But over the past year or so, “world events and politics have slid away from the suggestively dystopian towards the blatantly and unashamedly dystopian,” he says. Sometimespeople mistake his satire for real material, which he loves.”Not a day goes by without some political event or figure rivaling the absurdity of anything a satirist can create.” This Scarfolk book is brilliant. [It] makes me laugh like Peter O Toole - a sound of wheezy delight" It's not surprising to learn that author Richard Littler is a graphic designer; all the illustrations here (many of which are also featured on the blog) are beautifully executed to the very last detail. The story, though, leaves something to be desired. The silliness that made me laugh out loud at the beginning soon overstayed its welcome; the book is too focused on the graphics to allow the plot to develop into anything you'd care about or be scared by. This is reflected in the blog, which started out as just images but now includes a lot more description around them. It's obvious the popularity of the images has forced the creation of a narrative and not the other way around.

Review: ‘Discovering Scarfolk’ by Richard Littler - The Daily Review: ‘Discovering Scarfolk’ by Richard Littler - The Daily

Scarfolk is a fictional northwestern English town created by writer and designer Richard Littler, who is sometimes identified as the town mayor, L. Ritter. It is trapped in a time loop set in the 1970s, and its culture, parodying that of Britain at the time, features elements of the absurd and the macabre. First published as a blog of fake historical documents parodying British public information posters of the 1970s, a collected book was published in 2014, and the Scarfolk Annual was released in 2019. [1] Scarfolk is depicted as a bleak, post-industrial landscape through unsettling images of urban life; Littler's output belongs to the genres of hauntology and dystopian satire; his psychologically disturbing form of humour has been likened to the writings of George Orwell and J. G. Ballard. [2] [3] Description [ edit ] Sanctioned "Scarfolk Annual" On Its Way". downthetubes.net. 8 August 2019 . Retrieved 18 October 2019. Some observers have detected a kinship between Scarfolk and the musical genre of ‘hauntology’, as exemplified by the Ghost Box record label. It’s a link that Littler himself can understand. Indeed, he describes the unmade screenplay that he cannibalised for the blog as ‘hauntology-themed’. Daniel Bush makes a dreadful mistake when he stops off at Scarfolk, and when his two sons are abducted he must overcome the town’s totalitarian leadership, the paranoia of its brainwashed inhabitants and the dark secrets at the town’s malevolent heart. The conceit is that Scarfolk can never leave the 1970s, even though the rest of the world passes by normally. Perhaps this happens in a neighboring parallel universe, who knows. In practical terms, it means the present day can occasionally leak into the 1970s and vice versa, which is a way to contrast changes in social attitudes and ideas of the past 40 or 50 years. Collectors Weekly: Do you think of Scarfolk as an alternate version of your childhood?

Retailers:

I primarily study the ancient world. I only live in the modern one! Ancient rulers were heavily into “sacred” roles and patterns. These took the form of rituals, at first to help remember, but later because the underlying science/knowledge associated with those patterns/roles was for the most part forgotten. However, even the rote repetition of traditional roles and patterns produced predictable results. This must be why we are so reluctant to discover the origins of our belief systems. It’s not much, but it’s all we’ve got. Superstition is preferred to chaos, and those that rule the world exploit it to the max. Enlightenment of the masses is not the policy of the upper classes! Peace in the 3rd World is not the “foreign policy” of the 1st World. The charity lobbied the council which eventually agreed to regulate the amount of people that could be hurled from tall buildings (see poster above). Scarfolk designs often play with the modernist aesthetic of actual Penguin covers, like these three above. Collectors Weekly: Have people mistaken your designs for real artifacts? great job again hunter — currently reading “the face that must die” by ramsey campbell — their lives could have paralleled — overbearing mothers/absent fathers etc etc — it does make one so thankful to have been dropped off (either via the stork, aliens or a higher supreme being) in a loving home with for the most part “sanity” or if not that — a lot of good humor

Discovering Scarfolk | Richard Littler

In 1972, the government drew up plans to construct a deportation facility off the coast of Ireland that could house as many as 70 million people - the entire population of the UK, if need be. The intention was to make it an exact replica of the United Kingdom and call it Bad Kingdom. Nobody, it seemed, fulfilled the increasingly stringent criteria of what it meant to be truly British. Based on the darkly hilarious Scarfolk blog, which presents odd items from the archives of an insular, paranoid, medically unsafe and supernaturally haunted town in the northeast of 1970s England, Discovering Scarfolk attempts to understand what happened to a man who may or may not have been named Daniel Bush, and who may or may not have lost two children who may or not have been his, and may or not have subsequently been held captive in Scarfolk itself. A town which may or may not exist. Mark Sinclair (27 March 2013). "Creative Review – Have you been to Scarfolk?". Creative Review. Archived from the original on 27 April 2015 . Retrieved 14 October 2014.A book called Discovering Scarfolk, which tells the story of a family trapped in the town, was published in October 2014 by Ebury Press. [18] [19] It is a guide to all aspects of Scarfolk and covers the "frenzied archive of Daniel Bush, whose sons 'disappeared' in Scarfolk in 1970." [18] Littler has said that the book "attempts to guide you through the darkness by making light of the contradictions and it promises not to unnerve you. Well, not too much anyway." [3]

Scarfolk Council Scarfolk Council

What also seems clear is that an unidentified but enthusiastic council employee took it upon themselves to extend Plan C to almost every eventuality, in effect making the nuclear Plan C simply the only plan. This book is a veritable laugh riot for those of you with the proper sense of humor AND for those of you who are chomping at the bit waiting for a Welcome to Night Vale book. In January 2014, the London Evening Standard published an article [7] by Charles Saatchi, which accidentally included the cover of a Scarfolk book called Eating Children: Population Control & The Food Crisis instead of the intended Jonathan Swift publication A Modest Proposal ( 1729).Saatchi is Scarfolked - Imperica - arts, technology, and media magazine". Imperica. 30 January 2014. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014 . Retrieved 14 October 2014. What started as a handful of faux-vintage images for friends’ birthday cards grew into this universe of fake memorabilia, so complete that the Scarfolk concept was recently optioned for a British TV series. Littler borrows liberally from authentic designs of the era to craft his artfully decaying images, which are so familiar at first glance that many have been mistaken for authentic found objects rather than re-creations. Littler currently resides in Germany, but he grew up in the North West of England. He lived in Radcliffe near Bury until 1976 (when he was six) whereupon his family moved to Timperley, a small suburb south of Manchester. At various times Timperley has been home to Caroline Aherne, Chris Sievey (of Frank Sidebottom fame), and Ian Brown and John Squire of The Stone Roses. Littler admits that growing up there, as well as in Radcliffe, has made a direct impact on his work. In actual fact, all the subjects’ brains produced exactly the same image: An electrified cage containing a baby monkey whose mind had been destroyed by medical experiments, systematic torture and the jarring sound of a toy mechanical bear mercilessly beating a drum 24 hours a day.