Remembering Bowie

Aside from my Facebook page I didn’t really join in that publicly with the collective global grief expressed yesterday at the news of Bowie’s passing. This was largely because I couldn’t think of any tribute that didn’t sound in some way trite. The man was just too big. I can’t think of any cultural correlatives other than Elvis and John Lennon, and I hadn’t therefore really felt what I was feeling yesterday, I realized last night, since 1980 when news broke of John Lennon’s murder. A friend of mine expressed the feeling very well on Facebook in the morning: ‘F**king hell. Even though I wasn’t his greatest fan it’s not right that he’s no longer in the world. He’s always been around. David Bowie shouldn’t be dead, for f**k’s sake.’

Wes Craven, 1939 – 2015

It is with great sadness and maximum respect that we bid a very fond farewell to Wes Craven, who passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer, aged 76. I never met the man, but his work has been a constant and inspiring companion since I first encountered The Last House on the Left as a teenage horror fan in the days before the UK Broadcasting Act put it on the Obscene Publications List. Later, I got to teach it in lecture course about transgression, censorship and popular culture, and I still have the uncut videotape that I bought in Japan.