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The Illuminatus! Trilogy

'The Illuminatus! Trilogy' is a series of three novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction–influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third- and first-person perspectives in a nonlinear narrative. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology, and Discordianism.

The trilogy comprises three parts which contain five books and appendices: The Eye in the Pyramid (first two books), The Golden Apple (third and part of fourth book), Leviathan (part of fourth and all of fifth book, and the appendices). The parts were first published as three separate volumes starting in September 1975. In 1984 they were published as an omnibus edition and are now more commonly reprinted in the latter form. In 1986 the trilogy won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. The authors further dealt with its themes in fiction and non-fiction works.

Illuminatus! has been adapted for the stage and as an audio book, and has influenced several modern writers, artists, musicians, and game-makers. The popularity of the word "fnord" and the 23 enigma can both be attributed to the trilogy.

Narrative
The plot meanders between the thoughts, hallucinations and inner voices, real and imagined, of its many characters—ranging from a squirrel to a New York City detective to an artificial intelligence—as well as through time (past, present, and future), and sometimes in mid-sentence. Much of the back story is explained via dialogue between characters, who recount unreliable, often mutually contradictory, versions of their supposed histories. There are even parts in the book in which the narrative reviews and jokingly deconstructs the work itself.

Plot summary
The trilogy's story begins with an investigation by two New York City police detectives (Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon) into the bombing of Confrontation, a leftist magazine, and the disappearance of its editor, Joe Malik. Discovering the magazine's investigation into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., the two follow a trail of memos that suggest the involvement of powerful secret societies. They slowly become drawn into a web of conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the magazine's reporter, George Dorn—having been turned loose without support deep in right-wing Mad Dog, Texas—is arrested for drug possession. He is jailed and physically threatened, at one point hallucinating about his own execution. The prison is bombed and he is rescued by the Discordians, led by the enigmatic Hagbard Celine, captain of a golden submarine. Hagbard represents the Discordians in their eternal battle against the Illuminati, the conspiratorial organization that secretly controls the world. He finances his operations by smuggling illicit substances.

The plot meanders around the globe to such locations as Las Vegas (where a potentially deadly, secret U.S. government-developed mutated anthrax epidemic has been accidentally unleashed); Atlantis (where Howard, the talking porpoise, and his porpoise aides help Hagbard battle the Illuminati); Chicago (where someone resembling John Dillinger was killed many years ago); and to the island of Fernando Poo (the location of the next great Cold War standoff between the Soviet Union, China and the United States).

The evil scheme uncovered late in the tale is an attempt to immanentize the eschaton, a secret scheme of the American Medical Association, an evil rock band, to bring about a mass human sacrifice, the purpose of which is the release of enough "life-energy" to give eternal life to a select group of initiates, including Adolf Hitler. The AMA are revealed to be four siblings (last name Saure) who comprise four of the five mysterious Illuminati Primi. The identity of the fifth remains unknown for much of the trilogy. The first European "Woodstock" festival, held at Ingolstadt, Bavaria (place of origin of the real historical Illuminati, also known as Bavarian Illuminati), is the chosen location for the sacrifice of the unwary victims, via the reawakening of hibernating Nazi battalions from the bottom of nearby (fictitious) Lake Totenkopf (a literal translation of contemporary American English "dead head"). The plot is foiled when, with the help of a 50-foot-tall incarnation of the goddess Eris, the four members of the AMA are killed: Wilhelm is killed by the monstrous alien being Yog-Sothoth, Wolfgang is shot by John Dillinger, Winifred is drowned by porpoises, and Werner is trapped in a sinking car.

The major protagonists, now gathered together on board the submarine, are menaced by the Leviathan, a giant, pyramid-shaped single-cell sea monster that has been growing in size for hundreds of millions of years. The over-the-top nature of this encounter leads some of the characters to question whether they are merely characters in a book. This metafictional note is swiftly rejected (or ignored) as they turn their attention to the monster again. The threat is neutralized by offering up their onboard computer as something for the creature to communicate with to ease its loneliness. Finally Hagbard managed to defeat the Illuminati Primi and went to Alpha Centauri in 1999.

Characters

 * Carmel – a pimp living in Las Vegas
 * Freeman Hagbard Celine – leader of the Discordians and a central protagonist in The Illuminatus! Trilogy
 * George Dorn – reporter for Confrontation
 * Saul Goodman – New York City detective
 * Rebecca Murphy Goodman – Saul Goodman's wife
 * Howard – a porpoise
 * Joe Malik – editor of Confrontation
 * Mao Tsu-Hsi – Illuminati recruiter
 * Simon Moon – anarchist
 * Barney Muldoon – New York City detective
 * Tarantella Serpentine – an Illuminati-trained prostitute
 * Markoff Chaney – a midget on a cross country mission to spread chaos
 * Fission Chips – a British secret agent
 * Harry Coin – a perverted assassin
 * Robert Putney Drake – a mob boss obsessed with the occult

Titles
The titles of the three volumes or parts (the front covers were titled Illuminatus! Part I The Eye in the Pyramid, Illuminatus! Part II The Golden Apple and Illuminatus! Part III Leviathan) refer to recurring symbols of elements of the plot.

The Eye in the Pyramid refers to the Eye of Providence, which in the novel represents particularly the Bavarian Illuminati, and makes a number of appearances (for example, as an altar and a tattoo).

The Golden Apple refers to the golden apple of discord, from the Greek myth of the Judgement of Paris. In the trilogy it is used as the symbol of the Legion of Dynamic Discord, a Discordian group; the golden apple makes a number of appearances, for example, on the cover, on a black flag, and as an emblem on a uniform.

Leviathan refers to the Biblical sea monster Leviathan, which is a potential danger to Hagbard's submarine Leif Erickson (from the name of the Icelandic discoverer of America). It also refers to Thomas Hobbes' seminal work of political philosophy, Leviathan, as a metaphor for an all-encompassing, authoritarian state – a common metaphor used in libertarian discourse.

Publishing history
The trilogy was originally written between 1969 and 1971 while Wilson and Shea were both associate editors for Playboy magazine. As part of the role, they dealt with correspondence from the general public on the subject of civil liberties, much of which involved paranoid rants about imagined conspiracies. The pair began to write a novel with the premise that "all these nuts are right, and every single conspiracy they complain about really exists". In a 1980 interview given to the science fiction magazine Starship, Wilson suggested the novel was also an attempt to build a myth around Discordianism:

"It started with the Discordian Society, which is based on worship of Eris, the Greek goddess of confusion and chaos [...] We felt the Society needed some opposition, because the whole idea of it is based on conflict and dialectics. So, we created an opposition within the Discordian Society, which we called the Bavarian Illuminati [...] There were several Discordian newsletters written in the 1960s, and several Discordian members wrote for the underground press in various parts of the country. So, we built up this myth about the warfare between the Discordian Society and the Illuminati for quite a while, until one day Bob Shea said to me, 'You know, we could write a novel about this!'"

There was no specific division of labor in the collaborative writing process, although Shea's writing tended towards melodrama, while Wilson's parts tended towards satire. Wilson states in a 1976 interview conducted by Neal Wilgus:

"In general, the melodrama is Shea and the satire is me; but some of the satire is definitely him and some of the melodrama is certainly me. 'When Atlantis Ruled the Earth' is 99% Shea. The sections about Simon Moon, Robert Putney Drake and Markoff Chaney are 99% me. Everything else is impossible to untangle."

According to Ken Campbell, who created a stage adaptation of Illuminatus! with Chris Langham, the writing process was treated as a game of one-upmanship between the two co-authors, and was an enjoyable experience for both:

"They had a lot of access to research staff. And so under the guise that it would be helpful writing articles for Playboy (I don't think it was really) they got into the Illuminati. Wilson would bung these memos to Shea as material came in from the researchers—like the memos in the book. When they got to memo 23, Shea said, 'If we imagine a New York cop came across these memos, I think we've got the basis for a fine thriller!' So the next one Wilson wrote was episode one of the thriller. Shea replied with episode two. They were playing a game really. Like, I bet you can't continue this! The answer is, 'No I can't, so we'll continue with this!'"

The unusual end product did not appeal to publishers, and it took several years before anybody agreed to take it on. According to Wilson, the division of Illuminatus! into three parts was a commercial decision of the publisher, not the authors, who had conceived it as a single continuous volume. Shea and Wilson were required to cut 500 pages to reduce printing costs on what was seen as a risky venture, although Wilson states that most of the ideas contained therein made it into his later works. The idea that the top secrets of the Illuminati were cut from the books because the printer decided to trim the number of pages is a joke typical of the trilogy.

Dell Publishing first released these individual editions (with covers illustrated by Carlos Victor Ochagavia) in the United States in 1975, to favorable reviews and some commercial success. It became a cult favorite but did not cross over into large mainstream sales. In Britain, Sphere Books released the individual editions (with different cover art by Tony Roberts) in 1976. The individual editions sold steadily until 1984, when the trilogy was republished in a single omnibus volume for the first time. This collected edition lost the "what has gone before" introduction to The Golden Apple and the "Prologue" to Leviathan. Some of the material in that foreword, such as the self-destruct mynah birds (taught to say "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!"), appears nowhere else in the trilogy, likely a result of the 500 pages of cuts demanded by Dell. The omnibus edition gave a new lease on life to flagging sales, and became the most commonly available form of the trilogy from then on.

The trilogy was translated and published in German, again both as separate volumes (the three covers of which formed a triptych) and an omnibus. The face of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs was split across the first two volumes, despite the Church of the SubGenius not being featured in the novel (although Wilson had become a member). The Church was founded by Illuminatus! fans, and the image of "Bob" is widely considered to be a representation of Wilson himself.

Themes
''The Illuminatus! Trilogy'' covers a wide range of subjects throughout the book. These include discussions about mythology, current events, conspiracy theories and counterculture.

Conspiracies

Although the many conspiracy theories in the book are imaginary, these are mixed in with enough truth to make them seem plausible. For example, the title of the first book, The Eye in the Pyramid, refers to the Eye of Providence, a mystical symbol which derives from the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus and is erroneously claimed to be the symbol of the Bavarian Illuminati. Some of America's founding fathers are alleged by conspiracy theorists to have been members of this sect.

The books are loaded with references to the Illuminati, the Argenteum Astrum, many and various world domination plans, conspiracy theories and pieces of gnostic knowledge. Many of the odder conspiracies in the book are taken from unpublished letters to Playboy magazine, where the authors were working as associate editors while they wrote the novels. Among the oddest was the suggestion that Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, killed George Washington and took on his identity as President of the United States. This is often noted in Illuminati-conspiracy discussion. Proponents of this theory point to Washington's portrait on the United States one-dollar bill, which they suggest closely resembles the face of Weishaupt.

Fnord
The nonsense word fnord, invented by the writers of Principia Discordia, is given a specific and sinister meaning in the trilogy. It is a subliminal message technique, a word that the majority of the population since early childhood has been trained to ignore (and trained to forget both the training and that they are ignoring it), but which they associate with a vague sense of unease. Upon seeing the word, readers experience a panic reaction. They then subconsciously suppress all memories of having seen the word, but the sense of panic remains. They therefore associate the unease with the news story they are reading. Fnords are scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines, causing fear and anxiety in those following current events. There are no fnords in the advertisements, thus encouraging a consumerist society. Fnord magazine equated the fnords with a generalized effort to control and brainwash the populace. To "see the fnords" would imply an attempt to wrestle back individual autonomy, similar to the idea of reading between the lines, especially since the word fnord was actually said to appear between regular lines of text.

The word makes its first appearance in ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy'' without any explanation during an acid trip by Dr. Ignotum Per Ignotius and Joe Malik: "The only good fnord is a dead fnord". Several other unexplained appearances follow. Only much later in the story is the secret revealed, when Malik is hypnotized by Hagbard Celine to recall suppressed memories of his first-grade teacher conditioning his class to ignore the fnords: "If you don't see the fnord it can't eat you, don't see the fnord, don't see the fnord..."

Numerology
Numerology is given great credence by many of the characters, with the Law of Fives in particular being frequently mentioned. Hagbard Celine states the Law of Fives in Appendix Gimmel: "All phenomena are directly or indirectly related to the number five." He gives away the secret when he adds, "given enough ingenuity on the part of the demonstrator. That's the very model of what a scientific law must always be: a statement about how the human mind relates to the cosmos." (Late in the work, Celine demonstrates the meaninglessness of the Law of Fives by showing another character a picture of a young girl with six fingers on each hand and saying, "If we were all like her, there'd be a Law of Sixes.") Another character, Simon Moon, identifies what he calls the "23 synchronicity principle", which he credits William S. Burroughs as having discovered. Both laws involve finding significance in the appearance of the number, and in its "presen[ce] esoterically because of its conspicuous exoteric absence." One of the reasons Moon finds 23 significant is because "All the great anarchists died on the 23rd day of some month or other." He also identifies a "23/17 phenomenon." They are both tied to the Law of Fives, he explains, because 2 + 3 = 5, and 1 + 7 = 8 = 2³. Robert Anton Wilson claimed in a 1988 interview that "23 is a part of the cosmic code. It's connected with so many synchronicities and weird coincidences that it must mean something, I just haven't figured out yet what it means!".

Counterculture
The books were written at the height of the late 1960s, and are infused with the popular counterculture ideas of that time. For instance, the New Age slogan "flower power" is referenced via its German form, Ewige Blumenkraft (literally "eternal flower power"), described by Shea and Wilson as a slogan of the Illuminati, the enemies of the hippie ideal. The book's attitude to New Age philosophies and beliefs are ambiguous. Wilson explained in a later interview: "I'm some kind of antibody in the New Age movement. on the rewrite we deliberately threw in a couple of references to it, but we had worked out the structure on our own, mostly on the basis of the nut mail that Playboy gets".

The prevalence of kinky sex in the story reflects the hippie ideal of "free love"; characters are both liberal-minded and promiscuous. The authors are well aware that it also provides an excuse for mere titillation: in a typically self-referential joke, a character in the story suggests the scenes exist: "only to sell a bad book filled with shallow characters pushing a nonsense conspiracy". Similarly, the books espouse the use of mind-altering substances to achieve higher states of consciousness, in line with the beliefs of key counterculture figures like Timothy Leary, who is mentioned throughout the three novels. Leary himself called the trilogy "more important than Ulysses or Finnegans Wake," two novels by author James Joyce—who appears as a character in ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy'' and is a favorite author of Robert Anton Wilson. This quote is blurbed on the covers or front page of its various printings.

Cognitive dissonance
Every view of reality that is introduced in the story is later derided in some way, whether that view is traditional or iconoclastic. The trilogy is an exercise in cognitive dissonance, with an absurdist plot built of seemingly plausible, if unprovable, components. Ultimately, readers are left to form their own interpretations as to which, if any, of the numerous contradictory viewpoints presented by the characters are valid or plausible, and which are simply satirical gags and shaggy dog jokes. This style of building up a viable belief system, then tearing it down to replace it with another one, was described by Wilson as "guerrilla ontology".

This postmodern lack of belief in consensus reality is a cornerstone of the semi-humorous Chaos-based religion of Discordianism. Extracts from its sacred text, the Principia Discordia by Malaclypse the Younger, are extensively quoted throughout the trilogy. It incorporates and shares many themes and contexts from Illuminatus. Shea and Wilson dedicated the first part "To Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley", the founders of the religion. The key Discordian practice known as "Operation Mindfuck" is exemplified in the character of Markoff Chaney (a play on the mathematical random process called Markov chain). He is an anti-social dwarf who engages in subtle practical joking in a deliberate attempt to cause social confusion. One such joke involves the forging and placing of signs that are signed by "The Mgt." (leading people to believe they are from "The Management" instead of "The Midget") that contain absurdities like "Slippery when wet. Maintain 50mph."

Self-reference
There are several parts in the book where it reviews and jokingly deconstructs itself. The fictional journalist Epicene Wildeblood at one point is required to critique a book uncannily similar to ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy'':

"It's a dreadfully long monster of a book, [...] and I certainly won't have time to read it, but I'm giving it a thorough skimming. The authors are utterly incompetent—no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. And the time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell, I'm sure, and the authors—whom I've never heard of—have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposing a real conspiracy. You can be sure I won't waste time reading such rubbish."

Several protagonists come to the realization that they are merely fictional characters, or at least begin to question the reality of their situation. George Dorn wonders early on if he "was in some crazy surrealist movie, wandering from telepathic sheriffs to homosexual assassins, to nympho lady Masons, to psychotic pirates, according to a script written in advance by two acid-heads and a Martian humorist". Hagbard Celine claims towards the climax that the entire story is a computer-generated synthesis of random conspiracies: "I can fool the rest of you, but I can't fool the reader. FUCKUP has been working all morning, correlating all the data on this caper and its historical roots, and I programmed him to put it in the form of a novel for easy reading. Considering what a lousy job he does at poetry, I suppose it will be a high-camp novel, intentionally or unintentionally."

Allusions to other works
For a work of fiction, Illuminatus! contains a lot of references to songs, films, articles, novels and other media. This is partly because the characters themselves are involved in doing research, but it is also a trademark of Wilson's writing.

The novel Telemachus Sneezed by the character Atlanta Hope with its catchphrase "What is John Guilt?" is a spoof of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the origin of the character John Galt. Ayn Rand is mentioned by name a few times in Illuminatus!, and her novel is alluded to by Hagbard who says, "If Atlas can Shrug and Telemachus can Sneeze, why can't Satan Repent?" Rand is also disparaged in one of the appendices concerning property, ostensibly written by Hagbard, which serves as an explanation of anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's views on the subject. There are also references to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and his Gravity's Rainbow, an equally enormous experimental novel concerning liberty and paranoia that was published two years prior to Illuminatus! Wilson claims his book was already complete by the time he and Shea read Pynchon's novel (which went on to win several awards), but they then went back and made some modifications to the text before its final publication to allude to Pynchon's work. The phrase "So it goes" is repeatedly used in reference to death, a deliberate echoing of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.

Author H. P. Lovecraft is alluded to often, with many mentions of characters (e.g., Robert Harrison Blake, Henry Armitage, Klarkash-Ton), monsters (e.g., Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu), books (Necronomicon, Unaussprechlichen Kulten) and places (Miskatonic University) from his Cthulhu Mythos. He even appears himself as a character, as does his aunt Annie Gamwell and one of his acquaintances, Hart Crane. Interest in Lovecraft reached new heights in 1975, with two full-length biographies published in the same year as ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy''.

Reviews and reputation
The books have received laudatory reviews and comments from Playboy, Publishers Weekly, the American Library Association's Booklist magazine, Philadelphia Daily News, Berkeley Barb, Rolling Stone and Limit. The Village Voice called it "The ultimate conspiracy book ... the biggest sci-fi-cult novel to come along since Dune ... hilariously raunchy!" John White of the New Age Journal described it as:

"An epic fantasy...a devilishly funny work ... shimmers with illusion and paradox that provides delight after magical delight ... a farcical black tragicomedy that turns out to have been written by you and me ... it strips away illusion."

The Fortean Times was also enthusiastic, whilst acknowledging the difficulties many readers would have attempting to follow the convoluted plot threads:

"Be prepared for streams of consciousness in which not only identity but time and space no longer confine the narrative, which zips up and down time-lines and flashes into other minds with consummate ease [...] A damned good read. Has to be read to be believed (and even then I'm not sure—it really is preposterous in parts)."

Illuminatus! even garnered some attention outside literary criticism, having several pages devoted to it in a chapter on the American New Right in Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics by George Johnson (1983).

In more recent years, it was complimented in the bibliography to the New Hackers Dictionary as a book that can help readers "understand the hacker mindset." The Dictionary described it as:

"An incredible berserko-surrealist rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent dolphins, the fall of Atlantis, who really killed JFK, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and the Cosmic Giggle Factor. [...] The perfect right-brain companion to Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach."

It was also included in the "Slack Syllabus" in The Official Slacker Handbook by Sarah Dunn (1994), a satirical guide aimed at Generation X.

Follow-ups
Wilson and Robert Shea went on to become prolific authors. While Shea concentrated mainly on historical novels, Wilson produced over 30 works, mixing fictional novels with nonfiction. Although both authors' later work often elaborated on concepts first discussed in Illuminatus!, the pair never collaborated again. The trilogy inspired a number of direct adaptations, including a stage play and a comic book series, and numerous indirect adaptations that borrowed from its themes.

Shea and Wilson
Wilson subsequently wrote a number of prequels, sequels and spin-offs based upon the Illuminatus! concept, including an incomplete pentalogy called The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, a standalone work entitled Masks of the Illuminati and The Illuminati Papers, in which several chapters are attributed to the trilogy's characters. Many of Wilson's other works, fictional and nonfictional, also make reference to the Illuminati or the Illuminatus! books. Several of the characters from Illuminatus!, for example, Markoff Chaney ("The Midget") and Epicene Wildeblood, return in Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, which also carries on some of its themes. The third book of the Cat trilogy, The Homing Pigeons, is actually mentioned as a sequel to Illuminatus! in "Appendix Mem". In 1998, Wilson published an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories called Everything is Under Control, which explains the origins of many of the theories mentioned in Illuminatus!.

Wilson and Shea planned to recollaborate on a true sequel, Bride of Illuminatus, taking place in 2026. It was rumored that it would feature a resurrected Winifred Saure (the only female member of the American Medical Association) exerting her influence through virtual reality. Shea died in 1994 before this project came to fruition. An excerpt was published in Robert Anton Wilson's Trajectories Newsletter: The Journal of Futurism and Heresy in spring 1995. In a 1994 interview for FringeWare Review, Wilson suggested he may even "do a Son of Illuminatus later". In Intelligence Agents by Timothy Leary (1996) he was credited with having already authored Son of Illuminatus in the 1980s.

Shea never wrote another Illuminatus!-related book, although many of his later novels include references to the themes of that work. Locus called his Saracen novels "deep background for the Illuminatus trilogy".

Adaptations

An audacious proposal by the English experimental theater director Ken Campbell to stage Illuminatus! in its entirety at The National Theatre in London was met with surprisingly open arms, particularly given its inordinate length: a cycle of five plays—The Eye of the Pyramid, Swift Kick Inc., The Man Who Murdered God, Walpurgisnacht Rock and Leviathan—each consisting of five 23-minute acts. Sir Peter Hall, director of the National at the time, wrote of Campbell in his Diaries, "He is a total anarchist and impossible to pin down. He more or less said it was a crime to be serious."

The adaptation became the very first production at the National's Cottesloe Theatre space, running from 4 March to 27 March 1977. It had first opened in Liverpool on 23 November 1976. The first night of the London version featured Robert Anton Wilson, accompanied by Shea, as a naked extra in the witches' sabbat scene. Wilson was delighted with the adaptation, saying: "I was thunderstruck at what a magnificent job they did in capturing the exact tone and mixture of fantasy and reality in the book. I've come to the conclusion that this isn't literature. It's too late in the day for literature. This is magic!"

The 23-strong cast featured several actors, such as Jim Broadbent, David Rappaport and Chris Langham, who went on to successful film, stage and television careers. Broadbent alone played more than a dozen characters in the play. Bill Drummond designed sets for the show, and it was eventually seen (when it moved to London, with Bill Nighy then joining the cast) by the young Jimmy Cauty. Drummond and Cauty went on to form the Illuminatus!-inspired electronica band The KLF.

In thanks, Wilson dedicated his Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) to "Ken Campbell and the Science-Fiction Theatre Of Liverpool, England." The play was later staged in Seattle, Washington in 1978.

No film or video exists of the performances at The National Theatre. A full audio recording is available as a limited edition perk in the crowdfunding for the 2014 stage play of Wilson's book Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati, adapted by Daisy Eris Campbell (Ken Campbell's daughter).

An attempt was made to adapt the trilogy in comic book form beginning in the 1980s, by "Eye-n-Apple Productions" headed by Icarus! Icarus! met with Wilson in 1984 and subsequently obtained permission from Wilson's agent to adapt the trilogy. Illuminatus! #1 was issued in July 1987, then reissued in substantially revised form later that year by Rip Off Press (who had published the original 4th edition of the Principia Discordia in 1970).

A second issue followed in 1990, and a third in March 1991, after which the venture stalled (although several ashcans of the as yet unpublished Fourth Trip were distributed at comic book conventions in the Detroit and Chicago areas between 1991 and 2006).

Influence
The infamous 1980s computer hacker Karl Koch was heavily influenced by ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy''. Besides adopting the pseudonym "Hagbard" from the character Hagbard Celine, he also named his computer "FUCKUP", after a computer designed and built by that character. He was addicted to cocaine and became extremely paranoid, convinced he was fighting the Illuminati like his literary namesake. In 1987 he wrote a rambling seven-page "hacking manifesto of sorts, complete with his theories on Hagbard Celine and the Illuminati". The 1998 German motion picture 23 told a dramatized version of his story; Robert Anton Wilson appeared as himself.

A card game, Illuminati, inspired by the trilogy, was created by Steve Jackson Games. Using the Illuminatus! books as "spiritual guides but not as actual source material", it incorporated competing conspiracies of the Bavarian Illuminati and Discordians and others, though no characters or groups specific to the novels. A trading card game (Illuminati: New World Order) and role-playing game supplement (GURPS Illuminati) followed. The instruction booklets' bibliographies praise the novel and Wilson particularly, calling Illuminatus! in part "required reading for any conspiracy buff". Robert Shea provided a four-paragraph introduction to the rulebook for the Illuminati Expansion Set 1 (1983), in which he wrote, "Maybe the Illuminati are behind this game. They must be—they are, by definition, behind everything." Despite this initial involvement, Wilson later criticized some of these products for exploiting the Illuminatus! name without paying royalties (taking advantage of what he viewed as a legal loophole).

''The Illuminatus! Trilogy'' is steeped with references to the 1960s popular music scene (at one point a list of 200 fictional bands performing at the Walpurgisnacht rock festival is reeled off (including a handful of actual bands of the '60s), and there are numerous references to the famous rock and roll song "Rock Around the Clock"), and has influenced many bands and musicians. One of the aliases of anarchic British band The KLF was named after a secret society from the trilogy. They released much of their early material under the name "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu"/"The JAMMs", cf. "The Justified Ancients of Mummu"/"The JAMs" from the trilogy, and much of their work was Discordian in nature. They mirrored the fictional JAMs' gleeful political tactics of causing chaos and confusion by bringing a direct, humorous but nevertheless revolutionary approach to making records. The American band Machines of Loving Grace took the name of a sex act performed by one of the main characters during a Black Mass for the title of their song "Rite of Shiva" on their eponymous album. UK chillout maestro Mixmaster Morris also named his band The Irresistible Force after one that appears at the festival in the last part of the trilogy. Together with Coldcut he organised a huge Robert Anton Wilson Memorial Show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on 18 March 2007.

In general, ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy can be credited with popularizing the genre of conspiracy fiction, a field later mined by authors like Umberto Eco (Foucault's Pendulum), Charles Cecil (Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars) and Dan Brown (Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol), comic book writers like Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell), Dave Sim (Cerebus) and Grant Morrison (The Invisibles), and screenwriters like Chris Carter (The X-Files) and Damon Lindelof (Lost''). In particular, the regular use of the Illuminati in popular culture as shadowy central puppet masters in this type of fiction can be traced back to their exposure via ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy''.

Editions
Major English-language editions include:
 * 1975, US, Dell, Separate editions, The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-440-04688-2, The Golden Apple ISBN 0-440-04691-2 Leviathan ISBN 0-440-14742-5
 * 1976–77, UK, Sphere, Separate editions, The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-7221-9208-8, The Golden Apple ISBN 0-7221-9209-6 Leviathan ISBN 0-7221-9211-8
 * 1980, US, Laurel, Separate editions, The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-440-34688-6, The Golden Apple ISBN 0-7221-9209-6, Leviathan ISBN 0-440-34742-4
 * 1984, US, Dell ISBN 0-440-53981-1, Paperback (collected edition)
 * 1986, UK, Sphere, Paperback (separate editions), The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-7221-9219-3 The Golden Apple ISBN 0-7221-9222-3 Leviathan ISBN 0-7221-9216-9
 * 1988, US, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group ISBN 0-440-53981-1, Paperback (collected edition)
 * 1998, US, MJF Books ISBN 1-56731-237-3, Hardback (collected edition)
 * 1998, US, Constable and Robinson ISBN 1-85487-574-4, Paperback (collected edition)

title: The Illuminatus! Trilogy


text:
Fnord

"Fnord" is a word coined in 1965 by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill in the Discordian religious text Principia Discordia. It entered into popular culture after appearing in The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) of novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Here, the interjection "fnord" is given hypnotic power over the unenlightened, and children in grade school are taught to be unable to see the word consciously. For the rest of their lives, every appearance of the word subconsciously generates a feeling of unease and confusion which prevents rational consideration of the text in which it appears.

Other uses
The word has been used in newsgroup and hacker culture to indicate irony, humor, or Surrealism. Placement at the end of a statement in brackets (fnord) explicitly tags the intent, and may be so applied to any random or surreal sentence, coercive subtext, or anything jarringly out of context, intentional or not. It is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable in programming. Fnord appears in the Church of the SubGenius recruitment film Arise! and has been used in the SubGenius newsgroup alt.slack.

Origins
The word was coined as a nonsensical term with religious undertones in the Discordian parody of religious texts, Principia Discordia (1965) by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill, but was popularized by The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) of satirical conspiracy fiction novels by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Illuminatus! was produced, in the United Kingdom, as a cycle of plays by anarchic theatre director Ken Campbell and his Jungian Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool. The plays further popularized the term.

In the novel trilogy (and the plays), the interjection "fnord" is given hypnotic power over the unenlightened. Under the Illuminati program, children in grade school are taught to be unable to consciously see the word "fnord". For the rest of their lives, every appearance of the word subconsciously generates a feeling of unease and confusion, preventing rational consideration of the text it appears in. The uneasiness and confusion create a perpetual low-level state of fear in the populace. The government acts on the premise that a fearful populace keeps them in power.

In the Shea/Wilson construct, fnords—occurrences of the word "fnord"—are scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines, causing fear and anxiety in those following current events. However, there are no fnords in the advertisements, encouraging a consumerist society. The exclusion of the text from rational consciousness also enables the Illuminati to publish messages to each other in newspapers, etc., without fear that other people will be aware of them. It is implied in the books that fnord is not the actual word used for this task, but merely a substitute, since most readers would be unable to see the actual word.

To "see the fnords" means to be unaffected by the supposed hypnotic power of the word or, more loosely, of other fighting words. The term may also be used to refer to the experience of becoming aware of a phenomenon's ubiquity after first observing it. The phrase "I have seen the fnords" was graffitied on a British railway bridge throughout the 1980s and 1990s, until the bridge was upgraded. The bridge, located between Earlsdon and Coventry city centre, is known locally as "Anarchy Bridge". The bridge and the phrase were mentioned in the novel A Touch of Love by Jonathan Coe.

Usage
The lack of a clear definition of the word, and its popularity among certain groups on the internet, allowed it to be appropriated as a placeholder word (a metasyntactic variable) in computer programming, particularly by those with ties to Discordianism or the Church of the SubGenius. It has also been found useful as the name for a "techno cultural" conference, computer programs, and as a general placeholder word in computing literature.

Fnord! is the name of a (now defunct) freeware NT web server created by Brian Morin in 1995 and transferred to the care of Stephen Kazmierczak in 1997 when Morin was initiated into the summer Internet Server group at Microsoft. In his final transmission, Morin cites concern for potential legal backlash from the established tech giant as the reason for abandoning development of the free Fnord! server solution. Microsoft released Windows 95 and the accompanying Microsoft Network in the same time frame, which was seen as a play by the tech giant to monopolize the emerging online experience of dial-up users by introducing a toll road style business plan for accessing the world's information.

Paulo Goode, a typeface designer from West Cork, Ireland, created a serif font named Fnord in 2016 which contains 23 fonts in five weights. The geometry of the upper case 'O' is drawn on an axis of 23 degrees while the lower case 'o' falls on a 17-degree axis. The 23 / 17 numerology is reflective of similar numerical themes from The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fnord


text:
Émile Durkheim

David Émile Durkheim ( or, professionally known simply as Émile Durkheim; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber.

Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies can maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity, an era in which traditional social and religious ties are much less universal, and in which new social institutions have come into being. Durkheim's conception of the scientific study of society laid the groundwork for modern sociology, and he used such scientific tools as statistics, surveys, and historical observation in his analysis of suicides in Catholic and Protestant groups.

Durkheim's first major sociological work was De la division du travail social (1893; The Division of Labour in Society), followed in 1895 by Les Règles de la méthode sociologique (The Rules of Sociological Method). Also in 1895 Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology and became France's first professor of sociology. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Le Suicide (1897), a study of suicide rates in Catholic and Protestant populations, especially pioneered modern social research, serving to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy. In 1898, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912; The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life) presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.

Durkheim was deeply preoccupied with the acceptance of sociology as a legitimate science. Refining the positivism originally set forth by Auguste Comte (1798-1857), he promoted what could be considered as a form of epistemological realism, as well as the use of the hypothetico-deductive model in social science. For Durkheim, sociology was the science of institutions, understanding the term in its broader meaning as the "beliefs and modes of behaviour instituted by the collectivity," with its aim being to discover structural social facts. As such, Durkheim was a major proponent of structural functionalism, a foundational perspective in both sociology and anthropology. In his view, social science should be purely holistic in the sense that sociology should study phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited to the study of specific actions of individuals.

He remained a dominant force in French intellectual life until his death in 1917, presenting numerous lectures and publishing works on a variety of topics, including the sociology of knowledge, morality, social stratification, religion, law, education, and deviance. Some terms that he coined, such as "collective consciousness", are now also used by laypeople.

Early life and heritage
David Émile Durkheim was born 15 April 1858 in Épinal, Lorraine, France, to Mélanie (Isidor) and Moïse Durkheim, coming into a long lineage of devout French Jews. As his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been rabbis, young Durkheim began his education in a rabbinical school. However at an early age he switched schools, deciding not to follow in his family's footsteps. In fact Durkheim led a completely secular life, whereby much of his work was dedicated to demonstrating that religious phenomena stemmed from social rather than divine factors. Nevertheless Durkheim did not sever ties with his family nor with the Jewish community. In fact many of his most prominent collaborators and students were Jewish, some even being blood relatives. For instance Marcel Mauss, a notable social anthropologist of the prewar era, was his nephew.

Education
A precocious student, Durkheim entered the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in 1879, at his third attempt. The entering class that year was one of the most brilliant of the nineteenth century, as many of his classmates, such as Jean Jaurès and Henri Bergson, went on to become major figures in France's intellectual history as well. At the ENS, Durkheim studied under the direction of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a classicist with a social-scientific outlook, and wrote his Latin dissertation on Montesquieu. At the same time, he read Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, whereby Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society very early on in his career. This meant the first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting, turning his attention from psychology and philosophy to ethics and, eventually, sociology. He obtained his agrégation in philosophy in 1882, though finishing next to last in his graduating class owing to serious illness the year before.

The opportunity for Durkheim to receive a major academic appointment in Paris was inhibited by his approach to society. From 1882 to 1887 he taught philosophy at several provincial schools. In 1885 he decided to leave for Germany, where for two years he studied sociology at the universities of Marburg, Berlin and Leipzig. As Durkheim indicated in several essays, it was in Leipzig that he learned to appreciate the value of empiricism and its language of concrete, complex things, in sharp contrast to the more abstract, clear and simple ideas of the Cartesian method. By 1886, as part of his doctoral dissertation, he had completed the draft of his The Division of Labour in Society, and was working towards establishing the new science of sociology.

Academic career

Durkheim's period in Germany resulted in the publication of numerous articles on German social science and philosophy; Durkheim was particularly impressed by the work of Wilhelm Wundt. Durkheim's articles gained recognition in France, and he received a teaching appointment in the University of Bordeaux in 1887, where he was to teach the university's first social science course. His official title was Chargé d'un Cours de Science Sociale et de Pédagogie, thus he taught both pedagogy and sociology (the latter having never been taught in France before). The appointment of the social scientist to the mostly humanistic faculty was an important sign of changing times and the growing importance and recognition of the social sciences. From this position Durkheim helped reform the French school system, introducing the study of social science in its curriculum. However, his controversial beliefs that religion and morality could be explained in terms purely of social interaction earned him many critics.

Also in 1887, Durkheim married Louise Dreyfus. They had two children, Marie and André.

The 1890s were a period of remarkable creative output for Durkheim. In 1893, he published The Division of Labour in Society, his doctoral dissertation and fundamental statement of the nature of human society and its development. Durkheim's interest in social phenomena was spurred on by politics. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War led to the fall of the regime of Napoleon III, which was then replaced by the Third Republic. This in turn resulted in a backlash against the new secular and republican rule, as many people considered a vigorously nationalistic approach necessary to rejuvenate France's fading power. Durkheim, a Jew and a staunch supporter of the Third Republic with a sympathy towards socialism, was thus in the political minority, a situation that galvanized him politically. The Dreyfus affair of 1894 only strengthened his activist stance.

In 1895, he published The Rules of Sociological Method, a manifesto stating what sociology is and how it ought to be done, and founded the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux. In 1898, he founded L'Année Sociologique, the first French social science journal. Its aim was to publish and publicize the work of what was, by then, a growing number of students and collaborators (this is also the name used to refer to the group of students who developed his sociological program). In 1897, he published Suicide, a case study that provided an example of what a sociological monograph might look like. Durkheim was one of the pioneers of the use of quantitative methods in criminology, which he used in his study of suicide.

By 1902, Durkheim had finally achieved his goal of attaining a prominent position in Paris when he became the chair of education at the Sorbonne. Durkheim had aimed for the position earlier, but the Parisian faculty took longer to accept what some called "sociological imperialism" and admit social science to their curriculum. He became a full professor (specifically, Professor of the Science of Education) there in 1906, and in 1913 he was named chair in "Education and Sociology". Because French universities are technically institutions for training secondary school teachers, this position gave Durkheim considerable influence—his lectures were the only ones that were mandatory for the entire student body. Durkheim had much influence over the new generation of teachers; around that time he also served as an advisor to the Ministry of Education. In 1912, he published his last major work, The Elementary Forms of The Religious Life.

Death

The outbreak of World War I was to have a tragic effect on Durkheim's life. His leftism was always patriotic rather than internationalist, in that he sought a secular, rational form of French life. However, the onset of the war, and the inevitable nationalist propaganda that followed, made it difficult to sustain this already nuanced position. While Durkheim actively worked to support his country in the war, his reluctance to give in to simplistic nationalist fervor (combined with his Jewish background) made him a natural target of the now-ascendant French Right. Even more seriously, the generations of students that Durkheim had trained were now being drafted to serve in the army, many of them perishing in the trenches.

Finally, Durkheim's own son, André, died on the war front in December 1915—a loss from which Durkheim never recovered. Emotionally devastated, Durkheim collapsed of a stroke in Paris two years later, on 15 November 1917. He was buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

Methodology
In The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim expressed his will to establish a method that would guarantee sociology's truly scientific character. One of the questions raised concerns the objectivity of the sociologist: how may one study an object that, from the very beginning, conditions and relates to the observer? According to Durkheim, observation must be as impartial and impersonal as possible, even though a "perfectly objective observation" in this sense may never be attained. A social fact must always be studied according to its relation with other social facts, never according to the individual who studies it. Sociology should therefore privilege comparison rather than the study of singular independent facts.

Durkheim sought to create one of the first rigorous scientific approaches to social phenomena. Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the first people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference to what function they served in maintaining the quotidian (i.e. by how they make society "work"). He also agreed with Spencer's organic analogy, comparing society to a living organism. Thus his work is sometimes seen as a precursor to functionalism. Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts.

Unlike his contemporaries Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, he did not focus on what motivates the actions of individuals (an approach associated with methodological individualism), but rather on the study of social facts.

Inspirations
During his university studies at the ENS, Durkheim was influenced by two neo-Kantian scholars: Charles Bernard Renouvier and Émile Boutroux. The principles Durkheim absorbed from them included rationalism, scientific study of morality, anti-utilitarianism, and secular education. His methodology was influenced by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a supporter of the scientific method.

Comte
A fundamental influence on Durkheim's thought was the sociological positivism of Auguste Comte, who effectively sought to extend and apply the scientific method found in the natural sciences to the social sciences. According to Comte, a true social science should stress empirical facts, as well as induce general scientific laws from the relationship among these facts. There were many points on which Durkheim agreed with the positivist thesis:

 * First, he accepted that the study of society was to be founded on an examination of facts.
 * Second, like Comte, he acknowledged that the only valid guide to objective knowledge was the scientific method.
 * Third, he agreed with Comte that the social sciences could become scientific only when they were stripped of their metaphysical abstractions.

Realism
A second influence on Durkheim's view of society beyond Comte's positivism was the epistemological outlook called social realism. Although he never explicitly espoused it, Durkheim adopted a realist perspective in order to demonstrate the existence of social realities outside the individual and to show that these realities existed in the form of the objective relations of society. As an epistemology of science, realism can be defined as a perspective that takes as its central point of departure the view that external social realities exist in the outer world and that these realities are independent of the individual's perception of them.

This view opposes other predominant philosophical perspectives such as empiricism and positivism. Empiricists, like David Hume, had argued that all realities in the outside world are products of human sense perception, thus all realities are merely perceived: they do not exist independently of our perceptions, and have no causal power in themselves. Comte's positivism went a step further by claiming that scientific laws could be deduced from empirical observations. Going beyond this, Durkheim claimed that sociology would not only discover "apparent" laws, but would be able to discover the inherent nature of society.

Judaism
Scholars also debate the exact influence of Jewish thought on Durkheim's work. The answer remains uncertain; some scholars have argued that Durkheim's thought is a form of secularized Jewish thought, while others argue that proving the existence of a direct influence of Jewish thought on Durkheim's achievements is difficult or impossible.

Durkheim and theory
Throughout his career, Durkheim was concerned primarily with three goals. First, to establish sociology as a new academic discipline. Second, to analyse how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in the modern era, when things such as shared religious and ethnic background could no longer be assumed. To that end he wrote much about the effect of laws, religion, education and similar forces on society and social integration. Lastly, Durkheim was concerned with the practical implications of scientific knowledge. The importance of social integration is expressed throughout Durkheim's work:

"For if society lacks the unity that derives from the fact that the relationships between its parts are exactly regulated, that unity resulting from the harmonious articulation of its various functions assured by effective discipline and if, in addition, society lacks the unity based upon the commitment of men's wills to a common objective, then it is no more than a pile of sand that the least jolt or the slightest puff will suffice to scatter."

Establishing sociology
Durkheim authored some of the most programmatic statements on what sociology is and how it should be practiced. His concern was to establish sociology as a science. Arguing for a place for sociology among other sciences, he wrote, "sociology is, then, not an auxiliary of any other science; it is itself a distinct and autonomous science."

To give sociology a place in the academic world and to ensure that it is a legitimate science, it must have an object that is clear and distinct from philosophy or psychology, and its own methodology. He argued that "there is in every society a certain group of phenomena which may be differentiated from those studied by the other natural sciences."

In the Tarde-Durkheim debate of 1903, the "anthropological view" of Gabriel Tarde was ridiculed and hastily dismissed.

A fundamental aim of sociology is to discover structural "social facts". The establishment of sociology as an independent, recognized academic discipline is among Durkheim's largest and most lasting legacies. Within sociology, his work has significantly influenced structuralism or structural functionalism.

Social facts
"A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations."

Durkheim's work revolved around the study of social facts, a term he coined to describe phenomena that have an existence in and of themselves, are not bound to the actions of individuals, but have a coercive influence upon them. Durkheim argued that social facts have, sui generis, an independent existence greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals that compose society. Only such social facts can explain the observed social phenomena. Being exterior to the individual person, social facts may thus also exercise coercive power on the various people composing society, as it can sometimes be observed in the case of formal laws and regulations, but also in situations implying the presence of informal rules, such as religious rituals or family norms. Unlike the facts studied in natural sciences, a social fact thus refers to a specific category of phenomena: "the determining cause of a social fact must be sought among the antecedent social facts and not among the states of the individual consciousness."

Such facts are endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they may control individual behaviors. According to Durkheim, these phenomena cannot be reduced to biological or psychological grounds. Social facts can be material (i.e. physical objects ) or immaterial (i.e. meanings, sentiments, etc.). Though the latter cannot be seen or touched, they are external and coercive, thus becoming real and gaining "facticity". Physical objects, too, can represent both material and immaterial social facts. For example, a flag is a physical social fact that is often ingrained with various immaterial social facts (e.g. its meaning and importance).

Many social facts, however, have no material form. Even the most "individualistic" or "subjective" phenomena, such as love, freedom, or suicide, were regarded by Durkheim as objective social facts. Individuals composing society do not directly cause suicide: suicide, as a social fact, exists independently in society, and is caused by other social facts—such as rules governing behavior and group attachment—whether an individual likes it or not. Whether a person "leaves" a society does not alter the fact that this society will still contain suicides. Suicide, like other immaterial social facts, exists independently of the will of an individual, cannot be eliminated, and is as influential—coercive—as physical laws like gravity. Sociology's task therefore consists of discovering the qualities and characteristics of such social facts, which can be discovered through a quantitative or experimental approach (Durkheim extensively relied on statistics).

Society, collective consciousness, and culture
Regarding the society itself, like social institutions in general, Durkheim saw it as a set of social facts. Even more than "what society is," Durkheim was interested in answering "how is a society created" and "what holds a society together." In The Division of Labour in Society, Durkheim attempts to answer the latter question.

Collective consciousness
Durkheim assumes that humans are inherently egoistic, while "collective consciousness" (i.e. norms, beliefs, and values) forms the moral basis of the society, resulting in social integration. Collective consciousness is therefore of key importance to the society; its requisite function without which the society cannot survive. This consciousness produces the society and holds it together, while, at the same time, individuals produce collective consciousness through their interactions. Through collective consciousness human beings become aware of one another as social beings, not just animals. "The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or common consciousness."In particular, the emotional part of the collective consciousness overrides our egoism: as we are emotionally bound to culture, we act socially because we recognize it is the responsible, moral way to act. A key to forming society is social interaction, and Durkheim believes that human beings, when in a group, will inevitably act in such a way that a society is formed.

Culture
Groups, when interacting, create their own culture and attach powerful emotions to it, thus making culture another key social fact. Durkheim was one of the first scholars to consider the question of culture so intensely. Durkheim was interested in cultural diversity, and how the existence of diversity nonetheless fails to destroy a society. To that, Durkheim answered that any apparent cultural diversity is overridden by a larger, common, and more generalized cultural system, and the law.

In a socio-evolutionary approach, Durkheim described the evolution of societies from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity (one rising from mutual need). As societies become more complex, evolving from mechanical to organic solidarity, the division of labour is counteracting and replacing to collective consciousness. In the simpler societies, people are connected to others due to personal ties and traditions; in the larger, modern society they are connected due to increased reliance on others with regard to them performing their specialized tasks needed for the modern, highly complex society to survive. In mechanical solidarity, people are self-sufficient, there is little integration, and thus there is the need for use of force and repression to keep society together. Also, in such societies, people have much fewer options in life. In organic solidarity, people are much more integrated and interdependent, and specialization and cooperation are extensive. Progress from mechanical to organic solidarity is based first on population growth and increasing population density, second on increasing "morality density" (development of more complex social interactions) and thirdly, on the increasing specialization in workplace. One of the ways mechanical and organic societies differ is the function of law: in mechanical society the law is focused on its punitive aspect, and aims to reinforce the cohesion of the community, often by making the punishment public and extreme; whereas in the organic society the law focuses on repairing the damage done and is more focused on individuals than the community.

One of the main features of the modern, organic society is the importance, sacredness even, given to the concept—social fact—of the individual. The individual, rather than the collective, becomes the focus of rights and responsibilities, the center of public and private rituals holding the society together—a function once performed by the religion. To stress the importance of this concept, Durkheim talked of the "cult of the individual": "Thus very far from there being the antagonism between the individual and society which is often claimed, moral individualism, the cult of the individual, is in fact the product of society itself. It is society that instituted it and made of man the god whose servant it is."Durkheim saw the population density and growth as key factors in the evolution of the societies and advent of modernity. As the number of people in a given area increase, so does the number of interactions, and the society becomes more complex. Growing competition between the more numerous people also leads to further division of labour. In time, the importance of the state, the law and the individual increases, while that of the religion and moral solidarity decreases.

In another example of evolution of culture, Durkheim pointed to fashion, although in this case he noted a more cyclical phenomenon. According to Durkheim, fashion serves to differentiate between lower classes and upper classes, but because lower classes want to look like the upper classes, they will eventually adapt the upper class fashion, depreciating it, and forcing the upper class to adopt a new fashion.

Social pathology and crime
As the society, Durkheim noted there are several possible pathologies that could lead to a breakdown of social integration and disintegration of the society: the two most important ones are anomie and forced division of labour; lesser ones include the lack of coordination and suicide. To Durkheim, anomie refers to a lack of social norms; where too rapid of population growth reduces the amount of interaction between various groups, which in turn leads to a breakdown of understanding (i.e. norms, values, etc.). Forced division of labour, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which those who hold power, driven by their desire for profit (greed), results in people doing work that they are unsuited for. Such people are unhappy, and their desire to change the system can destabilize the society.

Durkheim's views on crime were a departure from conventional notions. He believed that crime is "bound up with the fundamental conditions of all social life" and serves a social function. He states that crime implies "not only that the way remains open to necessary changes but that in certain cases it directly prepares these changes." Examining the trial of Socrates, he argues that "his crime, namely, the independence of his thought, rendered a service not only to humanity but to his country" as "it served to prepare a new morality and faith that the Athenians needed." As such, his crime "was a useful prelude to reforms." In this sense, he saw crime as being able to release certain social tensions and so have a cleansing or purging effect in society.

The authority which the moral conscience enjoys must not be excessive; otherwise, no-one would dare to criticize it, and it would too easily congeal into an immutable form. To make progress, individual originality must be able to express itself…[even] the originality of the criminal…shall also be possible.

Deviance
Durkheim thought deviance to be an essential component of a functional society. He believed that deviance had three possible effects on society:

 * 1) Deviance challenges the perspective and thoughts of the general population, leading to social change by pointing out a flaw in society.
 * 2) Deviant acts may support existing social norms and beliefs by evoking the population to discipline the actors.
 * 3) Reactions to deviant activity could increase camaraderie and social support among the population affected by the activity.

Durkheim's thoughts on deviance contributed to Robert Merton's Strain Theory.

Suicide
In Suicide (1897), Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal levels of integration while Protestant society has low levels. Overall, Durkheim treated suicide as a social fact, explaining variations in its rate on a macro level, considering society-scale phenomena such as lack of connections between people (group attachment) and lack of regulations of behavior, rather than individuals' feelings and motivations.

Durkheim believed there was more to suicide than extremely personal individual life circumstances such as loss of a job, divorce, or bankruptcy. Instead, Durkheim explained suicide as a symptom of collective social deviance, like alcoholism or homicide.

He created a normative theory of suicide focusing on the conditions of group life. Proposing four different types of suicide, which include egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic, Durkheim began his theory by plotting social regulation on the x-axis of his chart, and social integration on the y-axis:

 * Egoistic suicide corresponds to a low level of social integration. When one is not well integrated into a social group it can lead to a feeling that they have not made a difference in anyone's lives.
 * Altruistic suicide corresponds to too much social integration. This occurs when a group dominates the life of an individual to a degree where they feel meaningless to society.
 * Anomic suicide occurs when one has an insufficient amount of social regulation. This stems from the sociological term anomie, meaning a sense of aimlessness or despair that arises from the inability to reasonably expect life to be predictable.
 * Fatalistic suicide results from too much social regulation. An example of this would be when one follows the same routine day after day. This leads to a belief that there is nothing good to look forward to. Durkheim suggested this was the most popular form of suicide for prisoners.

This study has been extensively discussed by later scholars and several major criticisms have emerged. First, Durkheim took most of his data from earlier researchers, notably Adolph Wagner and Henry Morselli, who were much more careful in generalizing from their own data. Second, later researchers found that the Protestant–Catholic differences in suicide seemed to be limited to German-speaking Europe and thus may have always been the spurious reflection of other factors. Durkheim's study of suicide has been criticized as an example of the logical error termed the ecological fallacy. However, diverging views have contested whether Durkheim's work really contained an ecological fallacy. More recent authors such as Berk (2006) have also questioned the micro–macro relations underlying Durkheim's work. Some, such as Inkeles (1959), Johnson (1965), and Gibbs (1968), have claimed that Durkheim's only intent was to explain suicide sociologically within a holistic perspective, emphasizing that "he intended his theory to explain variation among social environments in the incidence of suicide, not the suicides of particular individuals."

Despite its limitations, Durkheim's work on suicide has influenced proponents of control theory, and is often mentioned as a classic sociological study. The book pioneered modern social research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy.

Religion
In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), Durkheim's first purpose was to identify the social origin and function of religion as he felt that religion was a source of camaraderie and solidarity. His second purpose was to identify links between certain religions in different cultures, finding a common denominator. He wanted to understand the empirical, social aspect of religion that is common to all religions and goes beyond the concepts of spirituality and God.

Durkheim defined religion as: "'a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.'"In this definition, Durkheim avoids references to supernatural or God. Durkheim rejected earlier definitions by Tylor that religion was "belief in supernatural beings," finding that primitive societies such as the Australian aborigines (following the ethnologies of Spencer and Gillen, largely discredited later) did not divide reality into "natural" vs. "supernatural" realms, but rather into realms of the "sacred" and the "profane," which were not moral categories, since both could include what was good or evil. Durkheim argues we are left with the following three concepts:

 * The sacred: ideas and sentiments kindled by the spectacle of society and which inspire awe, spiritual devotion or respect;
 * The beliefs & practices: creating an emotional state of collective effervescence, investing symbols with sacred importance;
 * The moral community: a group of people sharing a common moral philosophy.

Out of those three concepts, Durkheim focused on the sacred, noting that it is at the very core of a religion: "They are only collective forces hypostasized, that is to say, moral forces; they are made up of the ideas and sentiments awakened in us by the spectacle of society, and not of sensations coming from the physical world."Durkheim saw religion as the most fundamental social institution of humankind, and one that gave rise to other social forms. It was religion that gave humanity the strongest sense of collective consciousness. Durkheim saw religion as a force that emerged in the early hunter and gatherer societies, as the emotions collective effervescence run high in the growing groups, forcing them to act in a new ways, and giving them a sense of some hidden force driving them. Over time, as emotions became symbolized and interactions ritualized, religion became more organized, giving a rise to the division between the sacred and the profane. However, Durkheim also believed that religion was becoming less important, as it was being gradually superseded by science and the cult of an individual. "Thus there is something eternal in religion which is destined to survive all the particular symbols in which religious thought has successively enveloped itself."However, even if the religion was losing its importance for Durkheim, it still laid the foundation of modern society and the interactions that governed it. And despite the advent of alternative forces, Durkheim argued that no replacement for the force of religion had yet been created. He expressed his doubt about modernity, seeing the modern times as "a period of transition and moral mediocrity."

Durkheim also argued that our primary categories for understanding the world have their origins in religion. It is religion, Durkheim writes, that gave rise to most if not all other social constructs, including the larger society. Durkheim argued that categories are produced by the society, and thus are collective creations. Thus as people create societies, they also create categories, but at the same time, they do so unconsciously, and the categories are prior to any individual's experience. In this way Durkheim attempted to bridge the divide between seeing categories as constructed out of human experience and as logically prior to that experience. Our understanding of the world is shaped by social facts; for example the notion of time is defined by being measured through a calendar, which in turn was created to allow us to keep track of our social gatherings and rituals; those in turn on their most basic level originated from religion. In the end, even the most logical and rational pursuit of science can trace its origins to religion. Durkheim states that, "Religion gave birth to all that is essential in the society."

In his work, Durkheim focused on totemism, the religion of the Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans. Durkheim saw this religion as the most ancient religion, and focused on it as he believed its simplicity would ease the discussion of the essential elements of religion. As such, he wrote: "Now the totem is the flag of the clan. It is therefore natural that the impressions aroused by the clan in individual minds—impressions of dependence and of increased vitality—should fix themselves to the idea of the totem rather than that of the clan: for the clan is too complex a reality to be represented clearly in all its complex unity by such rudimentary intelligences."Durkheim's work on religion was criticized on both empirical and theoretical grounds by specialists in the field. The most important critique came from Durkheim's contemporary, Arnold van Gennep, an expert on religion and ritual, and also on Australian belief systems. Van Gennep argued that Durkheim's views of primitive peoples and simple societies were "entirely erroneous". Van Gennep further argued that Durkheim demonstrated a lack of critical stance towards his sources, collected by traders and priests, naively accepting their veracity, and that Durkheim interpreted freely from dubious data. At the conceptual level, van Gennep pointed out Durkheim's tendency to press ethnography into a prefabricated theoretical scheme.

Despite such critiques, Durkheim's work on religion has been widely praised for its theoretical insight and whose arguments and propositions, according to Robert Alun Jones, "have stimulated the interest and excitement of several generations of sociologists irrespective of theoretical 'school' or field of specialization."

Sociology of knowledge
While Durkheim's work deals with a number of subjects, including suicide, the family, social structures, and social institutions, a large part of his work deals with the sociology of knowledge.

While publishing short articles on the subject earlier in his career, Durkheim's definitive statement concerning the sociology of knowledge comes in his 1912 magnum opus, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. This book has as its goal not only the elucidation of the social origins and function of religion, but also the social origins and impact of society on language and logical thought. Durkheim worked largely out of a Kantian framework and sought to understand how the concepts and categories of logical thought could arise out of social life. He argued, for example, that the categories of space and time were not a priori. Rather, the category of space depends on a society's social grouping and geographical use of space, and a group's social rhythm that determines our understanding of time. In this Durkheim sought to combine elements of rationalism and empiricism, arguing that certain aspects of logical thought common to all humans did exist, but that they were products of collective life (thus contradicting the tabula rasa empiricist understanding whereby categories are acquired by individual experience alone), and that they were not universal a prioris (as Kant argued) since the content of the categories differed from society to society.

Collective representations
Another key elements to Durkheim's theory of knowledge outlined in Elementary Forms is the concept of représentations collectives ("collective representations"). Représentations collectives are the symbols and images that come to represent the ideas, beliefs, and values elaborated by a collectivity and are not reducible to individual constituents. They can include words, slogans, ideas, or any number of material items that can serve as a symbol, such as a cross, a rock, a temple, a feather etc. As Durkheim elaborates, représentations collectives are created through intense social interaction and are products of collective activity. As such, these representations have the particular, and somewhat contradictory, aspect that they exist externally to the individual—since they are created and controlled not by the individual but by society as a whole—yet, simultaneously within each individual of the society, by virtue of that individual's participation within society.

Arguably the most important "représentations collectives" is language, which according to Durkheim is a product of collective action. And because language is a collective action, language contains within it a history of accumulated knowledge and experience that no individual would be capable of creating on their own: "If concepts were only general ideas, they would not enrich knowledge a great deal, for, as we have already pointed out, the general contains nothing more than the particular. But if before all else they are collective representations, they add to that which we can learn by our own personal experience all that wisdom and science which the group has accumulated in the course of centuries. Thinking by concepts, is not merely seeing reality on its most general side, but it is projecting a light upon the sensation which illuminates it, penetrates it and transforms it."As such, language, as a social product, literally structures and shapes our experience of reality. This discursive approach to language and society was developed by later French philosophers, such as Michel Foucault.

Morality
Durkheim defines morality as "a system of rules for conduct." His analysis of morality is strongly marked by Immanuel Kant and his notion of duty. While Durkheim was influenced by Kant, he was highly critical of aspects of the latter's moral theory and developed his own positions.

Durkheim agrees with Kant that within morality, there is an element of obligation, "a moral authority which, by manifesting itself in certain precepts particularly important to it, confers upon [moral rules] an obligatory character." Morality tells us how to act from a position of superiority. There exists a certain, pre-established moral norm to which we must conform. It is through this view that Durkheim makes a first critique of Kant in saying that moral duties originate in society, and are not to be found in some universal moral concept such as the categorical imperative. Durkheim also argues that morality is characterized not just by this obligation, but is also something that is desired by the individual. The individual believes that by adhering to morality, they are serving the common Good, and for this reason, the individual submits voluntarily to the moral commandment.

However, in order to accomplish its aims, morality must be legitimate in the eyes of those to whom it speaks. As Durkheim argues, this moral authority is primarily to be located in religion, which is why in any religion one finds a code of morality. For Durkheim, it is only society that has the resources, the respect, and the power to cultivate within an individual both the obligatory and the desirous aspects of morality.

Influence and legacy
Durkheim has had an important impact on the development of anthropology and sociology as disciplines. The establishment of sociology as an independent, recognized academic discipline, in particular, is among Durkheim's largest and most lasting legacies. Within sociology, his work has significantly influenced structuralism, or structural functionalism. Scholars inspired by Durkheim include Marcel Mauss, Maurice Halbwachs, Célestin Bouglé, Gustave Belot, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton, Jean Piaget, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Peter Berger, social reformer Patrick Hunout, and others.

More recently, Durkheim has influenced sociologists such as Steven Lukes, Robert N. Bellah, and Pierre Bourdieu. His description of collective consciousness also deeply influenced Ziya Gökalp, the founder of Turkish sociology who replaced Durkheim's concept of society with nation. An ideologue who provided the intellectual justification for the Ottoman Empire's wars of aggression and massive demographic engineering—including the Armenian genocide—he could be considered to pervert Durkheim's ideas. Randall Collins has developed a theory of what he calls interaction ritual chains, a synthesis of Durkheim's work on religion with that of Erving Goffman's micro-sociology. Goffman himself was also deeply influenced by Durkheim in his development of the interaction order.

Outside of sociology, Durkheim has influenced philosophers, including Henri Bergson and Emmanuel Levinas, and his ideas can be identified, inexplicitly, in the work of certain structuralist theorists of the 1960s, such as Alain Badiou, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault.

Durkheim contra Searle
Much of Durkheim's work remains unacknowledged in philosophy, despite its direct relevance. As proof, one can look to John Searle, whose book, The Construction of Social Reality, elaborates a theory of social facts and collective representations that Searle believed to be a landmark work that would bridge the gap between analytic and continental philosophy. Neil Gross, however, demonstrates how Searle's views on society are more or less a reconstitution of Durkheim's theories of social facts, social institutions, collective representations, and the like. Searle's ideas are thus open to the same criticisms as Durkheim's. Searle responded by arguing that Durkheim's work was worse than he had originally believed, and, admitting that he had not read much of Durkheim's work: "Because Durkheim's account seemed so impoverished I did not read any further in his work." Stephen Lukes, however, responded to Searle's reply to Gross, refuting, point by point, the allegations that Searle makes against Durkheim, essentially upholding the argument of Gross, that Searle's work bears great resemblance to that of Durkheim. Lukes attributes Searle's miscomprehension of Durkheim's work to the fact that Searle, quite simply, never read Durkheim.

Gilbert pro Durkheim
Margaret Gilbert, a contemporary British philosopher of social phenomena, has offered a close, sympathetic reading of Durkheim's discussion of social facts in chapter 1 and the prefaces of The Rules of Sociological Method. In her 1989 book, On Social Facts—the title of which may represent an homage to Durkheim, alluding to his "faits sociaux"—Gilbert argues that some of his statements that may seem to be philosophically untenable are important and fruitful.

Selected works

 * "Montesquieu's contributions to the formation of social science" (1892)
 * The Division of Labour in Society (1893)
 * The Rules of Sociological Method (1895)
 * Suicide (1897)
 * The Prohibition of Incest and its Origins (1897), in L'Année Sociologique 1:1–70
 * Sociology and its Scientific Domain (1900), translation of an Italian text entitled "La sociologia e il suo dominio scientifico"
 * Primitive Classification (1903), in collaboration with Marcel Mauss
 * The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
 * Who Wanted War? (1914), in collaboration with Ernest Denis
 * Germany Above All (1915)

Published posthumously
 * Education and Sociology (1922)
 * Sociology and Philosophy (1924)
 * Moral Education (1925)
 * Socialism (1928)
 * Pragmatism and Sociology (1955)

title: Émile Durkheim


text:
Toilet humour

Toilet humour, potty humour or scatological humour (compare scatology), is a type of off-colour humour dealing with defecation, diarrhea, constipation, urination and flatulence, and to a lesser extent vomiting and other bodily functions.

Toilet humour is commonly an interest of toddlers and young children, for whom cultural taboos related to acknowledgement of waste excretion still have a degree of novelty. The humour comes from the rejection of such taboos, and is a part of modern culture.

Music
Toilet humour is sometimes found in song and rhyme, particularly schoolboy songs. Examples of this are found in Mozart and scatology, and variants of the German folk schoolboys' song known as the Scheiße-Lied (English: "Shit-Song") which is indexed in the German Volksliederarchiv. A children's Spanish musical duo, Enrique y Ana, made a song called "Caca Culo Pedo Pis", which literally translates to "Poop Butt Fart Pee".

American musician Matt Farley is known for writing and performing a multitude of songs related to urine, feces, vomit and various other bodily fluids under the pseudonym The Toilet Bowl Cleaners, including one of his most popular songs, entitled "Poop in My Fingernails". Farley has another pseudonym, The Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke, and Pee. Many of his songs are just a person's name alternating with the word "poop". Other songs include "I Need a Lot of Toilet Paper to Clean the Poop in My Butt".

Detroit rapper Eminem famously utilises crude humour throughout his discography. His most notorious example of toilet humour was featured on the 2017 album Revival, where he raps "Your booty is heavy duty, like diarrhea", a line which received extensive lament from critics. The Los Angeles Times comments: "If Hannibal Lecter could have recorded a rap album, this would have been it. Brilliant, sinister, scatological and a parent's nightmare."

Performance
Paul Oldfield, who performed under the name Mr. Methane, performed a stage act that included him farting the notes of music. Joseph Pujol, who performed under the name Le Pétomane (French for "fart maniac"), performed a similar stage act for the Paris music hall scene.

The American comedy duo Tim & Eric have made numerous comedy sketches based around toilet humour. For example, they have made fake commercials for non-existent products such as the "Poop Tube" (a device that lets people release liquefied faecal matter into a urinal while standing up), the "fla'Hat" (a hat that is connected to the wearer's anus which expands when storing flatulence), and "D-Pants" (an undergarment invented by "Diah Riha-Jones" that captures "uncontrollable diarrhea").

In the series South Park, the Canadian comedy duo Terrance and Phillip are noted for toilet humor and often make comedic use of their flatulence e.g. in the song ‘Unclefucker’.

English actor Adrian Edmondson, who appeared in many shows utilising toilet humour, is quoted as saying, "Toilet humour is like jazz: everybody has an idea what it is, and most people don't like it. But the people who do like it are fervent about it and like it until they die."

Books
In 1929 comedian Charles "Chic" Sale published a small book, The Specialist, which was a large "underground" success. Its entire premise centered on sales of outhouses, touting the advantages of one kind or another, and labeling them in "technical" terms such as "one-holers", "two-holers", etc. Over a million copies were sold. In 1931 his monologue "I'm a Specialist" was made into a hit record (Victor 22859) by recording artist Frank Crumit (music by Nels Bitterman). As memorialized in the "Outhouse Wall of Fame", the term "Chic Sale" became a rural slang synonym for privies, an appropriation of Mr. Sale's name that he personally considered unfortunate.

More recently, one of the most popular books about defecation, diarrhea and accidents in toilets is by straight-talking physician Jane Wilson-Howarth, a guide that began as Shitting Pretty and then was relaunched as How to Shit around the World.

The children's book series Captain Underpants makes copious use of toilet humor. "Doctor Diaper", "The Bionic Booger Boy", and "Professor Pippy Pee-Pee Poopypants" are among the villains in the series.

Video games
A game notorious for its juvenile humour, Conker's Bad Fur Day contains a plentiful amount of scatological jokes. One of the landmark areas is a "Poo Mountain" and some of its missions involve getting cows to drink a laxative prune juice to produce "pooballs", or fighting The Great Mighty Poo, a giant opera-singing pile of feces as a boss. In a later mission, the game's protagonist also has urination as an attack, after drinking a lot of beer and getting drunk.

Toilet humour is also versatile in the Metal Gear franchise. Solid Snake can protect himself from wolf attacks by having one urinate on him. In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Solid Snake can spot soldiers relieving themselves several times and also stand under them. In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Raiden is instructed in order to use a terminal, he first needs to "take a DOOMP", which is an abbreviation for "digital-optical output mounted proxy".

A trait of Wario from the eponymous spin-off franchise is a powerful flatulence attack extensively used in his Super Smash Bros. appearance.

Toys
The Moose Toys franchise Little Live "Gotta Go" Pets is a toy line of interactive plush animals that "poop" when fed colourful sand. The toys make graphic noises of passing gas, panic and say the words "uh-oh! Gotta go!" and have scatological names including "turdle" (turtle). The internet critic Doug Walker called the toys "disgusting" and found them immature and inappropriate. Parenting blogs praised the toy line for its crude humour approach to potty training.

Mattel fashion doll Barbie has a plastic golden retriever, named Tanner, which has been an available toy in different variations since the 1990s. Tanner the dog eats brown bean-like beads and then poops them out when its tail is pressed. Barbie can then pick up the plastic poop with a scooper that comes with the playsets.

Infant dolls, typically targeted towards little girls, have existed for decades that urinate and defecate (into diapers or potties) as a play feature. Variants include "Magic Potty Baby" (a 1990s Tyco brand doll) and "Baby Alive" (and Amazon knock-off counterfeit variants) that pee, poop and release glitter from their rear ends. The trend of scatological dolls for girls was mocked on the 1970s British comedy TV series Are You Being Served? in the episode "A Change Is as Good as a Rest"; salesman Mr. Lucas fills Ms. Brahms's peeing dollies with fizzy carbonated lemonade; another gag features character Mrs. Slocombe displaying two doll variants to a customer: the one manufactured in Britain is blonde-haired and says "I want to go to the potty" when a string on its back is pulled, while a similar doll with sandy hair manufactured in India says "my name is Yasmin, and I have just been to the potty" when its string is pulled.

title: Toilet humour