Nov 27, 2022Innovator to Rebel: Strain Theory and Zack RyderThe story of Zack Ryder is one of the most frustrating for many wrestling fans. Ryder was a lower/lower mid-card talent who never seemed destined to rise any further up the card. He wasn’t bad per se, just fairly uninteresting. Then suddenly that changed. Ryder took to YouTube and his…4 min read4 min read
Oct 30, 2022Hiding in Plain Sight: The Bushman/San narratives and the influence of Western translators.In this essay, I will explore how the Bushman culture is presented through folklore and examine how various translators have acted as conduits. I will analyse whether it is correct to group the Bushman together into one unit and follow chronologically the different labels that have been applied to these…18 min read18 min read
Sep 25, 2022Is identity an individual or group construction in Kipling and to what extent can a reading of Kim informed by Erik Erikson’s theories on psychosocial development aid our understanding?Identity is a key, recurring theme in the bibliography of Rudyard Kipling. Identity formation has many facets and Kipling focuses on geography, naming, and behaviour. Some critics have explained Kipling’s focus on identity and how it can be formed and moulded by way of his own upbringing. Phillip Mason believes…22 min read22 min read
Aug 28, 2022Worked Shoots and Smart Marks: Locating the Post-Modern Era in Professional WrestlingMay 27th 1996 saw the emergence of the post-modern period in professional wrestling’s mainstream with the debut of Scott Hall on Nitro. Post-modernism as an artistic movement is broadly characterised by the concept of deconstruction. It demonstrates a heightened self-awareness of genre and assumes a rich schematic repertoire on the…2 min read2 min read
Jul 31, 2022Why and to what extent did modernist writers ‘make it new’?Renewal of philosophy and technique is at the heart of Modernism because it is, at its core, a response to the perceived dehumanisation of western society following the progress made in industrialisation in the nineteenth century[1]. Modernism was concerned with humanising literary characters; showing the human condition and consciousness in…14 min read14 min read
Jun 26, 2022Boundaries: A look at the portrayal of the country/city opposition in eighteenth-century and Romantic literature.The city and country dichotomy is one which pervades eighteenth-century art, from the neo-classicists through to the Romantic period. It follows a trajectory from outright hostility towards the city and its representations of commodification, stemming from an anxiety towards the proto- industrialisation of the early 1700s, ‘London, Swift subliminally suggests…14 min read14 min read
May 29, 2022Full of Shit: The excremental visions of Swift and South ParkSatire is the art of reducing the sublime to the commonplace through mockery and criticism, this can take many forms but I will argue that the purest is the excremental vision. The excremental vision is the filter through which mankind, the highest of all living things, creator of society, culture…Satire6 min readSatire6 min read
Mar 27, 2022The Inconstant Gardner: James Marcia’s identity formation in Guy Gardner RebornThe 1990s, or Extreme Age, in comic book history saw a huge speculator boom as key Silver Age comics started selling for huge amounts in the collector’s market. Suddenly everyone was looking for the next big thing and anything with a huge ‘#1’ on it was expected to increase in…DC Comics6 min readDC Comics6 min read
Feb 27, 2022Shooting From the Hip: Gary Cooper’s Freudian Gun-Cock in High NoonThe Freudian Western Western legends and childhood development have a subtly linked history, demonstrated by the amount of characters, both real life and fictional, who bear a post nominal epithet describing their level of maturation. William Bonney becomes Billy the Kid, dead at eighteen having killed one man for every…Movies With Meaning7 min readMovies With Meaning7 min read
