Fifty Shades
Wishbone and the Illustrated Classics series have gotten me through every conversation I've ever had about Dickens, Treasure Island, The Anarchist's Cookbook, and Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Wishbone and the Illustrated Classics series have gotten me through every conversation I've ever had about Dickens, Treasure Island, The Anarchist's Cookbook, and Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Fifty Shades of Grey is a best-selling novel featuring large quantities of BDSM sex. Wishbone was a children's TV show about a dog who draws parallels between literature and real life in his dreams, reenacting many literary classics. The show was especially praised in its time for refusing to censor the more unpleasant aspects of its source work. Many people within Randall's age group have experienced more literary classics through Wishbone than by actually reading them; this phenomenon lead to the formation of a Facebook group (now replaced by a page) with over 70,000 members dedicated to that idea.
In the comic, Cueball claims to have learned all that he knows about Fifty Shades of Grey from the Wishbone adaptation of the book. Knowing the faithful nature of Wishbone's adaptations, an episode on the book would likely involve age-inappropriate material for children, as the sounds emanating from the TV would suggest.
In the title text:
- Great Illustrated Classics is a series of easy to read adaptations of literary classics, including works by Charles Dickens and Stevenson's Treasure Island.
- The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book that contains instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and other items. It was written by William Powell to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
- Our Bodies, Ourselves is a book about women's health and sexuality produced by the nonprofit organization Our Bodies Ourselves (originally called the Boston Women's Health Book Collective). First published in 1971, it contains information related to many aspects of women's health and sexuality, including menopause, birth control, childbirth, sexual health, sexual orientation, gender identity, mental health and general well-being.
Part of the title text joke is that the latter two works would not likely be the subject of Great Illustrated Classics or Wishbone. However, the title text may be actually technically 100% correct, if Randall hasn't ever had an in-depth conversation about either of the latter two works.
The book was later made into a film which was referenced in 1585: Similarities almost three years later.