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Nick Bougas

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Nick Bougas
Bougas in 2008
Born
Nicholas Bougas

1955 (age 68–69)
Savannah, Georgia, U.S.
Other namesA. Wyatt Mann
Occupation(s)Film director, illustrator, record producer, cartoonist
Years active1977–present

Nicholas Bougas (born 1955) is an American documentary film director, illustrator and record producer.[1] As a cartoonist, he has used the pen name A. Wyatt Mann to produce racist, antisemitic, antifeminist and homophobic cartoons.[2][3][4]

Career

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Bougas directed the mondo film Death Scenes, hosted by Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey.[5] The film was followed by Death Scenes 2 in 1992,[6] and Death Scenes 3 in 1993.[7]

In 1993, he directed the documentary Speak of the Devil: The Canon of Anton LaVey, a profile of LaVey.[1][8][9]

Bougas has directed several other films, such as the 1994 documentary The Goddess Bunny, about disabled transgender tap dancing artist Sandie Crisp.[10][11]

In 1998, Bougas released the album Celebrities... At Their Worst!, a collection of comedic audio blunders by such celebrities as Elvis Presley, Casey Kasem, Paul Anka, and John Wayne.[12][13]

As an illustrator, Bougas has worked with writer and publisher Jim Goad on such publications as Answer Me![14][15]

A. Wyatt Mann

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According to a 2015 BuzzFeed News report, Bougas used the pseudonym "A. Wyatt Mann" (phonetically: 'a white man') to produce overtly racist and antisemitic cartoons in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[3]

Besides black people and Jews, his cartoons occasionally targeted other minorities and groups, including gay people and feminists. Many of them were published at the time by white supremacist Tom Metzger and Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey. Bougas has never publicly confirmed his authorship; however, his identity as Mann was confirmed by multiple people who worked with him at the time, and in captions of photos taken at various events.[3]

The Mann cartoons have been widely reused as hateful memes by white supremacists, various internet trolls, and later, the alt-right. One cartoon in particular, a stereotypical caricature of a Jewish person referred to as the "Happy Merchant", became one of the most popular antisemitic images on the internet. It has been reused, modified and parodied multiple times, eventually becoming part of the visual language of websites such as 4chan.[2][3][16][17]

Bougas' work as Mann has frequently been combined by Internet trolls with cartoons by political cartoonist Ben Garrison, which Garrison has said generates confusion between the two artists.[2][18]

Selected filmography

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References

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  1. ^ a b Barton, Blanche (2014) [1990]. "Dance Macabre". The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey (Revised ed.). Feral House. p. 253. ISBN 978-1-62731-002-4.
  2. ^ a b c Ellis, Emma Grey (June 19, 2017). "The Alt-Right Found Its Favorite Cartoonist—and Almost Ruined His Life". Wired. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2019. But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison's work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Man, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web's most enduring anti-Semitic images.
  3. ^ a b c d Bernstein, Joseph (February 5, 2015). "The Surprisingly Mainstream History Of The Internet's Favorite Anti-Semitic Image". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on February 28, 2019. Retrieved December 4, 2018. So. You could stop right there and say that Nick Bougas is the most widely disseminated anti-Semitic cartoonist of all time and not be wrong.
  4. ^ Malice, Michael (May 19, 2019). The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. St. Martin's Publishing Group. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-250-15467-5. Under the pen name of 'A. Wyatt Mann,' artist Nick Bougas has drawn many explicitly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic cartoons where there isn't even a pretense of humor.
  5. ^ Robert Firsching (2016). "Death Scenes (1989)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016.
  6. ^ Robert Firsching (2016). "Death Scenes 2 (1992)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 9, 2016.
  7. ^ "Death Scenes 3 (1993)". Rotten Tomatoes.
  8. ^ Lewis, James R. (2001). Satanism Today: An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore, and Popular Culture. ABC-CLIO. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-57607-292-9. LCCN 2001005141.
  9. ^ Boulware, Jack (November 19, 1997). "Slap Shots". SF Weekly. Archived from the original on September 15, 2017.
  10. ^ "The Goddess Bunny". Archived from the original on May 10, 2017 – via VHS Collector.
  11. ^ "The Goddess Bunny". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. 2016. Archived from the original on March 25, 2016.
  12. ^ "Weird Record of the Month". CMJ New Music Monthly. September 1998. p. 13. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  13. ^ Pearson, Paul. "Celebrities... At Their Worst!". AllMusic. Archived from the original on March 12, 2016.
  14. ^ Pafrey, Adam (1994). "Fucking Andrea Dworkin" (PDF). Answer Me!. No. 4. pp. 50–53. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 19, 2018 – via JimGoad.net.
  15. ^ O'Brien, Luke (May 30, 2019). "Twitter Still Has A White Nationalist Problem". HuffPost. Archived from the original on August 22, 2019. Retrieved May 5, 2020. Jim Goad is the former editor of Answer Me!, a magazine that ran from 1991 to 1994 and often featured the artwork of racist cartoonist Nick Bougas (Bougas published elsewhere under the pseudonym A. Wyatt Mann).
  16. ^ Ward, Justin (April 19, 2018). "Day of the trope: White nationalist memes thrive on Reddit's r/The_Donald". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on February 19, 2020. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
  17. ^ "General Hate Symbols : The Happy Merchant". Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
  18. ^ Malice, Michael (2019). The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. St. Martin's Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-250-15467-5. LCCN 2018056038. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
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