"The cinema of horror provides its highly secularized audience with their last - perhaps their only - opportunity to experience mystery and miracle . . . The great frenzies of chaos, creation, disobedience, disaster, solitude and evil which have been rendered vague or bland in the well-bred church and synagogue services of the '70s are restored to their terrifying proportions in the half-light of the movie theaters. Priests of the horror cinema still recite incantations that count." (Leonard Wolf, "In Horror Movies, Some Things Are Sacred,"
The New York Times, April 4, 1976, as quoted by David J. Skal in
The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 386)
The Wicker Man (two and a half stars total) I had to look up the definition of "straw man" arguments. It's been too many years since high school speech and debate class. I was curious to see if it would have any correlation to the movie,
The Wicker Man (1973). I admit that anything can be twisted to mean anything for argument's sake. This ties in directly with "straw man" arguments, which directly tie in with
The Wicker Man, no twisting necessary. The police sergeant who goes to investigate the report of a missing person wants a "proper" Christian burial and to enforce laws against public indecency. The pagan islanders he's investigating want religious tolerance and a "miracle" that will restore their crops in the coming year (never mind their own elaborate involvement in the machinations). The policeman's "reasoning" with the islanders is a
logical fallacy because he's only attacking his own "distorted" version of their position and that fails to constitute an attack on their actual position (see Wikipedia for a full list of logical fallacies). It's so cruel the way they talk down to him at the end, explaining everything in layman's terms that even a self-righteous blowhard can't argue with, but I guess it's no more dismissive than when he laughs at their custom for "supernatural impregnation" toward the beginning. As a kid, I thought the title referred to the villain's name, but the truth is much more terrifying than that. The villain is just actor Christopher Lee, dressed in purple and yellow drag.
If there were such a thing as the "Twelve Days of Halloween," they might start tomorrow. This is debatable because the "Twelve Days of Christmas" either end on Christmas Day or the day before Epiphany (see Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night), so who's to say whether you should start this make-believe holiday extension by counting down from October 20 or October 31? Holiday blending like "Chrismahanukwanzakah" or "Festivus" really get to me. Christmas alone is an example, blending the displaced Nativity (December 25) and the arrival of the Wise Men/baptism of Jesus (January 6) with the ancient Roman Saturnalia (December 17-23) and the pagan Germanic Yuletide/winter solstice (December 21-22). Somewhere along the line,
Halloween has transmuted into a second tier Christmas Day, probably because it's the second most commercialized holiday in the U.S. For me, Halloween will never be just an appetizer or a speed bump before Christmas. It's neither the anti-Christmas nor a dark twin to its neighbor holiday. Don't even get me started on
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Would this still have happened if Halloween were in June? Unfortunately, its proximity to Christmas has led to atrocities like Halloween wreaths, trees, stockings, pumpkin "snowmen" and "haunted" gingerbread houses. Soon there won't any distinction between holiday celebrations. Alas, it's the only politically correct way to go.
The Wicker Man (two and a half stars total) I had to look up the definition of "straw man" arguments. It's been too many years since high school speech and debate class. I was curious to see if it would have any correlation to the movie, The Wicker Man (1973). I admit that anything can be twisted to mean anything for argument's sake. This ties in directly with "straw man" arguments, which directly tie in with The Wicker Man, no twisting necessary. The police sergeant who goes to investigate the report of a missing person wants a "proper" Christian burial and to enforce laws against public indecency. The pagan islanders he's investigating want religious tolerance and a "miracle" that will restore their crops in the coming year (never mind their own elaborate involvement in the machinations). The policeman's "reasoning" with the islanders is a logical fallacy because he's only attacking his own "distorted" version of their position and that fails to constitute an attack on their actual position (see Wikipedia for a full list of logical fallacies). It's so cruel the way they talk down to him at the end, explaining everything in layman's terms that even a self-righteous blowhard can't argue with, but I guess it's no more dismissive than when he laughs at their custom for "supernatural impregnation" toward the beginning. As a kid, I thought the title referred to the villain's name, but the truth is much more terrifying than that. The villain is just actor Christopher Lee, dressed in purple and yellow drag.
If there were such a thing as the "Twelve Days of Halloween," they might start tomorrow. This is debatable because the "Twelve Days of Christmas" either end on Christmas Day or the day before Epiphany (see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night), so who's to say whether you should start this make-believe holiday extension by counting down from October 20 or October 31? Holiday blending like "Chrismahanukwanzakah" or "Festivus" really get to me. Christmas alone is an example, blending the displaced Nativity (December 25) and the arrival of the Wise Men/baptism of Jesus (January 6) with the ancient Roman Saturnalia (December 17-23) and the pagan Germanic Yuletide/winter solstice (December 21-22). Somewhere along the line, Halloween has transmuted into a second tier Christmas Day, probably because it's the second most commercialized holiday in the U.S. For me, Halloween will never be just an appetizer or a speed bump before Christmas. It's neither the anti-Christmas nor a dark twin to its neighbor holiday. Don't even get me started on The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Would this still have happened if Halloween were in June? Unfortunately, its proximity to Christmas has led to atrocities like Halloween wreaths, trees, stockings, pumpkin "snowmen" and "haunted" gingerbread houses. Soon there won't any distinction between holiday celebrations. Alas, it's the only politically correct way to go.
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