John Osborne and the Myth of Anger

1996 ◽  
Vol 12 (46) ◽  
pp. 136-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleks Sierz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Love Affair ◽  
The Public ◽  
John Osborne ◽  
Political Statement ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
Political Radicalism ◽  
Crucial Ingredient

John Osborne's Look Back in Anger is one of a handful of plays which have attained iconic status, becoming a symbolic work which means much more than the message of the play. Aleks Sierz examines Look Back in Anger not as a literary text or performance event but as a myth factory. After showing how the anger at the centre of the play depends on non-verbal signs such as emotionality, he goes on to show how John Osborne and his anti-hero Jimmy Porter became fused in the public mind into a symbolic figure, the Angry Young Man – a crucial ingredient in making Look Back in Anger part of a narrative of cultural revolution, in which a play mainly concerned with a problematic love affair turns into a political statement. He then questions the prevailing assumption, common in radical drama, that culture can be revolutionary, and asks whether radicalism in culture is a substitute for political radicalism. Aleks Sierz is theatre critic for Tribune.

scholarly journals “Liberating the Small Devils”: Red Guard Newspapers and Radical Publics, 1966–1968

2021 ◽  
Vol 246 ◽  
pp. 354-373
Author(s):  
Nicolai Volland
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Early Research ◽  
Test Case ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Red Guard ◽  
And Function ◽  
Chinese Public

AbstractRed Guard newspapers and pamphlets (wenge xiaobao) were a key source for early research on the Cultural Revolution, but they have rarely been analysed in their own right. How did these publications regard their status and function within the larger information ecosystem of the People's Republic, and what is their role in the history of the modern Chinese public sphere? This article focuses on a particular subset of Red Guard papers, namely those published by radical groups within the PRC's press and publication system. These newspapers critiqued the pre-Cultural Revolution press and reflected upon the possible futures of a new, revolutionary Chinese press. Short-lived as these experiments were, they constitute a test case to re-examine the functioning of the public in a decidedly “uncivil” polity. Ultimately, they point to the ambiguous potential of the public for both consensus and conflict, liberation and repression, which characterizes the press in 20th-century China.

Musical Culture To-day: A Sociological Note

Tempo ◽  
1944 ◽  
pp. 104-107
Author(s):  
W. H. Mellers
Keyword(s):  
New Technique ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Good Music ◽  
Adequate Provision ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Way

We are often told that there is to-day a promising efflorescence of musical culture in this country; that the public for ‘good’ music is growing rapidly; and that more adequate provision must be made for music in the post-war reconstructed world. Substantially I believe all this is true; but it does also seem to me that much potential cultural vitality may be wasted if these conclusions are accepted too easily, without enquiry into the premisses on which they are based. What do we mean by musical culture? What do we expect music to give us? The mere quantity of music played tells us nothing; we want to know what kind of relation the noise has to the society that produces it, we want to know what bearing it has on the way people live. If we look back a moment to consider some of the things that music has meant to people living before us, we shall soon see that our problems are peculiarly difficult, and that we may well need a virtually new technique to deal with them. A refusal to see our educational problems against the background of history will lead to confusion and incompetence in musical culture as in everything else.

The Problem with Necker’s Compte Rendu au roi (1781)

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joël Félix
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Compte Rendu ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fiscal Transparency ◽  
Fiscal System ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Administrative Tradition

Despite its iconic status, Necker's Compte-rendu au roi is one of the most debated but least understood historical documents of the Ancien Regime. This chapter challenges the assumption that the Compte-rendu was the first of its kind to be published and shows how it fitted within an established administrative tradition. It also rejects the classic interpretation according to which publication of the Compte-rendu was part of Necker's attempt at deceiving the public and justifying his popular but unsustainable policy of funding the American war without taxes. It is shown that the Compte-rendu's main objective, which drew heavily on the British fiscal system described by Necker as best practice, was to justify the necessity of additional fiscal resources — and fiscal transparency — for raising new loans to pay for the war. Rejection by Louis XVI of tax increase for fear of parlementaire opposition partly explains Necker's resignation.

Berlin and Vienna: Reassessing their Relationship in German Culture

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-23
Author(s):  
Frank Trommler
Keyword(s):  
Political Competition ◽  
German Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
German Politics ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Regional Character ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Crucial Ingredient

This article is a discussion of the relationship of Berlin and Vienna as cultural capitals. It acknowledges the distinctive Austrian cultural and intellectual traditions yet is based on the realization that the unique achievements and traditions as well as the public standing of these two cities can only be fully understood within the larger confines of German culture where they constituted a polarity, effectively confirming its diverse and regional character. Discussing this polarity necessarily leads beyond the strictly national definitions of culture that became part of German politics, especially under Nazi rule. And it leads beyond the stereotypes about the competition between Prussia and Austria, between the Wilhelmine Reich and the Habsburg Monarchy, a political competition whose significance for cultural identities was arguably smaller than what historians projected. Though not eclipsing other city rivalries such as those between Berlin and Munich, Berlin and Hamburg, Vienna and Budapest, the polarity of Vienna and Berlin seems to have become a crucial ingredient in labeling German culture multifaceted and blessed with alternatives.

Defining the Discographic Self

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Personal Narratives ◽  
British Society ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Presentation Of Self ◽  
The Public ◽  
Online Archive ◽  
Desert Island ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
First Time ◽  
Radio Programme

The radio programme Desert Island Discs has run almost continuously since 1942, and represents a unique record of the changing place of music in British society. In 2011, recognising its iconic status, the BBC created an online archive that includes podcasts of all programmes from 1976 on, and many from earlier years. Based on this and extensive documentary evidence, Defining the Discographic Self: ‘Desert Island Discs’ in Context for the first time brings together musicologists, sociologists, and media scholars to reflect on the programme’s significance, its position within the BBC and Britain’s continually evolving media, and its relationship to other comparable programmes. Of particular interest are the meanings attributed to music in the programme by both castaways and interviewers, the ways in which music is invoked in the public presentation of self, the incorporation of music within personal narratives, and changes in musical tastes during the seven decades spanned by the programme. Scholarly chapters are complemented by former castaways’ accounts of their appearances, which give fascinating insiders’ views into how the programme is made and how its guests prepare for their involvement.

How popular Confucianism became embarrassing

Focaal ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 (58) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Steinmüller
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Central China ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Everyday Action ◽  
Public Evaluation ◽  
Main Entrance

In the past, most farmhouses in central China had an ancestral shrine and a paper scroll with the Chinese letters for "heaven, earth, emperor, ancestors, and teachers" on the wall opposite the main entrance. The ancestral shrine and paper scroll were materializations of the central principles of popular Confucianism. This article deals with their past and present. It describes how in everyday action and in ritual this shrine marked a spatial and moral center. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) the ancestral shrines and paper scrolls were destroyed, and replaced by a poster of Mao Zedong. Although the moral principles of popular Confucianism were dismissed by intellectuals and politicians, Mao Zedong was worshipped in ways reminiscent of popular Confucian ritual. The Mao poster and the paper scroll stand for a continuity of a spatial-moral practice of centering. What has changed however is the public evaluation of such a local practice, and this tension can produce a double embarrassment. Elements of popular Confucianism (which had been forcefully denied in the past) remain somewhat embarrassing for many people in countryside. At the same time urbanites sometimes inversely perceive the Maoist condemnation of popular Confucianism as an awkward survival of peasant narrow-mindedness—all the more so as Confucian traditions are now reinvented and revitalized as cultural heritage.

What do we know about “don't knows”? Or, contexts of “ignorance”

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Turner ◽  
Mike Michael
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Statement ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Don't Know Responses

This paper addresses the meanings of “ignorance” in the context of “don't know” responses to questionnaires. First, we consider some of the broader functions of questionnaires, suggesting that they reflect and mediate between particular types of institutions, respondents and society. We then unpack some of the meanings of “don't know” responses. Specifically, we argue that the “don't know” response is not merely a sign of deficit but, potentially, a potent political statement. Moreover, in relation to studies of the public understanding of science, it can be employed as a resource by people reflexively to express their identity through their relationship with science. Next we consider ignorance in the more expansive contexts of late modernity, which include concerns about the ambivalent role of science in general, the transgressive quality of biotechnology in particular and the impetus to narrate the self. Consideration of these factors, we argue, may be useful for further interrogation of the meanings of “don't know” responses.

The trials of James Cotter and Henry, Baron Barry of Santry: two case studies in the administration of criminal justice in early eighteenth-century Ireland

1999 ◽  
Vol 31 (123) ◽  
pp. 328-342
Author(s):  
Neal Garnham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Imagination

At least twice during the first half of the eighteenth century criminal prosecutions were undertaken in Ireland which gripped the public imagination. The first of these celebrated cases, involving the trial for rape, conviction and subsequent execution of the Cork Jacobite James Cotter in 1720, has also come to hold an extraordinary fascination for historians of eighteenth-century Ireland. Few writers concerned with early Georgian Ireland have been able to avoid its allure. For the most part, however, the incident has been referred to only fleetingly, employed variously as a motif of religious or political conflict or ethnic alienation. For Kevin Whelan, it is illustrative of the ‘conflict between old and new families’ in Munster, and indicative of a ‘partisan popish paranoia’ on the part of the province’s Protestant rulers. For Louis Cullen, it was ‘part of the legacy of the 1690s’, yet an event which would provide ‘the spark which set alight the sectarian tensions in Munster in the 1760s’. Other commentators have seen the case as one in which ‘a trumped-up charge’ was laid, for political purposes, against a man ‘generally believed’ to be innocent. A few have offered more guarded conclusions. Thomas Bartlett ventures only that this was ‘certainly a sensational event’. James Kelly both recognises the unique circumstances of Cotter’s case and suggests that it is ‘unlikely that he was the victim of judicial assassination’. S. J. Connolly goes further, stressing that Cotter had ‘quite clearly been guilty of rape’. However, the fullest and most recent examination of the case, in an essay written by Breandán Ó Buachalla in an ‘attempt to correlate a specific literary text to the career of a specific political activist’, returns us firmly to the recurrent context of Catholic Jacobite resistance and Protestant collusion.

scholarly journals A commentary on a flawed public health investigation

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (11) ◽  
pp. 500-502
Author(s):  
John Hardie
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Health Unit ◽  
The Public ◽  
Dental Patients ◽  
Dental Origin ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Realistic Assessment ◽  
Dental Practices ◽  
False Premise

The possibility of hepatitis C being transmitted between dental patients was the genesis of an extensive and expensive look-back investigation conducted by an Ontario Public Health Unit. This investigation was performed with a minimal knowledge of nosocomial infections of dental origin, an enthusiastic reliance on untested checklist indicators and an absence of any of the criteria justifying such an investigation. As a consequence, the entire exercise was based on the false premise that an infection control lapse had occurred. This commentary will address these flaws, and other aspects of the Public Health Unit’s response that detracted from its credibility. The provision of a realistic assessment of disease transmission in dentistry should result in Public Health Units conducting informed and mutually beneficial inspections of dental practices.

scholarly journals Alison Porter in Look Back in Anger: Is She Responsible for her Sufferings?

IIUC Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Salma Haque
Keyword(s):  
John Osborne ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Pregnant State

John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger is a dramatic study of a strained marriage relationship. In it Jimmy Porter is the protagonist and Alison Porter, a retired Colonel’s daughter, is the heroine. The actual action of the play is centered around Jimmy’s relationship with her. Despite his dominance, his wife Alison Porter, is the most important supporting character on whom Jimmy inflicts pain by his tirades all the time until eventually she feels she can bear no more. Later on she leaves him in her pregnant state to seek peace. After the loss of the baby she comes back to him when both have lost faith in each other. So they will go back to their previous unhealthy relationship causing her to become deplorable again. My reading of Alison Porter is that she is a suffering person though some find Jimmy a sufferer. This paper aims at assessing her sufferings and the reasons behind them.IIUC Studies Vol.10 & 11 December 2014: 65-80

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