Weekly programme, assignments and handouts can be found on WOLF
Drawing
on a range of texts and cultural practices, this module addresses the extremes
of representation. We will examine some examples of the 'high' and 'low' cultural
texts that are hidden from mainstream society, and those which are rejected
by both/either the populace and the academy. Our objects of enquiry will be
representational strategies, and their real affects on individuals and on society.
Note: some material on this course may cause offence, upset, or embarrassment.
Warning:
many of the links below may lead to offensive material
Contents
Unpopular
texts
Censorship
Threads
The Three Golliwogs
Ulysses
Atrocity comics
Naked Lunch
Punk
The
Offence
The Turner Diaries
The White Hotel
Blasphemy
Cannibal Holocaust
Pornography
You should remember when using the internet for your research that very little of what passes for criticism or comment on the world wide web is academically credible. Its factual reliability is also often questionable. Material derived from the internet must not replace work with primary sources, or research using other secondary sources, including books and journals. For academically credible electronically-accessible material check out the library's web pages. Click for Electronic Resources or the Humanities or English subject pages.
Pdf files below require Acrobat reader.
Some of the sites below have gone offline, but if they are particularly useful I have linked to the archive of the site on the Internet Archive. This is indicated in the description.
Sites on the unpopularity of representations. (Under construction.)
Art we don't like — brief exploration of categories of art that challenge or offend.
Culture Shock — website for US tv series about various artistic controversies.
Unpop Art — "is a loosely organized group of creative individuals who often deal with similar cultural and aesthetic themes; generally speaking, the application of decidedly unpopular concepts via popular - often fun - media."
There are lots of sites about censorship, its history and processes, and in many different countries and cultures. This list is a brief sampling of links to sites dealing generally with the censorship and prosecution of film, broadcasting, and literature. Sites dealing specifically with art, music, comics, cartoons, horror, 'video nasties', pornography, the internet, political offence (eg. racism, sexism), and illegal expression are not included. Contact Mark for a personalised links list (which will remain within the bounds of the university internet policy and UK law...) if you want to deal with any of these areas in your online research.
British Board of Film Classification — official site.
Ofcom — official site of the body which oversees UK television and radio. Includes adjudications from complaints, but buried deep within the site.
Beyond the Boundaries: The Censors — film and video censorship in Britain and the US.
The Melon Farmers...Watching the Censors Watch What We Watch — huge and comprehensive, UK focused site on all aspects of censorship, though principally about video pornography.
The Censorship Pages -- Information on Censorship of the Written Word — largely US orientated, but with some useful links.
Mediawatch-uk — chief UK pressure group monitoring taste and decency on tv. Used to be the National Viewers and Listeners Association, founded by Mary Whitehouse. Now looking increasingly amateurish and overwhelmed.
FindLaw: Legal Subjects Constitutional Law Supreme Court Obscenity Cases — collection of US obscenity law reports from 1897.
Censorship and Secrecy, Social and Legal Perspectives — article by Gary Marx, from the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2001.
The Censorship of Movies on British Television: How it Works and Why it Should Stop — by Simon Birch, in Political Notes, No. 117, 1995, "an occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance" (pdf file).
Banned Books Online — links to the full text of many works of literature that have been banned or censored.
Study of censorship and free speech — various items on censorship of books, including a brief chronology of banned literature from ancient times to the present.
Threads
BBC tv, 1984, dir. Mike Jackson, scr. Barry Hines
There are quite a few Threads pages on the web, as the generation that was first traumatised by it gets hold of decent computers. This section also includes some links to sites on the representation of nuclear holocaust in film, tv and literature.
Threads — page by Patrick Bean. Includes story, images, sounds, some background information, links.
Threads review — (internet archive) part of fanzine site. Review, images, links to other reviews. Also includes PhD proposal on Threads by Paul Binnion.
Threads — page by Ashley Pomeroy. Includes synopsis, commentary, images, sounds. Oddly organised.
Threads — long synopsis and images.
Threads — includes synopsis, images, sounds, cast information. Irritating pop-ups.
Nuclear War - Threads — (internet archive) includes synopsis and images. Part of a site by Toby Murray on representations of nuclear war - go here for the home page.
Threads - As Close As You'll Ever Want To Get To Nuclear War... — part of site by Duncan Hutchinson about cult tv. Includes timeline and images.
Threads: The Void — short review by Kevin Donnelly from Off the Telly. On the same site is Let's All Hide in the Linen Cupboard: The Nuclear Issue on British Television by Jack Kibble-White.
Great Moments... In Fright — short article by Chas Newkey-Burden from Loaded.
Emptyworld: Threads — short review from site by Bryan Anderson devoted to post-apocalypse fiction and films. Emptyworld also features some short articles and a good working bibliography of primary texts. Click here for home page.
Review: Threads — from Logan and Glitz's movie page. Short review.
IMDb comments — viewers' comments from the Internet Movie Database.
Post Modem — brilliant site by Mick Broderick on nuclear war in literature and film. Long, fascinating articles. Loads very slowly, though.
Nuke Pop — excellent collection of images and commentary by Paul Brians on the coverage of nuclear war in popular culture. Also, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, an annotated bibliography supplementing Paul Brians' book published in 1986.
CONELRAD: all things atomic — comprehensive site on cold war culture.
Post-apocalyptic media — including film, tv, role-playing and computer games.
Post-Apocalyptic Movie Mania — page on post-nuclear war films, from a site covering global destruction by various means.
The
Three Golliwogs
Enid Blyton, 1944, London, George Newnes Ltd.
Lots about Blyton on the web, of which some is sampled below. Also included are pages on golliwogs – as collectors items, icons, and racist stereotypes – and some general material on the representation of black people in white popular media. Note that the Blyton sites largely steer clear of the golliwog books.
Enid Blyton webring — ten sites.
The Enid Blyton Appreciation List — Yahoo! group devoted to Blyton.
Unofficial Enid Blyton homepage — not very informative, but some good cover scans.
Enid Blyton Society — fairly uninformative, being basically a shopwindow for potential subscribers and customers.
Enid Blyton — short biography.
In Defence of Golly — several pages on the golliwog in Enid Blyton, and its effacement from later editions of the Noddy books. Part of Will's Golly Page, chiefly on the Robertson's jam badges.
Golly! Blyton 'is not guilty of race slurs' — article by David Ward from The Guardian.
Sunny Stories – Enid Blyton wins through — article by Kate Forsyth from Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
The Works of Enid Blyton — short piece by Terri Kovacs from the International Golliwogs Collectors Club (click here for their home page, which is hosted by 'The Great Teddy Bear Hug').
The Golliwog Caricature — excellent article supported by exhibits from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, a real and virtual museum hosted at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan.
Pollywogs and Golliwogs — piece by Hartley Patterson on the derivation of the racist epithet "wog".
Representation — good page on issues of representation and race from Emory University's Postcolonial Studies site.
Ulysses
James
Joyce, 1922, Paris, Shakespeare and Company
There is a huge amount of Joyce-related material on the internet. This list is highly selective, and largely consists of the ones I like...
James Joyce: The Brazen Head — good starting point for exploring Joyce on the web.
james joyce portal — large links page. Part of Robot Wisdom Weblog, where you can also find...
IQ Infinity: the unknown James Joyce — extensively hyperlinked overview of Joyce's writings and reputation by Jorn Barger.
Haveth Versions Everywhere -or- Here Comes Everybody's Edition(s) of Ulysses — overview of the 'Joyce wars' (the disputes over the various 'corrected' editions) by Daniel Klyn.
James Joyce's Amazing Chronicle — contemporary review of Ulysses from the New York Times by Dr. Joseph Collins. "[T]he average intelligent reader will glean little or nothing from it - even from careful perusal, one might properly say study, of it - save bewilderment and a sense of disgust." Also see the Joyce page of the New York Times which includes several articles from the '20s and '30s about the book's banning in the US.
Judge Woolsey's decision — text of Judge Woolsey's decision to allow the importation of Ulysses into the US.
Ulysses for Dummies — short comic strip version of Ulysses.
This section concentrates on the response of comic creators and publishers to the September 11th attacks. For general links on comics click here. There is little extended and considered comment as yet, and most of the following are news stories or brief reviews. Also included are a handful of links to other cultural responses to September 11th.
The Authentic History Center: 9/11 in Comic Books — reproductions of sample pages from The Amazing Spider-Man v.2 #36, and other comics.
9-11 — DC Comics site for benefit comic. Includes a gallery and some full comic stories.
9-11 Emergency Relief — page for the Alternative Comics collection. Includes links to some contributions.
Comics that Care — (internet archive) fairly comprehensive coverage of the many comic volumes and issues that followed the attacks.
Bin Laden as Lex Luthor — Gale Holland, Salon, 15 October 2001. Article examining the similarities between the universe of comic books and the attack on the US.
The Most Serious Comix Ever — part one of a long article by Andrew Arnold from Time, 29 January 2002 about the proliferation of comic book responses to the attacks. Part two (5 February 2002) is here.
The Brave and the Bold — long article by Robert Wilonsky from SF Weekly (that's San Francisco, not science fiction), 3 October 2001. Covers the various September 11 comics, and their implications for the industry.
Comic art of war — article by Joel Pollak from ZA@Play, 26 July 2002. Examines the use of superheroes, and their absence, in the tribute comics.
A comic book view on Sept. 11 — Michael Miller, South Florida Business Journal, 28 June 2002. News story.
Superheroes Confront Real-Life Tragedy — Michael Y. Park, FoxNews, 22 January 2002. News story.
Comics industry unites for 9/11 tributes — Burl Burlingame, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 31 March 2002. News story.
Comic books find post-Sept. 11 roles — Mark Rahner, The Seattle Times, 22 January 2002. News story.
Rant: Post 9/11 Comic Response — (internet archive) by Josiah. Brief attack on the exploitation of the attacks by comic book publishers.
Picturing the Catastrophe — brief analysis of the phenomenon by Karin Kross.
NYSS: post nine-eleven — David Yurkovich (superhero comic book creator) contributes a text tale in which he discusses his response to the attacks and their aftermath. Other parts are here - 2 3 4 5
Joe Straczynski Writes the Marvel Comic — brief entry on Straczynski's work on Spider-Man, including his World Trade Centre issue. Includes a link to the text of the issue.
Amazing Spider-Man #36 — review by John Cornwell.
Amazing Spider-Man #36 — review by Marc Deering.
The Amazing Spider-Man — reviews by Nathan Butler. Scroll over half way down the page for the review of the World Trade Centre issue, which includes reproductions of the cover and the issue's text.
Amazing Spider-Man #36 — review by Tobias Clutch.
Spiderman too late to save WTC, honors 'real heroes' — (internet archive) short article by Gina Doggett about the publication of Amazing Spider-Man #36.
Comic Book Galaxy — (internet archive) review of 9-11: Emergency Relief and A Moment of Silence by Alan David Doane and Rob Vollmar.
9-11: Emergency Relief — review by Anne Thalheimer from PopMatters.
9-11 Emergency Relief — review by Ed Matthews.
Captain America, Traitor? — analysis of recent Captain America series by Michael Medved, from the National Review, 4 April , 2003.
Heroes Among Us: A Comic Book Art Exhibit In Celebration of the Heroes of 9-11 — exhibition at the New York City Comic Book Museum.
11 September 2001 in a different way — superficial examination of the response within popular culture. Little on comics.
In pictures: Cartoonist's view of 11 September — BBC News, 29 August 2002. "French cartoonist Sandrine Revel was on her first trip to New York on 11 September 2001." Includes illustrations.
Get Your War On — David Rees' anti-war comic strip.
Naked
Lunch
William
S. Burroughs, 1959, Paris, Olympia Press
There are numerous William Burroughs sites. These are the most useful, the most obscure, and the most fun...
Burroughs — excellent collection of material from a course on the Beats taught by Ingrid Kerkhoff. Includes extensive extracts, many images, interviews, secondary material, etc.
S Press Media William S. Burroughs Homepage — another excellent collection of texts and images.
Literary Kicks: William S. Burroughs — extensively hyperlinked page on Burroughs from an excellent Beats-related site.
William S. Burroughs - the iZINE — good-looking site, including extracts and excellent images.
William (Seward) Burroughs (1914-1997) — biography and bibliography. The same entry can also be found here, with images.
William S. Burroughs — biography and links, some dead (from Bohemian Ink, "literary underground review").
The Kindly Dope Fiend: The Unofficial William S. Burroughs Webpage — biography, images, extracts, links.
Burroughs On-line — "A partial index of online works by, and interviews with William S. Burroughs." Links to various Burroughs material available on the web. Part of Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia, an excellent resource for textual frauds, hoaxes, and subversive silliness.
the ghost of william s. burroughs — the sayings of wsb... A collection of wav files of Burroughs' readings and statements, all delivered in that deific deadpan drawl. Provocative and offensive - listen with care.
WSB Interview, 1961 — by Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg, originally in Journal For the Protection of All People. Simultaneously obtuse and direct.
Obituary for William S. Burroughs — (internet archive) by J. G. Ballard, The Guardian, 4 August 1997.
Struggles with the Ugly Spirit — long obituary by James Campbell from The Guardian, 4 August 1997.
William S. Burroughs Dies at 83; Member of the Beat Generation Wrote 'Naked Lunch' — obituary by Richard Severo from The New York Times, 3 August 1997.
Salon: J. G. Ballard on William S. Burroughs' naked truth — interview with Ballard by Richard Kadrey and Suzanne Stefanac from Salon, September 1997, on the influence of Burroughs' work.
The Boston Trial of "Naked Lunch" — transcript of testimony by Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg at the obscenity trial of Naked Lunch in Boston, Massachusetts, 1965.
Beat Godfather meets Glitter Mainman — by Craig Copetas. Conversation between William Burroughs and David Bowie, Rolling Stone, 28 February 1974.
Which is the fly and which is the human? — (internet archive) interview with William Burroughs and David Cronenberg (director of film of Naked Lunch) by Lynn Snowden, originally from Esquire, February 1992.
The
Offence
1973,
dir. Sidney Lumet, scr. John Hopkins
Criminally, there is absolutely nothing of substance on the web about The Offence. The links below are the available reviews, movie guide entries, and material on the writer. Check out the movie guides for more on the other participants. By the way, some US material on the film spells it as The Offense.
Offence, The (1973) — Internet Movie Database entry. Check out the user comments.
All-Movie Guide — entry on The Offence.
Offencive — contemporary review by Richard Schickel, Time, 4 June 1973.
Offence — review by Dennis Schwarz.
The Offence — review of the DVD by Troy Howarth.
The Unknown Movies — review.
Hopkins, John — biography and tele/filmography of the writer, from the Encyclopedia of Television.
The
Turner Diaries
Andrew MacDonald
(William Pierce), 1978, Hillsboro, WV, National Vanguard Press
The first five links below are online reproductions of the whole novel - the site hosting the text is identified in each case, with notes about its political inclinations. For the other links, although most of the sites are critical of the far right, you may well find that some of the links below lead to material that is openly and virulently racist. I have included relevant links to some anti-racist campaign groups. (Contact module leader if you have problems obtaining The Turner Diaries. Copyright warning - download, reproduction and distribution of copyright material may infringe the law.)
The Turner Diaries — Truth About Talmud; grossly anti-semitic - whole novel on one pdf page.
The Turner Diaries — Myassoff.com; German language site - whole novel (in English) on one pdf page.
The Turner Diaries — Independent Media Center; eclectic resistance - whole book on one html page.
The Turner Diaries — Solar General; white supremacist organisation - whole novel on thirty html pages, or as a zip file.
The Turner Diaries, part 2, part 3 — Northwest National Socialist Movement; white supremacist organisation - whole novel on three html pages.
An Awakening — by William Pierce. Transcript of broadcast by Pierce from December 2001 explaining the purpose and motivation of the novel.
Reading The Turner Diaries: Jewish Blackness, Judaized Blacks, and the 'Radioactive Ruins of Tel Aviv' — (internet archive) conference paper by Joe Lockard.
Pierce and the Cosmotheist Worldview — critique of the philosophical underpinnings of The Turner Diaries. Probably an unauthorised reproduction of 'The Turner Diaries and Cosmotheism: William Pierce's Theology of Revolution' by Brad Whitsel, Nova Religio, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 1998.
Turner Diaries - Extremism in America — article from the Anti-Defamation League. The same site also includes a page on Pierce, and Q and A, giving background information.
The Turner Diaries — chronology and review from John Reilly's excellent site on alternative history and eschatology. Also a review of Michael Barkun's Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement.
Past Place — Newsletter of the Historical Geography Specialty Group Association of American Geographers, Winter 1996, Vol. 5, No. 2. Includes 'Hate Crimes and White Supremacy', a bibliography by Elizabeth Hines of mainly non-fictional material on the white right in the US.
Review of the "Left Behind" Tribulation Novels: Turner Diaries Lite — short article on radical Christian fiction, and its similarities to The Turner Diaries by Edmund D. Cohen.
Apocalypse Now! The Realized Eschatology of the "Christian Identity" Movement — article by Patrick Minges from the Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 49, 1-2, 1994. Uses The Turner Diaries in a discussion of the radical Christian right in the US.
The Civil Engineering of The Turner Diaries — review by L. J. Hurst, originally from Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association, comparing the novel with other sf novels.
The Turner Diaries — surprisingly serious review from rotten.com.
William L. Pierce and The Turner Diaries — short piece from The Nizkor Project, a Holocaust education site. Other links to Pierce pages on the same site here.
The Nazi Fiction of William Pierce — short article reproduced in Independent Gay Forum by Paul Varnell.
Holding Terrorists Accountable? — article by Tim Wise from Pop and Politics, comparing the attacks on the World Trade Centre with The Turner Diaries.
Neo-Nazis and 9/11 By Jack McCarthy — short article from Counterpunch, 29 October 2001 detailing Pierce's prescient comments on a potential terrorist attack.
The National Alliance — homepage of William Pierce's white supremacy organisation. Original publishers of The Turner Diaries.
Anti-National Alliance Network — "a collection of anti-racist activists from Citizens Against Hate working towards exposure of the true agenda of the National Alliance."
Explosion of Hate — information on The National Alliance from the Anti-Defamation League.
William Pierce - Wikipedia — entry on Pierce from the online encyclopedia, extensively hyperlinked to other entries.
William Pierce — obituary by Christopher Reed from The Guardian, 25 July 2002. Some factual errors, but fewer than in most of the other obituaries.
Goodbye, good riddance — article by John Sutherland from The Guardian, 29 July 2002. Celebrates Pierce's death and castigates booksellers who make the novel available.
There are thousands of punk-related websites. While this section is being constructed, click here for the No Future? links page, which categorises many of the most useful sites.
The
White Hotel
D.
M. Thomas, 1981, London, Victor Gollancz
Having had its scandalous moments (variously accused of sexism, plagiarism, and exploiting the Holocaust) long before the invention of the internet, there is little of substance about The White Hotel on the web, despite the hundreds of recommendations and mentions in weblogs. The resources below, though, are fairly full, and provide a lot of information.
D. M. Thomas Online — author's homepage.
Go Walkabout in Cornwall and Russia with Freud — condensed biography of Thomas.
Links to The White Hotel material — page by Mark Morton, providing links to various material related to The White Hotel. Most useful is a chart detailing the structure and narration of the novel, with hyperlinks to explanatory notes. Also includes links to background material on Freud and Babi Yar.
Perspectives on the Holocaust in Contemporary Literature — by Alvin H. Rosenfeld. Originally part of the Simon Wiesenthal Center website. Long article criticising Thomas's 'borrowings' of Holocaust history. See chapter 2 of Sue Vice's Holocaust Fiction (available in the library) for an alternative view.
The Uses of Memory and the Abuses of Fiction: Sexuality in Holocaust Fiction and Memoir — article from e-journal Other Voices, 2, 1 (February 2000) by Rebecca Scherr. Also examines The Night Porter.
Syllabuses of Risk — by Jeffrey Berman, The Chronicle Review, February 15, 2002. Long article including The White Hotel in a study of the deleterious affects that texts may have on their readers.
The Problems of Reading The White Hotel — Notes on the novel by Michael C. Martin.
Prudery — essay from evangelical Christian point of view by Del Doughty which deals with The White Hotel in a consideration of texts which may cause offence for good reason.
Freudian Psychology as Related to DM Thomas's The White Hotel — student essay by Morgan Albreight.
The White Hotel, Constant Reader Discussion — readers' discussion group.
Materiality versus abstraction in D. M. Thomas's The White Hotel — by Magali Cornier Michael, Critique, Fall 2001. Accessible through LION (from campus computer, or with an Athens password). Detailed analysis, foregrounding the novel's ambiguous and critical relationship with its source material and influences.
Thomas's The White Hotel — by James A. Wren, The Explicator, Winter 1996. Accessible through LION (from campus computer, or with an Athens password). Discusses the structure of the novel, and offers an alternative (and 'marginal') centre from which to view the narrative.
A lot of 'White' noise: Duo check into 'Hotel' — article from Variety about the forthcoming film of the novel.
How much do you know about 'The White Hotel'? — online quiz about the novel.
Under construction.
Cannibal
Holocaust
1979,
dir. Ruggero Deodato, scr. Gianfranco Clerici
Because of the nature of the film, many of the links below will lead to grossly offensive and disturbing images, albeit fictional ones. Particularly gratuitous ones are marked with an asterisk* as a warning, but the absence of this symbol does not guarantee the inoffensiveness of the linked site. For links to general horror-related sites, click here.
Cannibal Holocaust----The one that goes all the way!!!! — official site of US distributors, imitating The Blair Witch Project online marketing campaign.*
Ruggero Deodato [1939 - ] — biography and filmography from the Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television. Click here for the page on Cannibal Holocaust, which includes full credits and a bibliography.
Dark Waters - Cannibal Holocaust Where the Film Stops — short article by Rayo Casablanca on a scene that was so gross it was cut either in production or editing. Yes, it could have been worse.
Cannibal Holocaust — summary and review.
Rotten Tomatoes — index of online reviews, some of which are also listed immediately below.
Blood Feast — review by Ian Grey, from Baltimore City Paper, 29 August 2001.
Natural Born Viewers CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST — two reviews by Andrew Mackay and Gabe Toro.
Teleport City Movie Reviews Cannibal Holocaust — (internet archive) relatively thoughtful review by Keith Allison.
LOVE PRONG INC: "Cannibal Holocaust" It's a set-up - just like Cambodia! — (internet archive) review by Gorehound.
Flipside Movie Emporium Cannibal Holocaust Movie Review — by Mike Bracken.
Sky-High Picture Show - Cannibal Holocaust — (internet archive) review by Chris Barry.
Possibly the most disgusting film ever made — review by Brain Eater.
Film Motion Picture Purgatory — (internet archive) review in the form of a comic by Rick Trembles.
Under construction. For now, click here for EN2014 Popular Texts section on pornography and erotica.
Links verified and updated 17 September 2006