After This

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It didn’t rock the critics, but it is distinctly creepy.  After.Life came out in 2009 and quickly fell from sight.  It’s an interesting movie nevertheless.  Any film that features an undertaker, for one thing, gets edgy.  The story of a young teacher who never really felt loved and who is killed in a car crash sounds tragic enough.  Then she finds herself conscious in the preparation room where the funeral director, Eliot Deacon, talks to her, assuring her that he can speak with the dead.  As the movie progresses we begin to wonder if Anna, the teacher, really is dead or if she’s being killed by Deacon for having given up on life.  His name is suspiciously religious, fittingly for a film that deals with such a topic as the afterlife.  Overall, however, it’s pretty bleak.  One of Anna’s students also sees her after she dies and Deacon befriends him, offering to teach him his trade.

Although the critics didn’t like it, it is spooky on many levels.  Not the least of which is the question never satisfactorily answered of how to know when you’re really dead.  The movie presents the soul as a fact, and even dead bodies can move around when the situation merits it.  Death is one of those areas that religion generally enters.  Some secularists maintain their lack of religious thought even in this situation, but many people find religion helpful at this ultimate transition and the soul seems entirely natural then.  It’s unclear in the movie whether Deacon is good or bad.  He’s certainly obsequious, accommodating the wishes of families even when unreasonable.  With the dead, however, he takes a firmer stance, having to convince them that they’re no longer living.  The movie’s a bit confusing in the case of Anna—we’re never really sure if she’s dead or not.

Even with commercial interruptions (it’s free to watch that way) I found myself getting caught up in the story.  Deacon kept asking what it is the living really want.  He’s shown throughout doing the work singlehandedly, from picking up the bodies, to embalming, to even digging the grave.  His loneliness is ameliorated by his ability to speak to the dead, each of whom he photographs and puts on his bedroom wall.  Religion may be behind the soul, but no obvious religious talk pervades the film.  I have to wonder if this might not be the reason it fails to frighten its many critics.  Horror that uses religion effectively often becomes successful.  Those that avoid religion like, well, death, often fail to convince even secular critics.

Justice Hungry

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Social justice is very important to me.  At the same time I realize I’m just a single individual, and a small one at that.  I have a little group of internet friends (rather strangely called “followers”) but what I do and write has barely an impact with so much wrong in the world.  I suspect most people fall into this same dilemma.  A recent thread on the local Nextdoor app, for instance, reminded me how much people care for strangers in difficult times.  I side with Batman here—people are generally good.  Most of us are easily led, however.  And as we were taught in kindergarten, just one bad person spoils it for everyone.  So we find ourselves in a world disastrously off kilter and with nobody able to fix the problem.  Problems.  There are so many that it’s overwhelming.

Democracy seems like a good idea.  The problem is that the system is easily gamed by autocrats.  World news shows us the Hitler’s playbook is alive and well, even, if not especially, among “Christian” nations.  Jesus had no political power.  As soon as his followers gained it, the message of their master faded.  Today it’s unrecognizable.  “Bible believing” Christians who violate every principle in the Good Book to retain power is hardly something the carpenter from Nazareth would’ve advocated, or even, I venture, comprehended.  Bullies with only their own interests in mind take up the reins of state and convoluted laws allow them to do so.  The selfish win.

Photo by Sarah Ardin on Unsplash

I have great admiration for the people I know who work for social justice incessantly.  The kind of people you tremble to see coming because you know you can never measure up to their level of commitment.  Needed change, however, comes in small steps.  People are fearful and don’t welcome overnight paradigm shifts.  I admire social justice warriors even as I admire hose who throw themselves in front of buses or trains to save others.  I find myself watching their heroic action while calculating the best way to help, overthinking the problem.  I’ve marched in a number of protests, and it felt good.  I’ve not been able to free myself from capitalism long enough to really make a difference, I fear.  An idealist, conceivably, but not, I hope, an unawoken one.  So I struggle for justice and contribute what I can to right causes.  At the same time I’m compelled to acknowledge and thank those who do it so much better than I ever will.

True Value

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It’s a funny idea, net worth.  (Who says Capitalism isn’t a religion?)  We decide what people are worth by what corporate executives and small-minded economics determine what they will be paid.  We seem to think entitled, essentially worthless, inheritors of ancestral money are of more value than the workers who actually fuel the economy.  Economics is called the “dismal science” for more than one reason.  This system can’t help but to make individuals question their self worth, which, according to Capitalism, is different from net worth.  (Net requires taking the cost of goods into account, and is less than the list worth.)  And you must never tell anyone your net worth.  Why do we still hold to this system that future historians will see as just as archaic and cruel as feudalism?

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Nashotah House could hardly have claimed to be competitive with salaries.  Still, to those hired the title “professor” indicated you were a cut above many other professions.  Certainly above most clergy, the future cohort of which you were teaching.  Even so, it took a dozen years in publishing for me to reach the salary level at which I was asked to leave said seminary.  Net worth?  I tend to think of it as idol worship.  Many well-meaning colleagues congratulate me on my LinkedIn work anniversary.  None ask “How are you doing there?”  None wonder “Have you yet caught up with your net income of 2005?”  We’re all too busy bowing at the altar of the Stock Exchange.

People are worth far more than money.  For some, money, and only money (which is a symbol only), is worth having.  Some run for president on that very platform.  Holding up a Bible they’re careful that it doesn’t fall open to the place where it says love of money is the root of evil.  There is no such thing as evil in the religion of Capitalism.  Except Communism.  Interestingly enough, the New Testament advocates for a form of communism, but Acts is easily overlooked on the way to Leviticus.  I tend to stop about half-way between, at that comfortably uncomfortable book of Ecclesiastes.  It’s there that we read that all is vanity.  Money is merely a symbol of what we value.  Looking at what those who’ve devoted their lives to it have done with it, net worth sends me back to the cynical old preacher wondering about the meaning of it all.  It seems an appropriate place for the musings of a mere editor aware that his colleagues are valued much more by this “Christian” society.  I think the “net” in net worth should be cast much further.

Remarkable and Beautiful

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Last year I read and commented on Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.  I knew there’d be a sequel, but it took some time for it to come out in paperback, and it took a day of flying to give me dedicated time to finishing it.  A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor picks up where the first novel left off, bringing April May back to life.  It’s a story about good and evil and how humans, as flawed as we are, are nevertheless worth saving.  This story takes a further sci-fi and dystopian turn than the first part, moving it more into the regular novel than the “new adult” that seems to better fit the initial book.  Really only six months have passed since the first story, but the still young protagonists have aged in the way experience doles out to people who think they understand the world better than they do.

The world of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is dystopian in the sense that corporations have too much power and can (and do) drive the direction of human development.  It’s clearly a novel written after a couple years of repressive Trump rule where autocrats will do anything to keep in the public eye, even destroy their own world.  It becomes Manichaean, or maybe even Zoroastrian in that the extraterrestrial entity Carl, who was the subject of the first novel, reveals that he has an evil “brother” that encourages the corporations in their efforts to rule the world.  The goal of this evil intelligence is to get humanity to destroy itself as a failed experiment.  There’s plenty of metaphor here since the way to get people to destroy themselves is through virtual reality.

As someone who finds quotidian reality difficult enough, I have no desire to see how well some technocrats can imitate what nature already does so well.  Stepping outside with a cold November wind blowing down my collar, threatening snow and driving me back indoors I know I’m in a world not custom built for our comfort.  I am one of billions of scurrying, resistant, persistent creatures doing my best to survive.  I’m sure that virtual reality is an amazing experience, but so is stepping out into that November wind.  Hank Green is gifted at writing compelling, conflicted characters.  From his own internet platform he’s become a significant influencer, gathering the interest of even the White House.  His two novels form a thoughtful set that, like the books of his brother John, make us stop and think what it is to be human.

Flight Path

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It’s been some time since I was on a plane.  Or in a hotel.  These things seem strange and foreign to me now.  Covid-19 is now a fixture in life and we, as humans typically do, have adjusted.  Of course I was flying for Thanksgiving on the busiest travel day of the year.  Seeing all those people standing in line at 4:30 a.m. at the airport made my lifestyle seem a little less weird.  I’m used to being up at this time.  They did have to de-ice the plane at Lehigh Valley International Airport.  I’ve never been on a plane that was taking a shower before.  I also didn’t touch anything but my book.  And it seemed that those who “don’t believe in” masking weren’t making a fuss because you can’t win an argument with the FAA. I’m thankful for that.

I’d almost forgotten how to fly.  On the first leg of the journey I was the only one whose “hand-held device” was made of paper.  Connecting out of O’Hare, however, quite a few more books made an appearance.  I sit in front of a device all day at work, so on a rare day off I don’t really want to have to stare at a screen.  Although the total air time was under four hours I brought seven books in my personal item.  I finished one of them (the longest) on the trip.  I still have plenty of choices for the flight home on the weekend.  Thanksgiving, even more than Christmas, is the time for family gatherings.  We’re all vaccinated on this side, so it feels mostly safe.

This Thanksgiving I’m thankful that no turkeys were harmed on my account.  If you knew how “thanksgiving turkeys” are raised it’d put you off your feed, as the saying goes.  I’m also thankful that travel is possible, even if with added restrictions.  Frankly, I’m glad for them.  Anti-vaxxers don’t seem to realize that it’s not just themselves they’d be protecting, but others as well.  Vaccines and masks aren’t just about selfish desires.  Last year we couldn’t even consider traveling.  Covid-19 has changed the way we do things, perhaps permanently.  We can be thankful that we learn to adjust.  I’m no fan of crowds, but there was something a bit exhilarating about being among other goal-oriented individuals all focused on being with loved ones.  It gives me renewed faith in humanity, and that is something for which to be thankful.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Learning to Like

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The shout-out is an always appreciated gesture.  Among the guests on The Incarcerated Christian podcast, I’m pretty clearly the one with the smallest following.  That makes me doubly grateful to Robin and Debra for the work they’re doing.  If you want to get a sense of what their initial year involved, please take an unrushed moment or two and listen to their year-end reflection.  Better yet, follow them wherever you follow podcasts.  I’ve been watching some YouTube lately (I know, I know, the world has gone after TikTok instead) and I’ve come to realize that even those channels with millions of views have to remind people every single episode to click like, share, and/or notification.  Nobody knows it’s worth their time if readers/watchers don’t share!

One of the things about writing is that is craves readers.  There’s an almost Hebraic sense in which my writing is intended as a statement, whether or not it’s even read.  Ideas build up until they must be expressed.  You start to get to know other people by their words, written or spoken.  I sincerely wish I had more time to listen to podcasts.  I’m one of those people who can’t write with music or talking going on.  Nor can I work that way.  Those two activities make up the majority of my waking hours (perhaps I’m trying too hard, if there is such a thing).  Even the smallest Who, however, has his “Yop” to express.  In that case, however, he ended up saving the world.  I suspect many people have no idea what this blog’s about.  If you know, please tell me.  (There’s a comment section below.  Don’t forget to click like and share when you’re down there!)

The Incarcerated Christian has had everyone from evangelical pastors to obscure religionists such as yours truly on their podcasts.  People who aren’t afraid of the dark.  There’s an episode about the divine feminine.  There’s another by a blogger who used to follow my blog and comment on it in the early days until his own efforts took off.  And there are the hosts, Debra and Robin, whose stories are intriguing in their own right.  They approached me not knowing my own history with abusive religions—perhaps it comes through in my writing, or at least my choice of subjects?  There’s a strange comfort in knowing that others have had similar experiences.  Religion can be a monster, devouring people and spitting them out, all in the name of sanctity.  Listen to the Incarcerated Christian podcast, and don’t forget to like and share alike.

Rel Stud 101

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There’s no such thing.  Religious studies, that is.  I first heard this a decade ago while working as religious studies editor for Routledge.  My supervisor stared at me with such knowing eyes that all I could do was nod.  I figured that since I’d spent my entire career in religious studies I’d probably know if it existed or not.  I’ve heard the statement a number of times since then and have come to realize that what it means is this: unlike other academic disciplines, religious studies has no single, central topic of study and no agreed upon methodology.  It consists of scholars trained in a variety of fields looking at different aspects of religion from different perspectives.  There’s even little agreement as to what religion is.

Religious studies is an outgrowth of biblical studies.  Studying the Bible was a long preoccupation with Jews and Christians.  Long before there were universities there were places you could study the Good Book in depth.  When enough time had passed history of Christianity and theology were added to the mix.  It was only fairly recently, about the late nineteenth century, that scholars of Christianity began to wonder about other religions.  The earliest religious studies were Christians studying other faiths.  Now, of course, religious studies exists in a number of universities and colleges (but by no means all of them) and nobody really stops to think how this came to be.  Students are very interested in religions, but as a major it offers few career options (yours truly is a case in point).  It’s a discipline under duress.  Pretty stressful for something that just doesn’t exist, isn’t it?

My suspicion is that many who entered this limbo started out as I did—a curious Christian wanting to know as much as possible about what I’d been taught.  You learn to think along the way, with somewhat predictable results.  Sometimes it takes years to dawn on you.  In other words, I doubt that many entered this field consciously thinking “I want to learn religious studies as a discipline.”  Like a pitcher plant, however, once you fly in there’s no way out.  Instead we have to find tools to study this strange and slippery environment into which we’ve fallen.  Otherwise we’ll simply be digested.  I made it through three degree programs in this field without ever encountering this idea that apparently has been long known.  Numbers are declining, which makes those of us in here how long our odyssey might continue.  If it even exists.

Numbers Game

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I once asked a movie expert—this must’ve been when I was regularly on a campus somewhere, but not Nashotah House—how many movies had been made.  He sighed and said “There’s no way to know that.”  What I was thinking at the time was the Motion Picture Association of America (now the Motion Picture Association) number that comes near the end of the credits.  I wondered how many of those there were.  Of course, the number keeps changing.  It doesn’t account for television movies or straight to video, although, I see it does now include Netflix.  In any case, I was really interested in the statistics.  I still am.  I may not be a math person, but big numbers are intriguing.

The more I read about movies, and I seem to be moving in that direction, the more I realize how nobody can be an expert on all of them.  Even those of us with decades of experience watching horror can’t keep up with that genre.  Many of the books I’ve read are by authors whose families don’t like horror, so they have to carve out time alone to see the films.  This is on top of their jobs, which for some, admittedly, is film analysis—perhaps they’re the lucky ones.  I selected many films to discuss in Holy Horror.  There’s no index of the Bible in films, as useful as such an index would be.  As I continue to watch, and sometimes rewatch, I keep finding more and more material.  At some point, however, you just have to say “what I have written, I have written.”  But how many movies actually engage the Good Book?  There may be a way to know that, but it will take a lifetime of research.

Speaking of large numbers, the stats for how many Bibles are sold each year is a phenomenon unto itself.  It seems inevitable that it would find several of the cracks in American culture and leak in like rain water.  At times it’s the antidote to horror, while at others it’s the dote itself.  Holy Horror was never intended to be comprehensive.  It limited itself in intentional ways.  As I was writing it my naive question kept coming back to me.  When I research a topic I like to read as much written on the topic that I possibly can.  Of course, I spend over eight hours a day for most of the year doing something else.  The number of days like that, I suspect, is frightfully large.

Religious Dinosaurs

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Dippy is, apparently, a common name for pet diplodocuses.  The statue of a diplodocus outside the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh is fondly known as “Dippy,” as is the fossilized remains of one such dinosaur from London’s Natural History Museum.  The London Dippy is on tour, or at least has been.  I learned about the fact that Dippy was in Norwich Cathedral just a day or so after the exhibit closed (I wouldn’t have been able to make it in any case; I mean I haven’t been able to get to the Pittsburgh Dippy and I live in the same state).  There are still plenty of photos on the cathedral’s website.  It’s a striking juxtaposition.  A massive stone building constructed to a medieval conception of God and one of the best examples of evolution, far older than the church on several orders of magnitude, peacefully coexisting.

John Bell Hatcher, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

American evangelicalism has a much harder time accepting science.  I’ve been writing about change recently.  One of the changes in western thinking has been to move from the “I told you so” of clerics to the “I can show you evidence” of scientists.  Those who like others to tell them what to think have a difficult time letting go of medieval notions of the world—that it’s flat, and young, and about to end, as if God has a very limited imagination.  We now know that the world has been here far longer than one interpretation of the Bible posits, but that doesn’t make it any easier to have a conversation about it.  Many religions want to claim knowledge that can’t be questioned.  And yet, dinosaurs and cathedrals seem to mix well.

The assumption that those who think differently are evil, or are inspired by evil, is one of the most insidious children of monotheism.  With one God comes the idea of only one way to understand that deity and all other interpretations come from that divinity’s arch-enemy.  It’s a view of the world that struggles with change.  Historians, even those of us who focus on the history of religions, tend to take a long view. It’s possible to trace the development of ideas that have lead to the strange juxtapositions of our modern world.  Apologists so convinced of their interpretation of Genesis that they think the Bible wouldn’t have found dinosaurs worth remarking about, for example, and then cramming them on the ark.  Others, it seems, welcome dinosaurs into cathedrals.  Which is a better way to be humble before God?

Holiday Season

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Halloween, in some ways, is the unofficial kick-off of the holiday season.  This was made clear to me when someone recently played the song “Soul Cake” in the context of Halloween.  I’d only ever heard the song in a Christmas context before, and a little research led to the discovery that asking for soul cakes originated as a Halloween custom (before it was called Halloween, even) but was considered appropriate anywhere from All Hallows through the twelve days of Christmas.  The common thread here is, of course, gift giving.  We tend to keep our holidays discrete for commercial reasons but there is a natural continuity from All Hallows Eve through what used to be known as Epiphany (now Insurrection Day).

Holidays help us prepare for things that we know are coming.  For the Celts, Samhain—which led to our Halloween—was the start of winter.  With no Daylight Saving Time to oppress them with the changing of their clocks and throwing everything off for weeks at a time, this was the dark part of the year.  Holidays are helpful in getting through times when natural light is lacking.  From Halloween you can almost see Thanksgiving.  At Thanksgiving we anticipate Christmas.  The winter solstice holidays see us through the shortest, darkest days of the year.  I’m no fan of capitalism, but as long as we’re stuck with it I wonder why we don’t advocate for Halloween as an official holiday.  The start of the holiday season.  In my local town the Christmas lights went up on November 1.

East and south Asian religions spend considerable energy teaching that change is the only permanent aspect of life.  Western cultures, on the other hand, focus on the status quo, the assumption that once something is established, it will, or should, remain as it is.  Time reminds us that change is constant.  We can allow entropy to win by sitting by and letting things fall apart, or we can try to build something useful to prevent a collapse.  Holidays change over time and over religions.  Halloween was a pre-Christian new year celebration.  From there it changed into a solemn holy day to remember saints and then the dead.  Incorporating aspects of Samhain and some customs such as soul cake begging and guising, it grew to a more fun celebration.  Now it’s a commercial occasion to rival Christmas.  The year is constantly changing.  Just when I start looking for my sweaters I see my light summer clothes haven’t yet been put away.  I look forward to Halloween as the start of the holiday season until we get past the longest night just before Yule.

Spirit of Halloween

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So it’s Halloween.  It’s also Sunday.  I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the spirituality of this particular day.  Now it’s often treated as a trick, a consumerist holiday with too much candy and befitting spooky decorations.  Like all holidays Halloween has evolved from its origins to how we celebrate it today.  Other than Wiccans and Neo-pagans, however, not too many take it seriously.  At Nashotah House, and therefore likely at some parishes scattered around the world, All Saints Day—which is tomorrow—was a day of obligation.  What we call Halloween was the day before this major festival of praising the faithful.  There is some evidence that All Saints was moved to November 1 to counter the lively celebration of Samhain, or the Celtic fire festival marking the onset of winter.

The Celts included an intellectual class known as Druids.  Druids seem to have been the “theologians” (oh, that word!) of the Celts and they mandated that their teachings not be written down.  A great deal of information was passed on by intensive memorization and only became known to us outsiders because after Christianization it began to be written down.  Their idea of the afterlife seems to have been that it was being born into the other world.  In the otherworld life was different and apparently in some respects better.  When our time there drew to a close, our death led to our birth into this world.  The cycle continued on and on.  Samhain was the time when crossing between worlds could occur.  Death wasn’t a cause for sorrow since the otherworld awaited.  Birth into this world was more problematic.

Fear of death seems natural enough to us.  Even though it’s inevitable and this world’s graveyards are full, somehow we seem to think we can avoid it ourselves.  Our evolved survival instinct runs out of control since we’ve eliminated many of the causes of death that have plagued our species (and many other species) for millennia.  Eons.  As we’ve done so we’ve distanced ourselves from death—dying in hospitals, our corpses prepared in funeral homes, buried and eventually forgotten.  To me, the Celtic idea, from a world where death was likely much more close to hand, seems a more healthy outlook.  Instead of fear, why not consider it a day of wonder and celebration?  To many, I know, that is a spooky thought indeed.  It’s more than a day of masks and candy, however.  And we might learn from it if we stop and ponder.

Documenting Horror

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Watching documentaries always seems to raise questions.  I recently found A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss on YouTube.  Produced by the BBC in 2010, the set of three episodes is a selective walk through the horror genre through the eyes of an insider in the film industry.  Divided over three segments, he covers early horror (primarily Frankenstein-related movies), British horror, and the American horror revival beginning in the late 1960s.  It occurred to me while watching this that horror is often—but not always—an intellectual genre.  Many of the plots and ideas are sophisticated and puzzling.  At one point Gatiss says it is nearly the perfect genre for movies.  I would tend to agree.  Many of the payoffs of horror are the reasons I go to see a movie.

Of course, documentaries involve interviews.  While discussing religion and horror—the two are closely related—in the third segment, he considers the impact of what I termed the “unholy trinity” in Holy Horror: Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen.  His primary interview for this set was with David Seltzer, the screenwriter for the last of these.  At this point my memory took me back to an interview on one of the extras for my DVD edition of The Omen.  In that interview Seltzer mentions that the antichrist is at that moment (clearly this was shot shortly after the movie came out) walking the earth.  In my mind I compartmentalized this to interpret his stance as that of a religious conservative.  The idea of the Antichrist, after all, is post-biblical, at least in the sense that end-time scenarios are developed.

The Gatiss interview was filmed many years later and he asked Seltzer if he believed in the Devil.  “No,” Seltzer laughed, stating that if he did he wouldn’t work on movies like The Omen.  People’s opinions change over time, of course.  And the Devil and the Antichrist are two separate characters as they develop after the Bible was completed.  Still, I had to wonder if his earlier interview included that comment about the Antichrist being alive now wasn’t intended as a bit of spooky propaganda for the movie.  It’s difficult to know what someone really believes.  Most people mouth what their ministers say, not really considering where said clergy get their information.  For these many years I’ve been thinking that The Omen was considered as some kind of documentary by the screenwriter.  Documentaries always seem to raise questions.

Podcast Live

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Have you ever had one of those weeks where you forgot what day it was?  (Come on, now, it’s a pandemic—you can admit it!)  I spent yesterday unaware that it was Tuesday.  Tuesday is important because I knew that The Incarcerated Christian was going to be posting my interview on Holy Horror on their podcast.  It’s live now—give a listen!  I’ve been toying with rebooting my own podcasts, but like most other things in life I just can’t find the time to do it.  I still enjoy talking about my ideas and I thank Robin Mitchell Stroud and Debra Levy Martinelli for allowing me to yak their ears off for an hour.  There are many interesting podcasts on their site, so it you decide to listen the interview be sure to hang around a while and explore.

My hosts understand that Holy Horror was written for general readers, if not priced for them.  Being asked questions keeps you sharp, and sometimes it feels like my blade has been dulled from sitting in the drawer too long.  At the risk of sounding too biblical, iron sharpen iron, right?  Conversation is increasingly important in a polarized world where minds are already made up and the preferred solution is to hate others based on differences of opinion.  Why not talk about things?  Interviews also keep me sharp in asking about things I wrote years ago.  It may not seem like it, but the main body of Holy Horror was finished nearly five years ago.  Books take a long time to write and then a long time to publish.  It’s good to be asked about what one has written.

The questions asked on this interview were well thought out and reflective.  I can only hope that my responses were the same.  If you decide to listen and like what you hear, please share it with others.  The interview actually spilled over into a part two that will be posted in a couple weeks.  There’s a lot to say about religion and horror.  I’ve continued to watch movies since the interview and I notice further affirmations.  The Wicker Tree, for example, is a very biblical movie.  Or at least it quotes from the Bible quite a bit.  Holy Horror was very much an experiment on my part to find out if there was any room for a book like this.  After I wrote it I found others shared some interest in these topics, and two people cared enough to schedule an interview about it.  Please give it a listen.

B Film

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October brings horror films to mind.  As soon as the calendar clicks over, discussions of favorite scary movies begins.  As I’ve mentioned many times before, it is the one time of year when those of us who watch horror don’t feel so odd.  It is a little strange, however, to be watching movies related to The Wicker Man at this time of year.  As holiday horror that particular movie is set at the other end of the year, in May.  So I had to see The Wicker Tree, something I’ve avoided doing all these years.  Neither properly a sequel nor a remake, The Wicker Tree is Robin Hardy’s re-envisioning of the story with a larger budget.  There’s no way to prove it, but it seems likely that it was released in response to the unfortunate remake of The Wicker Man in 2006.

There are any number of things that could be said about The Wicker Tree, not least of which is that it’s clear Anthony Shaffer was a far better screenwriter than Robin Hardy.  (Shaffer had written a sequel, more properly conceived, which has not been filmed.)  Robin Hardy was, of course, the director of the original movie.  Plagued by low budget, rushed filming, and lack of production company support, The Wicker Man nevertheless soared.  The Wicker Tree is what is termed a “spiritual successor”—it doesn’t directly carry on the story of the original, but draws its inspiration from it.  It was based on a novel written by Hardy titled Cowboys for Christ.  Two evangelical missionaries are sent to Scotland to convert as many lapsed Christians as they can.  Of course, their invitation to Tressock is a trap so they can be sacrificed on May Day.

Despite the many unanswered questions the film leaves, to someone raised evangelical it seems that Robin Hardy really doesn’t understand what evangelicals are.  Beth and Steve, on their tour through the lowlands, do things evangelicals just wouldn’t do.  They drink, they dance, they swear, they play cards.  The only thing he seemed to get about evangelicals is they like to sing and talk about Jesus and hand out pamphlets.  This is something I often see is movies—those who try to portray evangelicals haven’t actually been evangelical themselves and don’t understand them.  I also find this in my interactions with British colleagues all the time—they don’t really comprehend what evangelicalism is.  That could be a topic for its own post.  In any case, The Wicker Tree has its moments, but it’s convoluted, cynical, and off-the-mark.  It may’ve been intended as a spiritual successor, but its prototype required no re-envisioning.

Banning Banning

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Banned Book Week gets me all aflutter.  There have been years at I’m so busy that it slips by before I notice it, but each year I try to incorporate it somehow into my reading challenges.  This year my book was Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell.  Yes, it’s a young readers’ book.  Most banned and challenged books are.  Why censorious adults feel the need to keep ideas out of print is pretty obvious in these Trumpian times.  (Please note, dear Republicans, many Democrats criticize Biden on a regular basis; we do not worship him.  American Marxist my donkey!)  Book censoring only serves fascist tendencies.  Ideas will find a way to be born, regardless.

Scary Stories, of course received a shot in the arm by Guillermo del Toro and his interest in making a movie based on it.  The stories themselves are drawn from folklore—they’re populist, you might say—and reflect what passes around from perhaps less insane times.  As an adult a reader tends not to find these stories frightening.  For one thing, many of them are stories we’ve heard before.  For another, life has already thrown many scary things at us.  Not only that, but we try to ban books to make adulthood even scarier.  You see, folklore doesn’t go away just because children are kept from the books.  These stories find the gaps just as water does.  They get told in the dark.  Instead of trying to censor them we should try to talk about them.

Adults’ own discomfort with ideas such as death and decay often stand behind our efforts to “protect” our children.  Then they reach maturity not prepared for the adult world of sex, exploitation, and dying.  Our modern comfort-based lifestyle tries to shut away the unpleasant aspects of existence.  Books, however, are the food of the imagination.  To ban them is to try to suppress the truths that authors have uncovered.  Growing up in a conservative household, we weren’t subjected to censorship.  I couldn’t afford many books, but my mother never said “No, you can’t read that.”  Some of my early reading faced uncomfortable facts.  I read both Jaws and The Godfather long before I ever saw the movies.  I read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a form of solidarity with young minds.  There are benefits to learning to deal with fear early on in life.  And Scary Stories, even if not so frightening, has an appropriate place in it.