# ladybird books satire ladybird books - for clean happy obedient players only - fascinating historical artifacts clearly illuminating upper middle class bourgeois culture in some permanently forever green and disturbingly pleasant england circa immediate post wwii ir illustrations showcase the exact type of soul crushing inner blandscape predicted by writer and visionary j. g ballard > (..] the future is just going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul > ~ interview (30 october 1982) in re/search no. 8/9 (1984) ladybird key word reading books are holy place in the elite stifled imagination where mummy and daddy and peter and jane live in the carefree countryside far away from all the vulgar noise of johnny foreigner and ir funny ideas and everyone knows ir little g0d given role in english(tm) life by heart and plays it out with ruthlessly charming and terrifyingly bland efficiency uk based artist miriam elia has faced unthinking blanket censorship from neckless bean counters at penguin books for releasing a 'frightfully jolly' postmodern satire of one of ir impossibly ancient titles - ironic indeed considering such images were tantamount to shameless propaganda for a white-washed western world of fake innocence plastic living and unquestioned misogyny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfm9wlfqcp0 as a small measure of artistic solidarity and to try one's hand at a spot of spiffing digital montage robert what presents "boyz n' girlz": a satire and parody in twenty four slices of perfectly english existential delight // republic of bob