December 2, 2024
Video nasty is a colloquial term popularized by the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association (NVALA) in the United Kingdom to refer to a number of films, typically low-budget horror or exploitation films, distributed on video cassette in the early 1980s that were criticized by the press, social commentators, and various religious organisations for their violent content.
These video releases were not brought before the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) due to a loophole in film classification laws that allowed videos to bypass the review process. The resulting uncensored video releases led to public debate concerning the availability of these films to children due to the unregulated nature of the market.
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June 13, 2024
Dark cuisine (‘hei an liao li’) is a Chinese neologism referring to a culinary style built around foods or food combinations that sound bizarre or even disgusting but which often are tastier than anticipated.
The Chinese term hei an liao li dates from its use in ‘Chuuka Ichiban!’ (‘China’s Number One!’), a 1990s manga series by Etsushi Ogawa, that follow a young chef in 19th-century China as he fights the Dark Cooking Society. In China the term had been used starting in 2012 to discuss stargazy pie, a Cornish baked sardine dish that exemplified ‘all that the Chinese find baffling about Western cooking.’
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May 20, 2024
The Polish School of Posters refers to a highly influential artistic movement that emerged in Poland after World War II, primarily from the 1950s through the 1980s, characterized by its unique graphic design style, particularly in the realm of poster art.
Despite the restrictions of the communist regime, Polish poster artists enjoyed a surprising degree of creative liberty compared to other art forms. They often used surreal, abstract, and metaphorical illustrations to convey complex ideas and emotions, and many posters served as subtle critiques of the political and social realities of the time. Posters featured vivid colors, strong contrasts, and simplified forms to create eye-catching, impactful designs. Distinctive, expressive lettering was hand-drawn and integrated into the overall composition.
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March 27, 2022
Hyperpop is a loosely-defined music movement and microgenre, characterized by a maximalist or exaggerated take on popular music. Artists tagged with the label typically integrate pop and avant-garde sensibilities, drawing on tropes from electronic, hip hop, and dance music.
The microgenre reflects an exaggerated, eclectic, and self-referential approach to pop music and typically employs elements such as brash synth melodies, Auto-Tuned ‘earworm’ vocals, and excessive compression and distortion, as well as surrealist or nostalgic references to 2000s Internet culture and the Web 2.0 era.
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May 26, 2021
A zine [zeen] (short for magazine or fanzine) is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. A fanzine (blend of fan and magazine) is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share their interest.
The term ‘zine’ was coined in an 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and popularized within science fiction fandom, entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1949. Zines have served as a medium for various subcultures, and frequently draw inspiration from a DIY ethos that disregards traditional publishing conventions.
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November 19, 2020
Russian political jokes can be grouped into the major time periods: Imperial Russia, Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia. Quite a few political themes can be found among other standard categories of Russian joke, most notably Rabinovich jokes (short fictional Russian stories or dialogs with a punch line) and Radio Yerevan, also known as the Armenian Radio jokes, which mocked the ‘Question & Answer’ series of the Armenian Radio.
A typical format of a joke was: ‘Radio Yerevan was asked,’ and ‘Radio Yerevan answered.’ For example: Radio Yerevan was asked: ‘Comrades, will there be war?’ Radio Yerevan answered: ‘No, but there will be such a struggle for peace that everything will be razed to the ground.’
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October 8, 2020
Copaganda, a portmanteau of ‘cop’ and ‘propaganda,’ is the phenomenon in which news media and other social institutions promote celebratory portrayals of police officers with the intent of swaying public opinion for the benefit of police departments and law enforcement. Copaganda has been defined by cultural critics as ‘media efforts to flatter police officers and spare them from skeptical coverage’ and ‘pieces of media that are so scarily disconnected from the reality of cops that they end up serving as offbeat recruitment ads.’
The term has gained more popularity in the wake of the George Floyd protests as the United States’ media structure publicly reckons with its role in perpetuating overly fawning or unrealistic portrayals of the police, which activists believe has contributed to downplaying the effects of police brutality in the United States.
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July 22, 2020
An art car is a vehicle that has had its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. Art cars are often driven and owned by their creators, who are sometimes referred to as ‘Cartists.’
Most car artists are ordinary people with no artistic training. Artists are largely self-taught and self funded, though some mainstream trained artists have also worked in the art car medium. Artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and others have designed BMW Art Cars, a project introduced by French racecar driver and auctioneer Hervé Poulain In 1975, and their work has been reflected in racing cars like the BMW V12 LMR.
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July 28, 2019
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity. The term arises from a device developed during the broad, physical comedy style known as commedia dell’arte in 16th-century Italy.
The ‘batacchio’ or ‘bataccio’ (lit. ‘slap stick’) consists of two thin slats of wood, which make a ‘slap’ when striking another actor, with little force needed to make a loud—and comical—sound. The physical slap stick remains a key component of the plot in the traditional and popular ‘Punch and Judy’ puppet show. Along with the inflatable bladder (of which the whoopee cushion is a modern variant), it was among the earliest special effects.
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June 29, 2019
Public art is art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all. Public signifies a working practice of site specificity, community involvement and collaboration.
Public art may include any art which is exhibited in a public space including publicly accessible buildings, but the relationship between the content and audience, what the art is saying and to whom, is just as important if not more important than its physical location.
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December 26, 2018
Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts. In the UK, it was used to describe content which was an ‘alternative’ to the mainstream of live comedy, which often involved racist and sexist material.
In other contexts, it is the nature of the form that is ‘alternative,’ avoiding reliance on a standardized structure of a sequence of jokes with punchlines. American comedian Patton Oswalt has defined it as ‘comedy where the audience has no pre-set expectations about the crowd, and vice versa. In comedy clubs, there tends to be a certain vibe—alternative comedy explores different types of material.’
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October 24, 2018
The Jersey Shore sound is a genre of rock and roll popularized at New Jersey beach towns that evolved from the mixing of pre-Beatles rock and roll, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and the urban culture of the Mid-Atlantic states, especially Pennsylvania (more specifically Philadelphia), Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and, of course, New Jersey.
The form has a strong Italian-American influence, in as much as many of the form’s key precursors and artists, from Frankie Valli through Bruce Springsteen, are of Italian ancestry and urban background.
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