Pop Culture Isolation / Film

• Fear of a Black Hat, contrasted with This Is Spın̈al Tap (which can also fit)
• In an inversion, Australian film critic David Stratton seems to be quite isolated from other forms of media - in his review of The Simpsons Movie he said he had never watched The Simpsons, in his review of Bee Movie he admitted to never having watched Seinfeld, and he also said he had never read the book Where the Wild Things Are in his review of that movie. Some critics and pundits would argue that such a stance is actually for the best, as it ensures that reviewers will remain unprejudiced toward the film content and avoid Hype Backlash and/or They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. One theatre critic, for example, had never seen any incarnation of West Side Story prior to attending a Broadway revival of it; with this fresh and unjaded perspective, the reviewer was able to honestly (if kindly) evaluate the play's objective worth and point out any flaws it had. (After all, a worshipful attitude often indicates just as much bias as an unreasonably hateful one.)
  • Of course, this attitude can also go too far and be a bad thing; it’s hardly fair, for instance, to watch the last movie in a series without bothering to even look up the others and then whine about the movie not making sense. This famously happened with Avengers: Infinity War. As the first part of the Grand Finale for a beloved, long-running franchise, it was huge success that got rave reviews and made billions in the box office... but mixed in with all the praise were quite a few critics who had never watched any Marvel movie before complaining that they didn’t understand the movie at all.
• The popularity of several cult actors. But in certain circles, they're as popular as Tom Cruise and Will Smith. A few examples are...

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  • Bruce Campbell, usually a bit actor in mainstream works, is a living legend in B-Movie circles.
  • Tony Todd
  • Michael Jai White
  • Tiffany Shepis
  • Julie Strain: Basically a female Bruce Campbell.
  • Jeffrey Combs
  • Sybil Danning
  • Debbie Rochon
  • Summer Glau (arguably anyone who was in Firefly/Serenity aside from Nathan Fillion)
  • Asia Argento
  • Tom Savini
  • Beverly Lynne
  • Don Wilson
  • Christine Nguyen
  • Shannon Tweed
  • Kane Hodder
  • Misty Mundae
  • Lance Henriksen
  • Shannon Whirry
  • Brad Dourif
  • Cynthia Rothrock
  • Tane McClure
• Also true about many African-American actors, such as Mo'Nique, Loretta Devine, Angela Bassett, Boris Kodjoe, Jill Scott, Tracee Ellis Ross, Meagan Good, the list goes on. Often when African-American actors have a movie that is a crossover hit, that movie will be treated as their first by mainstream media. Hilariously demonstrated by Fox News when LL Cool J demanded to have a pre-recorded interview dropped out of a program hosted by Sarah Palin. In an apparent Take That!, one of the network anchors, referencing his role in the popular NCIS: Los Angeles, probably the only time most of the Fox News main demographic would have ever seen him acting, said there were no hard feelings and wished him well "in his fledgling acting career". LL Cool J had, at that point, been acting in film and TV for nearly a quarter of a century.

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• In the days of drive-ins and regional film distributors, it was possible for a filmmaker to be successful making movies that did good business in one region of the United States, but were almost completely unknown elsewhere. The North Carolina-based Earl Owensby, aka "The Redneck Roger Corman," is but one example.
• The financial success of Tyler Perry's movies, particularly Diary of a Mad Black Woman, seemed to catch the mainstream media off guard. Perry had been currying good favor with black audiences through his plays for the better part of a decade, but the white American majority was ignorant of his existence until Madea hit the mainstream. The audience for Perry's films are usually black women, a demographic that is either virtually ignored by mainstream films or relegated to a supporting "sassy friend" sidekick for the star. The fact that black woman might want to watch movies where people who look like them want to find some fulfillment out of life besides following their white friends around and supporting them seems have found a voice in Perry's works.

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• Nollywood (the Nigerian film industry) produces the second-largest number of titles of any film industry, but the films are only distributed around parts of Africa and the West Indies.
• Discussed in Smokey and the Bandit, when Carrie mentions that Bandit doesn't know much about the theater or any of the things she's interested in and Bandit comes back by saying that she doesn't know anything about people like Richard Petty or Waylon Jennings. "When you tell somebody somethin', it depends on what part of the United States you're standin' in as to just how dumb you are."
• Priyanka Chopra is one of the top actresses in Bollywood and Miss World 2000. In the US, she's probably best known as the singer of the NFL Thursday Night Football theme song, "In My City" or as the star of Quantico.
• Pre-1968 pornographic films are poorly known for a very good reason: no self-respecting theater owner of the era would have been caught dead showing one, and they tended to be screened only in underground, male-only venues. The only chance one of these vintage porn films had of gaining true notoriety was if a major celebrity did a cameo in it (which most were not willing to do, although it did happen once in a while). This is touched upon in Ed Wood: Ed wants to cast Bela Lugosi in his transvestite film Glen or Glenda because he figures that a star cameo is the only hope his sleazy film has of going mainstream.
• Many of the adult actors in the Harry Potter films are known to younger non-UK/Irish audiences only for their role in the series. Examples include Richard Harris, Michael Gambon, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Griffiths, Fiona Shaw, Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton, Jason Isaacs, Zoe Wanamaker, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Ian Hart, Julie Walters, Mark Williams, Miranda Richardson, Adrian Rawlins, Geraldine Somerville, and Robert Hardy. However, they have all been highly prolific stars back home. The ones who avert this include Alan Rickman (somewhat), Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh, Warwick Davis, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Bill Nighy. And then you have "two-hit wonders" like Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey) and David Bradley (Game of Thrones), or actors now known for a different role entirely, like David Tennant (Doctor Who) and Michelle Fairley (Game of Thrones).
• The only film of Gene Wilder's that many younger people will be able to name is Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. In fact, it was one of his less successful box office hits back in the day.
• Nosferatu is much less known nowadays for being a German Expressionist horror classic than it is for the ending gag in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Graveyard Shift".
• In-universe example: In the movie A Mighty Wind, the folk singer groups throughout the making of the documentary are fawning all over their common producer, Irving Steinbloom. During the ending, after the audience has spent almost two hours caring about the participants, you see how the rest of the world treats Folk Music singers: mild interest and relegation to playing background music at medical supply conventions.

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