The Strange Case of ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde

ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde

By Gregory Tate, University of St Andrews

By the final episode of ITV’s adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, viewers might be forgiven for wondering if there’s any connection between the series and Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella other than the title. Set in 1930s London, the series has found room for plenty of violence, a menagerie of CGI beasts and monsters, an X Files-style secret government organisation, and a demon named Lord Trash.

But the freedom with which writer Charlie Higson has adapted the story is nothing new. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of several late Victorian texts (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the Sherlock Holmes stories) that have been so frequently adapted that the leading characters have taken on lives of their own.

Will Donald Trump Get The Schlong? - Petition To Ban Him From Entering The UK Will Be Debated In Parliament!

The following is a quick update on how the petition asking the Government to ban Donald Trump from entering the UK is doing...

And, from what the email I received last night says, it's not doing too badly, somehow. As the petition has over 100,000 signatures., the Petitions Committee will not only consider it for a debate, but they can also "gather further evidence and press the government for action."

Sounds promising...

The full response from the Government can be found below as well as a little humoristic video of mine as a bonus. .

Enjoy!

Loup Dargent

Ten New Year's Resolutions That Will Benefit Both Your Work and Personal Lives

New Year's Resolutions to Benefit Both Your Work and Personal Life
(PRNewsFoto/Real Office Centers)

2016 is quickly approaching, and for many of us that means it is time to come up with our annual list of New Year's resolutions. If you are a busy professional trying to balance work and family life, these ten resolutions from Real Office Centers may help you on both fronts.

Stranger Than Strangelove: How The US Planned For Nuclear War in The 1950s

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) CC BY-SA

By Paul Lashmar, University of Sussex

Those who have written about the nuclear Cold War remain grateful to Stanley Kubrick for giving us the satirical 1964 film Dr Strangelove which captures the madness that swept the world for 40 years. The name Strangelove may be overused but the United States has now released a secret file that really does justify the sobriquet: “Stranger than Strangelove”. Almost anodyne in title, Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959 is a truly shocking document, revealing the scale of the holocaust that would have been unleashed in a nuclear war.

US: Injured Veterans and Families Enjoy North Pole Christmas

Christmas in Ice gave wounded veterans and their families a chance to bond in North Pole, Alaska

From frozen water carved into shapes to hot chocolate shared in mugs, wounded veterans and their families experienced a memorable day in North Pole, Alaska, recently. Wounded Warrior Project® (WWP) brought the injured service members and families out to spend the day together and build camaraderie.

WWP sees engagement as a key pillar to an injured veteran's recovery. Through gatherings, sporting events, and outings, wounded service members can bond with one another and build a larger support network. WWP offers 20 free programs and services to wounded veterans to help their mind, body, engagement, and encourage economic empowerment.

The impersonal Politics of The Guy Fawkes Mask

Million Mask March in London November 2015. Peter Nicholls/Reuters

By Alysia E Garrison, Dartmouth College

Just days after the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13, the iconic mask of Guy Fawkes appeared – again – in two videos released in French by the hacktivist techno-social collective Anonymous. This time, they declared a total war on the Islamic State, or ISIS, continuing a campaign sparked by the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Anonymous was quick to distance this work from surveillance measures targeting Arab and Muslim populations. One month later, an operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump was launched featuring a masked figure in a video voicing outrage against Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

Then on December 13, at the Twitter handle @YourAnonNews, Anonymous issued a message distancing themselves from a splinter group of secret hackers aligned with US security interests, the counterterrorism group GhostSec.

This sequence of events is less indicative of an “identity crisis,” as tweeted by an Anonymous member and reported in the Washington Post than of the jettisoning of any one “identity” for Anonymous.

Anonymous had specific eras - lulz era 2006 - 2010 | hacktivism era 2010 - 2012 | SJW era 2012 - 2015 | identity crisis 2015 - now

— Discordian (@AnonDiscordian) December 11, 2015

Anonymous’ collective actions are not identity-driven but faceless. The mask of Anonymous refuses identity.

The question that interests me, as a literary scholar and critical theorist, is: how did Guy Fawkes become transformed from a 17th-century Catholic conspirator to a tool of social protest?