Abstract. – Susan Sontag in a 1963 essay wrote famously about Claude Levi-Strauss as “hero,” and by extension his fellow anthropologists as well. In 1970 E. Nelson Hayes and Tanya Hayes’s collection of essays expanded on this theme. The notion of anthropologists possessing access to arcane information and innate qualities beyond those of other mortals has had a long run in popular culture, including fiction, science fiction, movies, television, and magazines among other outlets. This article proposes to explore reasons for the fictional popularity of anthropology as well and the manner in which popular culture has depicted it. Finally, the consequences of that portrayal are discussed as well as the manner in which anthropologists themselves have fostered some of the images in their own professional and creative works. [anthropology in the USA and UK, anthropology and popular culture, self-image of anthropologists]