Category Archives: drugs

The subversion of American civilization

Perversion for Profit (1965)

“Through this material, today’s youth can be stimulated to sexual activity for which he has no legitimate outlet. He is even enticed to enter the world of homosexuals, lesbians, sadists, masochists and other sex deviants.”

Perversion for Profit is a 1965 American propaganda film. A vehement diatribe against pornography, the film attempts to link explicit portrayals of human sexuality to a Communist conspiracy and the subversion of American civilization.

Video:

Perversion for Profit Part I and II at Google video. And check the YouTube clip which also has a segment on drugs. Parts of the propaganda film were also featured in a ‘Sims’ bootleg version of Justin Timberlake’s 2006 clip ‘Sexy Back’. Here is a cutup/détournement version of that same propaganda film.

It takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict

“You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.” —Junky (1953) – William S. Burroughs

Underground

Parent: underground – philosophy of place – culture

By medium: underground film – underground literature – underground press – underground music

“Ideas enter our above-ground culture through the underground. I suppose that is the kind of function that the underground plays, such as it is. That it is where the dreams of our culture can ferment and strange notions can play themselves out unrestricted. And sooner or later those ideas will percolate through into the broad mass awareness of the broad mass of the populace. Occulture, you know, that seems to be perhaps the last revolutionary bastion.” — Alan Moore

Related: alternative – banned – censorship – clandestine – controversial – counterculture – crime – cult – drugs – economy – forbidden – grotto – hidden – illegal – illicit – independent – a glossary of the non-mainstream – overground – prohibition – resistance – secret – subculture – subversive – taboo – transgressive – underworld – The Velvet Underground

Contrast: mainstream

Underground mining station, image sourced here.

A basement or cellar is an architectural construction that is completely or almost below ground in a building. It may be located below the ground floor.

The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground. – Frank Zappa

Interconnected underground stems are called rhizomes