Full Description
Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Wrath, Sex, Crime, is a fascinating study of the a-temporal nature of evil in the West. The international academics and researchers who have contributed to this text not only concentrate on political, social and legally sanctioned cruelty from the past and present, but also explore the nature of moral transgression in contemporary art, media and literature. Although many forms and practices of what might be called 'evil' are analysed, all are bound by violence and/or the sexually perverse. As this book demonstrates, the old news media axiom, 'if it bleeds it leads,' also extends to the larger pool of popular culture. This absorbing volume will be of interest to anyone who has ever pondered on the exotic, extraordinary and surreal twists of human wickedness.
Contents
Introduction
PART I Wrath: Purging, Cleansing and Appropriating the Deviant Other
Rebecca KNUTH: Systemic Book Burning as Evil?
William A. COOK: The Destructive Power of Medieval Mythology: A Revisionist View of the Extermination of the Cathars and Pequots
Meg BARKER: Satanic Subcultures? A Discourse Analysis of the Self-Perceptions of Young Goths and Pagans
Michael F. STRMISKA: The Evils of Christianization: A Pagan Perspective on European History
PART II Sexual Imagery: Locus of Pleasure, Pain, Censorship and Reclamation
Terrie WADDELL: The Female/Feline Morph: Myth, Media, Sex and the Bestial
Loren GLASS: Bad Sex: Second-Wave Feminism and Pornography's Golden Age
Darren OLDRIDGE: "Video Abuse": Gender, Censorship and I Spit on Your Grave
Madelaine HRON: Naked Terror: Horrific, Aesthetic and Healing Images of Rape
PART III Crime: Versions of Guilt, Shame and Redemption
Earl F. MARTIN Masking the Evil of Capital Punishment
Diana MEDLICOTT: Interrogating the Penal Gaze: Is the Ethical Prison a Possibility?
Fiona PETERS: The Contraction of the Heart: Anxiety, Radical Evil and Proximity in Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Novels
Paul DAVIES : "I did so many bad things": Sin and Redemption in the Films of Abel Ferrara
Notes on Contributors
