“At first the pies used in slapstick comedies were the real thing, but it was soon found that they had a distressing tendency to disintegrate in the air. A patisserie called Greenbergs in Glendale, California, came up with a solution to the problem – a special ballistic custard pie with a double thickness of pastry and a filling of flour, water and whipped cream. The filling came in two flavours; blackberry if the recipient was a blonde, lemon meringue for a brunette, to show up better on black and white film.”
‘First custard pie thrown on film’, Guinness Book of World Records website
“Toss the baby to Pantaloon, crying “catchee, catchee!” Snatch it away from him, and hit him with it over the shins, knocking him down. […] Now wash the baby by putting it in a tub, pouring hot water on it from the kettle, and swabbing its face with a mop. Comb its hair with a rake; then put the baby into a mangle and roll it out flat. Set the baby in its cradle, and tread it well down. Make the baby cry; then take it out of bed to quiet it […]”
From James Johnson’s Account of Pantomime (London: H.S. Phillips, 1884) quoted in Edwin M. Eigner, ‘Imps, Dames and Principal Boys: Gender Confusion in the Nineteenth-Century Pantomime’, Browning Institute Studies, 17 (1989) pp. 65-74, p. 69
“We begin with a journalist indulging in all manner of graphic sexual activity with an underaged and mentally retarded girl in his hotel room somewhere in England. Then we regress, by various implausible stages, from mere unlawful indecency to vividly enacted male rape, through to the barbaric cannibalism of a dead baby and on to simple defecation on stage.”
Jack Tinker, ‘This Disgusting Feast of Filth’, Daily Mail, 19th January 1995
Darkness.
Light.
Ian masturbating.
Ian: cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt
Darkness.
Light.
Ian shitting.
And then trying to clean it up with newspaper.
Darkness.
Light.
Ian laughing hysterically.
Darkness.
Light.
Ian having a nightmare.
Darkness.
Light.
Ian crying, huge bloody tears.
He is hugging the Soldier’s body for comfort.
Darkness.
Light.
Ian lying very still, weak with hunger.
Darkness.
Light.
Ian tears the cross out of the ground, rips up the floor and lifts the baby’s body out.
He eats the baby.
He puts the remains back in the baby’s blanket and puts the bundle back in the hole.
A beat, then he climbs in after it and lies down, head poking out of the floor.
He dies with relief.
It starts to rain on him, coming through the roof.
Eventually.
Ian: Shit.
Sarah Kane, Blasted
Titus: Soft, so busily she turns the leaves.
Help her. What would she find? Lavinia, shall I read?
This is the tragic tale of Philomel,
And treats of Tereus’ treason and his rape —
And rape, I fear, was root of thy annoy.
William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 4.1.41-49
Titus: […] come, brother, take a head,
And in this hand the other will I bear —
And Lavinia, thou shalt be employed in these things:
Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth.
Titus Andronicus, 3.1.278-81
Enter Marcus from hunting.
Marcus: Who is this? My niece that flies away so fast?
— Cousin, a word. Where is your husband.
[Lavinia stops and turns.]
If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me;
If I do wake, some planet strike me down
That I may slumber an eternal sleep!
Speak, gentle niece. What stern ungentle hands
Hath lopped and hewed and made thy body bare
Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments
Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in
And might not gain so great a happiness
As half thy love? Why dost not speak to me?
Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,
Like to a bubbling fountain stirred with wind,
Doth rise and fall between thy rosèd lips,
Coming and going with thy honey breath.
Titus Andronicus, 2.4.11-25
“Aw. Diddums. Did the nasty fictional play upset you? *Fictional’ : Not true. * ‘Play’ : Not real.”
‘Travalinman’, comment on MailOnline, ‘Alas, poor snowflakes’, October 2017
Soldier: You never fucked by a man before?
Ian: (Doesn’t answer.)
Soldier: Didn’t think so. It’s nothing. Saw thousands of people packing into trucks like pigs trying to leave town. Women threw their babies on board hoping someone would look after them. Crushing each other to death. Insides of people’s heads came out of their eyes. Saw a child most of his face blown off, young girl I fucked hand up inside her trying to claw my liquid out, starving man eating his dead wife’s leg. Gun was born here and won’t die. Can’t get tragic about your arse. Don’t think your Welsh arse is different to any other arse I fucked. Sure you haven’t got any more food, I’m fucking starving.
Ian: Are you going to kill me?
Soldier: Always covering your own arse.
Sarah Kane, Blasted
“Around one in twenty females (aged 16 to 59) reported being a victim of a most serious sexual offence since the age of 16. Extending this to include other sexual offences such as sexual threats, unwanted touching or indecent exposure, this increased to one in five females reporting being a victim since the age of 16.”
UK Ministry of Justice, Home Office, and Office for National Statistics, An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales, ‘Overview’, published 10th January 2013, p. 6
“I think the press outrage was due to the play being experiential rather than speculative. The title refers not only to the content but also the impact it seems to have had on audiences. What makes the play experiential is its form.”
Quoted in Aleks Sierz, In-yer-face Theatre: British Drama Today (London: Faber and Faber, 2001), p. 98
“I mentioned the compulsory consent classes you now have to attend as a first-year undergraduate (generally presided over by embarrassed second-years) in which you are lectured on how rape is a bad thing. Then later I made a flippant reference to Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris. [Non-British readers should know that these were successful children’s TV celebrities of the 70s and 80s, later revealed to be predatory sex offenders.]”
James Delingpole, ‘Delingpole: My Horrible, Horrible Encounter with a “Rape Culture” Cry Bully at Cambridge University’, Breitbart, 30th June 2018
discussions about literature 