Neil Armstrong (Teesside University) In 1908 the writer George Sturt reflected in his personal journal that Christmas had the peculiar power to transform personal behaviour. Couched in the language of an emerging psychological understanding of the self, Sturt asserted that ‘[f]or three or four short silly days we encourage the activity of idea-powers which during all the rest of the year are rather strongly suppressed; with the result that for that brief period we are a different people, more amiable
Read moreTag: Christmas
Peter J. Katz, ‘Dickens, the Digital, and The Doctor’
By Peter J. Katz, Syracuse University In the latest Doctor Who Christmas Special (watch from 53:41 to 54:30), the Great Intelligence, a disembodied and purely intellectual power, threatens to take over Victorian London with an army of snowmen. At the last moment, The Doctor stumbles upon the secret weapon to use against the horde: a family crying on Christmas Eve. To be more particular, though: a Victorian family crying on a Victorian Christmas Eve. Doctor Who taps into a nostalgia
Read moreDickens, the Digital, and The Doctor
By Peter J. Katz, Syracuse University In the latest Doctor Who Christmas Special (watch from 53:41 to 54:30), the Great Intelligence, a disembodied and purely intellectual power, threatens to take over Victorian London with an army of snowmen. At the last moment, The Doctor stumbles upon the secret weapon to use against the horde: a family crying on Christmas Eve. To be more particular, though: a Victorian family crying on a Victorian Christmas Eve. Doctor Who taps into a nostalgia
Read moreLucinda Matthews-Jones, Tasting the Victorian Christmas: Mince pies and Chocolate Santas
Lucinda Matthews-Jones (Liverpool John Moores University) Last Thursday was the end of a very long term for me and my students. I’m not saying that I was bribing my students with treats, but my co-lecturer on ‘Victorian Popular Culture’ and I were both aware that we needed to sweeten the blow of week 14. For Mike, this meant stopping off at a local shop to purchase ‘A Victorian Christmas: Milk Chocolate Santas’. The box showed a ‘traditional’ image of Christmas
Read moreTasting the Neo-Victorian Christmas: Mince pies and Chocolate Santas
Lucinda Matthews-Jones (Liverpool John Moores University) Last Thursday was the end of a very long term for me and my students. I’m not saying that I was bribing my students with treats, but my co-lecturer on ‘Victorian Popular Culture’ and I were both aware that we needed to sweeten the blow of week 14. For Mike, this meant stopping off at a local shop to purchase ‘A Victorian Christmas: Milk Chocolate Santas’. The box showed a ‘traditional’ image of Christmas
Read morePete Orford, ‘Scrooge in Space; updating A Christmas Carol for the twenty-first century and beyond’
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_KJG5w91cE[/youtube] A Christmas Carol is Dickens’ most appropriated tale, with an eclectic mix of artists involved in its retelling, from Mr Magoo to the Mr Men, and Batman to Barbie. The latest, and highly entertaining, offering was from the BBC’s flagship drama Doctor Who in its 2010 Christmas Special (aired in Britain on BBC1 on Christmas Day), in which the miserly Kazran Sardick (played by Michael Gambon) was the only man who could save the Doctor’s friends – and several
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