Dark Side Of Humanity Research Articles

Ow! Bam! Good Grief!: Comics and Politics

Ow! Bam! Good Grief!: Comics and Politics Lori Clune (bio) Blake Scott Ball, Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. xii + 256 pp. Images, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95. Paul S. Hirsch, Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. 344 pp. Images, notes, bibliography, and index. $30.00. A few weeks ago, I needed a new pair of sneakers. Responding to social media ads, I explored the touted Cariuma shoes website. The first to pop up was emblazoned with Snoopy atop his iconic doghouse. Why did this mod, eco-friendly footwear company choose to display Snoopy and other recognizable Peanuts characters not seen in new comic-strip format in more than twenty years? Why are Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Woodstock still popular well into the twenty-first century? Why do some comics resonate? What do they reveal about American society? And how, in light of all of those questions, can historians use comics? The scholar Eric Avila defines cultural history as “the history of stories, their origins, transmission, and significance in time. Lost voices,” he explains, help widen the “definition of what constitutes historical evidence” and highlight culture as “a driving force in history.”1 Comics are an example of a relatively overlooked cultural historic source. In both the book and strip format, comics are accessible cultural products that succeed or fail in how much they resonate with readers. They provide unique insights into politics and culture, both in the United States and abroad. They are compelling avenues for scholarly exploration for historians and our students. The Venn diagram of politics and culture has become the sweet spot for an increasing number of scholars. Many U.S. historians have shifted to looking at war, death, racism, sexism, and nukes through the lens of cultural products. While these scholars may look longingly at seemingly lighthearted historical sources—such as cartoons, television shows, and games—the dark side of humanity can seep into any crevice. The role sexism played in the creation of Monopoly (The Landlord’s Game, 1904); childhood polio and iron lungs and [End Page 416] the gameplay in Candyland (1948); how Johnny Carson groping Eva Gabor on The Tonight Show sparked the popularity of Twister (1966); racism and sexism in the original Oregon Trail (1971); strategically planning nuclear destruction in Balance of Power (1985).2 Cultural products can help historians tell a richer, fuller social and political story. Scholars Blake Scott Ball and Paul S. Hirsch each embrace this overlap of culture and politics and take what is often seen as populist and disposable foolishness—Peanuts and comic books—in their capable hands to create compelling and enlightening lenses through which to view modern American history. In Charlie Brown’s America, Blake Scott Ball provides a “biography of Peanuts’ cultural life” by examining the popular comic strip. Neatly covering 1950 to 2000, Ball uses Peanuts as an effective lens through which to view Cold War America (p. 3). In addition to the strips themselves, Ball makes great use of thousands of pieces of fan mail and other letters sent to Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. By capturing the voices of these ordinary folks, Ball is able to add their opinions and give an indication of how the comic strip was received. Ball argues that through Peanuts’ characters Schulz was able to channel “Americans’ dreams, hopes, fears, and worries” and comment on social and political issues in post-WWII America (p. 3). Chapter Two, for example, explores the Cold War origins of Peanuts. As someone who grew up reading Peanuts, I was surprised how deftly Schulz reflected the Cold War in his strips. It is now difficult to see Linus’s omnipresent blanket as anything but an expression of Cold War anxiety. And J. Edgar Hoover really had signed original Peanuts strips hanging in his office? One wonders which ones! On June 18, 1954, just two years after the United States tested its first hydrogen bomb, Peanuts characters grappled with fear of the bomb by integrating it into their play. Charlie Brown explains, “We’re playing ‘H-Bomb test.’” Three panels later Lucy roars...

Economic Obsession in Early Literary Imagination: Shakespeare, Jonson and More

That revenues, profits, wealth, valuables, properties and various forms of riches can be so attractive to most people is because these resources affect the operational mode of social economy and personal well-being. As a major driving force of social development, the desire to accumulate wealth affords people the prospect of leading a comfortable life. Yet the acquisition of which may bring down other people to become poorer and creating potential social injustice. Three interrelated concepts in money spending: consumption, fear of poverty and social justice/injustice are markedly shown in some of the great minds among English writers.
 In this article, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Ben Jonson’s Volpone and Thomas More’s Utopia are used to demonstrate the concerns of the early modern English mentality. Some scholars have suggested that the first two playwrights reflected the fear that their London would come to be ruled by corruption, swindling, greediness, vicious competition and unethical business practices. In this pre-capitalist economy, people are seen to adopt unfair competition and reciprocal malice in order to accumulate wealth. Entrepreneurial liberation in economic affairs sets off the dark side of hu manity in which the playwrights were most probably implicated.
 To counteract this rapacious thinking, Thomas More offers his conception of a wealthy and happy worldly life. Not to attack the self-centered, bene fit gaining intentions, Utopia builds up a society that claims fairness, commonwealth, more obligations than privileges and the wiping away of vanity. Mercantilism is not denied, yet private property is contained. Written earliest among the three works, Utopia anticipates the two plays that dwell on social evils sparked by over concern for personal gains.
 Generally, the three works lay the foundation of positive and negative aspects of economy in terms of production, marketing, circulation, consumption and services of the English mind of that era. The social mood borders on the financial and political matters of the bourgeois class while providing a mega-worldview as well as micro-worldview of economic concern of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England.

Shadows Along the Spiritual Pathway.

Contemporary spirituality discourses tend to assume that a canopy of light and love overarches all spiritual pathways. Unfortunately, the dark side of humanity cannot be spirited away so easily, and aberrations of personal spiritual development, interpersonal spiritual relationships and new spiritual movements can often be traced to the denial, repression and return of our dark side. Transpersonal psychology offers a way of approaching, reframing and redeeming the unconscious depths of our psyche, with its metaphors of shadows and daimons on the one hand, and its therapeutic practices for symbolically containing and transcending polarities on the other. In its absence, any spirituality which eulogises holistic growth is likely to engender the reverse effect.

The ‘Book of Manson’: Raymond Pettibon and the killing of America

Raymond Pettibon's work sits uncomfortably in the world of comics or cartoons. Instead of jokes or punch-lines, his work promotes an intense form of narrative and exhibits a unique ‘illustrative-comic style’ (O'Connor, The Believer [online], 1995). His work emerged from and reflects upon underground pop culture (rock music, TV, films), and it is the dark side of humanity that his work explores. Pettibon says that he actually prefers writing to drawing and the importance of ‘texts’ can be seen in Raymond Pettibon: A Reader (1998, Philadelphia Museum of Art), a collection in which the written inspirations for his psycho-graphic style is clear. This paper examines how the disturbing subject of Charles Manson oozes into the consciousness of writers, artists and musicians, using Pettibon's work as a powerful case study of this weird phenomenon. Manson has haunted the art of our time; he typifies the way in which, as Pettibon acknowledges, ‘There are certain figures, without even my meaning to do it, that become subjects’ (O'Connor, The Believer [online], 1995). In his cartoons, Pettibon depicts Charles Manson in a variety of ways. This reflects the various multiple readings of Manson and his story evident since his trial and conviction in the late 1960s. Pettibon's links with the American music underground brought him in contact with Manson as a symbol. The media obsession with celebrity – especially ‘bad’ celebrities – is a powerful force which Pettibon addresses. In 1989, Pettibon even made a low-budget movie about Manson and his followers. It is a fascinating intersection of graphic art, music and murder which this paper opens up.

PARKIN (Robert), The Dark Side of Humanity. The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy

L’œuvre, breve mais fondamentale, de Robert Hertz est aisement accessible aujourd’hui encore par deux publications, initialement dues a Marcel Mauss (Sociologie religieuse et folklore, 1928, Paris, P.U.F., 1970, reed. preface de Georges Balandier. Le peche et l’expiation dans les societes primitives, publie par Mauss en article en 1922 et repris en livre, Paris, Jean-Michel Place, Les Cahiers de Gradhiva, 1988, 69 p., preface de Jean Jamin). Mais ni la vie ni l’œuvre de Hertz n’avaient fait l...

The Dark Side of Humanity. The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy

The Dark Side of Humanity. The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Glen Banks and Chris Ballard (eds). The Ok Tedi Settlement: Issues, Outcomes and Implications. Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy (eds). Rethinking Visual Anthropology. Johanna M. Blows. Eagle and Crow: An Exploration of an Australian Aboriginal Myth. Malcolm Crick, Resplendent Sites, Discordant Voices: Sri Lankans and International Tourism. Gary W. Dowsett, Practicing Desire: Homosexual Sex in the Era of AIDS. Juliana Flinn, Leslie Marshall and Jocelyn Armstrong (eds). Fieldwork and Families: Constructing New Models for Ethnographic Research. James Fox (ed.) The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality. Hamilton, Malcolm B. The Sociology of Religion ‐ Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives. Andro Iteanu and Eric Schwimmer (eds). Pane, etje t'ecouterai: Recits et traditions des Orokaiva de Papouasie‐Nouvelle‐Guinee James Jemut Masing. The Coming of the Gods: An Iban Invocatory Chant (Timang Gawai Amat) of the Baleh River Region, Sarawak. Monica Lindh De Montoya. Progress, Hunger and Envy: Commercial Agriculture, Marteting and Social Transformation in the Venezuelan Andes. R.G. Parker and J.H. Gagnon (eds). Conceiving Sexuality: Approaches to Sex Research in a Postmodern World R. Parkin. The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy. Raul Pertierra. Explorations in Social Theory and Philippine Ethnography. Carmel Schrire. Digging Through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist. William Scott Shelley. The Elixir: An Alchemical Study of the Ergot Mushroom. Andrew Shyrock. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Nicholas Thomas. Oceanic Art. Elspeth Young. Third World in The First.

The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and Its Legacy

Robert Parkin's book gives a reading of each of these texts before going on to show their subsequent influence on anthropologists in particular. Hertz's activities as reviewer and phamphleteer are also covered. The introductory biographical chapter drawing on Hertz's surviving papers in the College de France, shows his own ambivalence towards his academic career and it also attempts to clarify the circumstances leading up to his apparently gratuitous death in the First World War. Two further chapters attempt to situate his work in the broader context of Durkheimian sociology.

The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy

The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy. Robert Parkin. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. xi. 226 pp., notes, bibliography, Indexes.

The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Herte and Its Legacy

The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Herte and Its Legacy, Robert Parkin. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. 226 pp.

The dark side of humanity: the work of Robert Hertz and its legacy

The dark side of humanity: the work of Robert Hertz and its legacy

Bearing Witness to the Dark Side of Humanity

Bearing Witness to the Dark Side of Humanity