Yale in popular culture

Yale University, one of the oldest universities in the United States, has been the subject of numerous aspects of popular culture.

Literature

The narrator of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Ishmael, thus explains his education: "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."^[1] Melville's famous invocation may have been autobiographical,^[2] and has been co-opted by other authors to describe unorthodox places of higher learning.^[3]

• Owen Johnson's novel, Stover at Yale, follows the college career of Dink Stover (whose prep-school life at the Lawrenceville School had been chronicled in earlier novels). A counterpart to Tom Brown at Oxford, it was once a byword. F. Scott Fitzgerald's fictional Amory accepted the novel as a "kind of textbook" for collegiate life.
• Frank Merriwell, the model for all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs.^[4][5]
• In the popular Gossip Girl teenage novel series, one of the lead characters, Blair Waldorf, is waitlisted at and ultimately accepted to Yale. She attends Yale, while two friends who were also accepted opt out of attending college altogether. Near the end of the series, Blair's mother and stepfather have a baby daughter, who is named Yale.
• Diana Peterfreund's novel, Secret Society Girl, takes place in Eli University, a thinly veiled version of Yale. Additionally, the main character is initiated into the secret society Rose & Grave, an allusion to the common naming scheme for secret societies at Yale.
• Yale appears prominently in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby (as the alma mater of narrator Nick Carraway and the antagonist Tom Buchanan), and also in his short stories "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Bernice Bobs Her Hair."
• Allusions to Yale occur frequently in the writings of Tom Wolfe, who earned a Ph.D at Yale. In his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, bond trader Sherman McCoy is described as having a "Yale chin." A character in A Man in Full carries the middle name "Ahlstrom," which he was said to have been given in honor of religious historian Sidney Ahlstrom; this is an allusion to Sydney E. Ahlstrom, who was an historian of religion on the Yale faculty from 1954 to 1984.
• Stephen Carter's novel, New England White, takes place at a university in "Elm Harbor," a city which bears a striking resemblance to Yale's home of New Haven. Carter is a law professor at Yale and a building from the university is featured prominently on the book's cover.
• In Sylvia Plath's classic novel The Bell Jar, the protagonist's "hypocritical" boyfriend Buddy Willard is described as being a Yale man.
• Yale is strongly satirized in Thomas Pynchon's 2006 novel Against the Day. Among other elements, one of the major characters, Kit Traverse, is described as making a deal with the devil to get into Yale. Kit's Yale education was financed by arch-villain Scarsdale Vibe, after Kit's father was killed by henchmen of his.
• Tom Perrotta's 2000 novel, Joe College, is set at Yale in the 1980s.
• Dr. R. Lars Porsena in Red Orc's Rage by Philip Jose Farmer was trained in psychiatry at Yale University. He utilizes a state of the art method of group therapy which he says he developed at Yale. This character is based on real-life psychiatrist A. James Giannini who completed his residency at Yale; this is noted in the novel.^[6]

Television

• An episode of The Flintstones entitled "Flintstone of Prinstone" (which originally aired on November 3, 1961) shows Yale's prehistoric counterpart "Shale University." Shale is shown playing a football game against archrival Prinstone University, with part-time student Fred Flintstone playing for the latter university's team. Both universities are members of the prehistoric "Poison Ivy League."
• On the CW show Gilmore Girls, Rory Gilmore, played by Alexis Bledel, attends Yale, after spending much of her educational career with her heart set on attending Harvard. She is admitted to Harvard and Princeton as well as Yale, and chooses the latter over the other two after much consideration. She drops out at the end of season five, but returns mid-way through season six. Her friend and rival Paris Geller (Liza Weil) also matriculates at Yale after being rejected from Harvard, and both become editors for the Yale Daily News during their time at the school.
• In Mission Hill, Kevin dreams about going to Yale. The school is briefly shown, with a large number of students who are stereotypical nerds like Kevin himself.
• Brad O'Keefe, from Grounded for Life, fictionally gets an interview with Yale, and is later granted admission. Lily Finnerty, also from Grounded for Life, gets an interview (by lying).
• In the show The L Word, the character Bette Porter, played by Jennifer Beals, is a Yale graduate. Jennifer Beals graduated from Yale herself.
• Aaron Sorkin characters Josh Lyman (The West Wing) and Simon Stiles (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) attended Yale Law School and Yale Drama School, respectively. An episode of The West Wing was framed around a Whiffenpoofs performance at the White House.
• In episode "4F16" of The Simpsons, Montgomery Burns is revealed to have been a member of Skull and Bones.^[7] In several episodes Burns is seen wearing a white sweater with the Yale "Y" or waving a Yale pennant. In another episode it is revealed that Sideshow Bob attended Yale and appears to have been a member of the rowing team.
• In King of the Hill, Kahn Jr. has a Yale pennant hanging over her bed.
• The 2007 miniseries The Company follows the career of a young Yale graduate recruited into the CIA during the Cold War.
• In the television series Gilligan's Island, Mr. Howell calls several different individuals "A Yale Man," most notably in the episode "Don't Bug the Mosquitos," in which he proclaims, "You, sir, look like Attila the Hun—or a Yale man!" to a Mosquitos band member.
• On Beverly Hills, 90210, class brain Andrea Zuckerman is admitted to Yale but decides to go to California University for financial reasons; she later is impregnated by a UCLA law student who had graduated from Yale College.
• Norm Macdonald's character Stan Hooper on the ill-fated sitcom A Minute With Stan Hooper attended Yale.
• On Boy Meets World, Topanga Lawrence gets accepted into Yale after being put on the waitlist.
• On Gossip Girl, the character Blair Waldorf, played by Leighton Meester, fantasizes about Yale, her dream college. She even owns a bulldog named "Handsome Dan," the name of Yale's actual mascot.
• On Frasier, Niles attended Yale.
• In the short-lived ABC series Traveler, Jay Burchell is a Yale Law School graduate, Tyler Fog is a Yale School of Management graduate, and Will Traveler has a graduate degree in chemical engineering from Yale.
• In the episode "No Chris Left Behind," from the show Family Guy, Chris is sent to the fictional and unfortunately-named Morningwood Academy. The school is a dead ringer for Yale. The most notable reference is the Pewterschmidt family's legacy membership in a secret society whose building is a direct copy of the "tomb" (society hall) of Skull and Bones. Other references can be found in the architecture of other campus buildings, the stereotypical personalities (especially that of James William Bottomtooth IV), and even a mention of Yale in the script.
• On the last episode of The Suite Life on Deck Bailey got a letter to go to Yale after graduation and Cody didn't.
• On "Glee", Quinn Fabray decides to apply to Yale University for college for the theatrical program; she is subsequently accepted by Yale. In a future episode, Quinn claims she's looking forward to her graduation at Yale as the best in her class. Two episodes make mention of the Waffletoots, a boys' preparatory school a cappella group modeled after the Whiffenpoofs. They are played by the real Whiffenpoofs in the episode "All or Nothing."
• In the Fox's TV show Fringe scenes are shots in Yale university instead of Harvard University
• In TNT series, The Last Ship, Rachel Scott receives her PhD in Virology and Public Health from Yale University.

Cinema

• The 1961 film Splendor in the Grass is partially set at Yale.
• In the film The Money Pit, the character Walter played by Tom Hanks is a Yale graduate.
• In the film Mystic Pizza, the character Kat is a Yale astronomy major.
• The 2000 film The Skulls concerns a secret society with resemblances to Skull and Bones. That society, as well as the a cappella group the Whiffenpoofs, are elements of the 2006 film The Good Shepherd.
• Yale is prominently featured in the The Good Shepherd as the alma mater of the political figures instrumental in the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency.
• In the film My Cousin Vinny, Judge Chamberlain Haller shows his degree from Yale Law School.
• In the teen movie It's a Boy Girl Thing, Nell Bedworth (played by Samaire Armstrong) dreams of going to Yale.
• A chase scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was filmed at Yale (posing as Marshall College in the movie) in 2007 and prominently features a number of campus locations. The scene ends with Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf crashing a motorcycle into what is portrayed as a study room of Sterling Memorial Library, actually filmed in Commons dining hall. Yale alumnus and professor Hiram Bingham III, discoverer of Machu Picchu, has been cited as a potential inspiration for the Indiana Jones character.
• Mary Mazzio's 1999 documentary film, A Hero for Daisy, chronicles the 1976 demonstration at Yale in which the women's rowing team demanded equal athletic facilities.
• In The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, Carmen goes to Yale.
• In the movie High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Taylor McKessie was accepted to Yale.
• In 2012, the son of the white jazz musician playing on board the cruise ship is seen wearing a YALE T-shirt when his father calls him moments before his demise.
• In the film The Namesake, the protagonist Gogol attends Yale College.
• In the film Moneyball, Jonah Hill's character graduated from Yale.
• In the film Lady and the Tramp, several references to Yale University are made such as a pennant flag being nailed to the wall and several cushions being labelled with the letter Y.
• In the film Lost in Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola in 2003, it is revealed that the protagonist Charlotte studied philosophy at Yale during a conversation between her and her boyfriend John.
• In the film Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike's character earned an Undergraduate Degree from Yale University.
• In the 2006 film Accepted a primary character, Rory, applied to Yale and only Yale.

Other

• John O'Hara, according to The New Yorker contributor and Yale alum Brendan Gill, wanted desperately to have gone to Yale. "People used to make fun of [it], but it was never a joke to O'Hara. It seemed... that there wasn't anything he didn't know about in regard to college and prep-school matters." Hemingway once said, cruelly, "Someone should take up a collection to send John O'Hara to Yale." George V. Higgins opined that the reason Yale University Library has the manuscript of BUtterfield 8 and the galley proofs of Appointment in Samarra is that O'Hara was "foraging for honors:"

Former Yale president Kingman Brewster was forthright — and supercilious — in his explanation of O'Hara's disappointments in New Haven: he said Yale didn't give him an LL. D. degree "because he asked for it."

In a newspaper column, O'Hara attempted to make light of the matter, writing: "If Yale had given me a degree, I could have joined the Yale Club, where the food is pretty good, the library is ample and restful, the location convenient, and I could go there when I felt like it without sponging off friends. They also have a nice-looking necktie."

• The Doonesbury comic strip, by Garry Trudeau, originated in the Yale Daily News as "Bull Tales," a strip about local campus events and situations. Several characters in the Doonesbury strip were based on people associated with the university. The character B.D. was originally based on Yale football quarterback Brian Dowling; Dowling's teammate Calvin Hill was featured as "Calvin" in the early years of the strip. President King of the fictional Walden College was based on Yale president Kingman Brewster, and longtime Yale chaplain Rev. William Sloane Coffin provided part of the basis for the Rev. Scot Sloan, the chaplain at Walden in the strip.

In the 2010 video game Red Dead Redemption Dr. Harold Macdougal assists John Marston in tracking down Dutch Vanderline

References