Frankenstein (1818) 6

"I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition." (139)

Film critic Roger Ebert called The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) "the best of the Frankenstein movies," and then in the same sentence, as if to equate "best" with deception, provides this qualification: "a sly, subversive work that smuggled shocking material past the censors by disguising it in the trappings of horror."

Indeed, much of what comes to us in the popular culture comes to us through something else. The availability of explicit sexual imagery first arrived under the guise of documentarian social science (films like Censorship in Denmark, 1970, or books like The Cult of Analism), 1971), while anti-war satires like Starship Troopers (1997) were taken literally by American audiences who continue their passive, if not escapist, love affair with heroic Buck Rogers-style science-fiction.

The U.S. Army's preparation for this Wednesday's inauguration of its country's 46th president is the latest project to convey -- intended or otherwise -- its opposite effect. Instead of a production designed to protect the next president to utter the words "liberty" and "freedom" a couple thousand times over the next four years, his party's detractors will point instead to the prison-like environment his administration has designed to restrict those who feel it is their right to overrun anyone in government who dares to impinge on their liberties and freedoms.