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This chapter considers the influence of horror on the production of commercial gay pornography. I see this influence reflected especially in the production and popularity of gay pornographic films inspired by horror franchises from the slasher and ‘torture porn’ cycles that have been remade in recent decades. Nine texts are selected for analysis – from the slasher genre: Bryan Kenny’s 2010 A Nightmare on Twink Street (inspired by the A Nightmare on Elm Street series), Andy Kay’s 2012 Black XXXmas (inspired by Black Christmas), Frank Fuder and Angel Skye’s 2009 Halloweiner: Friday the Fuckteenth and Chi Chi LaRue’s 2016 Scared Stiff (both inspired by the Friday the 13th series), Bromo’s 2017 Cream for Me (Scream series); and from the torture porn genre: Jett Blakk’s 2006 Bonesaw, John Bruno’s 2006 Rammer and Bryan Kenny’s 2010 Raw I and 2011 (with Andy Kay) Raw II (inspired by the Saw franchise). The specificity of the horror genre is addressed, as is the importance of gender. But particular focus is directed toward the structural aspects of gay porn parodies and the degree to which horror parodies in particular have the potential to blend pornographic homosex with graphic violence, perhaps most extreme in the slasher and torture porn horror variants. Other potentialities are also explored, such as for the easing of narrative/sex porn tensions.

Bureaucratic hierarchy, as the hallmark of the modern organization, has been remarkably resilient in the face of increasingly pervasive attacks on its fundamental value and usefulness. We investigate the reasons for this from a cultural, particularly psychoanalytic, perspective – one that sees hierarchy's perpetuation not in terms of the efficacy of its instrumental potential, but rather in the values that are culturally sedimented within it. We argue that hierarchy reflects longings for a pure heavenly order that can never be attained yet remains appealing as a cultural fantasy psychologically gripping individuals in its beatific vision. To tease out this cultural logic we examine two representations of it in popular culture – the U.S. television comedy The Office (2005–) and comedian Will Farrell's impersonation of George W. Bush (2009). These examples illustrate the strength of bureaucratic hierarchy as an affective cultural ideal that retains its appeal even whilst being continually the subject of derision. We suggest that this cultural ideal is structured through a ‘fantasmatic narrative’ revolving around the desire for a spiritualized sense of sovereignty; a desire that is always undermined yet reinforced by its failures to manifest itself concretely in practice. Our central contribution is in relating hierarchy to sovereignty, suggesting that hierarchy persists because of an unquenched and unquenchable desire for spiritual perfection not only amongst leaders, but also amongst those they lead.

Comedy and parody in rock and metal music have been around since the genre's inception. The Italian comedic music genre known as rock demenziale employs the use of nonsense and surrealism which turns conventions upside down. The demenziale has also attracted a slew of bands that employ this humour within the heavy metal genre, most famous of which is the Roman band Nanowar of Steel. With their jabs at Manowar and power metal bands, they place mundane activities and characters into the grandiose medievalist and fantasy worlds commonly used by those bands to the point of absurdity. However, with humour being deeply culture-specific, jokes that draw from a country's pop culture and makes extensive use of puns may be lost to an audience not familiar with that culture. Nanowar of Steel's unique position of having songs written in seven languages, primarily English and Italian, allows us to take a deeper look at how language and humour interfaces with the local and global metal scenes.

Extreme metal originated in North America and Europe in the late-1980s, but Australia’s adoption of the form followed closely. One of the first Australian extreme metal (AEM) acts was Sadistik Exekution from Sydney, formed in 1985. Sadistik Exekution are notable for combining musical intensity with irreverent humour and parody. They introduced global extreme metal to the trope of the Australian larrikin: a once pejorative characterisation that has become a term of endearment in contemporary Australian culture, describing a defiant and jocular personality. This trope is evident in Sadistik Exekution’s work, but it has since proliferated more broadly throughout AEM, exemplified by more recent bands like Blood Duster and King Parrot. Their music, too, is inarguably intense and provocative, but is simultaneously mocking of the solemnity of its scene and lineage. This chapter will examine how bands like Sadistik Exekution, Blood Duster and King Parrot, through their public personas and musical and paramusical texts, have subverted extreme metal coding, thereby uncovering a uniquely Australian trajectory in extreme metal style and history.

This chapter explores the role of postmodern intertextuality in Neil Jordan’s 2012 vampire film Byzantium. This intertextuality serves to place the film in dialogue with earlier vampire fiction, in particular the 1970s cycle of British and European erotic vampire films such as Daughters of Darkness and The Vampire Lovers from Hammer Films. Byzantium recalls these earlier texts structurally and thematically, both through direct reference and more oblique allusions.

While Fredric Jameson characterizes postmodern intertextuality as mere nostalgia and the imitation of ‘dead styles’, feminist postmodern theorists such as Linda Hutcheon contend argue for the political potential of postmodernism. This chapter proposes that the postmodern intertextuality of Byzantium is a critical intertextuality, and that the foregrounding of storytelling, writing, and rewriting in the film draws attention to the ways in which the intertextuality of Byzantium is not merely a return to past forms but also a reworking of them.

Taking up the work of Linda Hutcheon and Catherine Constable, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which Byzantium critically reworks aspects of earlier vampire fiction in order to critique and expand the representation of the female vampire and through this explore issues relating to female subjectivity and community.

Purpose – This chapter explores the use of music and celebrity endorsements in political campaigns of the United States. It focuses on two aspects: (1) the legality of a political campaign’s use of music at rallies and in advertisements without authorization from the owner of the musical work and (2) a review of the literature on the potential effect of the use of music in political campaigns on voter behavior.

Design/methodology/approach – A brief history of the use of music in political campaigns precedes an examination of the expansion of copyright law protection for music and the legal claims musicians may raise against the unauthorized use of music by political campaigns. The chapter then reviews the potential effect of political campaigns’ use of music and celebrity endorsements on voter behavior.

Findings – A musician’s primary legal protection falls under copyright law, but the courts disagree on whether the unauthorized use of music at political rallies and in political campaign advertisements results in copyright infringement. Social research suggests music and celebrity endorsements affect voter behavior with a likely greater effect on first-time voters.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter introduces the complicated application of copyright law to the unauthorized use of musical works by political campaigns. Additionally, it notes the limited research on the effect of music and celebrity endorsements on voter behavior even as political campaigns increasingly target niche demographics with specific music selections to motivate voters to vote.

The phrase “e proboscis unum,” a parody on the more familiar Latin phrase that means “out of many one” is taken from the courtroom scene of the 1964 Broadway musical Hello, Dolly! In this scene, the entire cast is under arrest for disturbing the peace, but the young impoverished clerk Cornelius Hackl takes the opportunity to proclaim his love for the milliner Irene Molloy in the song “It only takes a moment.” The matchmaker Dolly pokes fun at the judge, the figure of authority, by commenting on the appearance of his nose, which she characterizes as “a flaming beacon of justice” and “living symbol of the motto of this great land,” “e proboscis unum.” The bickering, fighting crowd, however, in spite of the parody, are transformed into a community as they witness the young man's declaration. As this episode shows, popular culture reads the law and the courts as making possible a space for personal transformation and transformative sociality. The recent debate about same-sex marriage in Massachusetts shows that both individual persons and the law itself are open to a process of mutual transformation. The chapter uses Hello, Dolly!, the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, and Shoshana Felman's The Juridical Unconscious to argue that the study of law and literature is crucial in the current academic environment in which many critics, influenced by Giorgio Agamben, argue that law and the courts are merely the space for the exercise of the state's sovereign power to carry out punishment.