non-linear effect elsewhere. Mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz originally explained this theory metaphorically, with the flap of a butterfly’s wing in one corner of the world causing a tornado elsewhere weeks later. -The Decision Lab, Authors: Dan Pilat, Dr. Sekoul Krastev
As you can see from the definition, the butterfly effect suggests that everything is connected, and one thing that happens leads to another thing no matter where. If you observe, you can see that it happens in our day-to-day lives too.
Pop culture events are also a good way to observe the butterfly effect. Now let’s take a look at this butterfly effect, which is really interesting.
Gerard Way is an American singer who was a co-founder of the rock band My Chemical Romance. He is also the creator of The Umbrella Academy, but that is not our point.
Gerard Way was an intern at Cartoon Network during the 9/11 attacks. Seeing the attacks at first hand he got traumatized. He later found out that writing music was a very good way to cope. He started the band My Chemical Romance.
His music touched so many lives. One of these lives was Stephenie Meyer, The Twilight Saga author was a fan of their music. While she was writing Twilight, she constantly listened to My Chemical Romance. In 2009, she told Entertainment Weekly that the band was really instrumental in making one of the main protagonists Jacob Black’s character, and she included several of their songs in her “Twilight Playlist,” a curated roundup of “the music (she hears in her head) while reading the book.”
Twilight was a worldwide success. The Saga was loved by so many people. One of the people who loved the saga was E. L. James, the author of the bestselling novel Fifty Shades Of Gray. “How is this relevant to our case?” you may ask. Please be patient with me. E. L. James was a huge fan of The Twilight Saga, in the interview she gave to ABC in 2012, the author said, “I just sat on my sofa and just read them and read them and read them [Twilight books]. I was inspired by Stephenie Meyer… she just kind of flipped this switch in my head.”
With that switch, she wrote an erotic fan fiction of Twilight. YES. Fifty Shades of Gray is a fan fiction story about Twilight. As a result of the huge success of the book, it was adapted into a movie starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. Even though Dakota Johnson was a long-time actor, Fifty Shades of Gray (2015) made her a worldwide phenomenon. This made her do so many interviews and so many new projects. In 2019, she was a guest on The Ellen Show.
While she was talking about her favorite comedian Tig Notaro who did a standup set during her recent birthday party, Ellen said "How was the party, I wasn't invited." cluelessly that this sentence was going to bring her down. Johnson replied with the sentence that is going to be one of the biggest pop culture references to our day, "Actually, no. That's not the truth Ellen. You were invited." This was the first brick, thrown out to Ellen's fame. Later this incident led to people becoming disillusioned with the talk show host, toxic workplace allegations, and problematic interviews resurfacing, and the show was eventually cancelled after 19 years of long run.
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