the riverdale library

welcome to the riverdale, the town with infinite references!

[sullypants]

I’m less than 5 minutes into this episode, but the reference is glaring.

[sullypants]

Caché (2005, dir Michael Haneke)

The plot follows an upper-class French couple, Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), who are terrorised by anonymous tapes that appear on their front porch and seem to show the family is under surveillance.

A n y w a y.

[theriverdalelibrary]

s4👏🏻 coming👏🏻 in👏🏻 hot👏🏻

[bronwynn]

how many literary properties can RAS rip off in one season? stay tuned.

[theriverdalelibrary]

Season 4 references are off to a rip-roaring start!

[theriverdalelibrary]

ooo I love the idea of this blog; I always thought it was interesting how they made references in universe to movies/literature; I always love imagining what movies/books etc exist in Riverdale universe and ours that overlap

Thank you! There certainly are a lot of references to work with in the crazy world of Riverdale. I personally am a huge fan of the seemingly bizarre, mostly-out-of-place references made in dialogue but it is always interesting to see some of the items the set dec crew peppers into set design. Those references have always felt a little more purposeful to me. 

[theriverdalelibrary]

“I feel like I’m wandering through the lost epilogue to Our Town.”

Veronica Lodge in 1x01 The River’s Edge (2016), written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Our Town (1938), a play by Thornton Wilder: Our Town tells the story of a small town, Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, in order to tell us the story of every town, the whole world over. Narrated by the “Stage Manager”, we follow the Gibbs and Webb families, residents of Grover’s Corners, through twelve years of life changes -- from the mundane in Act I, “Daily Life,” to the romantic in Act II, “Love and Marriage,” to the devastating in Act III, “Death and Eternity.” Through the young lovers Emily and George, their strong and loving parents, and the many other Grover’s Corners’ locals, Wilder delivers universal truths about what it means to be human. “Oh, earth,” Emily Webb exclaims towards the play’s end, “you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you.” [x] 

What could an epilogue to Our Town look like, you may ask? Excellent question! Act III closes with Emily’s ghost observing her funeral (having died in childbirth) with other ghosts in the graveyard and reflecting on the living’s inability to appreciate what they have. She watches her husband grieve over her tombstone and the play ends. Not a whole lot of room for interpretation. Perhaps Ms. Lodge is ruminating over the intricacies of small town life and the fleeting nature of life, having just left her ‘previous’ life of luxury; maybe she has an awareness of Riverdale’s own meta-narrator in Jughead (wouldn’t that be fun? I’d kill to have Jughead break the fourth wall); maybe she just knows Our Town is about a small town and wanted to appear worldly to the brilliant Ms. Cooper. Who’s to say? 

[theriverdalelibrary]

1x01 Chapter One: The River’s Edge (2016), written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: As a new school year begins, the town of Riverdale is reeling from the tragic death of high school golden boy Jason Blossom. [x]

The River’s Edge (1986), dir. by Tim Hunter & screenplay by Neal Jimenez: Teenage burnout Samson (Daniel Roebuck) has murdered his girlfriend and left her naked body lying on the bank of a river just outside their small California town. He not only doesn't run away, he brings his friends to gawk at her dead body. Speed freak Layne (Crispin Glover) tries to force the teens' silence to protect their friend, but conscience is gnawing at the others -- particularly Matt (Keanu Reeves) and Clarissa (Ione Skye Leitch), who want to go to the police. [x]

[theriverdalelibrary]

“Are you familiar with the works of Truman Capote? I’m Breakfast at Tiffany’s but this place is strictly In Cold Blood.”

Veronica Lodge in 1x01 The River’s Edge (2016), written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: A nonfiction novel published originally as a four-part series in The New Yorker magazine in 1965 and in book form in 1966. Capote used the techniques of fiction to tell the true story of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Kansas by a pair of drifters and of the subsequent capture, trial, and execution of the killers. [x]

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote: It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction. [x]

[theriverdalelibrary]

hello and welcome to the riverdale library!

remember when these kids had homework to do instead of serial killers and cults to catch? 

no, just me? 

well, regardless of what these kids are doing, they are almost always making absurd and/or obscure (pop) culture references while doing so. I’m going to collect them all here, because why not.