{"id":309193,"date":"2025-10-30T10:51:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=309193"},"modified":"2025-10-30T10:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:51:09","slug":"what-is-the-meaning-behind-the-uk-band-name-joy-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=309193","title":{"rendered":"What is the meaning behind the UK band name &#8216;Joy Division&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The name &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?tag=joy-division\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Joy Division\">Joy Division<\/a>&#8221; originated from a 1953 novel,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwm.org.uk\/collections\/item\/object\/1500102291\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">House of Dolls<\/a>,\u00a0which described the sexual slavery wings of Nazi concentration camps.\u00a0The band, originally named &#8220;Warsaw,&#8221; changed its name to &#8220;Joy Division&#8221; in 1978 to avoid confusion with another band and to reflect the novel&#8217;s content, which contained the term &#8220;Freudenabteilung&#8221; (Joy Division in German).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The name immediately caused controversy, leading to accusations that the band had right-wing sympathies. The members denied this, though they acknowledged that the name had shock value and was meant to subvert norms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his memoir, Sumner described the decision as &#8220;mischievous&#8221; but noted that he would not choose the name today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most recently Australia&#8217;s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=309195\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">was photographed leaving an Australian Airforce Aircraft wearing a Joy Division<\/a> Tee Shirt.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his memoir, Sumner described the decision as &#8220;mischievous&#8221; but noted that he would not choose the name today.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":309200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2112,85],"tags":[18605,18606],"class_list":["post-309193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-music","category-uk","tag-joy-division","tag-sexual-slavery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309201,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309193\/revisions\/309201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/309200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}