Whitehouse in black and white

摘要

Ban This Filth is a puzzling volume. In the special collections rooms of the University of Essex library, a radio producer - Jo Wheeler - and a record producer - Johnny Trunk - came across the 300-box archive accumulated by Mary Whitehouse. They licensed it for publication and brought in journalist Ben Thompson to shape the material and provide some perspective. The result is 400 pages of assorted vehemence, from and to Whitehouse, roughly organised by theme, but annoyingly lacking an index. There are three problems with this approach. First, we are taken back and forth in time, very confusingly. Second, some of the themes are closely inter-connected, and we lose those connections in this scheme of separation.