Maple syrup doesn’t have a lot of pop culture exposure, probably because most maple syrup production and distribution happens far away from Hollywood. Even so, there are exceptions. I can’t say that the following examples elevate the industry, but any exposure is better than nothing. So here we go:
1) Star Trek: Voyager, s.7 ep.16 “Workforce”
An alien civilization with a labour shortage has kidnapped members of the Voyager’s crew and, to keep them docile, erases their memories and implants new ones. When the crew rescues B’elanna Torres, Neelix uses pleasant food associations to help the half Klingon Torres recover her memory. He presents her with a plate of pancakes drenched in maple syrup and tells her that it’s her favourite breakfast. There you have it: Klingons love maple syrup.
2) Elf, starring Will Ferrell
Raised as an oversized elf, the human named Buddy travels from the North Pole to NYC in search of his biological father. During a dinner, he pulls a bottle of maple syrup out of his sleeve and douses his plate of spaghetti. He informs his hosts that elves thrive on the four major food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup.
3) Sweet as Maple Syrup
Sweet as Maple Syrup is a made-for-TV movie, as yet unreleased, and so I have no idea whether it’s any good. However, reading the blurb on IMDb, I suspect it’s awful:
Rachelle is in a race against time when her family’s maple orchard starts to decline, just ahead of the upcoming Maple Syrup Festival. With the help of Derek, a professor of arboriculture, they combine her hands-on experience and his scientific knowledge to heal the orchard, along the way discovering their newfound friendship may have a sweet ending of its own.
A maple syrup orchard? Really? It sounds sappy.
4) Pulp Fiction
At the end of Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, we come full circle with the robbery in the diner. Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) are eating breakfast after a stressful time cleaning bits of brain out of the back seat of their car. Vincent has a plate of pancakes and, after buttering each pancake, slathers the pile with syrup. When Vincent excuses himself to go to the toilet, Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) pull out their guns and rob the diner. When Pumpkin gets to Jules, he notices that Jules has a briefcase on the seat beside him, and while Jules refuses to surrender the briefcase, he lets Pumpkin look inside. Pumpkin opens it up and although we never see what’s inside, we see how it bathes Pumpkin’s face in a golden glow. The internet is rife with theories about what’s inside that briefcase but anyone with common sense knows it’s bottles of amber maple syrup.
5) Riverdale, s.1 ep. 9 “La Grande Illusion”
“Thicker than blood, more precious than oil, Riverdale’s big business is maple syrup.” So begins the 9th episode of the Netflix series based on the Archie comic strip. We watch a man pour maple syrup from a barrel as if it were single malt in the Scottish Highlands. From there, the camera pans to an entire family engaged in a syrup tasting. We learn that the Blossom family controls the maple syrup industry in Riverdale. But the patriarch has died, creating a power vacuum. Intrigue follows…
6) Wedding Crashers
John (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy (Vince Vaughan) are a couple of players who exploit weddings for romantic opportunities (i.e. to get laid). As they arrive at one wedding, they get into an argument about their back story. Jeremy wants them to pose as businessmen from Vermont who own an emerging maple syrup conglomerate. John thinks this is a dumb idea but Jeremy insists he knows everything there is to know about maple syrup.
7) Love and Maple Syrup, by Gordon Lightfoot
You would think that a Gordon Lightfoot song about maple syrup would appear on an album called Gord’s Gold. But no. It appears on side 2 of his 1971 album, Summer Side of Life. Strictly speaking, maple syrup happens more in the late winter/early spring side of life but who’s going to quibble with Gordon Lightfoot?
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[…] you read my Maple Syrup in Pop Culture post, you would have noted a trend. The popular imagination has only two uses for maple syrup. […]