title: Mississippi Delta

text: In 1890, the white-dominated state legislature passed a new state constitution effectively disenfranchising most blacks in the state. In the next three decades, most blacks lost their lands due to tight credit and political oppression. African Americans had to resort to sharecropping and tenant farming to survive. Their political exclusion was maintained by the whites until after the gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The majority of residents in several counties in the region are still black, although more than 400,000 African Americans left the state during the Great Migration in the first half of the 20th century, moving to Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western industrial cities.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: As the agricultural economy does not support many jobs or businesses, the region has attempted to diversify. Lumbering is important and new crops such as soybeans have been cultivated in the area by the largest industrial farmers.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: At times, the region has suffered heavy flooding from the Mississippi River, notably in 1927 and 2011.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Despite the name, this region is not the delta of the Mississippi River. The shifting river delta at the mouth of the Mississippi on the Gulf Coast lies some 300 miles south of this area, and is referred to as the Mississippi "River" Delta. Rather, the Mississippi Delta is part of an alluvial plain, created by regular flooding of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers over thousands of years.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The land is flat and contains some of the most fertile soil in the world. It is two hundred miles long and seventy miles across at its widest point, encompassing approximately 4,415,000 acres, or, some 7,000 square miles of alluvial floodplain. On the east, it is bounded by bluffs extending beyond the Yazoo River.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The Delta includes all or part of the following counties: Washington, Western DeSoto, Humphreys, Carroll, Issaquena, Western Panola, Quitman, Bolivar, Coahoma, Leflore, Sunflower, Sharkey, Tate, Tunica, Tallahatchie, Western Holmes, Western Yazoo, Western Grenada, and Warren.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: In the 21st century, about one-third of Mississippi's African American population resides in the Delta, which has many black-majority state legislative districts. Much of the Delta is included in Mississippi's 2nd congressional district, represented by Democrat Bennie Thompson.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Chinese began settling in Bolivar County and other Delta counties as plantation workers in the 1870s, though most Delta Chinese families migrated to the state between the 1900s and 1930s. Most Chinese immigrants worked to leave the fields, becoming merchants in the small rural towns. As these have declined, along with other Delta residents ethnic Chinese have moved to cities or other states. Their descendants represent most of the ethnic Asian residents of the Delta recorded in censuses. While many Chinese have left the Delta, their population has increased in the state.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Despite its representation as an overwhelmingly rural and African American area of the country, the Mississippi Delta received waves of immigration from three areas which had provided many of America's immigrants: China, Mexico, and Italy. The Italians of the Mississippi Delta brought with them elements of Italian cuisine to the region, and possibly most importantly, elements of Southern Italian music such as the mandolin, which became a part of the music of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Mexican immigrants to the Mississippi Delta greatly influenced the cuisine of the Mississippi Delta, leading to the development of one of Mississippi and the Gulf Coast's most famous culinary inventions, the Delta-style tamale, also known as the hot tamale, formed from syncretism of Mexican and African-American culture and cuisine.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: For more than two centuries, agriculture has been the mainstay of the Delta economy. Sugar cane and rice were introduced to the region by European settlers from the Caribbean in the 18th century. Sugar and rice production were centered in southern Louisiana, and later in the Arkansas Delta.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Early agriculture also included limited tobacco production in the Natchez area and indigo in the lower Mississippi. French yeomen settlers, supported by extensive families, had begun the back-breaking process of clearing the land to establish farms. European settlers in the region attempted to enslave local Native Americans for labor, though this proved unsuccessful as they frequently escaped. By the 18th century, the settlers had switched to importing enslaved Africans instead as a source of labor. In the early years of European colonization, enslaved African laborers brought critical knowledge and techniques for the cultivation and processing of both rice and indigo. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were captured, sold and transported as slaves from West Africa to North America.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The invention of the cotton gin in the late 18th century made profitable the cultivation of short-staple cotton. This type could not be grown in the upland areas of the South, leading to the rapid development of King Cotton throughout what became known as the Deep South. The demand for labor drove the domestic slave trade, and more than one million African American slaves were forced by sales into the South, taken in a forced migration from families in the Upper South. After continued European-American settlement in the area, Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 extinguished Native American claims to these lands.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The Five Civilized Tribes and others were mostly removed west of the Mississippi River, and European-American settlement expanded at a rapid rate in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. In the areas of greatest cotton cultivation, whites were far outnumbered by their slaves.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Many slaves were transported to Delta towns by riverboat from slave markets in New Orleans, which became the fourth largest city in the country by 1840. Other slaves were transported downriver from slave markets at Memphis and Louisville. Still others were transported by sea in the coastwise slave trade. By this time, slavery had long been established as a racial caste. African Americans for generations worked the commodity plantations, which they made extremely profitable. In the opinion of Jefferson Davis, typical of that of Mississippian whites of his day and beyond, Africans being held in slavery reflected the will of Providence, as it led to their Christianizing and to the improvement of their condition, compared to what it would have been had they remained in Africa. According to Davis, the Africans "increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers."


title: Mississippi Delta

text: By the early 19th century, cotton had become the Delta's premier crop, for which there was high international demand. Mills in New England and New York also demanded cotton for their industry, and New York City was closely tied to the cotton trade. Many southern planters traveled so frequently there for business that they had favorite hotels. From 1822 cotton-related exports comprised half of all exports from the port of New York City. In 1861 Democratic mayor Fernando Wood called for secession of New York City because of its close business ties to the South. Eventually the city joined the state in supporting the war, but immigrants resented having to fight when the wealthy could buy their way out of military service.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Comparing cotton's preeminence then to that of oil today, Historian Sven Beckert called the Delta "a kind of Saudi Arabia of the early nineteenth century."


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Demand for cotton remained high until well after the American Civil War, even in an era of falling cotton prices. Though cotton planters believed that the alluvial soils of the region would always renew, the agricultural boom from the 1830s to the late 1850s caused extensive soil exhaustion and erosion. Lacking agricultural knowledge, planters continued to raise cotton the same way after the Civil War.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Plantations before the war were generally developed on ridges near the rivers, which were used for transportation of products to market. Most of the territory of Mississippi was still considered wilderness, needing substantial new population. These areas were covered in a heavy dense growth of trees, bushes and vines.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Following the Civil War, 90 percent of the bottomlands in Mississippi were still undeveloped. The state attracted thousands of migrants to its frontier. They could trade their labor in clearing the land to eventually purchase it from their sale of lumber. Tens of thousands of new settlers, both black and white, were drawn to the area. By the end of the century, two-thirds of the independent farmers in the Mississippi Delta were black. But, the extended low price of cotton had caused many to go deeply into debt, and gradually they had to sell off their lands, as they had a harder time getting credit than did white farmers. From 1910 to 1920, the first and second generations of African Americans after slavery lost their stake in the land. They had to resort to sharecropping and tenant farming to survive.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Sharecropping and tenant farming replaced the slave-dependent plantation system. African American families retained some autonomy, rather than working on gangs of laborers. As many were illiterate, they were often taken advantage of by the planters' accounting. The number of lynchings of black men rose in the region at the time of settling accounts, and researchers have also found a correlation of lynchings to years that were poor economically for the region.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The sharecropping and tenant system, with each family making its own decisions, inhibited the use of progressive agricultural techniques in the region. In the late 19th century, the clearing and drainage of wetlands, especially in Arkansas and the Missouri Bootheel, increased lands available for tenant farming and sharecropping.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Planters needed workers and recruited Italians and Chinese workers in the 19th century to satisfy demand. They quickly moved out of field labor, saving money as communities in order to establish themselves as merchants, often in the small rural towns.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: During the 1920s and 1930s, in the aftermath of the increasing mechanization of Delta farms that reduced the need for labor, displaced whites and African Americans began to leave the land and move to towns and cities. Tens of thousands of black laborers left the Jim Crow south for better opportunities in the Northeast and Midwest in the Great Migration, settling in cities such as St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York City. It was not until the Great Depression years of the 1930s and later that large-scale farm mechanization came to the region. The mechanization of agriculture and the availability of domestic work outside the Delta spurred the migration of Delta residents from the region. Farming was unable to absorb the available labor force, and entire families moved together, many going north on the railroad to Chicago. People from the same towns often settled near each other.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The view that mechanization sparked the Great Migration—both Black and white—has been challenged by two of the most prominent recent chroniclers of the event. Isabel Wilkerson characterizes the migration as a flight for freedom from the political terror of lynchings and the hardening of Jim Crow restrictions on Black freedom: “They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.” Nicholas Lemann notes the onset of the Great Migration coincided with the passage of immigration restrictions that throttled the supply of immigrants who had been willing to take the worst of the jobs of the industrial North, which was relatively free of the suffocating breadth of Jim Crow. Further, Lemann wrote, "it was undeniable that the economic opportunity [in the North] was vastly greater; that moment in the black rural South was one of the few in American history when virtually every member of a large class of people was guaranteed an immediate quadrupling of income, at least, by simply relocating to a place that was only a long day’s journey away." In this view, Southern Blacks were the agents of the Great Migration and not passive objects. Instead, they actively fled oppression and sought freedom, especially in the years between World War I and World War II. A slow mechanization of Delta agriculture during the first phase of the Great Migration was the effect of the migration of a workforce, not its cause. It was not until the mid 1940s that the doctrine of white supremacy demanded that Blacks be displaced. By that time, Lemann writes, Delta whites feared socio-political changes that might be forced on the Delta by the Roosevelt Democratic coalition and the pressure of returning WWII veterans; the Delta was three-quarters Black, so their voting potential was huge. As Delta native Aaron Henry, who was born in 1922, put it, "They wished we’d go back to Africa, but Chicago was close enough."


title: Mississippi Delta

text: From the late 1930s through the 1950s, the Delta enjoyed an agriculture boom, as wartime needs followed by reconstruction in Europe and Japan expanded the demand for the Delta region's farm products. As the mechanization of agriculture continued, women left fieldwork and went into service work, while the men drove tractors and worked on the farms. From the 1960s through the 1990s, thousands of small farms and dwellings in the Delta region were absorbed by large corporate-owned agribusinesses, and the smallest Delta communities have stagnated.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: One company that served the agricultural industry in the region was an aerial crop dusting service that eventually became Delta Air Lines, which is currently a major U.S. based passenger air carrier.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Since the late 20th century, lower Delta agriculture has increasingly been dominated by families and nonresident corporate entities that hold large landholdings. Their operations are heavily mechanized with low labor costs. Such farm entities are capital-intensive, where hundreds and thousands of acres are used to produce market-driven crops such as cotton, sugar, rice, and soybeans.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Remnants of the region's agrarian heritage are scattered along the highways and byways of the lower Delta. Larger communities have survived by fostering economic development in education, government, and medicine. Other endeavors such as catfish, poultry, rice, corn, and soybean farming have assumed greater importance. Today, the monetary value of these crops rivals that of cotton production in the lower Delta. Shifts away from the river as a main transportation and trading route to railroads and, more significantly, highways, have left the river cities struggling for new roles and businesses.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Due to the growth of the automobile industry in the South, many parts suppliers have opened facilities in the Delta (as well as on the Arkansas Delta side of the Mississippi River, another area of high poverty). The 1990s state legalization of casino gambling in Mississippi has boosted the Delta's economy, particularly in the areas of Tunica and Vicksburg.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: A large cultural influence in the region is its history of hunting and fishing. Hunting in the Delta is primarily for game such as whitetail deer, wild turkey, and waterfowl, along with many small game species (squirrel, rabbit, dove, quail, raccoon, etc.) For many years, the hunting and fishing have also attracted visitors in the regional tourism economy. The Delta is one of the top waterfowl destinations in the world because it is in the middle of the Mississippi Flyway (the largest of all the migratory bird routes in America).


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Delta politics was dominated by pro-slavery Democrats during the post-Civil War era, though areas of resistance from blacks and whites remained throughout the era. Some of these Southern Democrats resorted to using fraud, violence, and intimidation to regain control of the state legislature in the late 19th century. Civic groups such as the Red Shirts in Mississippi were active against Republicans and blacks, sometimes using violence to suppress their voting for state candidates. But many blacks continued to be elected to local offices, and there was a biracial coalition between Republicans and Populists that briefly gained state power in the late 1880s.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: To prevent this from happening again, in 1890 the Mississippi state legislature passed a new constitution which effectively disenfranchised most blacks by use of such devices as poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses, which withstood court challenges. If one method was overturned by the courts, the state would come up with another to continue exclusion of blacks from the political system. Unable to vote, they could not participate on juries. The state passed legislation to impose racial segregation and other aspects of Jim Crow.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: This system of oppression was maintained with violence and economic boycotts into the years of increasing activism for civil rights, as blacks worked to regain their constitutional rights as citizens. The Delta counties were sites of fierce and violent resistance to change, with blacks murdered for trying to register to vote or to use public facilities. African Americans were not able to exercise their constitutional rights again until well after their successes in the Civil Rights Movement and gaining passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The Delta is strongly associated as the place where several genres of popular music originated, including Delta blues and rock and roll. The mostly black sharecroppers and tenant farmers had lives marked by poverty and hardship but they expressed their struggles in music that became the beat, rhythm and songs of cities and a nation.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: Gussow (2010) examines the conflict between blues musicians and black ministers in the region between 1920 and 1942. The ministers condemned blues music as "devil's music". In response, some blues musicians satirized preachers in their music, as for example in the song, "He Calls That Religion", by the blues group Mississippi Sheiks. The lyrics accused black ministers of engaging in and fomenting sinful behavior. The black residents were poor, and the musicians and ministers competed for their money. The Great Migration to northern cities, beginning before World War I, seriously depleted black communities and churches, but the musicians sparked off each other in the industrial cities, with blues in Chicago and St. Louis.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The Mississippi Department of Corrections operates the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman, MSP) in unincorporated Sunflower County, within the Mississippi Delta. John Buntin of "Governing" magazine said that MSP "has long cast its shadow over the Mississippi Delta, including my hometown of Greenville, Mississippi".


title: Mississippi Delta

text: As of 2005, the majority of students in public schools in the Mississippi Delta are black, and the majority of private school students are white. This "de facto" racial segregation is related in part to economics, as few African American parents in the poor region can pay to send their children to private schools. Suzanne Eckes of "The Journal of Negro Education" wrote, "Although "de facto" segregation in schools exists throughout the country, the "de facto" segregation that exists in the Mississippi Delta region is somewhat unique."


title: Mississippi Delta

text: During the years of segregation, public school systems did not know how to classify the minority Chinese students, initially requiring them to attend schools with blacks. Their socioeconomic status affected their classification and, as their parents became merchants and filed legal suits, in some areas they gained entrance for their children to white schools, before the schools were integrated beginning in the late 1960s.


title: Mississippi Delta

text: The Northern Delta is also served by "The Commercial Appeal" and "The Daily News" newspapers based in Memphis, Tennessee, plus several radio and also based there.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: The Sims is a social simulation video game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts in 2000. It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual people ("Sims") in a suburban household near a fictional city. Players control customizable Sims as they pursue career and relationship goals. Players can also use their Sims' income to renovate their living space, purchase home furnishings, or clothing for their household. Players can also choose to pursue a social and successful life.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: The game's development was led by Will Wright and the game was a follow-up to Wright's earlier "SimCity" series; Wright was inspired to create the game by Christopher Alexander's 1977 book "A Pattern Language", and Scott McCloud's 1993 book "Understanding Comics" later played a role in the game's design. Seven expansion packs were released from 2000 to 2003, each of which added new items, characters, skins, and features.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: Upon release, "The Sims" garnered widespread critical acclaim and was described by Wright as being successful in attracting casual and female gamers. It also won several awards, and placed 31st on "Time"'s The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. The game has also been commercially successful, being one of the best selling PC games of all time with 11.5 million copies sold. Several sequels were released—"The Sims 2" in 2004, "The Sims 3" in 2009, and "The Sims 4" in 2014.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: The structure of the game is an agent-based artificial life program. The presentation of the game's artificial intelligence is advanced, and the Sims will respond to outside conditions independently, though often the player's intervention is necessary to keep the Sims on the right track. "The Sims" technically has unlimited replay value, in that there is no way to truly win the game, and the player can play indefinitely. It has been described as more like a toy than a game.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: Sims are influenced by the player to interact with objects or other Sims. Sims may receive guests at their home lot, invited or not, from other playable lots or from unhoused non-player character (NPC) Sims. If enabled in the game's options, Sims have a certain amount of free will, allowing them to autonomously interact with their world. However, the player can override most of these autonomous actions by cancelling them in the action queue at the top of the screen. Unlike the simulated environments in games such as "SimCity", "SimEarth" or "SimLife", Sims are not fully autonomous. They are unable to take certain actions without specific commands, such as paying bills, finding a job, exercising, and conceiving children. Sims communicate in a fictional language called Simlish, which is mostly composed of blowing raspberries and saying nonsense.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: The player can make decisions about time spent in skill development, such as exercise, reading, creativity, and logic by adding activities to Sims' daily agenda. Daily needs such as hygiene and eating can and must also be scheduled. Although Sims can autonomously perform these actions, they may not prioritize them effectively and can suffer consequences for neglecting their own needs. In addition, Sims must maintain balanced budgets and usually supplement an income by obtaining a job. Sims may earn promotions by fulfilling skills and maintaining friendships with others for each level, which lead to new job titles, increased wages, and different work hours. Alternately, Sims may create and sell various artwork and items at home.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: While there is no eventual objective to the game, states of failure do exist in "The Sims". One is that Sims may die, either by starvation, drowning, fire, or electrocution (or from natural causes/age in certain versions). When a Sim dies, a tombstone or an urn will appear (in later expansion packs, the Grim Reaper will appear first), and the ghost of the deceased Sim may haunt the building where it died. In addition, Sims can leave the game for good and never return, or two adult Sims with a bad relationship may brawl, eventually resulting in one of them moving out. Children will be sent away to military school if they fail their classes or if they have not fulfilled their needs, a social care worker will take them away from their household and they are no longer returnable.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: When the "Live" mode occurs in the game, the player may enter "Build" mode or "Buy" mode to pause time and renovate the house or lot. When the game begins, each family starts off with §20,000 "simoleons" (regardless of its number of members). These funds can be used to purchase a small house or vacant lot on the neighborhood screen. After purchasing a lot, a user may construct or remodel a house in Build mode or purchase or move furniture in Buy mode. All architectural and customizable features and furnishings in Build and Buy modes follow a square-tile system in which items must be placed on a tile. Walls and fences extend along the edge of a tile and can follow the edge of the tile or cross it diagonally, but furniture items cannot be placed on either side of a crossed tile. The base game contains over 150 items, including furniture and architectural elements.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: In addition, the game includes an architecture system. The game was originally designed solely as an architecture simulator, with the Sims there only to evaluate the houses, but during development it was decided that the Sims were more interesting than originally anticipated, and their once limited role in the game was developed further.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: Players have a broad choice of objects that their respective Sims may purchase. Objects fall into one of eight broad categories: seating, surfaces, decorations, electronics, appliances, plumbing, lighting, and miscellaneous.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: The original inspiration for "The Sims" was Christopher Alexander's 1977 book on architecture and urban design, "A Pattern Language". Game designer Will Wright was inspired by the book's focus on functionality in architecture, as Alexander based his design principles on structural usability rather than aesthetic values. Wright wanted to create a simulation game about enabling human behavior and interaction through design. Scott McCloud's 1993 book "Understanding Comics" became a big influence on the design of "The Sims" later on, as it advocates a certain type of "collaboration" between designer and consumer and outlines the value of abstraction for getting readers or players involved with a story.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: Will Wright started working on "The Sims" after releasing "SimAnt" in 1991. It was during that same year that he lost his home during the Oakland firestorm of 1991, and he incorporated his experience of rebuilding his life into the game. However, the game's concept was very poorly received by a focus group, so Wright had difficulty getting the project off the ground. He managed to convince his company to let him work on the project (codenamed "Project X" at the time) in the background while developing "SimCity 2000" and "SimCopter". He was lent one programmer for the project, Jamie Doornbos, who went on to become the lead programmer for "The Sims". During the first few years of the project, Wright and Doornbos were primarily developing an open-ended system of character behavior. As the project continued, Wright found that the social aspect of the game turned out to be highly engaging, and the team started to focus more on the characters of the game, such as by letting Sims visit one another's houses and by implementing long-term relationships.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: A demo of the game was presented at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo. During a displaying in front of the press, two female characters at an in-game wedding fell in love and kissed each other. After the event, the relationship mechanics were further modified so the character's sexual orientation was set depending on the player's actions.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "The Sims" uses a combination of 3D and 2D graphics techniques. The Sims themselves are rendered in 3D, whereas the house and all its objects are pre-rendered and displayed diametrically.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: For the game's Japanese release, the game was renamed to SimPeople (シムピープル) to match the naming conventions of the other Sim games from Maxis.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: The game music was composed by Jerry Martin, Marc Russo, Kirk R. Casey, and Dix Bruce. The game disc contains 37 tracks, of which 15 were published in 2007 as an official soundtrack album. Most of the tracks contain no vocals, but some of them feature Simlish lyrics.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "The Sims" is credited with opening up modding to a new demographic, making it easy enough for "casual modders" to modify the game. "The Sims" was designed in a way that it would be easy to add user-created content (also known as custom content or "CC") to the game, with Will Wright stating in an interview that he wanted to put the player in the design role. Maxis released modding tools for "The Sims" before the game itself, resulting in a suite of fan-created mods being available at launch. Websites for downloading CCs and mods include The Sims Resource and Mod The Sims.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "The Sims" had a total of seven expansion packs released in its lifecycle. Each expansion generally adds new items, neighborhoods, characters, skins, and features.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "The Sims" received critical acclaim. On review aggregator Metacritic, the PC version of "The Sims" received a score of 92%, indicating "universal acclaim". Will Wright, the game's designer, said the game has been a success in many ways—attracting casual gamers and female gamers (the latter making up almost 60% of players).


title: The Sims (video game)

text: Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PC version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it four stars out of five, saying "Do not miss. Run do not walk. And set aside lots of time."


title: The Sims (video game)

text: In 2012, the game was one of 14 video games selected by the Museum of Modern Art as the basis for an intended collection of 40 games.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "The Sims" has won numerous awards, including GameSpot's "Game of the Year Award" for 2000. During the 3rd Annual AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards (now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards), "The Sims" won "Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design" and "Outstanding Achievement in Gameplay Engineering" (along with nominations for "Computer Family Title of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction"). "Game Informer" ranked it the 80th best game ever made in its 100th issue in 2001. In 2005, "The Sims" was inducted into GameSpot's list of the greatest games of all time. In 2016, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted "The Sims" to its World Video Game Hall of Fame. In August 2016, "The Sims" placed 31st on "Time"'s The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. In 2019, it was ranked 17th on "The Guardian" newspaper's The 50 Best Video Games of the 21st Century list.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "The Sims" was released on February 4, 2000, and became a best-seller shortly after launch. In the United States, it was the best-selling computer game of 2000, with domestic sales of 1.77 million units and revenues of $72.9 million. It remained the country's #1 computer title in 2001, when it sold an additional 1.48 million units and earned another $60.4 million in revenue. In 2002, "The Sims" became the top-selling PC game in history at the time, displacing "Myst" by selling more than 6.3 million copies worldwide.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: By February 2005, the game had shipped 16 million copies worldwide. By July 2006, the console versions of "The Sims" series had sold a combined 3.5 million units in the United States.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "Next Generation" ranked "The Sims" as the 45th highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube between January 2000 and July 2006 in the United States.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: As of March 2015, "The Sims" had sold more than 11.24 million copies for PC, making it one of the best-selling PC games of all time.


title: The Sims (video game)

text: "The Sims" was followed by the sequels "The Sims 2" (2004), "The Sims 3" (2009), and "The Sims 4" (2014).


title: The Sims (video game)

text: The console versions of "The Sims" were each followed by a sequel, "The Sims Bustin' Out", and a spin-off game, "". These versions incorporate some features of later PC expansion packs, and "Bustin' Out" adds a multiplayer mode supporting two simultaneous players.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Shub-Niggurath is a fictional deity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. She is often associated with the phrase "The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young". The only other name by which Lovecraft referred to her was "Lord of the Wood" in his story "The Whisperer in Darkness".


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Shub-Niggurath is first mentioned in Lovecraft's revision story "The Last Test" (1928); she is not described by Lovecraft, but is frequently mentioned or called upon in incantations. Most of her development as a literary figure was carried out by other Mythos authors, including August Derleth, Robert Bloch, and Ramsey Campbell.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Lovecraft explicitly defined Shub-Niggurath as a mother goddess in "The Mound", where he calls her "Shub-Niggurath, the All-Mother". He describes her as a kind of Astarte in the same story. In "Out of the Aeons", she is one of the deities siding with humanity against "hostile gods".


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: August Derleth classified Shub-Niggurath as a Great Old One, but the "Call of Cthulhu" role-playing game classifies her as an Outer God. The "CthulhuTech" role-playing game, in turn, returns to Derleth's classification of Shub-Niggurath as a Great Old One.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Shub-Niggurath's appearances in Lovecraft's main body of fiction do not provide much detail about his conception of the entity. Her first mention under Lovecraft's byline was in "The Dunwich Horror" (1928), where a quote from the "Necronomicon" discussing the Old Ones breaks into an exclamation of "Iä! Shub-Niggurath!" The story provides no further information about this peculiar expression.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: The next Lovecraft story to mention Shub-Niggurath is scarcely more informative. In "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930), a recording of a ceremony involving human and nonhuman worshipers includes the following exchange:


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Similarly unexplained exclamations occur in "The Dreams in the Witch House" (1932) and "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1933).


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Lovecraft only provided specific information about Shub-Niggurath in his "revision tales", stories published under the names of clients for whom he ghost-wrote. As Price points out, "For these clients he constructed a parallel myth-cycle to his own, a separate group of Great Old Ones", including Yig, Ghatanothoa, Rhan-Tegoth, "the evil twins Nug and Yeb"—and Shub-Niggurath.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: While some of these revision stories just repeat the familiar exclamations, others provide new elements of lore. In "The Last Test" (1927), the first mention of Shub-Niggurath seems to connect her to Nug and Yeb: "I talked in Yemen with an old man who had come back from the Crimson Desert—he had seen Irem, the City of Pillars, and had worshipped at the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb—Iä! Shub-Niggurath!"


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: The revision story "The Mound", which describes the discovery of an underground realm called K'n-yan by a Spanish conquistador, reports that a temple of Tsathoggua there "had been turned into a shrine of Shub-Niggurath, the All-Mother and wife of the Not-to-Be-Named-One. This deity was a kind of sophisticated Astarte, and her worship struck the pious Catholic as supremely obnoxious."


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: The reference to "Astarte", the consort of Baal in Semitic mythology, ties Shub-Niggurath to the related fertility goddess Cybele, the Magna Mater mentioned in Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls", and implies that the "great mother worshipped by the hereditary cult of Exham Priory" in that story "had to be none other than Shub-Niggurath".


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: The Not-to-Be-Named-One, not being named, is difficult to identify; a similar phrase, translated into Latin as the "Magnum Innominandum", appears in a list in "The Whisperer in Darkness" and was included in a scrap of incantation that Lovecraft wrote for Robert Bloch's "The Shambler from the Stars". August Derleth identifies this mysterious entity with Hastur (though Hastur appears in the same "Whisperer in Darkness" list with the "Magnum Innominandum"), while Robert M. Price equates him with Yog-Sothoth—though he also suggests that Shub-Niggurath's mate is implicitly the snake god Yig.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Finally, in "Out of the Aeons", a revision tale set in part on the lost continent of Mu, Lovecraft describes the character T'yog as the "High Priest of Shub-Niggurath and guardian of the copper temple of the Goat with a Thousand Young". In the story, T'yog surprisingly maintains that "the gods friendly to man could be arrayed against the hostile gods, and ... that Shub-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb, as well as Yig the Serpent-god, were ready to take sides with man" against the more malevolent Ghatanothoa. Shub-Niggurath is called "the Mother Goddess", and reference is made to "her sons", presumably Nug and Yeb.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Other evidence of Lovecraft's conception of Shub-Niggurath can be found in his letters. For example, in a letter to Willis Conover, Lovecraft described her as an "evil cloud-like entity". "Yog-Sothoth's wife is the hellish cloud-like entity Shub-Niggurath, in whose honor nameless cults hold the rite of the Goat with a Thousand Young. By her he has two monstrous offspring—the evil twins Nug and Yeb. He has also begotten hellish hybrids upon the females of various organic species throughout the universes of space-time."


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Although Shub-Niggurath is often associated with the epithet "The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young", it is possible that this Black Goat is a separate entity. Rodolfo Ferraresi, in his essay "The Question of Shub-Niggurath", says that Lovecraft himself separated the two in his writings, such as in "Out of the Aeons" (1935) in which a distinction is made between Shub-Niggurath and the Black Goat—the goat is the figurehead through which Shub-Niggurath is worshipped. In apparent contrast to Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat is sometimes depicted as a male, most notably in the rite performed in "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931) in which the Black Goat is called the "Lord of the Woods". However, Lovecraft clearly associates Shub-Niggurath with The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young in two of his stories—"The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Thing on the Doorstep".


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: It is possible that The Black Goat is actually Ny-Rakath, Shub-Niggurath's brother. The Black Goat may also be the personification of Pan, since Lovecraft was influenced by Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" (1890), a story that inspired Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" (1929). In this incarnation, the Black Goat may represent Satan in the form of the satyr, a half-man, half-goat. In folklore, the satyr symbolized a man with excessive sexual appetites. The Black Goat may otherwise be a male, earthly form of Shub-Niggurath—an incarnation she assumes to copulate with her worshipers.


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Robert M. Price points to a passage from "Idle Days on the Yann", by Lord Dunsany, one of Lovecraft's favorite writers, as the source for the name Shub-Niggurath:


title: Shub-Niggurath

text: Notes Price: "The name already carried a whiff of sulfur: Sheol was the name for the Netherworld mentioned in the Bible and the Gilgamesh Epic."


title: Brittany Howard

text: Brittany Amber Howard (born October 2, 1988) is an American musician, singer, and songwriter known for being the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and main songwriter of rock bands Alabama Shakes, Thunderbitch, and Bermuda Triangle. Her work with Alabama Shakes has garnered her nine Grammy Award nominations including Best New Artist and Album of the Year for "Sound & Color". They eventually won four awards including Best Alternative Music Album.


title: Brittany Howard

text: In 2018, Alabama Shakes announced they were going on hiatus. During this time, Howard released her debut studio album as a solo artist, "Jaime", in 2019. The work received critical acclaim and earned her seven Grammy nominations, winning Best Rock Song for "Stay High".


title: Brittany Howard

text: Howard was born in Athens, Alabama, one of two daughters born to Christi (née Carter) and K. J. Howard. Her mother is white, of English and Irish ancestry, while her father is African American. The family's home was in a junk yard, and once burned down due to a lightning strike. She learned to write poetry and play the piano from her older sister Jaime, who died from retinoblastoma in 1998; Howard got the same affliction but survived with partial blindness in one eye. Her parents separated soon after. She began playing the guitar at age 13, and was enamored with albums by Dionne Warwick and Elvis Presley, which she listened to repeatedly, and was inspired to write song lyrics.


title: Brittany Howard

text: Howard attended East Limestone High School, where she met future Alabama Shakes bassist Zac Cockrell. In high school, Howard began listening to 1970s rock music, such as Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd. "I’d be in the back of this Buick and be like ‘What's this? This is really cool’ and my friends told me it was Pink Floyd and I was like ‘Whoa’, it blew my mind. I started getting into all the classic rock stuff, like Yes, Cream, all that stuff."


title: Brittany Howard

text: After high school, Howard worked for the United States Postal Service until becoming a full-time musician as lead singer of Alabama Shakes.


title: Brittany Howard

text: Brittany Howard is best known as the lead singer and guitarist for the American rock band Alabama Shakes. The band formed under the name "The Shakes" when Howard and bassist Zac Cockrell began playing covers and original songs together with drummer Steve Johnson. Guitarist Heath Fogg later rounded out the lineup, and the band began playing shows at bars in Alabama and recording their debut album, "Boys & Girls". They went on to sign a record deal with ATO Records, and released "Boys & Girls" in 2012 which received critical acclaim and multiple Grammy Award nominations.


title: Brittany Howard

text: In April 2015, Alabama Shakes released their second album, "Sound & Color". It debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200, and received favorable reviews from the music press. The band went on to perform on multiple late night shows, including "Saturday Night Live", "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", and "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". Howard was featured in the musical medley alongside Mavis Staples, Stephen Colbert, Ben Folds, and more in the series premiere of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". At Lollapalooza in 2015, Howard was invited on stage to perform a duet of "Get Back" with Paul McCartney. Howard also performed at the ceremony for Eddie Murphy's Mark Twain Prize. In 2015, Howard was named the recipient of Billboard's Women in Music "Powerhouse" Award.


title: Brittany Howard

text: Howard is also the lead singer of the rock band Thunderbitch, formed in Nashville in 2012 with members of Clear Plastic Masks and ATO Records labelmates Fly Golden Eagle. The band surprise-released a self-titled album in September 2015. Although the band rarely makes live appearances, they did play a rare set at ATO Records' CMJ Music Marathon showcase in October 2015.


title: Brittany Howard

text: Brittany Howard is also a singer in the band Bermuda Triangle with Jesse Lafser and Becca Mancari, which was formed in Nashville in 2017. Their debut live performance was on July 12, 2017 at the Basement East in Nashville. The trio released their first single on September 6, 2017, titled "Rosey", which was first released on Jesse Lafser's 2015 album "Raised On The Plains". Although originally believed to be a one time performance, the trio performed a five show tour through the Southern states of America in October 2017. This small tour included shows in Carrboro and Asheville, North Carolina; Birmingham, Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia; and Knoxville, Tennessee.


title: Brittany Howard

text: In June 2019, Brittany Howard announced a debut solo album, "Jaime" which was released on September 20, 2019, as well as a tour across North America and Europe. "Jaime" was received with universal acclaim, with Pitchfork noting "The exceptional solo debut from the Alabama Shakes singer-songwriter is a thrilling opus that pushes the boundaries of voice, sound, and soul to new extremes." On July 16, 2019, Howard released the music video to the single "Stay High", featuring actor Terry Crews lip-syncing to the track. On April 15, 2020, Howard released a cover of a Funkadelic's 1971 song "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" and a new rendition of her song "Stay High". "Stay High" was recommended as an appropriate musical remedy to get people through bad lockdown and quarantine feelings.


title: Brittany Howard

text: Howard has cited as influences artists including Led Zeppelin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Prince, Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie, Mavis Staples, Tom Waits, Björk, Gil Scott-Heron, Freddie Mercury, and Tina Turner.


title: Brittany Howard

text: Howard came out as a lesbian at age 25. In 2018, Howard married Jesse Lafser, her bandmate in the Bermuda Triangle Band.


title: Splatter film

text: A splatter film is a subgenre of crime films and horror film that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence. These films, usually through the use of special effects, display a fascination with the vulnerability of the human body and the theatricality of its mutilation. The term "splatter cinema" was coined by George A. Romero to describe his film "Dawn of the Dead", though "Dawn of the Dead" is generally considered by critics to have higher aspirations, such as social commentary, than to be simply exploitative for its own sake.


title: Splatter film

text: The term was popularized by John McCarty's 1981 book "Splatter Movies", subtitled: "Breaking The Last Taboo: A Critical Survey Of The Wildly Demented Sub Genre Of The Horror Film That Is Changing The Face Of Film Realism Forever". The first significant publication to attempt to define and analyse the 'Splatter Film', McCarty suggests that Splatter is indicative of broader trends in film production. Though Splatter is associated with fairly extreme Horror Films, and such works form the main focus of the book, a relatively diverse range of titles dating mainly from the 1960s to late 1970s are also included, for example John Waters' "Female Trouble",the 1973 sequel to "Dirty Harry" "Magnum Force", Terry Gilliam's "Jabberwocky", and Walter Hill's Western "The Long Riders". This filmography implies that the influence of film-makers such as Sam Peckinpah or Andy Warhol, to name two, is as significant to the development of the form as Grand Guignol, Hammer Films or Herschell Gordon Lewis.


title: Splatter film

text: During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the use of graphic violence in cinema has been labeled "torture porn" or "gorno" (a portmanteau of "gore" and "porno"). By contrast, films such as "Braindead", "Evil Dead II" and to some extent "Dawn of the Dead", all of which feature over-the-top gore, can be construed as comedic, and fall into the category of splatstick.


title: Splatter film

text: Splatter films, according to film critic Michael Arnzen, "self-consciously revel in the special effects of gore as an artform." Where typical horror films deal with such fears as that of the unknown, the supernatural and the dark, the impetus for fear in a splatter film comes from physical destruction of the body and the pain accompanying it. There is also an emphasis on visuals, style and technique, including hyperactive camerawork. Where most horror films have a tendency to re-establish the social and moral order with good triumphing over evil, splatter films thrive on a lack of order. Arnzen argues that "the spectacle of violence replaces any pretensions to narrative structure, because gore is the only part of the film that is reliably consistent." These films also often feature fragmented narratives and direction, including "manic montages full of subject camera movement...cross-cuttings from hunted to hunter, and ominous juxtapositions and contrasts."


title: Splatter film

text: The splatter film has its aesthetic roots in French Grand Guignol theatre, which endeavored to stage realistic scenes of blood and carnage for its patrons. In 1908, Grand Guignol made its first appearance in England, although the gore was downplayed in favor of a more Gothic tone, owing to the greater censorship of the arts in Britain.


title: Splatter film

text: The first appearance of gore—the realistic mutilation of the human body—in cinema can be traced to D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916), which features numerous Guignol-esque touches, including two onscreen decapitations, and a scene in which a spear is slowly driven through a soldier's naked abdomen as blood wells from the wound. Several of Griffith's subsequent films, and those of his contemporary Cecil B. DeMille, featured similarly realistic carnage.


title: Splatter film

text: In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the public was reintroduced to splatter themes and motifs by groundbreaking films such as Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960) and the output of Hammer Film Productions (an artistic outgrowth of the English Grand Guignol style) such as "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957) and "Horror of Dracula" (1958). Perhaps the most explicitly violent film of this era was Nobuo Nakagawa's "Jigoku" (1960), which included numerous scenes of flaying and dismemberment in its depiction of the Buddhist underworld Naraka.


title: Splatter film

text: Splatter came into its own as a distinct subgenre of horror in the early 1960s with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis in the United States. Eager to maintain a profitable niche, Lewis turned to something that mainstream cinema still rarely featured: scenes of visceral, explicit gore. In 1963, he directed "Blood Feast", widely considered the first splatter film. In the 15 years following its release, "Blood Feast" took in an estimated $7 million. It was made for an estimated $24,500. "Blood Feast" was followed by two more gore films by Herschell Gordon Lewis, "Two Thousand Maniacs!" (1964) and "Color Me Blood Red" (1965).


title: Splatter film

text: The popularity of the splatter film in the 1970s was met with strong reactions in the US and the U.K. Roger Ebert in the U.S., and Member of Parliament Graham Bright in the U.K., led the charge to censor splatter films on home video with the film critic going after "I Spit on Your Grave" while the politician sponsored the Video Recordings Act, a system of censorship and certification for home video in the U.K. This resulted in the outright banning of many splatter films, which were deemed "video nasties" in the British press.


title: Splatter film

text: Some splatter directors have gone on to produce mainstream hits. Peter Jackson started his career in New Zealand by directing the splatter movies "Bad Taste" (1987) and "Braindead" (1992). These films featured such over-the-top gore that it became a comedic device. These comedic gore films have been dubbed "splatstick", defined as physical comedy that involves dismemberment. Splatstick seems to be more common in Japan, with the examples of "Robogeisha", "Tokyo Gore Police", and "Machine Girl".


title: Splatter film

text: Splatter films have pioneered techniques used in other genres. For example, the popular 1999 film "The Blair Witch Project" is similar to the 1980 film "Cannibal Holocaust". The story in "Cannibal Holocaust" is told through footage from a group of people making a documentary about a portion of the Amazon which is said to be populated by cannibals. Although the "Blair Witch" directors had not seen "Cannibal Holocaust" at the time of filming, this "mockumentary" format was later used in their film.


title: Splatter film

text: One of the more recent examples of a splatter film is "Terrifier" (2016) and its sequel "Terrifier 2" (2022). Both films are infamous for their gore, two main examples being Dawn's hacksaw kill in "Terrifier" (2016), where Art the Clown saws Dawn in half, and Allie's bedroom kill in "Terrifier 2" (2022), where Art theatrically mutilates Allie to death. Terrifier 2 was said to be so gory and so violent that audience members have reported to be vomiting and fainting.


title: Splatter film

text: In the 2000sparticularly 2003–2009a body of films was produced that combined elements of the splatter and slasher film genres. The films were dubbed "torture porn" by critics and detractors, most notably by David Edelstein, who is thought to have coined the term. Like their splatter forerunners, torture porn films reputedly emphasize depictions of violence, gore, nudity, torture, mutilation and sadism. Also like splatter films, the extent to which torture porn lives up to its sensational reputation has been disputed.


title: Splatter film

text: Filmmaker Eli Roth's "Hostel" (2005), released in January 2006, was the first to be called torture porn by critic Edelstein, but the classification has since been applied to "Saw" and its sequels (though its creators disagree with the classification), "The Devil's Rejects" (2005), "Wolf Creek" (2005), and the earlier films "Baise-moi" (2000) and "Ichi the Killer" (2001). A difference between this group of films and earlier splatter films is that they are often mainstream Hollywood films that receive a wide release, and have comparatively high production values.


title: Splatter film

text: The torture porn subgenre has proven to be very profitable: "Saw", made for $1.2 million, grossed over $100 million worldwide, while "Hostel", which cost less than $5 million to produce, grossed over $80 million. Lionsgate, the studio behind the films, made considerable gains in its stock price from the box office showing. The financial success led the way for the release of similar films: "Turistas" in 2006, "", "Borderland", and "Captivity", starring Elisha Cuthbert and Daniel Gillies, in 2007. Indeed, in 2009 the "Saw" series became the most profitable horror film series of all time,


title: Splatter film

text: Despite these financial successes, torture porn is perceived as a pejorative label by many press critics, filmmakers, and fans. "Torture porn’s" pejorative connotations were anchored by high-profile salacious advertising campaigns. Billboards and posters used in the marketing of "" and "Captivity" drew criticism for their graphic imagery, causing them to be taken down in many locations. Director Eli Roth sought to defend the subgenre, claiming that critics’ uses of torture porn "genuinely says more about the critic's limited understanding of what horror movies can do than about the film itself", and that "they're out of touch." Horror author Stephen King defended "Hostel: Part II" and torture porn stating, "sure it makes you uncomfortable, but good art should make you uncomfortable." Influential director George A. Romero stated, "I don't get the torture porn films [...] they're lacking metaphor."


title: Splatter film

text: The success of torture porn, and its boom during the mid to late 2000s, led to a crossover into genres other than horror. This became evident with the release of many crime thrillers, particularly the 2007 film "I Know Who Killed Me" starring Lindsay Lohan, and the 2008 film "Untraceable", starring Diane Lane and Billy Burke. The British film "WΔZ", starring Stellan Skarsgård and Selma Blair, and its US counterpart "Scar", starring Angela Bettis and Ben Cotton, continued to facilitate this hybrid form of torture porn, which was also, to a lesser degree, evident in films such as "Rendition" (2007) starring Jake Gyllenhaal, "Law Abiding Citizen" (2009), and "Unthinkable" (2010) starring Samuel L. Jackson.


title: Splatter film

text: In the mid-2000s, the splatter film was given a major boost within the horror industry by a new wave of French films—commonly referred to as the New French Extremity—which became internationally known for their extremely brutal nature: "Martyrs" (2008), directed by Pascal Laugier, "Frontier(s)" (2007), directed by Xavier Gens, and "Inside" (2007), directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. Rapper Eminem explored the genre in his music video for the single "3 a.m." that year. Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's "Antichrist", starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, was labeled torture porn by critics when it premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival due to scenes of extreme violence, graphic sex, and genital self-mutilation.


title: Splatter film

text: By 2009, the box office draw of torture porn films had mostly been replaced in the U.S. by the profitable trend of remaking or rebooting earlier horror films from decades past, with the modernization of films such as "Dawn of the Dead" (2004), "The Amityville Horror" (2005), "House of Wax" (2005), "Black Christmas" (2006), "Halloween" (2007), "My Bloody Valentine 3D" (2009), "Friday the 13th" (2009), "The Wolfman" (2010), "The Crazies" (2010), and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (2010). A number of these remakes, such as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2003), "The Hills Have Eyes" (2006) (and its sequel in 2007), "Funny Games" (2008), "The Last House on the Left" (2009), and "I Spit on Your Grave" (2010) were referred to as torture porn in press reviews.


title: Splatter film

text: At the close of the decade, "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)" (2009) and "A Serbian Film" (2010) were among the most notable torture porn releases. Although not as financially successful as "Saw" or "Hostel", "A Serbian Film" and "The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)" (2011) gained attention in the press for their graphic depictions of forced fecal consumption and necrophilia, and both films were censored in order to attain release in the U.K. Other torture porn films such as "Grotesque" and "The Bunny Game" were banned outright by the BBFC.


title: Splatter film

text: Subsequently, torture porn has increasingly become a DVD-oriented subgenre. For example, "" (2011) was released direct to DVD, unlike the previous films in the series. The film received less negative attention in the press as a result of its lower-profile release. Other recent torture porn films include "Would You Rather" (2012), "Shiver" (2012), and "The Collection" (2012). As fewer and fewer high-profile cinematic torture porn films are being released, however, the subgenre is slowly dying out, as many journalists have proposed.


title: Splatter film

text: The genre elements were also used in episodes of many popular American television shows, including Fox's "24", CBS's "Criminal Minds", Showtime's "Dexter", The CW's "Supernatural", NBC's "Blindspot" and FX's "American Horror Story".


title: Splatter film

text: Some scholars have published analyses of torture porn films. For example, a book chronicling the torture porn phenomenon and the surrounding controversy – Steve Jones' "Torture Porn: Popular Horror after Saw" – was published in 2013.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the King of the Jews, both at the beginning of his life and at the end. In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, e.g., in , this is written as "Basileus ton Ioudaion" ().


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: Both uses of the title lead to dramatic results in the New Testament accounts. In the account of the nativity of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, the Biblical Magi who come from the east call Jesus the "King of the Jews", causing Herod the Great to order the Massacre of the Innocents. Towards the end of the accounts of all four canonical Gospels, in the narrative of the Passion of Jesus, the title "King of the Jews" leads to charges against Jesus that result in his crucifixion.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The initialism INRI () represents the Latin inscription (in ), which in English translates to "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews", and states that this was written in three languages—Hebrew, Latin, and Greek—during the crucifixion of Jesus.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The title "King of the Jews" is only used in the New Testament by gentiles, namely by the Magi, Pontius Pilate, and the Roman soldiers. In contrast, the Jewish leaders use the designation "Messiah". They use Hebrew words and did not say 'Christ', a Greek translation word. Although the phrase "King of the Jews" is used in most English translations, it has also been translated wrongly "King of the Judeans" (see Ioudaioi).


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In the account of the nativity of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, the Biblical Magi go to King Herod in Jerusalem and (in ) ask him: "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" Herod asks the "chief priests and teachers of the law", who tell him in Bethlehem of Judea.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The question troubles Herod who considers the title his own, and in he questions the Magi about the exact time of the Star of Bethlehem's appearance. Herod sends the Magi to Bethlehem, telling them to notify him when they find the child. After the Magi find Jesus and present their gifts, having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they returned to their country by a different way.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and warns him to take Jesus and Mary into Egypt (). When Herod realizes he has been outwitted by the Magi he gives orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who are two years old and under. ()


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In the accounts of the Passion of Jesus, the title "King of the Jews" is used on three occasions. In the first such episode, all four Gospels state that the title was used for Jesus when he was interviewed by Pilate and that his crucifixion was based on that charge, as in , , and .


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The use of the terms "king" and "kingdom" and the role of the Jews in using the term "king" to accuse Jesus are central to the discussion between Jesus and Pilate. In , Jesus responds to Pilate, "you have said so" when asked if Jesus is the King of the Jews and says nothing further. In , he hints that the king accusation did not originate with Pilate but with "others" and, in , he states: "My kingdom is not of this world". However, Jesus does not directly deny being the King of the Jews.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In the New Testament, Pilate writes "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews" as a sign to be affixed to the cross of Jesus. states that the Jews told Pilate: "Do not write King of the Jews" but instead write that Jesus had merely claimed that title, but Pilate wrote it anyway. Pilate's response to the protest is recorded by John: "What I have written, I have written."


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: After the trial by Pilate and after the flagellation of Christ episode, the soldiers mock Jesus as the King of Jews by putting a purple robe (that signifies royal status) on him, place a Crown of Thorns on his head, and beat and mistreat him in , and .


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The continued reliance on the use of the term "king" by the Judeans to press charges against Jesus is a key element of the final decision to crucify him. In Pilate seeks to release Jesus, but the Jews object, saying: "If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend: every one that maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar", bringing the power of Caesar to the forefront of the discussion. In , the Jews then cry out: "Crucify him! ... We have no king but Caesar."


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The use of the term "King of the Jews" by the early Church after the death of Jesus was thus not without risk, for this term could have opened them to prosecution as followers of Jesus, who was accused of possible rebellion against Rome.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The final use of the title only appears in . Here, after Jesus has carried the cross to Calvary and has been nailed to the cross, the soldiers look up on him on the cross, mock him, offer him vinegar and say: "If thou art the King of the Jews, save thyself." In the parallel account in , the Jewish priests mock Jesus as "King of Israel", saying: "He is the King of Israel; let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in him."


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In the New Testament, the "King of the Jews" title is used only by the gentiles, by the Magi, Pontius Pilate, and Roman soldiers. In contrast, the Jewish leaders prefer the designation "King of Israel" as in and . From Pilate's perspective, it is the term "King" (regardless of Jews or Israel) that is sensitive, for it implies possible rebellion against the Roman Empire.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In the Gospel of Mark the distinction between King of the Jews and King of Israel is made consciously, setting apart the two uses of the term by the Jews and the gentiles.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The initialism "INRI" represents the Latin inscription (), which in English translates to "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews" (). states that this was written in three languages — Hebrew, Latin and Greek – and was put on the cross of Jesus. The Greek version of the initialism reads ΙΝΒΙ, representing ().


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: Devotional enthusiasm greeted the discovery by Pedro González de Mendoza in 1492 of what was acclaimed as the actual tablet, said to have been brought to Rome by Saint Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In Western Christianity, most crucifixes and many depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus include a plaque or parchment placed above his head, called a titulus, or title, bearing only the Latin letters "INRI", occasionally carved directly into the cross and usually just above the head of Jesus. In the Eastern Church "King of Glory" (, ) may be used.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In Eastern Christianity, both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic particular churches "sui iuris" use the Greek letters ΙΝΒΙ, based on the Greek version of the inscription . Some representations change the title to "ΙΝΒΚ," (, "The King of the World"), or to (, "The King of Glory"), not implying that this was really what was written but reflecting the tradition that icons depict the spiritual reality rather than the physical reality.


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The Romanian Orthodox Church uses INRI, since abbreviation in Romanian is exactly the same as in Latin "(Iisus Nazarineanul Regele Iudeilor")"


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: Eastern Orthodox Churches that use Church Slavonic in their liturgy use (, the equivalent of ΙΝΒΙ for ) or the abbreviation (, "King of Glory").


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In Spanish, the word denotes any insulting or mocking word or phrase; it is usually found in the fixed expression (literally "for more/greater insult"), which idiomatically means "to add insult to injury" or "to make matters worse". Its origin is sometimes made clearer by capitalisation .


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: The initials INRI have been reinterpreted with other expansions (backronyms). In an 1825 book on Freemasonry, Marcello Reghellini de Schio alleged that Rosicrucians gave "INRI" alchemical meanings:


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: Later writers have attributed these to Freemasonry, Hermeticism, or neo-paganism. Aleister Crowley's "The Temple of Solomon the King" includes a discussion of Augoeides, supposedly written by "Frater P." of the A∴A∴:


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: Leopold Bloom, the nominally Catholic, ethnically Jewish protagonist of James Joyce's "Ulysses", interprets INRI as "Iron Nails Ran In". The same meaning is given by a character in Ed McBain's 1975 novel "Doors". Most "Ulysses" translations preserve "INRI" and make a new misinterpretation, such as the French "he makes us innocent again".


title: Jesus, King of the Jews

text: In isopsephy, the Greek term () receives a value of 3343 whose digits seem to correspond to a suggested date for the crucifixion of Jesus, (33, April, 3rd day).


title: Phil Lesh

text: Philip Chapman Lesh (born March 15, 1940) is an American musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career.


title: Phil Lesh

text: After the band's disbanding in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of Grateful Dead family music with side project Phil Lesh and Friends, which paid homage to the Dead's music by playing their originals, common covers, and the songs of the members of his band. Lesh operated a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads. He scaled back his touring regimen in 2014 but continues to perform with Phil Lesh & Friends at select venues. From 2009 to 2014, he performed in Furthur alongside former Grateful Dead bandmate Bob Weir.


title: Phil Lesh

text: Lesh was born in Berkeley, California, United States, and started out as a violin player. While enrolled at Berkeley High School he switched to trumpet and participated in all of the school's music-related extracurricular activities. Studying the instrument under Bob Hansen, conductor of the symphonic Golden Gate Park Band, he developed a keen interest in avant-garde classical music and free jazz. After attending San Francisco State University for a semester, Lesh was unable to secure a favorable position in the school's band or orchestra and determined that he was not ready to pursue a higher education. Upon dropping out, he successfully auditioned for the renowned Sixth Army Band (then stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco) with the assistance of Hansen, but was ultimately determined to be unfit for military service.


title: Phil Lesh

text: Shortly thereafter, he enrolled at the College of San Mateo, where he wrote charts for the community college's well-regarded big band and ascended to the first trumpet chair. (A snippet of tape of Lesh on trumpet at CSM can be heard on "Born Cross-Eyed" from the Grateful Dead's 1968 release "Anthem of the Sun".) After transferring with sophomore standing to the University of California, Berkeley in 1961, he befriended future Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten before dropping out again after less than a semester. At the behest of Constanten, he studied under the Italian modernist Luciano Berio in a graduate-level course at Mills College in the spring of 1962; their classmates included Steve Reich and Stanford University cross-registrant John Chowning.


title: Phil Lesh

text: While volunteering for KPFA as a recording engineer during this period, he met bluegrass banjo player Jerry Garcia. Despite seemingly opposite musical interests, they soon formed a friendship. Following a brief period as a Post Office Department employee and keno marker in Las Vegas (initially rooming with Constanten, who soon departed to study under Berio and other members of the Darmstadt School in Europe); a second stint with the Post Office in San Francisco; and a collaboration with the likes of Reich, Jon Gibson and Constanten upon the latter's return from Europe under the auspices of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Lesh was talked into becoming the bassist for Garcia's new rock group (then known as The Warlocks) in the fall of 1964. This was a peculiar turn of events, as Lesh had never played bass before. According to Lesh, the first song he rehearsed with the band was "I Know You Rider". He joined them for their third or fourth gig (memories vary) and stayed until the end.


title: Phil Lesh

text: Since Lesh had never played bass, it meant that to a great extent he learned "on the job", yet it also meant he had no preconceived attitudes about the instrument's traditional rhythm section role. In his autobiography, he credits Jack Casady (who was playing with Jefferson Airplane) as a confirming influence on the direction his instincts were leading him into. While he has said that his playing style was influenced more by Bach counterpoint than by contemporaneous rock and soul bass players, one can also hear the fluidity and power of a jazz bassist such as Charles Mingus or Jimmy Garrison in Lesh's work, along with stylistic allusions to Casady. Lesh has also cited Jack Bruce of Cream as an influence.


title: Phil Lesh

text: Lesh was an innovator in the new role that the electric bass developed during the mid-1960s. Contemporaries such as Casady, Bruce, James Jamerson and Paul McCartney adopted a more melodic, contrapuntal approach to the instrument; before this, bass players in rock had generally played a conventional timekeeping role within the beat of the song, and within (or underpinning) the song's harmonic or chord structure. While not abandoning these aspects, Lesh took his own improvised excursions during a song or instrumental. This was a characteristic aspect of the so-called San Francisco Sound in the new rock music. In many Dead jams, Lesh's bass is, in essence, as much a lead instrument as Garcia's guitar.


title: Phil Lesh

text: Lesh was not a prolific composer or singer with the Grateful Dead, although some of the songs he contributed or co-wrote (including "New Potato Caboose", "Box of Rain", "Truckin'", "Unbroken Chain" and "Pride of Cucamonga") are among the best known in the band's repertoire. Lesh's high tenor voice contributed to the Grateful Dead's three-part harmony sections in their group vocals in the early days of the band, until he largely relinquished singing high parts to Donna Godchaux (and thence Brent Mydland and Vince Welnick) in 1976 due to vocal cord damage from improper singing technique. In 1985, he resumed singing lead vocals on select songs as a baritone. Throughout the Grateful Dead's career, his interest in avant-garde music remained a crucial influence on the group.


title: Phil Lesh

text: After the disbanding of the Grateful Dead, Lesh continued to play with its offshoots The Other Ones and The Dead, as well as performing with his own band, Phil Lesh and Friends. In 1999, he co-headlined a tour with Bob Dylan.


title: Phil Lesh

text: Additionally, Lesh and his wife Jill administer their charitable organization, the Unbroken Chain Foundation. The couple have two children together, Grahame and Brian. Both Grahame and Brian follow in their father's musical footsteps. The three frequently play together both publicly and privately, for example in an annual benefit concert grouping known as Philharmonia, dating to 1997, most recently on December 18, 2011 at a Christmas gig including Bob Weir and Jackie Greene at the Tenderloin Middle School cafeteria attended by 250 people.


title: Phil Lesh

text: In 1998, Lesh underwent a liver transplant as a result of chronic infection called alligator syndrome; since then, he has become an outspoken advocate for organ donor programs and when performing regularly encourages members of the audience to become organ donors (tracks identified as the "donor rap" on the live recordings of his various performances).


title: Phil Lesh

text: In April 2005, Lesh's book "Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead" () was published. The book takes its name from the lyrics of a Grateful Dead song titled "Unbroken Chain," from their album "From the Mars Hotel". "Unbroken Chain" is one of the few songs Lesh sings. This was the only book about the Grateful Dead written by a member of the band until 2015, when Bill Kreutzmann released his memoir, "Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams and Drugs with the Grateful Dead".


title: Phil Lesh

text: On October 26, 2006, Lesh released a statement on his official website, revealing that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer—the disease that killed his father—and would be undergoing an operation in December 2006 to have it removed. On December 7, 2006, Lesh released a statement stating that he had undergone prostate surgery with the cancer being removed.


title: Phil Lesh

text: In 2009, Lesh went back on tour with the remaining members of the Grateful Dead. Following the 2009 summer tour Lesh proceeded to found a new band with Bob Weir named Furthur, which debuted in September 2009.


title: Phil Lesh

text: In 2012, Lesh founded a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads, in San Rafael, California. The venue officially opened on March 8, 2012, with a first of a run of twelve concerts by Phil Lesh and Friends. When not on tour, Lesh's sons, Grahame and Brian, serve as the house band at Terrapin Crossroads In addition to songs from the Dead catalog, Lesh played material by Mumford & Sons, Zac Brown Band and other contemporary acts with his sons.


title: Phil Lesh

text: Lesh began performing again with Phil Lesh and Friends in 2012. Furthur disbanded in early 2014 and, at age 74, Lesh ceased touring full time. Since then he has performed regularly at Terrapin Crossroads with various Phil Lesh and Friends line-ups as well as with the Terrapin Family Band. He also performs select show at venues throughout the United States, notably the Capitol Theatre, as well as at festivals.


title: Phil Lesh

text: He took part in the 2015 concerts, and a short North American tour with Bob Weir in the spring of 2018.


title: Phil Lesh

text: In October 2015, Lesh announced that he had bladder cancer surgery. He stated that his prognosis was good and that he expected to make a full recovery.


title: Phil Lesh

text: In August 2019, Lesh announced that he would undergo back surgery, due to which he and his band cancelled upcoming engagements at the Outlaw Music Festival, Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, and Dirt Farmers Festival. He is expected to make a full recovery. Phil and Jill Lesh closed Terrapin Crossroads in November, 2021 when their lease on the property expired.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Empress Myeongseong or Empress Myungsung (명성황후 민씨; 17 November 1851 – 8 October 1895), informally known as Empress Min, was the official wife of Gojong, the 26th king of Joseon and the first emperor of the Korean Empire. She was posthumously called Myeongseong, the Great Empress ().


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Empress Myeongseong was considered an obstacle by the government of Meiji Japan (明治政府) to its overseas expansion. However, she took a harsher stand against Japanese influence after the Heungseon Daewongun's failed rebellions that were intended to remove her from the political arena.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: After Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, Joseon Korea came under the Japanese sphere of influence. The empress advocated stronger ties between Korea and Russia in an attempt to block Japanese influence in Korea. Miura Gorō, the Japanese Minister to Korea at that time and a retired army lieutenant-general, backed the faction headed by the Daewongun, whom he considered to be more sympathetic to Japanese interests.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: In the early morning of 8 October 1895, the Hullyeondae Regiment, loyal to the Daewongun, attacked the Gyeongbokgung, overpowering its Royal Guards. Hullyeondae officers, led by Major Woo Beom-seon, then allowed a group of ronin, specifically recruited for this purpose, to infiltrate and assassinate the empress in the palace, under orders from Miura Gorō. The empress's assassination sparked international outrage.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Domestically, the assassination prompted anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea with the "Short Hair Act Order" (), facilitating the creation of the Eulmi Righteous Army and protests nationwide. Following the empress's assassination, Emperor Gojong and the crown prince (later Emperor Sunjong of Korea) fled to the Russian legation in 1896. This led to the general repeal of the Gabo Reform, which was under Japanese influence. In October 1897, King Gojong returned to Gyeongungung (modern-day Deoksugung). There, he proclaimed the founding of the Korean Empire.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: In 1864, Cheoljong of Joseon died suddenly as the result of suspected foul play by the Andong Kim clan, an aristocratic and influential clan of the 19th century. Cheoljong was childless and had not appointed an heir. The Andong Kim clan had risen to power through intermarriage with the royal House of Yi. Queen Cheorin, Cheoljong's consort and a member of the Andong Kim clan, claimed the right to choose the next king, although traditionally the most senior Queen Dowager had the official authority to select the new king. Cheoljong's cousin, Grand Royal Dowager Sinjeong, the widow of Heonjong of Joseon's father of the Pungyang Jo clan, who too had risen to prominence by intermarriage with the Yi family, currently held this title.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Queen Sinjeong saw an opportunity to advance the cause of the Pungyang Jo clan, the only true rival of the Andong Kim clan in Korean politics. As Cheoljong succumbed to his illness, the Grand Royal Dowager Queen was approached by Yi Ha-eung, a distant descendant of King Injo (r.1623–1649), whose father was made an adoptive son of Prince Eunsin, a nephew of King Yeongjo (r.1724–1776).


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The branch that Yi Ha-eung's family belonged to was an obscure line of descendants of the Yi clan, which survived the often deadly political intrigue that frequently embroiled the Joseon court by forming no affiliation with any factions. Yi Ha-eung himself was ineligible for the throne due to a law that dictated that any possible heir had to be part of the generation after the most recent incumbent of the throne, but his second son, Yi Myeongbok, was a possible successor to the throne.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The Pungyang Jo clan saw that Yi Myeongbok was only 12 years old and would not be able to rule in his own name until he came of age, and that they could easily influence Yi Ha-eung, who would be acting as regent for his son. As soon as news of Cheoljong's death reached Yi Ha-eung through his intricate network of spies in the palace, he and the Pungyang Jo clan took the hereditary royal seal (considered necessary for a legitimate reign to take place and aristocratic recognition to be received), effectively giving Queen Sinjeong absolute power to select the successor to the throne. By the time Cheoljong's death became a known fact, the Andong Kim clan was powerless to act according to law because the seal already lay in the hands of Grand Royal Dowager Queen Shinjeong.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: In the autumn of 1864, Yi Myeong-bok was crowned as King Gojong of Joseon, with his father titled Heungseon Daewongun ( "Grand Internal Prince").


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The strongly Confucian Heungseon Daewongun proved to be a capable and calculating leader in the early years of Gojong's reign. He abolished the old government institutions that had become corrupt under the rule of various clans, revised the law codes along with the household laws of the royal court and the rules of court ritual, and heavily reformed the military techniques of the royal armies. Within a few years, he was able to secure complete control of the court, and eventually receive the submission of the Pungyang Jo's while successfully disposing of the last of the Andong Kim's, whose corruption, he believed, was responsible for the country's decline in the 19th century.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The future queen-consort was born into the aristocratic Yeoheung Min clan on 17 November 1851 within the (,) in Seomrak Village, Geundong-myeon, Yeoheung (present-day Yeoju), Gyeonggi Province, where the clan originated.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The Yeoheung Min’s were a noble clan boasting many highly positioned bureaucrats in its illustrious past, princess consorts, as well as two queen consorts: Queen Wongyeong, the wife of Taejong of Joseon and mother of Sejong the Great, and Queen Inhyeon, the second wife of Sukjong of Joseon.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: When her father Min Chi-rok was young, he studied under scholar Oh Hui-sang (, ), and eventually married his daughter and first wife, Lady Oh of the Haeju Oh clan (, ). However, Lady Oh died at the age of 36 in 1833 with no children. After mourning for three years, Min Chi-rok married Yi Gyu-nyeon's daughter, Lady Yi of the Hansan Yi clan, in 1836. She was the fourth child to Lady Yi. She had an older brother and two older sisters who died prior to her birth.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Before her marriage, the empress was known as the daughter of Min Chi-rok, Lady Min, or Min Ja-yeong (, ). At age seven, she lost her father to an illness on 17 September 1858 while he was in Sado city. Lady Min was then raised by her mother and Min relatives for eight years until she moved to the palace and became queen. Ja-yeong worked with her mother while in living in Gamgodang for three years. In 1861, it was decided during King Cheoljong's 12th year of reign that Min Seung-ho, her mother-in-law's younger brother, would become her father's heir.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: When Lady Min became Queen Consort in 1866, her mother was given the royal title of "Internal Princess Consort Hanchang" (, ). Her father was given the royal title of "Internal Prince Yeoseong, Min Chi-rok" (, ), and after he died, he was appointed as "Yeonguijeong". Her father's first wife also given the royal title of "Internal Princess Consort Haeryeong" (Hangul: 해령부부인, Hanja: 海寧府夫人).


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Her mother died from a bombing assassination in 1874, along with her adoptive older brother, Min Seung-ho.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: When Gojong reached the age of 15, his father began to look through candidates for Gojong to marry. The Daewongun sought someone with no close relatives who would harbor political ambitions and who came from a noble lineage, allowing himto justify his choice to the court and the people. After rejecting numorus canadates, the Daewongun's wife, Grand Internal Princess Consort Sunmok (known at the time as Grand Internal Princess Consort Yeoheung; "Yeoheung Budaebuin"; ) and his mother, Princess Consort Min, proposed a bride from their own clan, the Yeoheung Min. She was orphaned and was said to possess beautiful features, a healthy body, and an ordinary level of education.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The bride underwent a strict selection process, culminating in a meeting with the Daewongun on 6 March, and a marriage ceremony on 20 March 1866. He did not realize the empress's politically ambitious nature in the meeting he held. Ja-yeong also held a gentleness to her. It might have been because he was afraid that the Andong Kim clan and Pyungyang Jo clan would raise again in power that he chose Ja-yeong, since she had no father or brother by blood, throughout the duration of the meeting which left the Daewongun satisfied. But it was said that after meeting with Ja-yeong, he felt slightly disturbed by her presence. Saying that she "...was a woman of great determination and poise“ but paid no mind to it and allowed her to marry his son.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Min, barely 16, married the 15-year-old king and was invested in a ceremony (, ) as the Queen Consort of Joseon. Two places assert claims on the marriage and ascension: both Injeong Hall () at Changdeok Palace and Norak Hall () at Unhyeon Palace. The wig typically worn by brides at royal weddings was so heavy for the slight 16-year-old bride that a tall court lady was specially assigned to support it from the back. Directly following the wedding was the three-day ceremony for the reverencing of the ancestors.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The first impression of Ja-yeong at the palace was that she was in fact gentle and docile, and tried to be a good daughter-in-law but as she got older, the queen became resigned due to the Heungseon Daewongun. By the time the queen entered the palace, the 15-year-old Gojong had already favored concubine Yi Gwi-in of the Gyeongju Yi clan (Gwi-in being the first junior rank of concubine). On the day of their marriage ceremony, Gojong did not go to Queen Min's quarters but to concubine Yi Gwi-in's quarters. This would later get the favor of the Heungseon Daewongun.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Older officials soon noticed that the new queen consort was an assertive and ambitious woman, unlike other queens preceding her. She did not participate in lavish parties, rarely commissioned extravagant fashions from the royal ateliers, and almost never hosted afternoon tea parties with the various princesses of the royal family or powerful aristocratic ladies unless politics required her to do so. While she was expected to act as an icon for Korea's high society, the queen rejected this role. Instead, she devoted time to reading books generally reserved for men (such as "Spring and Autumn Annals" and its accompanying "Zuo Zhuan",) and furthered her own education in history, science, politics, philosophy, and religion.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: By the age of twenty, the queen consort had begun to leave her apartments at Changgyeong Palace and to play an active part in politics in spite of the Daewongun and various high officials, who viewed her involvement meddlesome. The political struggle between the queen consort and the Heungseon Daewongun became public when the son she bore died prematurely four days after birth. The Heungseon Daewongun publicly accused her of being unable to bear a healthy male child, while she suspected her father-in-law of foul play through the ginseng emetic treatment he had brought her. It was probably likely from then on that the Empress started to hold a strong hatred for her father-in-law. The Daewongun then directed Gojong to conceive through concubine Yi Gwi-in from the Yeongbo Hall (), and on 16 April 1868, she gave birth to Prince Wanhwa (), to whom the Daewongun gave the title of crown prince. It was said that the Heungseon Daewongun was so overwhelmed with joy with Gojong's first born son that the Empress was not acknowledged as much.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: However, the queen consort had begun to secretly form a powerful faction against the Heungseon Daewongun, once she reached adulthood; now, with the backing of high officials, scholars, and members of her clan, she sought to remove the Heungseon Daewongun from power. , the queen consort's adoptive older brother, along with court scholar Choe Ik-hyeon, devised a formal impeachment of the Heungseon Daewongun to be presented to the Royal Council of Administration, arguing that Gojong, now 22, should rule in his own right. In 1873, with the approval of Gojong and the Royal Council, the Heungseon Daewongun was forced to retire to Unhyeongung, his estate at Yangju. The queen consort then banished the royal concubine along with her child to a village outside the capital, stripped of royal titles. The child died on 12 January 1880.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: With these expulsions, the queen consort gained complete control over her court, and placed family members in high court positions. Finally, she was a queen consort who ruled along with her husband; moreover she was recognized as being distinctly more politically active than Gojong.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: After Korean refusal to receive Japanese envoys announcing the Meiji Restoration, some Japanese aristocrats favored an immediate invasion of Korea, but the idea was quickly dropped upon the return of the Iwakura Mission on the grounds that the new Japanese government was neither politically nor fiscally stable enough to start a war. When Heungseon Daewongun was ousted from politics, Japan renewed efforts to establish ties with Korea, but the Imperial envoy arriving at Dongnae in 1873 was turned away.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: The Japanese government, which sought to emulate the empires of Europe in their tradition of enforcing so-called Unequal Treaties, responded by sending the Japanese gunboat "Unyō" towards Busan and another warship to the Bay of Yeongheung on the pretext of surveying sea routes, meaning to pressure Korea into opening its doors. The ventured into restricted waters off Ganghwa Island, provoking an attack from Korean shore batteries. The fled but the Japanese used the incident as a pretext to force a treaty on the Korean government. In 1876 six naval vessels and an imperial Japanese envoy were sent to Ganghwa Island to enforce this command.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: A majority of the royal court favored absolute isolationism, but Japan had demonstrated its willingness to use force. After numerous meetings, officials were sent to sign the Ganghwa Treaty, a treaty that had been modeled after treaties imposed on Japan by the United States. The treaty was signed on 15 February 1876, thus opening Korea to Japan and the world.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Various ports were forced to open to Japanese trade, and Japanese now had rights to buy land in designated areas. The treaty also permitted the opening of the major ports, Incheon and Wonsan to Japanese merchants. For the first few years, Japan enjoyed a near total monopoly of trade, while Korean merchants suffered serious losses.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: In 1877, a mission headed by Kim Gi-su was commissioned by Gojong and Min clan to study Japanese westernization and its intentions for Korea.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: In 1881 another mission, this one under Kim Hongjip went to Japan. Kim and his team were shocked at how large the Japanese cities had become. He noted that only 50 years before, Seoul and Busan of Korea were metropolitan centers of East Asia, dominant over underdeveloped Japanese cities; but now, in 1877, with Tokyo and Osaka westernized throughout the Meiji Restoration, Seoul and Busan looked like vestiges of the ancient past.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: When they were in Japan, Kim met with the Chinese ambassador to Tokyo, Ho Ju-chang and the councilor Huang Tsun-hsien. They discussed the international situation of Qing China and Joseon's place in the rapidly changing world. Huang Tsu-hsien presented to Kim a book he had written called "Korean Strategy."


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: China was no longer the hegemonic power of East Asia, and Korea no longer enjoyed military superiority over Japan. In addition, the Russian Empire began expansion into Asia. Huang advised that Korea should adopt a pro-Chinese policy, while retaining close ties with Japan for the time being. He also advised an alliance with the United States for protection against Russia. He advised opening trade relations with Western nations and adopting Western technology. He noted that China had tried but failed due to its size, but Korea was smaller than Japan. He viewed Korea as a barrier to Japanese expansion into mainland Asia. He suggested Korean youths be sent to China and Japan to study, and Western teachers of technical and scientific subjects be invited to Korea.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: When Kim returned to Seoul, Queen Min took special interest in Huang's book and commissioned copies be sent out to all the ministers. She had hoped to win yangban (aristocratic) approval to invite Western nations into Korea, to open up trade with and keep Japan in check. She wanted to first allow Japan to help in the modernization process but towards completion of certain projects, have them be driven out by Western powers.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: However, the yangban aristocracy still opposed opening the country to the West. Choi Ik-hyun, who had helped with the impeachment of Heungseon Daewongun, sided with the isolationists, saying that the Japanese were just like the "Western barbarians" who would spread subversive notions like Catholicism (which had been a major issue during Heungseon Daewongun's reign and had been quashed by massive persecutions).


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: To the socially conservative yangban, Queen Min's plan meant the destruction of social order. The response to the distribution of "Korean Strategy" was a joint memorandum to the throne from scholars in every province of the kingdom. They stated that the ideas in the book were mere abstract theories, unrealizable in practice, and that the adoption of Western technology was not the only way to enrich the country. They demanded that the number of envoys exchanged, ships engaged in trade and articles of trade be strictly limited, and that all foreign books in Korea should be destroyed.


title: Empress Myeongseong

text: Despite these objections, in 1881, a large fact-finding mission was sent to Japan to stay for seventy days observing Japanese government offices, factories, military and police organizations, and business practices. They also obtained information about innovations in the Japanese government copied from the West, especially the proposed constitution.