tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2086364186580509818.post6243607406185144009..comments2020-01-07T21:09:08.858-08:00Comments on The Boojum Pudding Blog: The Folk Horror Podcast Episode 10: Tam Lin or The Devil's Widow (1970), pt. 1Candle-Endshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00037802833914590614noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2086364186580509818.post-77716975115083820602018-12-08T18:24:47.363-08:002018-12-08T18:24:47.363-08:00I don't think you can make the distinctions yo...I don't think you can make the distinctions you are trying to make. Most genres are defined as an assortment of particular tropes, so how is folk horror any different? Even if we just define it as a "mood", that still is just like many genres (e.g. film noire is more about a particular "mood", but most folks would agree it is nevertheless a genre. Or broader genres, like "horror" "comedy" or "drama" are really just particular moods.)<br />I do think you need to be careful that any genre, including folk horror, is going to include "bad" works. It's a mistake to exclude a particular work from your favorite genre just because it fails artistically.<br />One of the attributes of folk horror I think is that the sacredness and the magic is connected to folk beliefs which were held by the ancestors of the characters. It would be hard to get this in the USA, where the dominant culture (i.e. Euro-Americans) is separate from the indigenous cultures and their religions (i.e. Native Americans).<br />The "man with the deer head being attacked by wolves" I am pretty sure is the Greek myth of Actaeon. Actaeon was a hunter who (in the most common version of the story) while hunting happened to see the Greek goddess Artemis bathing. She was so offended that she turned him into a deer, and he was killed by his own hunting dogs. I assume that in the artwork at the beginning, Pan is there to assist Artemis to turn Actaeon into a deer.<br />The Romans considered Artemis to be the same as their goddess Diana. And Westerners later considered Diana to be the same as the Queen of the Fairies. <br />I can't identify the heraldic animals in the driveway either. To me, they look much more like bears than they do like badgers, but might be something else entirely such as panthers.<br />I think that Tam Lin is in a grey area at the edge of folk horror. It certainly is a modern retelling of the Tam Lin story. But none of the characters seem to be aware that they are in the Tam Lin story. None of the characters have an awareness of old folk traditions. I think this means it technically isn't "Folk Horror".<br />Roddy McDowell I always think of as showing up in all sorts of 60s and 70s science fiction, probably because of his association with the Planet of the Apes films.<br />The role that made me aware of Ian McShane was the TV series "Lovejoy".<br /><br />TheRealKEVPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14103869360491222919noreply@blogger.com