E-Book Overview
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.
E-Book Content
Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Wrath, Sex, Crime
At the Interface
Dr Robert Fisher Series Editor
Advisory Board Professor Ned Basic Dr Diana Medlicott Professor James Cameron Revd Stephen Morris Professor Margaret Chatterjee Professor John Parry Dr Salwa Ghaly Dr David Seth Preston Professor Michael Goodman Professor Dan Primozic Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E
Volume 3 A volume in the At the Interface project ‘Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness’
Probing the Boundaries
Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Wrath, Sex, Crime
Edited by
Terrie Waddell
Amsterdam – New York, NY 2003
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation – Paper of documents – Requirements for performance”. ISBN: 90-420-1015-0 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2003 Printed in The Netherlands
Contents Introduction PART I
ix
Wrath: Purging, Cleansing and Appropriating the Deviant Other Systemic Book Burning as Evil?
1
Rebecca Knuth The Destructive Power of Medieval Mythology: A Revisionist View of the Extermination of the Cathars and Pequots 13 William A. Cook Satanic Subcultures? A Discourse Analysis of the Self-Perceptions of Young Goths an Pagans 37 Meg Barker The Evils of Christianization: A Pagan Perspective on European History 59 Michael F. Strmiska PART II
Sexual Imagery: Locus of Pleasure, Pain, Censorship and Reclamation The Female/Feline Morph: Myth, Media, Sex and the Bestial
75
Terrie Waddell Bad Sex: Second-Wave Feminism and Pornography’s Golden Age 97 Loren Glass
“Video Abuse”: Gender, Censorship and I Spit on Your Grave
113
Darren Oldridge Naked Terror: Horrific, Aesthetic and Healing Images of Rape
127
Madelaine Hron PART III
Crime: Versions of Guilt, Shame and Redemption Masking the Evil of Capital Punishment
159
Earl F. Martin Interrogating the Penal Gaze: Is the Ethical Prison a Possibility?
175
Diana Medlicott The Contraction of the Heart: Anxiety, Radical Evil and Proximity in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Novels
189
Fiona Peters “I did so many bad things”: Sin and Redemption in the Films of Abel Ferrara 209 Paul Davies Notes on Contributors
225
Welcome to At the Interface/Probing the Boundaries multi-disciplinary, ATI/PTB publications are designed to be both exploratory examinations of particular areas and issues, and rigorous inquiries into specific subjects. Books published in the series are enabling resources which will encourage sustained and creative dialogue, and become the future resource for further inquiries and research. Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Wrath, Sex, Crime is a volume which belongs to the research project Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness (www.wickedness.net). This wide ranging project seeks to explore