User:Inetpup/United Airlines in popular culture

The use of United Airlines planes and advertisements in popular culture has been discussed in various contexts, including as examples of computer-driven imagery, as well as toys.

Scholarly reception
The topic of airlines or aviation in general in popular culture has attracted book-length scholarly attention. The tragedies of United Airlines flights 93 and 175 on 11 September 2001 have especially received attention in popular culture. As Manohla Dargis writes, "Sept. 11 has shaped our political discourse and even infiltrated our popular culture, though as usual Hollywood has been awfully late to that table." A Boeing 757 traveling from Newark, New Jersey to San Francisco, California on the morning of September 11, 2001, was the focus of 2006's United 93. The filmmakers, while not having the cooperation of United Airlines, recreated the morning with attention to detail. They told the story of the fourth plane hijacked by terrorists and how the passengers teamed up to overpower the aircraft's hijackers, subsequently causing the plane to crash in rural Pennsylvania. When discussing the films concerning United 93, Ron Rosenbaum wrote that popular culture reflects the division between the pro- and anti-war camps and their use of the event. He explains: "Neil Young manages to incorporate both sides of it. His unapologetic celebration of Flight 93, 'Let's Roll,' and his new 'Let's Impeach the President' songs are not necessarily contradictory.  As I understand his position, he's not renouncing the spirit of 'Let's Roll,' he just feels it's been misused by the Bush presidency; the new song then represents a form of de-linkage of Flight 93 "let's roll" redemptiveness and the uses to which it's been put.

In film
United and other airlines have been featured in numerous films.

In 1962's unfinished Something's Got to Give, A United Jet, probably a Douglas DC-8, is used for a scene shot over one of the islands of Hawaii. A scene involving the characters played by Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse returning to San Francisco, California from Honolulu, Hawaii where they had their Honeymoon, was shot in a recreated First Class cabin. Later, when Marilyn Monroe's character returns to her, Martin and Charisse's characters' home in San Francisco, after seven years lost at sea, she is seen carrying a United carry-on bag marked "United Hawaii".

Tom Hanks' character Viktor Navorski is stuck at New York's JFK airport in the United terminal in The Terminal (2004). Viktor flew into JFK on a United 747, and the woman he falls for, played by Catherine Zeta Jones, is an international first class flight attendant for United.

In music

 * In the U2 song "Zooropa", the lyric "Fly the friendly skies" is heard, a reference to United's 1960s advertising campaign.

In television

 * United Airlines flights were shown in the opening montage of Hawaii Five-O. The producers of the show required numerous shots of commercial airliners taking off and landing and United provided a "substantial" sum for use of the footage.