“The parallels between Justine [by de Sade] and Frankenstein become obvious at this point. Sexual desire using science as a cover turns human beings into objects by promoting the notion that morals are either ‘unscientific’ or are a mere epiphenomenon of the mechanism as yet not understood ” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters from the Id, …
Moral Dyslexia
“Mary Shelley, at this point in our narrative, did not understand all this, but by the time she had finished writing Frankenstein she did not see things Shelley’s way, either. She had by that time experienced the sadistic consequences of her sexual profligacy. Frankenstein was her attempt to make sense out of the conflict between …
Porn As Revolution
“The revolutionaries simply put to their own use the libido that Versailles had unleashed. Sade, who more explicitly than any other in France described and reveled in the link between pornography and political revolution, was not an aberration of eighteenth-century French culture, but the culmination of the French predilection for pornography” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters …
Horror as Cultural Guilt
“The fact that the creator of the horror genre is celebrated as a proponent of sexual liberation indicates that our culture still does not understand horror. If our culture could make up its mind about sexual liberation, it would not need horror. It would either embrace sexual license wholeheartedly, as Mary’s husband did, or repudiate …
Self-Authenticating Ultimacy
“Hence the late-romantic tendency to insist on a total separation between the aesthetic and the moral; and finally the modernist tendency to grant art the ultimate legitimacy and authority that were previously reserved for morality” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, pp. 389).
Let’s Do the Lurch
“. . . it is hard not to see a dance floor as a paddock for musical philistines” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, pp. 383).
Now There’s a Thought
“The abiding weaknesses of country music are two: love of sentimental cliché, rooted in its turn-of-the-century link with Tin Pan Alley, and fear of polyrhythm, rooted in white racism” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, pp. 380).
Rap as Ultimate European Whiteness
“As we’ve seen, obscenity is the preferred weapon of those willing to do anything to get a rise out of the public. The faces are black, but the strategy is European: Seek out a submerged, antisocial custom that is considered marginal even by its participants, drag it kicking and screaming to the surface, and celebrate …
Time Will Win
“But lately there is something desperate about Madonna’s whip cracking, something reminiscent of the fading hooker fighting to keep her street corner. But don’t misread the metaphor—this working girl does not have a heart of gold” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, pp. 334-335).
Different Costumes, Same Trick
“In [Sinead] O’Connor, this shtick is touted as a pure product of her brooding Irish soul. In Nirvana, it is praised as a distillation of Seattle despair. In fact, it is a cliché of expressionist theater, passed down through performance art (via Yoko Ono) to punk” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 318).