Harriet Evans demystifies our literary snobbery. People are always surprised to discover that many of my favourite books belong to the much-derided fantasy sub-genre of fiction.  “But,” they exclaim, “you’re an English Literature student – surely that stuff isn’t literature?” Simply put, it is assumed that “literary” fiction, in the form of the short...
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Lewis Anton Earl explores the impact of the e-reader upon the experience of reading. Much has been written about both the consumer and cultural implications of the new generation of e-readers. The product’s market potential, social symbolism and physical features have been thoroughly dissected. But what of the fundamentally different sensual experience which the...
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Marnie Richards can’t make an emotional investment in an e-reader. At the end of January this year, Apple unveiled their latest creation: the ‘iPad’. The US release of this tablet computer coincided with a new Apple iBookstore, with the large screen of the portable iPad perfect for reading e-books. This has been hailed as...
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Holly Phillips confronts the inherently violent structures of mainstream pornography. Let’s face it: no one likes a corpse-fucker. Indeed, the UK law enacted on 29th of January 2009 went so far as to criminalise the production and possession of images, including necrophiliac porn, which it defined as ‘extreme pornography’. Under this legislation ‘extreme pornography’ constitutes...
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Justin Bailey explores the criminal beauty of The Big Sleep. At seven-twenty a single flash of hard white light shot out of Geiger’s house like a wave of summer lightning. As the darkness folded back on it and ate it up a thin tinkling scream echoed out and lost itself among the rain drenched trees....
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As the balance of power shifts, Peter Hagen cautions against rash action on Iran. The ruling elites of Iran are remitting power like shit remits a blanket. The good news is that there is no prospect of democracy, and the strong chance of an emerging military dictatorship. Consider facts rather than emotion. In the...
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Writing with misplaced authority, Guy Wilson calls for a radical review of British democracy. There is no perfect pickle, there are only perfect pickles. Well, we’re in a pickle now. “Who talks of boom and bust economics today?” A question posed by Tony Blair in 2007, around the time of his resignation. Back then it...
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How Hollywood Blockbusters changed during the “Noughties” Michael Tansini outlines emerging and evolving themes in Hollywood. 2010 began with a cultural retrospective of the “Noughties”, with shows detailing the ‘100 most shocking incidents with celebrities and peanut butter’ that featured talking heads you’ve never heard of clogging up BBC3’s viewing schedule. Such lists for films...
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Anya Benson discusses nature’s voice as an  impossible imagining. The representations of nature we are used to in our world – or at least, in our political world – are of something silent and peaceful, isolated from the realities of human lives. It is depicted through gentle forests where we can be ‘alone’, vast...
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Sharon Coleclough derives  meaning from vivid  imaginings of the future. “We are all interested in the future, for that is where we are going to spend the rest of our lives” – so speaks Criswell in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer-Space (1959). Criswell is indeed correct, but what future is a question film...
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