Angry Men Research Articles

Mythology, Masculinity and Indian Cinema: Representation of ‘Angry Young Man’ in Popular Hindi Films of 1970s

In the 1970s popular Hindi cinema witnessed an emergence of action oriented films with a distinctive young protagonist. Tracing the antecedents of Indian masculine subjectivity in colonial discourse, this essay seeks to constitute a framework that identifies vestiges of mythological narratives alongside the politico-historical factors, to explain the formation of the belligerent male in the post-independence popular Hindi films. Reconciling the problematic of overdetermined Indianness- conceived as spiritual, calm, and other-worldly, together with its opposite: aggression, anger and this-worldly, that is also constitutive of Indian masculinity- the essay argues, benevolence or militancy cohere in the masculine self and, are activated according to specific political conditions in history. The angry man figure inscribed in the 1970s popular Hindi cinema is explicable in relation to the 1960s political crises in India that exposed a delegitimized Indian state. This essay focuses on the mythic tale of Parashurâma in the epic Purânas, which is instructive in understanding the rage and rebellion of the figure of the angry man- and his violent yet eventually sacrosanct masculinity- whose dharma (sacred duty) is to reinstate the flawed ideal even if that meant confronting the enemy within or going against one's own family.

Slithering snakes, angry men and out-group members: What and whom are we evolved to fear?

The preparedness theory of classical conditioning proposed by Seligman (1970, 1971) has been applied extensively over the past 40 years to explain the nature and “source” of human fear and phobias. In this review we examine the formative studies that tested the four defining characteristics of prepared learning with animal fear-relevant stimuli (typically snakes and spiders) and consider claims that fear of social stimuli, such as angry faces, or faces of racial out-group members, may also be acquired utilising the same preferential learning mechanism. Exposition of critical differences between fear learning to animal and social stimuli suggests that a single account cannot adequately explain fear learning with animal and social stimuli. We demonstrate that fear conditioned to social stimuli is less robust than fear conditioned to animal stimuli as it is susceptible to cognitive influence and propose that it may instead reflect on negative stereotypes and social norms. Thus, a theoretical model that can accommodate the influence of both biological and cultural factors is likely to have broader utility in the explanation of fear and avoidance responses than accounts based on a single mechanism.

Serling: the rise and twilight of TV's last angry man

Serling: the rise and twilight of TV's last angry man

P2-32: Influence of Spatial Frequency Information on Face Gender with Different Expressions

Visual image contains broadband information and is processed by different neural channels that are tuned to different spatial frequencies. Here we investigated whether or not our ability in gender identification on emotional faces was influenced by this early visual processing. Four types of emotional (happy, anger, sad, and fear) faces were used, and all of the stimuli were processed by spatial frequency analysis. Spatial frequency content in the original faces was filtered by using a high-pass filter (cut-off frequency was 24 cycles/image) for the HSF stimuli, and a low-pass filter (cut-off frequency was 6 cycles/image) for the LSF stimuli. Participants needed to identify the gender of the faces. The results showed that the participants responded faster and had higher accuracy to LSF faces than to HSF ones. They also responded faster and had higher accuracy to male faces than to female faces. Further analysis revealed that the identification of an angry man and a happy woman had advantage among combinations of genders and emotions in LSF conditions. However, this advantage was not manifested in HSF conditions. We concluded that the identification of gender with different emotions may rely on the processing of low spatial frequency channels.

Selling Out in the Writing of Memoir

Selling Out in the Writing of Memoir Lee Martin (bio) Over twenty years ago, when I'd just started to publish a few short stories, my aunt told me some things about my father and the farming accident that cost him both of his hands. I'd later use that information in a short story called "Small Facts" that I published in Yankee, a New England magazine that I didn't think my aunt, who lived on a farm in southeastern Illinois and who didn't read much of anything, would ever see. Then came the day when my aunt said she'd been talking to a neighbor who'd been on vacation in Vermont, had stayed at a cozy bed and breakfast, had found a copy of Yankee magazine in her room, had read a little story called "Small Facts," and oh, by the way, she said to my aunt, isn't Lee Martin your nephew? You have to understand that my family in their rural part of southeastern Illinois could be as fenced in and taciturn as the landscape where the roads ran straight and intersected at right angles. My aunt felt that I'd betrayed her, yes, but most of all she felt I'd betrayed my parents by putting their story in print. She said to me, "I'll never tell you any family stories again. You've got no business broadcasting them to strangers," which is something I've done yet again as I've told you [End Page 121] this story. Which proves you can never trust a writer. Even as a fiction writer, someone who . . . wink, wink . . . made things up, I was already suspect. My aunt didn't know, nor did I, that I'd keep selling out the family, having just now published my third memoir. Had she known what was coming down the pike, she might have shot me. If I'd survived, I would have told that story, too. I never meant to write creative nonfiction. As I said, I was a fiction writer, but when I got my first tenure-track teaching position and had to teach a graduate workshop in creative nonfiction, I thought maybe I should try to write some of it before I tried to teach others how to write it. So I wrote an essay called "From Our House," about my father's farming accident, the angry man he became, the difficulties he and I had, and the years it took for us to reconcile. It was the first time I'd faced the story of my father head-on, the first time I'd stepped out behind the scrim of fiction and claimed my experience as my own. The only way I knew how to proceed was by putting to use everything I knew from writing fiction. I knew how to pay attention to details, to trust that the particulars of a world would eventually reveal that world, not only the surface but also the more complicated narratives of what Faulkner called "the old verities and truths of the heart." I'd been doing my best to do exactly that in my short stories, but when I began writing that first piece of memoir—when I spoke directly from my own life—I immediately felt the power that can come from narrating one's own experience, from saying, in essence, "This is me. I'm here to tell the truth. I'm no longer keeping the secrets." So I began with a simple fact. My father's name at birth was Leroy Martin, but when he started learning cursive handwriting in school he had, for whatever reason, difficulty forming the capital "L." His solution? He dropped the name he would eventually give me, Lee, and became from then on Roy Martin. From that fact, the narrative of his life, and in many ways, of my own life, began to emerge. I opened myself to what it could show me. I did what I knew how to do. I told a story. I thought I'd write this one essay and that would be that. I'd go back to writing fiction. But a curious...

Faux masculinities among college men who experience depression

Depression is a significant problem among college men that can be complicated by masculine ideals of stoicism, reluctance to seek help, and risky self-management strategies. Underpinning these issues are complexities in recognizing what behaviors might be indicative of college men's depressive symptoms. Findings drawn from a qualitative study of 25 Canadian-based college men who self-identified or were diagnosed with depression revealed three predominant masculine identities: the angry man; the solitary man; and the risk-reliant man. Within each of these themes men embodied aspects of idealized masculinity that were difficult to distinguish as symptoms of depression or as representative of the activities with which many college men partake. The angry man identity described men who expressed anger, at least in part, to dissipate depression invoked pain and emotional distress. The solitary man category included men who self-isolated, fearing that others would recognize and judge them as harboring depression. Risk-reliant men employed strategies including alcohol and other drug overuse rather than relinquish control by engaging with professional health care providers and services. Guided by the overall findings we argue this phenomenon as 'faux masculinities' - characterized by men's engagement in practices consistent with idealized masculine identities but that emerge from and/or in response to the experience of depression. Faux masculinities are discussed within the context of the challenges posed for college men and their health care providers in pointing toward targeted depression interventions.

“Not Out to Start a Revolution”

In this article, I use in-depth interviews with black university men to investigate race, gender, and emotions. Participation in dominant institutions requires African American men to exhibit extraordinary emotional restraint. Because anger is culturally associated with men, however, black men’s suppression of anger violates masculine expectations. Thus, racial subordination not only creates difficult emotional expectations but may also create emotional dilemmas in which expected emotional displays undermine other identity expectations. In this article, I examine both how a group of black university men achieve emotional restraint and how they use their emotions to craft and manage their identities as black middle-class men. I argue that black men distance themselves from the controlling image of the angry black man by developing a shared identity I call moderate blackness. Moderate blackness entails emotional restraint, a moderate approach to campus racial politics, and the ability to get along with white people. These strategies work together to produce positive, restrained emotions and to manage anger and agitation, but they require black university men to “not see” racism. Black men use defensive othering to push the stereotype of the angry black onto black women. In doing so, they shore up their masculinity but leave women responsible for combating racial inequality.

Five Poems

Five Poems Fiona Sze-Lorrain (bio) I Wait for the Ruined Elegance Plum blossoms comb the southern mountain. Maybe winter,maybe spring. What is the difference between two seasons? If only swallows mend the wind, the immaculate river—from tree to tree, grievance by grievance. I watchthe sun turn from a sphere to a palace. Burning, but not disastrous. Soon, but not now, my gazewill break. I want to honor the invisible. And I'll use the fog to see white peaches. Am I What the Lake Gave Me In recurring gestures this round wardrobe of tears deletes its soul. Only strangers require faces. Not everyone desires contradiction. They called my teacher sorceress before she drowned here. The rest, a matter not of reason. This is why our grief tastes like water. The children associate it with punishment. They have forgotten that water is an herb. The sorceress will wake up at no distance. But I tell myself I am safe. Five points and two maps, we are not from here, stopping to read signs from above. What a perfect question, a useless mirror. [End Page 146] Neither An Elegy Nor a Dream My grandfather caught a tiger in a stone, and could carve a stone into a tiger. He wasn't an angry man. He built bridges and cupboards. Leaving behind twelve rabbits and a foundation. The bed he made for me surrendered its shape when my body suspended a mountain in me. Now and then I asked the door if he'd return with clothes he died in. His noble face, too discreet to weep. The shaman believed that I betrayed my clairvoyance. Quick, swallow all the coins you've stolen. The dead always punish odd spirits. In my sleep, a vulture was arranging its feathers at my feet. I fidgeted but held intact my laughter. Premonition ended like a fruit fallen. In defeat, in plain colors. My grandfather initiated our pact. No time to fall ill, no time to heal. I wasn't young, but I was forgiven. I took the same road, braved the same sun. I rode on shadows and looked for white. Trying to memorize our last time. Refusing Lyricism This sadness in me isn't mine. An earthen jar, Emily Dickinson, and a bed. The wait most of all. It became the space, a cell that ran on dark feet in my mind. If the wait is sinister, change yourself to hours. To something fickle that serves as flesh and spirit. I chanted and drew a blue fox on each wall. So badly, so well. My American friends write poems on war and imprisonment. Both political and spiritual. Is their imprisonment a concept a subject an inspiration. I've lived through both, childless and don't need lies. Trouville, 2011 By the sea the past comes tiding from toes to fingers. Rising or falling, we hear the break of us. We come to heal because a child left us. Can't you see the horizon coming in many lines. The sun arrives on time and leaves on the mark. Let's pray for a harbor that has no owner. With sand and oyster shells I stage an opera. In many castles and mansions devoid of persona. I stick half-cigarettes in the wet sand, pretending they play miniature soldiers who prey on absence and white fear. They're trying to breathe, but the struggle is permanent. I'll control the pain, make the scream formless. With confused trees and gods, the world is a budget theater. For a long time we have not been alone. Room after room, people walk in and out. Most of them need something from us. Perhaps I'll eat mussels marinières tonight. With or without fries. It is too early to predict movement. Do you really know how to feel empty. Nine times out of ten, it is an accident. One sand castle falls, then more. And all. [End Page 147] Fiona Sze-Lorrain Fiona Sze-Lorrain (1980-) was born in Singapore and educated at Columbia University, New York University, and Paris IV-Sorbonne, where she received a doctorate in French. She writes and translates...

Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

68 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY reviews the state’s propaganda loudspeakers blaring their version of Jun Do’s story (presumably the state’s altered version of the biography written by the nameless state interrogator) as the selected winner of the Best North Korean Story. In the narrative, Johnson speaks to his largest theme, the supremacy of national interests and propaganda over the individual: “Stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person.” Although the first half of the book serves as a sort of prologue to the more interesting Jun Do / Commander Ga storyline, and nearly this much of the book is required before the story begins layering rich, satisfying implications and picking up any steam, it all ends at a dead sprint as Jun Do sacrifices the only identity he ever had for the sake of the only woman he ever loved. At times, the sadistic governmental whims, Kim Jong Il’s character (even though Johnson said he toned him down to make him more believable), and the content of propaganda messages border on the farcical, but the story ’s ability to elicit empathy makes the individual’s struggle for identity against an oppressive North Korea powerfully human and authentic. As an aside, we certainly can’t ignore that Kim Jong Il is alive and well in The Orphan Master’s Son. Johnson expressed concern that Kim’s December 2011 death would demystify the legend (much the way Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi’s deaths did for them) before Orphan’s January 2012 release. But, he said, the secrecy surrounding Kim’s death only served to magnify the reality Kim had so meticulously manufactured. John Tyler Allen New York Etgar Keret. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, and Nathan Englander, tr. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2012. isbn 9780374533335 Some stories are hard to get out of your head, and Etgar Keret writes such stories. His latest collection brims with tales filled with sorrowful poignancy and sympathetic isolation. His telltale flare for the magical and the absurd is present here in such works as “Lieland,” in which a habitual liar enters a world populated by the characters from his and others’ lies, and “Unzipping,” in which a curious woman discovers a zipper under her lover’s tongue and finds a completely different man underneath when she pulls it (see WLT, Nov. 2008, 19). But many of his characters in this work are average Joes who simply play out a few moments of their mundane lives for us yet succeed at revealing more about our own lives than if they had gone on a great adventure. One such tale is “Healthy Start,” in which Miron, a lonely man who eats his breakfast at the same café each morning , starts inviting strangers to his table and pretending to be whomever they presume him to be. As expected, this new habit ends in disaster when Miron meets with an angry man and pretends to be the lover of the man’s wife. Yet, as Miron is lying on the ground covered in blood after the man beats him up, he feels alive, perhaps for the first time. Keret shows us that we need the painful, horrible moments of life to provide the fertile ground for awakening. Keret is more than your average storyteller—he is an acerbic social critic, with an imagination like fire. His insight burns all, but this destruction is precisely what paves the way for new growth. His identity as an Israeli writer is everywhere apparent, and he often uses his penetrating eyes to critique the politics of his region. “Pick a Color” is, for me, the fullest embodiment of Keret’s poignancy , imagination, and cultural criticism . In this story, violence befalls SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2012 69 Homecoming Denys Johnson-Davies, ed. and tr. American University in Cairo Press Since the inception of Egyptian short fiction just sixty years ago, Egyptian writers and translators have struggled to find a place for Egyptian literature on...

Twelve (not so) angry men: jurors work better in small groups

Twelve-person juries are often regarded as one of the cornerstones of democracy. In the UK, the right to a trial by jury is considered an important feature of the criminal justice system. Indeed, it has been rated as more important than a number of other rights, including the right to protest against the government, the right not to be detained for an extended period without charge and the right to free speech in public (Roberts and Hough, 2009). The public also trusts juries comprising randomly selected ordinary people and relies on the contribution of 12 individuals to eliminate bias and prejudice from the decision making process.

Steric Crowding Can Stabilize a Labile Molecule: Solving the Hexaphenylethane Riddle

12 not so angry men: Hexaphenylethane is unstable, a phenomenon traditionally attributed to steric repulsion between the six phenyl rings. However, adding 12 bulky tert-butyl groups, one to each of the 12 meta positions, gives a stabile ethane derivative (see space-filling model and potential energy curve for the dissociation of the central C-C bond). This unexpected stabilization is shown to result from attractive dispersion interactions between the substituents.

Teaching Patience

Teaching Patience

Yemen: Descending into Despair

Yemen: Descending into Despair

Spontaneous Firing, and: A House on the Cliff

Spontaneous Firing, and: A House on the Cliff Joel Peckham Jr. (bio) Spontaneous Firing Neuropathy, the doctor says, without expression. The bodyshouting out its false report incessantly. But nothingis really wrong. Like a fire alarm going off becausethe batteries are low. Of course no warning is really false,just late or premature, misheard or heard wrongly. Woodwants to burn and burns and, like a poem, a flamecan leap a long way from its origins. Its logic is its own. Somewhere, someone feels a stabbing in his chest.The breath stops in a crib while parents sleep. Two girlsmake it halfway down the steps, their lungs fullof smoke. Everything burns. And I just feel it. A month ago,down Chellis Road at four in the morning, a house caught fire.It burns still, smolders in the mind's thick peat. If I had notbeen sleeping, I might have seen from my bedroom window, a glowing just beyond the ridge—or maybe heard the shotsthe whole town swears were there amid the pop and blastof glass and falling beams. And maybe they were. For somesay last spring they heard the husband pointed a gun into the air and screamed at the rain—police were called, a warningissued, and then there were the rumors: a troubledmarriage, debt. So when the papers named it "accident,"cause of death, "asphyxia," no one believed. They heard what they heard. And that man was crazy a good friendsays. Anyone could have seen it. Even the ministershakes his head. There has to be a reason. I nod. I knowmore than I'm saying—yes, they're always there—the signs.Like that numbness in your left arm. Is it a pinched nervelike you tell yourself. Or maybe heartburn. Maybe a burning [End Page 57] more distinct. Is it bad wiring in the walls or in the chest?From where and when will the flame leap, the muzzle flash?Our knowledge works only in reverse. Like a poem, likeprophecy. The fire has a logic. And like the body wants to burn. A House on the Cliff At night the ocean shook the cottagelike an angry man will shake the shouldersof a boy, shouting Listen. Listen to me. I've heardit fill me like a sail the way a prophet hearsGod: its harsh refusal to be shut out:a force to be lived with not withstood. There was a house on the cliffside—They fought to save it. First with tiresfilled with stone, poured concrete. Then shovels.Backhoes. Cables at every joist. But one winterstorm spooned out the sand beneath. It slid,in stages, the deck leaning down the dunelike a bather stretching out one long leg to test the water. Then the acrobatic pause—the kitewhen the string snaps or the stunned silencein the stare of the child just stepping offthe curb as the car appears aroundthe corner. The no, not yet clinging onthe diving down and in. I've heard the moanand shriek of nails, crack of wood and glass-shatter. [End Page 58] Still, among the stones and driftwood,sea glass, bones of fish, the remnants whisperin the sand. Broken picture frames,a clock with the face gone—a jewelry box of silt. Joel Peckham Joel Peckham Jr. has published two full-length poetry collections, nightwalking and the heat of what comes (Pecan Grove). His latest chapbook, Movers and Shakers, was recently published by Pudding House Press. His essays and poetry have appeared in many journals, including Black Warrior Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Review. His poems have also appeared in Contemporary Poetry of New England (UP of New England) and Poets Against the War (Nation P). Copyright © 2011 University of Nebraska Press

Coming Out as Homophobic: Isaiah Washington and the Grey's Anatomy Scandal

In late 2006 and early 2007, a high-profile celebrity scandal developed around Isaiah Washington's use of an anti-gay slur to describe his co-star T. R. Knight. The mainstream media coverage of this scandal positioned homophobia primarily in therapeutic and confessional terms, echoing the typical treatment of a celebrity's coming out. As the “angry black man,” Washington failed to satisfy the criteria for neoliberal citizenship and seemed to confirm white culture's fears about black masculinity. Knight, in contrast, emerged as a successful neoliberal citizen whose “difference” was safely contained. The debate thus shifted from the morality of homophobia to the morality and psychological health of the individual, determined through Washington's failed performance of honesty and Knight's successful one. As a result, heteronormativity and white privilege remained largely unnoticed within mainstream coverage of the scandal.

A tribute to Alan M. Gewirtz

We mourn the untimely passing of Alan Gewirtz, a member of the JCI Editorial Board, who died on November 17, 2010, at the age of 61. Alan received his undergraduate degree from Colgate University, where, in keeping with a lifelong interest in the world around him, he majored in marine biology. After graduating from SUNY Buffalo Medical College and completing a medical residency at The Mount Sinai Hospital (New York, New York, USA), he went to Yale University for clinical training in hematology and oncology. While at Yale, he worked with Ron Hoffman, Ed Cadman, and Ed Benz to make seminal contributions to the field of megakaryocyte developmental biology. Later, as an independent researcher at Temple University, and then at the University of Pennsylvania, Alan pioneered the use of antisense RNA technologies for the treatment of leukemia, ultimately extending this work to a more global application of oligonucleotide therapeutics for treating stem cell disorders. Alan’s extraordinary scientific accomplishments were well known and deservedly well recognized. His research was published in journals such as Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, PNAS, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, Blood, and, of course, the JCI. He was elected to membership in both the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He served on numerous national and international scientific advisory committees and reviewed manuscripts for more than 25 scientific journals. Alan managed to do all this while still being an active clinician. He was repeatedly recognized both locally and nationally for his expertise in the treatment of hematologic malignancies. So devoted was Alan to his patients that he essentially refused to schedule social engagements (at least with either of us!) when he was attending, because he invariably was at the hospital until far past normal dinner hours. Feisty, loyal, gentle, combative, impassioned, gracious, spirited . . . these are all adjectives that readily described Alan. His was not an imposing physical presence — he probably never weighed more than 150 pounds — but it is hard to imagine Alan ever backing down when challenged, and we each recall a beet red–faced angry man when he encountered incompetence or rudeness, especially if directed at friends or family. We are all, of course, studies in contrasts, and Alan was simultaneously the gentlest of men. A lover of animals, he frequently snuck his wirehaired dachshund, Sparky, into work by hiding him in a small satchel; Sparky even attended a JCI Editorial Board meeting once. Alan was a devoted pilot, and was actually funded by NASA to study hematopoiesis in outer space. He shared ownership in a small plane with Meenhard Herlyn of The Wistar Institute and flew as often as he could, whether it was to Study Section, to visit his children at college, or just to get out on a beautiful day. In 1999, Alan and a colleague at Penn, Jim Hoxie, were each nominated to apply for the first Doris Duke Translational Researcher Awards. The time period for the application was brief, and Alan and Jim left it to the last minute. After staying up most of the night before the due date, with Alan sleeping on the floor under his desk for a few hours, they had to personally deliver the grants to the Foundation offices. Jim recalls, “After the all-nighter, Alan took one look at me with my sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes, [and] said there was no way he was going to get in a car with me behind the wheel. Then he said, ‘Hoxie, we’re taking the plane.’” Alan was a founding member of the Penn JCI Editorial Board. Of the 19 Associate Editors currently on our masthead, only eight served in that capacity for our first issue (March 2007), Alan among them. He was a force in our weekly meetings. He usually held strong opinions, but was always willing to be persuaded by the facts. If he thought the ideas in a manuscript had merit, he fought passionately for the paper. He was a strong author advocate — he wanted us to publish good science and to publish it quickly, rather than ask the authors to spend months doing “clean-up” experiments that were unnecessary. He also never forgot what the C in JCI stands for. More than any other Penn board member, past or present, Alan would ask whether the paper, the model, and the experiments were relevant to human disease. If the work could be validated with human samples, he would insist on the authors doing it. Alan never forgot that the mission of biomedical research is to improve human health. We thank Alan’s many friends and colleagues who shared their feelings about him with us — the joy that he brought into their lives, and ours, is palpable. He will be sorely missed.

Black Snake Moan as Postsouthern Fable

M. THOMAS INGE Randolph-Macon College Black Snake Moan as Postsouthern Fable BEFORE THE FILM BLACK SNAKE MOAN WAS RELEASED IN MARCH OF 2007, it set off a firestorm of criticism among commentators mainly because of the advance promotional poster showing a scantily clad young white woman bound in chains and kneeling before an older virile black male, both parts portrayed by recognizable actors, Christina Ricci and Samuel L. Jackson. Given that the film released previously by the director, Craig Brewer, had been the provocative Hustle and Flow in 2005, with its Academy Award winning song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” some saw the film as another exploitation of old and new Southern/racial tensions (Johnson). The critic for the New York Times noted, “A white woman, a black man and a chain; it’s hard to think of an image more likely to inflame the demons of the American id” (Scott), and a reviewer for a Richmond, Virginia, newspaper obliged by letting his id loose: “Black Snake Moan is strictly for perverts. . . . It’s one of those exploitation films that make Southerners resentful of the Northerners who make them,” films that “preyed on Northern fears that all Southerners were racist, lust-crazed, subhuman and ignorant” (Neman). The poster itself was clearly designed to both provoke and reflect on a variety of ideas and attitudes. The legend, “Everything is hotter down South,” only contributes to the notion that the film is a typical exploitation of the Mandingo tradition of unbound lust on the Southern plantation, the 1975 film by Richard Fleischer that gave new meaning to Confederate degeneracy and forbidden interracial sex. It is with the same frame of mind that the poster is designed to emulate the cover of a comic book, for many the lowest possible cultural denominator. The title is emblazoned at the top in bright red and yellow against a black background in the top quarter, the area reserved for comic book titles. To the left is an indicia which on the comic book is devoted to the date, the issue number, and the publisher, as on DC and Marvel publications. However, this information has been replaced by a symbolic heart wrapped in chains, the meaning of which becomes clear in the film to suggest that stability and security may be more important than freedom 566 M. Thomas Inge in affairs of the heart. Some viewers will also recall, no doubt, the country song recorded by Hank Williams and released after his death in 1953, “Take these chains from my heart and set me free.” To the right at the top of the cover the seal of approval of the Comics Code Authority would normally appear, but a comic book cover with such an image would never pass muster, so it is missing. The edges of this faux comic book cover are frayed, discolored, and torn, to suggest that it has had many readers and has been passed around among the young males in the fashion of one of the pornographic comic books, called Tijuana Bibles, although they were usually smaller in size. In other words, everything suggests poor taste, salacious trash, and adolescent immaturity, which does little service to the actual nature of the film. But then such posters were meant to attract audiences, not to inform them. In another way, however, the main image does challenge a good many conventional traditions. Any portrayal of an older black man and a younger blonde white girl automatically triggers memories of Uncle Tom and Little Eva in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic tale of interracial dependency Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). It is clear in this case, however, that we do not have a fawning, submissive, and worshipful Tom or an angelic, innocent, and chaste Little Eva. Rather the roles have been radically altered with a threatening, angry black man who has subdued and chained a lusty white girl. Of course, the chains invoke the entire history of slavery in the South and the subjugation of the African American, but once again, things are different. This time the enslaved is the white woman, that vessel of purity and virtue who, according to social tradition...

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease

SHEARING THE SHEPHERDS: VIOLENCE AND ANTICLERICAL SATIRE IN LANGLAND'S "PIERS PLOWMAN"

In her study of patristic influence on Piers Plowman, Margaret Goldsmith raises a suggestive point about its author's attitude towards the Church.1 She writes: 'We cannot doubt that William Langland was an angry man. One part of him would certainly like to take a stick to cheats, spongers and corrupters, and doubledealers of all kind - especially if they walk under the protection of a tonsure and a habit.'2 As this statement makes clear, Goldsmith sees a firm connection between Langland's anticlerical satire and corporeal violence. She sees in his text a clear desire to bruise, break, or otherwise damage the bodies of ecclesiastics, as they attract his hostility above any other target. Beneath his critiques, in other words, is a wish to inflict actual injury on priests, as Langland's denunciations seem to be underpinned by aggression, or even motivated by it.What makes this comment valuable is not that it is necessarily correct or well founded, but the fact that it articulates an assumption which echoes throughout Piers Plowman scholarship. The link Goldsmith posits between Langland's criticism of the clergy and aggression pervades commentary on the poem. Barbara Johnson, for instance, finds similar beliefs among the poem's early readers, noting that 'the Lollards and English reformers' saw Piers as a 'prophet ploughing for Christian truth by the violent action of attacking thorns and briars', while the idea that Langland 'lashed the vices of the clergy . . . with savage energy' attains the level of a cliche among nineteenth-century scholars.3 The same conviction appears in the work of more recent critics, as George Kane also sees Langland's satire as analogous to physical attack, stating that he 'was obliged to speak out . . . with loud violence' when addressing the priesthood.4 The connection Goldsmith describes is therefore a long-standing one in criticism. Langland's anticlerical remarks are often held to resemble violence, as assault seems to provide their underlying stimulus.The purpose of the present article is to interrogate this enduring assumption. Its main objective is to determine whether Langland's satire on the clergy is indeed supported by an implicit pattern of violence, or whether a different interplay is at work between his censure and his portrayal of wounding. However, it will also broaden this enquiry to consider what such an association can reveal about the poem as a whole, especially regarding Langland's position as a critic of the Church, and his understanding of the proper social function of the Church.One of the first points to note is the sheer importance of violence and anticlerical satire in Langland's vision. There can be little doubt that each of these issues occupies a fundamental place in his writing. Both leave a deep imprint on Langland's polemic position, his ethical schemata, and his rhetorical strategies alike. The presence of anticlerical satire in his work, for instance, has attracted attention throughout the history of the poem. As is well known, early modern readers treated such concerns as the dominant aspect of Piers, placing Langland's outbursts against 'the pride of the Romane Clergy' at the centre of the text.5 Thus Robert Crowley's 1550 edition directs the reader towards such 'principali poyntes' as 'what shameful Simony reigneth in the church' and 'Howe Wrath teacheth the Fryers', while John More, writing in 1593, regards the poem as wholly concerned with castigating the priesthood, placing it 'against shrift, Popes curse, Friers, sacrificing priestes, single lyfe, Cannon lawe, purgatorie'.6 Although modern criticism has tended to regard such a view as 'a gross renaissance distortion', and relocated the poem's 'deepest' or 'primary' meaning in its 'subtle spirituality' and 'religious function', the importance of satire in the poem remains undeniable.7 Langland draws from a wide range of traditions opposing or ridiculing particular orders within the Church: this is clear from Perm Szittya's study of his antifraternalism, and Jill Mann's analysis of his satire against monks, bishops, parsons, and nuns. …

Rule of law vs. ‘Russian justice’: Nikita Mikhalkov's 12

ABSTRACTThe article analyses Nikita Mikhalkov's film 12 (2007), a remake of the classic American Twelve Angry Men by Sidney Lumet (1957). Lumet's film asserts the rule of law over illegal retaliation, chauvinism and emotional judgement. Though Mikhalkov's version uses the setting and the plot of the original production, its ultimate conclusion is that the rule of law is not always an acceptable answer to Russia's troubled society. This article explores how Mikhalkov remade the classic courtroom drama into a prequel for a revenge genre film.