In Praise of the Artifice in George Cukor’s ‘Sylvia Scarlett’
George Cukor's gender-bending Sylvia Scarlett proposes a heroine who learns nothing from her cross-gendered ordeal.
censorship
Huxters and Do-Gooders and the “Forbidden Fruit” Film Series
Have a peak behind the censored curtain, if you dare, with Dwain Esper's Marihuana and Narcotic, Crane Wilbur's Tomorrow's Children and Harry J. Revier's Child Bride. These exploitation films are certain to provoke.
How the Template for Modern Combat Journalism Developed
The superbly researched Journalism and the Russo-Japanese War tells readers how Japan pioneered modern techniques of propaganda and censorship in the Russo-Japanese War.
Does Cao Fei’s Art of Chinese Industrialization and Globalization Work in a Time of Censorship?
Some might think that the influence of politics and economics in a censored art world might harm Chinese artist Cao Fei's efforts to provide real critique.
Judgment Day!: Social Protest and Censorship in EC Comics
Scholar Qiana Whitted's EC Comics: Race, Shock & Social Protest explores a different path in EC Comic's history: their work with social justice stories and the resulting censorship in 1950s America.
Haven’t You Learned How to Take a Joke? The Comedy-on-Campus Debates
The college comedy deficit means that we are neither taught how to take a joke nor how to interpret one.
Every F***ing Thing You Need to Know About Profanity
Why "jeepers creepers" should be more profane than any word you (still) can't say on television, why it isn't, and why that matters.
Black Mass Murder: Extreme Metal and the PMRC
A mainstream metal band like The Black Dahlia Murder is more explicit than anything the Parents Music Resource Center sought to regulate in 1985.
Can I Say That? Stand-Up Comedy in the Age of Political Correctness
For all the alarmist propaganda about political correctness in the US, insensitive speech is still protected by the First Amendment. The complaints about PC are BS.
The New Puritanism, or, Some Troubling Tendencies in Video Game Criticism
Is the role of the video game critic to protect us from that which we may find offensive?