FOLK: Image & Presentation

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Def Shepard
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 03:42 PM

WAV, upon entering to ruin yest another thread, said "and these ARE important matters for discussion."

As long as everyone agrees with you, and says just how marvellous you'r 'writings' are, you're a very happy soldier. When, however, people dare to criticise you, all of a sudden those same people are using under-handed and inflammatory tactics. Then there's:

It's everyone else's fault, but not yours when , and I quote,"my recent threads ("English Folk Awards" and "BS Green/Godly Gardening") are being closed due to what OTHERS post on it...not fair!.."

What complete and utter rubbish WAV.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 03:15 PM

And a troll whose primary interest, it seems to me, is little more than self-promotion.

By the way, trying to prove a point by quoting yourself as the primary authoritative source will get you laughed out of any freshman course in Logic. And if you persist, most certainly flunked out.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 07:58 AM

I spent a good 10-15 minutes presenting thoughtful answers this morning to the overnight posts on that thread, Volgadon...perhaps someone emailed Max in complaint, as I just did, but, for what it's worth, if this happens again, I'll soon be walking about other forums.

By all means, please do so. Every thread you start, no matter posted the topic, is still the same as detailed above and on those threads by others. Put simply, you are a troll. Please feel free to walk on out.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 07:38 AM

No, I'm talking about inflammatory subjects unrelated to the topic of the thread. You know perfectly well what subjects I'm talking about, David, and you know who it was that introduced them to the EFD thread.

If you want to discuss your political views, there are plenty of forums out there (some of them *way* out there) where you can do it. Don't bring them here.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 07:33 AM

Your gardening thread might be considered inflammatory because of comparisons you keep drawing between it and immigration, that is, people.

Why don't you try reasoning, debating, explaining, rather than quoting YOURSELF? One way leads to a good conversation, the other shows that the person isn't open to conversation. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 07:14 AM

"Green/Godly Gardening" in the BS section, and an "English Folk Degree?" are not "inflamatory" or "unrelated" threads, Phil. And, if I feel, Volgadon, that I can better answer my ctitics in, already written, verse, why not?

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 06:44 AM

Avoiding inflammatory (and unrelated) subjects might also be a good idea.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 06:30 AM

Perhaps if you would be more open to discussion, rather than just making pronouncements and quoting from your website, they wouldn't get closed.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: glueman
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 06:30 AM

Missed those WAV. Were they about the lack of perceived Englishness of the content by any chance?

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 06:14 AM

Re: Mudcat's Image and Presentation - my recent threads ("English Folk Awards" and "BS Green/Godly Gardening") are being closed due to what OTHERS post on it...not fair!..and these ARE important matters for discussion.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Black Hawk on works PC
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 05:51 AM

Richard Bridge 'Image and presentation are still less important than content'

Try telling that to the millions of Garth Brooks fans.
I borrowed some CD's from the library to see if I could understand the attraction. Only 1 track was worth listening to IMO.
His biggest attraction appears to be when he 'flies' around the audience on wires & smashes guitars onstage.
Thats why he is the highest earning 'singer'.

If a 'folkie' could get that sort of exposure then the genre could make headway with the general public but at what expense?

It seems there are two extremes here & it depends on personal preference which way to go.
Youth of today receive the media message that money is success, so will tend to the GB way rather than content.
I see/hear many with great technical skill but little 'feeling' for the music. Whether they will develop this feeling depends on which 'extreme' they favour. (IMO)

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: glueman
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 05:15 AM

Every generation will add their two pennor'th to a tradition. In my youth it was re-assessing the do-wop songs of 10+ years earlier. George Lucas's American Graffiti is an example of film digging up a recently deceased popular culture, with surf music portrayed as the end of real rock and roll, as earlier directors made the steam locomotive's bell sound the death knell of the old west.

I may flinch at hearing 'the nineties' talked about as a genuine historical period but it is, and the problem is mine. So far as new traditions go they will form, like it or not. Each generation will assign meaning and value where they may.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Sedayne (In Norfolk)
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 05:11 AM

Here I am checking into Mudcat for the first time since we eet off for Norfolk on Saturday morning & you guys still haven't sorted anything out; and WAV is still repeating himself like one of those skeleton spacemen in the recent Dr. Who (Hey! Who turned out the lights?) - but what else do we expect? Actually I find it kind of comforting in a way...

Glueman - went via Southwell & rejoiced; 30 years I've been wanting to se those, shame the Chapter House also featured an exhibition of antique wedding gowns.

Anyhoo, the sun is shining & the byways of Vagabondia are beckoning...

(PS - When I get back on Mudcat proper, I might not be Sedayne anymore...)

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Alan Surtees
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 04:55 AM

Hi Jim

I only said "beleives it is living with the very latest". The men in suits will trawl up and rehash anything they can get a profit out of.

Alan

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 04:35 AM

So do you accept that new traditions can be formed?

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 04:06 AM

Good, Jim - as I've said here, traditions exist due to folks being impressed by how their forebears did/presented things.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 03:48 AM

"Youth culture doesn't look backwards for its inspiration but believes it is living with the very latest that music can offer;"
Then why am I constantly hearing all these re-hashes of songs I was listening to thirty odd years ago?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: trevek
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 03:37 PM

VirginiaTam, th carving at Bath is said to be Medusa, which is funny, because it is male and the divine Miss M wasn't!

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: trevek
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 03:30 PM

"Youth culture doesn't look backwards for its inspiration but believes it is living with the very latest that music can offer; and apart from a short period in the sixties, when music seemed to be driven by genuine musicians, young people buy into the crap sold to them buy businessmen."

I really disagree with this statement; even in the 1980's kids were looking at 1940's Swing, 1950's Rockabilly and 1960's Ska/ Soul and that wasn't something that was served up to them, it was something they were doing for themselves and which the media later caught onto.

What about the rise of groups like The Pogues and The Men They Couldn't Hang, The Levellers (a bit later)?

Even today, I know a number of young people who are listening to 1980's music and letting it shape their own music.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: trevek
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 03:22 PM

In 1920's/30's Poland ther was a move to tidy up the presentation of traditional singing to suit more genteel tastes of the more western-tuned elements of society. The village women (and presumably men) were given courses on how to bow and perform. In some cass the keys and styles of singing were modified to be easier on the ear.

Most of that is now considered "the tradition" and it is very hard (if not impossible) to find (original) people who sang/sing in the earlier styles.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 03:03 PM

The whole green man controversy reminds me of Lada and Lel. Who, you ask? Supposedly, two ancient Slavic fertility gods, whose worship was preserved in circle dances (khorovods, like the Balkan Hora). Village women would dance singing refrains like lada, lel.
19th century folklorists with paganism on the brain were straining to find pre-Christian origins for everything, even to the extent of inventing old gods.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: glueman
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:51 AM

So cartoonish they look modern! There was an interesting TV prog in about 1990ish +/- a year or two called In Search of the Green Man, which took in Joseph Beuys' land art, John Piper, the work of Common Ground and tours around Scottish green man locations. It's still on video in the loft somewhere, the reason I keep telling the missus, no, they can't go in the skip!

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:33 AM

takes some finding

Rest assured, I will persist, no doubt whilst listening to the Amazing Blondel on my mp3 player. Otherwise, there's a similar thing on the famous exterior corbels of Kilpeck, a very cartoonish hare & hound that invariably wins the hearts of all who see it. See Here. This is just around the corner from the famous Sheela-na-Gig - for more on which see the very excellent Sheela-na-Gig Project.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:18 AM

Image and presentation are still less important than content.

More than that, Richard, I'd say Image & Presentation are implicit in the very nature of Folk, just that, unlike Reggae, Death Metal, Punk and Hip-Hop (etc.) Folk would appear to be uncomfortable in its own skin - see above post, 03 Jun 08 - 06:35 AM.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: glueman
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:17 AM

Good question. He took me ages to find him last time I looked, he's tucked away and no-one seems to know he's there. IIRC he's on the main screen on the right of the arch as you enter the choir but takes some finding. It's been a long while so the location may have drifted in my brain but he's around there.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:11 AM

an absolute dead ringer for Goofy

Might be passing Lincoln soon; whereabouts is he?

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: glueman
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:06 AM

The Southwell chapter house green men are most familiar and well worth looking out for those at this weekend's FF. A favourite carved head (not a GM) is in Lincoln cathedral. It is a hominid-animal form that's is an absolute dead ringer for Goofy. Considering a nearby stall is for the parish of Norton D'Isney, ancestral home of Walt Disney I like to think of the dog as an animus who finally found a voice.
There also some interesting medieval pathologies (and older of course) depicted in Lincoln, toothache, migraine and so on plus unflattering characatures of the gaffer class.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 07:38 AM

Image and presentation are still less imprtant than content.

200

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 07:26 AM

another dislocated head motif that's used to bash one another's ideas with.

There are but few examples of the full-bodied Green Man, my favourite being that to be found on a misericord in Southwell Minster - see Here for a rather splendid jpeg. Odd how in my researches I find myself giving these things names, such as the foliate Davros and Osama Bin Laden found in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral (see Here & scroll down to the Chester images - they're both pretty obvious!). The Southwell figure I think of as The Storyteller, being a storyteller myself, because this is exactly what it feels like when a story is really kicking off, growing forth from some inner linguistic seed, deep in the mysterious & occult dark of primal consciousness wherein the innate structural parameters of grammar, syntax & the Indo-European Folk-tale dwell! The foliage spews forth in rampant vigour, emblematic of the Nature / Nurture dialectic, thus do I adopt the Green Man as my personal hero.

Folk: Image & Presentation? Phooey! Give me a Green Man carved on an ancient bum-worn misericord any day; an image as modern (rather than post-modern) & relevant to the human condition as the day it was carved.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:51 AM

If any body has any sensible suggestions on how to improve image and presentation and where and how this can best serve what we do, music. Please list it.

Only one: keep it real. 25/35 sounds like you've a healthy club going, especially if you are getting new people in too. The attraction is in the authenticity of the thing itself & the experiential quality thereof, which has nothing whatsoever to do with such anathemaic concepts as Image & Presentation. Image & Presentation have all but strangled the life out of culture as a whole, but once they begin to infect folk at a grass roots level then I'll be finding something else to do with my Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday evenings, with occasional Sundays too (please note: this is why we never get to Staining!).

A bunch of surly blokes & beautiful women in a pub lounge south of Manchester untouched since 1908 (give or take 80 years), swilling halves, pints (okay Nigel, red wine) singing exquisite traditional ballads, roaring hearty choruses, munching biscuits, bellowing away at bagpipes, and having the time of their lives is surely Image & Presentation enough. Elsewhere, we experience the phenomena of pulling in more for singers nights than we do for guests despite the paltry £3 cover charge. There are exceptions of course (hi, Wendy & Paul!) and last nights extended floor spot from our very own Nicky Snell (nice one Nicky, you did us proud!) proved a thriving occasion too. So, cherish what you've got, each & every one of them, for a bird in the hand is always worth a whole flock in the bush.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:14 AM

By the way, at the risk of possibly being labeled "pedantic" yet again, but thinking only in terms of "credit where credit is due," the quotation (...) is from "Leaves of Grass" by American poet Walt Whitman.

It's an odd thing but given the state of limbo we've been living in here in Lytham St Annes for the past 8 months whilst trying to sell our house in Durham (i.e. everything but the essentials in storage, everything else in open boxes, unwilling unpack too much in our rented flat in the servants quarters of a huge old mock-Tudor mansion by the sea because we know, sooner or later, we'll be on the move again...) that I found my old copy of Leaves of Grass straightaway - a Bantam Classic paperback reprint of the 1892 Deathbed Edition (it says) gifted to me by an old (American) girlfriend back in 1992. But get this, turning instinctively to Song of Myself I land after a mere five minutes browsing on the appropriate piece. For those who don't have a copy of the book to hand, it's on-line too at Song of Myself - worth reading in its entirety I'd say, but the Wicker Man quote comes from the opening of Part 32.

This reminds me of the time back in 1978/79 when I was working with special needs adults, and one old chap heaved a sigh about the moral & spiritual decline of popular culture in general & music in particular, singling out for special attention the nonsensical lyrics of Boney M's By the Rives of Babylon. This chap was never without his Bible, and was absolutely made up when I drew his attention to Psalm 137, after which, of course it became his favourite song of all time. Give a thing a source and let the meaning shine through! So, thanks again Don for contextualising something that has always haunted me, and given me cause to open a book, unopened, for whatever reason, since 1992!

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Two of a Hind
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:11 AM

I have scrolled through this thread with the hope of finding some sensible suggestions about Image and Presentation. As a club organiser its always useful to hear other peoples thoughts on how folk music / clubs are percieved by other folkies and civilians. We get new people comming through the club on a fairly regular basis and we have our regular 25/35 supporters. My interest in Image and Presentation was to somehow target more throughput with its enevitable product of people liking what there hear and coming agian and again, If any body has any sensible sugestions on how to improve image and presentation and where and how this can best serve what we do, music. Please list it.
Newport Folk Club

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: glueman
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 04:32 AM

Fascinating thread Sedayne. I've just written an article for another site on the horror of smileys, another dislocated head motif that's used to bash one another's ideas with.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 07:25 PM

There is a thread on the Green Man I opened up last year in which the various positions are discussed : Folklore; The Green Man, this includes links to other sites of interest, mostly by, ahem, me, but don't let that put you off. Here they are anyway:

Heads With Leaves - A Gallery of Images, both Still & Moving, plus a Little Blurb by Way of an Introduction.

The Devil in the Details - PDF of an article published in Spring 2007 edition of Folk Leads.

Otherwise, many thanks for sourcing that quote, Don - gives it so much more resonance. I actually have a copy of Leaves of Grass lying around here somewhere too, must dig it out...

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: glueman
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 04:11 PM

I've read a convincing bit of work somewhere that the Green Man as seen in churches (the foliate heads) has no provable connections with paganism, this wasn't a bit of creationist propaganda either. Now I'm going to have to damned well find it, aren't I?
John Piper is another artist with Green Man tendencies. Managed to get a 1st edition of Barbara Jones book Follies and Grottoes while on holiday in the Cotswolds which is in a similar vein. neo-romantic.org.uk is a good primer in all things darkly green.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Nigel Spencer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 03:03 PM

Virginia, it is cheesy. Definitely. That's part of its strange, quixotic charm.

Do give it another go, though. With tongue reasonably firmly in cheek...

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:55 PM

Interesting points about "The Wicker Man," Sedayne. A rather haunting movie indeed.

By the way, at the risk of possibly being labeled "pedantic" yet again, but thinking only in terms of "credit where credit is due," the quotation

I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable, or unhappy, all over the earth.

is from "Leaves of Grass" by American poet Walt Whitman.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:53 PM

"Do I need proof"

Certainly not for your belief system. But faked-up folklore is very damaging. Believe what you want, as long as you're happy to acknowledge there's no proven link outside what people would LIKE to be true...

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:44 PM

Like I said... ages since I read the thing so maybe my memory has twisted. I just want it to be true that green man is pagan. And that the church stole it and rubbed out the pagan proof. Do I need proof? The whole premise of belief depends on no proof. Excellent. Now I can sleep easy tonight.

Wait! Didn't I see an image either carving or tessalation in the Roman Baths in Bath, that was very similar to the green man image? But was the image truly roman or was it a victorian or edwardian sympathy? I can't remember.

Re Wickerman... I only saw it once and found it a bit cheesy. Though that is my jaded take, I wouldn't mind watching it again.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:23 PM

John Speirs (I think that's the right spelling), who was a serious medievalist, did a lot to spread this Green Knight/Green Man/'vegetation god' thing around - it's not as if Mike Harding made it all up. I remember some friends at college having a lot of fun with Speirs's, um, imaginative readings of Gawain. At one point he hold forth about how the lair of the Knight is a mystical gateway to the chthonic realms of the old earth gods (or something along those lines). The effect is slightly deflated when he quotes the description of the lair given us by the Gawain poet, which is...

"nobbut an old cave".

(And that is a quote.)

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:10 PM

There is no evidence that I'm aware of to legitimise the conflation of the Green Knight and the Green Man - unless you've been reading the "scholarship" of Mike Harding. Where is the evidence for the Green Man being a pagan symbol?

Sedayne: hurrah! Excellent point about the absence of Sheelaghs and Green Men in The Wicker Man. It's a goood demonstration of how the co-option of these "ancient pagan" symbols is really relatively recent. I was given the film for Christmas as a joke, and haven't been able to bring myself to watch it yet - tonight may be the night! :0)

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 01:42 PM

Erm? Isn't the Green Knight (of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) the same as the Green Man? This tale is 14th century literature purportedly by the Pearl Poet. It's been yonks since I read it, but wasn't the story a sort of juxtapostioning of pagan concepts and christian tenets seasoned with a load of the chivalric code.

Yeah I know that churches and cathedrals throughout Europe have the Green man(green christ)image carved here and there. But is this not just another pirating of a pagan concept made to look christian?

Someone illuminate me?

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 10:16 AM

The third in the canon tends to be Blood on Satan's Claw (1970), which is as nauseating as it is beguiling on various levels, Linda Hayden notwithstanding of course, although the sight of Michele (Betty) Dotrice getting turned on by a rape has to be a particular low point on any scale of exploitation. The cinematography is second to none however, one of the most beautifully filmed of all the British horrors. I noticed a vinyl album of the soundtrack in a Manchester record shop recently, a new deluxe edition with some choice scenes on the cover. I note that every time they show that film there's more and more of it cut, and, I must say, rightly so.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:56 AM

Could I also add that along with Witchfinder General, WM is undoubtedly one of my favourite films.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Nigel Spencer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:52 AM

What I was about to say. You hear so much guff about the Wicker Man. I suspect there is a largish sub-category of Wicker Man, erm, enthusiasts whose most fervent dream is to actually live on Summerisle under Lord S's not-so-benevolent dictatorship. Willow's the lure, of course. The men want to bed her, the women want to be her.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:30 AM

That's, um, the plot, isn't it?

Most people I know don't see it that way at all; that the film is the cornerstone of a lot of modern paganism is evidence enough of that, and there is a good deal of unquestioning adulation of the supposedly pagan themes as a nose about on line would undoubtedly reveal...

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:23 AM

I keep meaning to set it down with greater substance, otherwise it just comes out in hang-over babble as the synapses attempt to reconnect with reality in the cold light of day wherein I might resent the sun for shining, perhaps, a little too brightly... There is a case for such an approach, I'm sure, and it's implicit at every turn of the film, just as there are clear implications for modern paganism therein, which is, for the most part, a similar system of ill-founded assumption & absolutism - the May-Pole is a phallic symbol, the Green Man is a pagan god of the greenwood, the Sheela-na-Gig is the Goddess of Fertility etc. Interesting to note no Greenies or Sheelas in The Wicker Man, but way back in 1973 such things were entirely absent from the pagan / wiccan cultural consciousness. It's not until Anne Ross's Grotesques & Gargoyles (1975) that Greenies make their first* appearance in this respect, though of course in academia & folkloric circles you can take that back to 1939 when Lady Raglan first came up with the term Green Man for such imagery and postulated a folkloric origin, which, at the time, also meant pagan.

Enough! We've got another sing tonight and I haven't even decided what I'm going to do yet...

* If anyone can give an earlier date for Greenies in popular folkloric or pagan / wiccan literature I'd be interested in hearing from you.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Phil at work
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:01 AM

The best interpretation of the Wicker Man I've ever read

That's, um, the plot, isn't it? I mean, it's a good plot & a good discussion of it - I particularly like the angle about compulsory bawdiness - but Lord Summerisle's self-serving and spectacular repackaging of paganism is right there in the film. You'd have to be watching a different film to come away with unquestioning adulation of the supposedly pagan themes, shirley.

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Nigel Spencer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 08:10 AM

I meant to add: is this the first ever situationst critique of the Wicker Man?

Subject: RE: FOLK: Image & Presentation
From: GUEST,Nigel Spencer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 07:14 AM

They have been rendered docile, manipulated by mere spectacle, and anaesthetised by enforced compliance to the extent that they willingly participate in a sacrifice which is, in actuality, simply a desperate buying of time as the foundations of the aristocratic order of Summerisle begin to crumble.

Absolutely brilliant!

The best interpretation of the Wicker Man I've ever read. Such a refreshing change from the usual unquestioning adulation of the supposedly pagan themes by self-styled folk fauns. Authoritarian faux-paganism. That's mah new religion!

There's a full length article in here somewhere and you're definitely the man to write it...