The History of Trash
Intellectualising Trash, Lecture 3
Pioneers of Science Fiction
HG Wells (1886The Time Machine (1895) The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
Jules Verne Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) Voyage to the Moon (1865)
The Invisible Man (1897)
War of the Worlds (1898) The Sleeper Awakes (1899) The Shape of Things to Come (1933)
20 000 Leagues under the Sea (1871)
Georges Méliès, Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902)
[Henty] successfully redirected the uncontrolled violence of the penny dreadful into approved channels - imperial expansion and a belief in martial prowess, glossed with notions of chivalric behaviour and ideas about the ‘sporting’ nature of warfare...Part of the adult approval for Henty and his fellow writers, then, was because they promoted, through the pleasure culture of war, a sense of duty and the martial spirit among British boys upon whom the security of the empire would ultimately depend. (Paris, 2000: 64)
Most people are influenced far more than they would care to admit by novels [and] serial stories … from this point of view the worst books are often the most important because they are usually the ones that we read earliest in life. It is probable that many people who would consider themselves extremely sophisticated and ‘advanced’ are actually carrying through life an imaginative background which they acquired in childhood…
George Orwell, Boys Weeklies, 1939
The Battle of the Somme, 1916
Going ‘over the top’ (faked footage)
The Hull Pals ‘return’ from the Front (reversed footage)
Man carrying wounded soldier The Battle of the Somme: 1916
MURDER! MYSTERY!! TREACHERY!!! ROMANCE!!!! Hounded by spies… Hunted by police…Double crossed by the woman he loves… in THE 39 STEPS
The 39 Steps, Buchan, 1915, Hitchcock, 1939
The Schoolgirl
ed. Frank Richards, (writing as Hilda Richards), 1922-40
(Captain) W.E. Johns’ Biggles Stories: The Camels are Coming (1927) Biggles Flies Again (1934)
‘It’s Quicker by Train’ railway advertising campaign, 1930s
‘You can be Sure of Shell’, 1930s advertising
The War Books Controversy (1928-33)
1928 Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of A Foxhunting Man. Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War. 1929
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That. Eric Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, (trans. A Wheen). Frederic Manning, Her Privates We.
1930 Wilfred Owen, Poems, (ed. Blunden). Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet. 1933 Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth. Guy Chapman, A Passionate Prodigality.
…science fiction, as a genre, afforded more freedom for uncompromising left-wing statements that, say, the war films, precisely because it was so thoroughly removed from reality, so well insulated by its own peculiar conventions. After all, it was ‘just entertainment,’ wasn’t it?
(Biskind, Seeing is Believing, 1983: 159)
Major films of the 1950s
1950 Destination Moon The Man in the White Suit
The Day the Earth Stood Still Invaders from Mars It Came from Outer Space The War of the Worlds Them! Nineteen Eighty Four Earth vs. the Flying Saucers Forbidden Planet Invasion of the Body Snatchers The Incredible Shrinking Man Attack of the 50-Foot Woman I Married a Monster from Outer Space The Fly The Twilight Zone [TV] The Time Machine Village of the Damned
1951 1953
1954
1956
1957 1958
1960
‘Something is happening, send your men of science quick!’
Siegal: The Invasion of the Body Snatchers: 1956
[The only difference between] "surreptitious pornographic literature for adults and children's comic book is this: in one it is a question of attracting perverts, in the other of making them.“
(Frederic Wertham, The Seduction of the Innocent. p. 183)
Tales from the Crypt #29, EC Comics, 1950
People searching for peace of mind through… PSYCHOANALYSIS EC Comics: 1955
Major Trash Fiction of the 1950s
1950 1951 Isaac Asimov, I Robot Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids Ian Fleming, Casino Royale J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Jack Finney, The Body Snatchers
1953 1954 1955
1957
Nevil Shute, On the Beach John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned in 1960)
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
1959