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Old West outlaws
Old West legend tends to divide its heroes into badmen and lawmen, though in reality, there was often little difference between the two. A lawman in one state might have been a badman in another. Wyatt Earp, for example, a frontier marshal, was hailed as a lawman, though some accounts of his life have portrayed him as a paid killer and card sharp.
The Old West stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, covering hauntingly beautiful, vast and wild tracts of America waiting to be discovered, tamed and civilised. Before civilisation came, however, the Old West outlaws were forever getting themselves into gunfights over land, honour, cattle, women or cards, or simply trying to prove that they were the fastest guns in the West.
Contrary to their portrayal in countless books, comics and films, most of the Old Western heroes — such as Billy the Kid and Jesse James — were criminals, thugs and murderers.
Find out more …
Outlaws
http://schoolweb.missouri.edu/ashland.k12.mo.us/bill/practice.htm
Profiles of Billy the Kid, Jessie James and Butch Cassidy.
Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws by Jay Robert Nash (Da Capo Press, 1994) £21.99.
Written by a crime historian, this book includes gunmen, train robbers, gangs, desperadoes, range warriors, gamblers and lawmen.
The Wild West: The Way the American West Was Lost and Won, 1845-1893 (Channel 4, 1995) £3.50.
The story of Native Americans' struggle for survival in the face of invasion and domination by migrant whites from the East. Interviews with Native Americans and western writers and historians complement a succession of contemporary accounts drawn from diaries, letters, memoirs and newspapers. Many reproductions of archive photographs, engravings and paintings are included.
To order your copy online, go to: www.channel4.com/plus/print, or you can send a cheque or postal order for £3.50 (payable to Channel 4) to: The Wild West, PO Box 4000, Manchester M60 3LL.
Hell's Angels
The original Hell's Angels motorcycle club was set up in Oakland, California in 1957. Sonny Barger, the Hell's Angels' patriarch, established a formal set of rules for his gang of fellow bikers, attempting to transform them into an elite brotherhood, bound by a strict code of honour. Hell's Angels gangs then sprang up all over California in the late 1950s and 1960s, spreading thence to the rest of the United States and the world.
Codes of honour aside, Hell's Angels were hedonists, who embraced the sex and drug culture of the 1960s. They also tended to be vicious racist and sexist criminals. Their emblem was a winged death's head and much of their garb was adorned with Nazi paraphernalia.
They needed the most spurious of excuses to start a fight. In 1965, Hell's Angels attacked an anti-Vietnam peace march on the grounds that the protesters were showing disrespect to the troops in Vietnam. Hunter S Thompson, who travelled with the Oakland Angels, was beaten almost to death after criticising one of the members for hitting a woman. In 1969, at a rock concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, a Hell's Angel stabbed a black man to death while the Rolling Stones played 'Sympathy for the Devil'.
Find out more …
Hell's Angels MC World
www.hells-angels.com/home1.htm
Links to charters worldwide, history and events.
Hell's Angels: Into the abyss by Yves Lavigne (Harper Prism, 1997) £3.99.
The findings of FBI undercover agent Anthony Tait: the truth about a gang of Hell's Angels.
S&M
According to S&M — 'sado-masochism' — pressure groups, S&M is 'a sexual orientation that is found in a significant percentage of the population' — a fact that many S&M enthusiasts would find depressing, since part of the point of being a sado-masochist is to be on the edge, different, bad.
In reality, S&M is erotic psychodrama played out between dominant and submissive partners. Fans insist that the practice is not sexist. They also argue that, in most circumstances, the masochist, or submissive partner, has the final say on what the limits of sexual activity are.
Nevertheless, S&M can be dangerous. 'Strangulation play', also known as erotic asphyxiation, is common. Strangulation, in addition to fulfilling the masochistic desire to be bound, induces a pleasurable, hallucinogenic, yet lucid state as the amount of oxygen getting to the brain is reduced. Fatalities do occur: Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of of the rock group INXS, is thought to have died of auto-erotic asphyxiation.
Find out more …
A Defence of Masochism by Anita Phillips (Faber, 1999) £6.99.
Who are the masochists, and why are they doing it? Is it a dangerous perversion or a harmless, playful pastime?
Best of Bizarre, editedby Eric Kroll (Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 2001) £4.99.
Highlights from John Willie's bondage magazine Bizarre, published between 1946 and 1959.