You only disagree because you’re unwilling or unable to take off your US-centric glasses. For the third and final time - honest. We’re talking worldwide iconicity.
‘I Love You Lucy’ was the first really big US sitcom, has enjoyed countless reruns over there and is constantly referenced. I get that. Like I said, it’s firmly ingrained in the US popular culture. That, I know. But the world doesn’t end in the USA.
Some things also make a splash elsewhere and others do not. Take the Three Stooges, for instance, who are virtually unknown around here. I like to post stuff on several non-English speaking European boards, too, and when I posted about the Infinite Abbot and Costello piece I had to keep telling people who those guys actually were.
‘I Love You Lucy’ is a 50’s black and white TV show which never aired in many countries. It didn’t in mine, and in France, for instance, it didn’t until this century, as filler in a privately owned channel “with a female and family focus”. Hardly the stuff of iconicity.
Again, so far Blitzway has aimed at figures that are truly iconic the world over: they released who’s indisputably the biggest female movie icon ever – twice. And then the other absolutely timeless female icon – Audrey.
Those two have graced posters and memorabilia all over the world ever since, and probably will long after we’re all dead, because they’re synonymous with cinema, same as King Kong at the top of the Empire State, and even the average Joe (both from the US and abroad) who’s not that much into movies or statues will recognize their iconicity and might want that for their living room. Which is what Blitzway are counting on. Same reason they did Bruce Lee, the Godfather, Rocky, and Elvis, and same reason they might take on, for better or worse, Chaplin, Groucho, Bogart, John Wayne, Bob Marley, Freddy Mercury or Michael Jackson, to mention just a few.
And yes, same reason they released Sharon Stone in ‘Basic Instinct’. Now, Stone isn’t iconic per se, but THAT scene? Come on, that scene is pure movie iconicity. It’s been almost three decades now and people still will goof around when sitting in a chair reminiscing that scene. They will keep showing it in future scene compilations, like De Niro saying “You talkin’ to me?” or Gene Kelly perched on a lamp post with his umbrella.
So, yes, no contest – Stone’s leg-crossing scene does not only have more worldwide iconicity than ‘I Love You Lucy’, it’s actually the only one of those two actually iconic the world over. Outside of perhaps our fellow members in Canada, the UK and down under, it’s hard to find iconic what you don’t actually know.
Hell, I’m not exactly a youngster, and I’ve always been a movie buff – a ‘real’ one, not just genre movies, and even though I have seen a few Lucille Ball movies, I had to look the “vitameatavegamin” scene up on YouTube myself.
That said, here's hoping either Infinite or Tweeterhead do release a statue of her for those of you who find her iconic.