Weekend Update

[moon_custafer]

(Brief Break from Current Events):
One of the things I always appreciated about the 1950s SF/Horror novel A Scent of New-Mown Hay was that some thought had clearly been put into how the villain’s mad-science would actually work. TIL that’s probably because it was based on a real thing, although afaik the real-life “gamma gardeners” had more peaceful intentions.

Finally gave in and started binge-watching Twin Peaks – have now seen about a third of the original two seasons; I gather I should also see Firewalk With Me before starting the 2017 Return.

I knew from clips and fannish references that there was a fair bit of deliberate humour -- always the more conventional stuff that subverts itself through the introduction of awkwardly realistic details. The example that leaps to mind is a bit in (iirc) S2, where Coop and Sherriff Truman come to the hospital room of a witness who’s regained consciousness, in the hopes she can help their investigation – totally normal scenario for a police procedural, but when the two lawmen try to sit by her bedside, they find their seats are the wrong height and spend the next minute or so trying to adjust them before they can begin showing her sketches of possible suspects and the scene turns dramatic again. By contrast, Coop’s weird visions are perfectly serious.

I realized after a bit that what it all reminded me of was Kids In the Hall, if the Canadian sketch-comedy series had leant even one degree more towards drama. I suppose it’s also partly because the two shows date from the same era, but they definitely share a vibe in which conventional realism is ignored, but stripping it away exposes a layer of emotional realism – the weirder the situation, the more sincerity the actors bring to their performances. Googling the two titles together finds a number of posts by other fans who seem to have noticed this.

ETA— Other notes on stuff I’ve been thinking about: parodies that show familiarity with the original work or era being parodied vs. ones that are based on earlier parody of the subject. Some of this is me having been on Tumblr long enough that when people start making fun of Tumblr posts from Back in the Day, I know what they’re refencing, but I also find myself trying to recall if I ever *actually* saw anybody address their readers as “tumblypoos," and if not, was it just because I was lucky enough to avoid those, or are the modern posters exaggerating the cringe factor? See also – actual slang from any era vs. cliched depictions of that slang*, mid-20th-century depictions of 19th-century popular culture (in which the melodramas are dumbed way, way down, and all magazine cartoons have the punchline “collapse of stout party".)

ETA2 – Also started thinking again about a difference between North American and British folk-horror fantasy, which I think can be summed up as “Anglican Magic.”

*then there’s the subcategory “real-life teen slang vs. advertisers trying to imitate it, and the latter being what generally gets recorded for posterity." I can't recall anybody actually exclaiming RADICAL! in real life during my adolescence, though perhaps there were originally youth subcultures somewhere where it was common. I do recall seeing a serious tv news piece in the early '90s that described a bunch of supposedly common teen slang expression which I had never encountered before and have never read or heard since -- I suspect the teens they asked were just making stuff up to troll the adults.

Comments

[kore]

Fire Walk With Me is amazing, I love it a lot more than the show.

[sovay]

Googling the two titles together finds a number of posts by other fans who seem to have noticed this.

I saw the entire first season and about two-thirds of the second and I agree with that assessment.

Also started thinking again about a difference between North American and British folk-horror fantasy, which I think can be summed up as “Anglican Magic.”

Unpack? I think of Anglican Magic as C.S. Lewis or Elizabeth Goudge.

[moon_custafer]

In American fantasy, if the forces of good are in any way based in paganism or witchcraft, any Christians in the story tend to be determinedly against them even if that puts them on Team Evil by default; I can’t think up any exceptions off the top of my head, though there may well be some.

In contrast, I can think of a lot of British fantasy in which the folkloric neo/paganism (i.e. “what we think druids did” + “whatever local traditions sound like they might tie into that”) and the Church of England aren’t necessarily opposed to each other: In the 1970s Doctor Who story “The Daemons,” a self-proclaimed witch, suspecting (correctly) that paranormal forces are menacing her village, approaches the new rector as an obvious ally against the forces of evil (he’s not, but only because he’s the Master in disguise); in Joan Aiken’s The Cockatrice Boys, Dr. Wren, an archbishop who’s also a medical doctor, is also fairly strongly implied to be a good magician; his best friend is an old lady who’s the team cook and also sometimes has “useful dreams.” I forget the title, but there’s an M.R. James in which a rector who obtained the job by killing his predecessor is hunted down by carving from his own cathedral, but those carvings, centuries-old already, were made from the wood of a local sacred oak tree so at least two separate traditions are after this guy because neither of them approves of murder. The Box of Delights has local clergy *and* Herne the Hunter holding the line against American sorcerer-gangsters. And so on.

The flip side is that M.R. James and others also wrote a fair number of clergy whose hobby is conjuring up demons (Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, etc), but I’d count that as well. Overall I think it might be due to one country having its mainstream Christianity largely descended from the Puritan strain, while the other has a kind of Catholicism-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off that had to keep all the possibly-pagan local traditions because the locals who believed them weren’t a recently-colonized people, and anyway who doesn’t enjoy Wassailing (well, the Puritans, but they’d left)? Does that make sense?

[sovay]

Does that make sense?

It does, although I'm not sure I agree with it: my immediate response was "but The Wicker Man (1973)." Which is more equivocal in its moral alignment all round, but remains seminal British folk horror in which paganism and Christianity are unquestionedly at odds. Penda's Fen (1974) achieves its fusion of the two by reclaiming Christ from the Church. And Susan Cooper's The Grey King (1975) leaves it right until the last minute whether the most Christian character in the novel will be knowingly for the Light or unwittingly for the Dark. I am having more difficulty calling to mind American titles which mix the two, but I know I've seen them—right, Madeline L'Engle, who was in fact Episcopalian. And once you get into Black American fantasy, you see a lot more of the simultaneity, because of so much syncretism which was not merely hiding African gods under the names of Christian saints. I'm not arguing against the existence of Satanic panics and their rejoinders, but I'm not sure it's a totally clear-cut distinction.

I should obviously read The Box of Delights; it sounds, in a good way, nuts.

[moon_custafer]

Yeah, I'm probably cherry-picking.

it sounds, in a good way, nuts.

It is wonderfully nuts, and the 1980s tv adaptation also conveyed most of the nuttiness quite well, plus the in-joke of casting Patrick Troughton as a time-travelling ancient philosopher who’s the current custodian of the titular box.

[sovay]

Yeah, I'm probably cherry-picking.

I don't think you're off-base about the idea of different protocols of fantasy, and I think it does make a difference whether you think of the non-Christian tradition as an indigenous inheritance to be drawn out of the land you still live on—so much of old weird England is about deep time, when it isn't thinking that the time is even deeper in Wales—I just don't think it's as pure a split as "Christian-aligned in the UK, Christian-opposed in the U.S." I would also be curious to know if there was a shift in the second half of the twentieth century, post-Wicca, plus New Age. I am at the moment feeling some jaundice toward modern paganism based on recent conversations where the "Abrahamic faiths" or "Judeo-Christian monotheism" were collectively blamed for the persecution of original flavor pagans and aside from the fact that I want to fire both of these phrases into the sun on general principle, the ahistoricity concerns me.

plus the in-joke of casting Patrick Troughton as a time-travelling ancient philosopher who’s the current custodian of the titular box.

Nice.

[pedanther]

I should obviously read The Box of Delights; it sounds, in a good way, nuts.

The book that The Box of Delights is a sequel to, The Midnight Folk, also possesses that quality.

(I'd recommend reading The Midnight Folk first, if you can find a copy reasonably available; the plots of the two books are distinct enough that you can read The Box of Delights on its own, as many have, but there's at least one nice plot twist in The Midnight Folk that The Box of Delights casually gives away because it assumes you already know about it.)

[sovay]

(I'd recommend reading The Midnight Folk first, if you can find a copy reasonably available; the plots of the two books are distinct enough that you can read The Box of Delights on its own, as many have, but there's at least one nice plot twist in The Midnight Folk that The Box of Delights casually gives away because it assumes you already know about it.)

Both were reprinted by the New York Review of Books I had thought recently, but I guess only in perspective of the 1930's. These are both exactly the sort of books I would have read as a child, except I didn't.

[pedanther]

Hah. You know that plot twist I mentioned that The Box of Delights casually gives away because it assumes you've already read The Midnight Folk? The NYRB blurb for the The Midnight Folk also casually gives it away, apparently because it assumes you've already read The Box of Delights. Occupational hazard of being a nearly-a-century-old plot twist, I guess.

[sovay]

Occupational hazard of being a nearly-a-century-old plot twist, I guess.

I mean, the good news is I legitimately don't care about spoilers.

[teenybuffalo]

I love this overview and may find it useful in thinking about some writing I mean to do soon, just so you know.

[pedanther]

See also – actual slang from any era vs. cliched depictions of that slang*, mid-20th-century depictions of 19th-century popular culture

And celebrity impressions -- I once saw an interview with a professional impressionist where he remarked that once somebody manages a good impression of a particular celebrity, there's a tendency for subsequent impressionists to be doing that guy doing the celebrity, rather than doing a direct take on the celebrity. And eventually the impression gets boiled down into a bit that everybody recognises but it's even money whether it retains any real resemblance to the person it's supposed to be.

[moon_custafer]

Andrew, who’s quite good at vocal impressions and used to act in a lot of fan sketches at conventions, always says that the key to playing a character played professionally by someone else is to find out what the actor’s voice sounds like naturally, and use that as a baseline, rather than imitating their in-character voice which just leads to mimicry decay. Luckily his volunteer work at conventions meant he’d usually met the original actors, and sometimes got drunk with them.

[sovay]

And eventually the impression gets boiled down into a bit that everybody recognises but it's even money whether it retains any real resemblance to the person it's supposed to be.

*cough* Peter Lorre impersonations *cough*

[teenybuffalo]

I Was Coming Here To Convey This Sentiment

*punts Mel Blanc over the horizon*