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Post by Askel McThurkill on Apr 22, 2009 12:05:52 GMT
I have to say I found myself amused by the hot air generated on this particular thread. Has anyone any views now, in the absence of two of the particular commentators above?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 23, 2009 9:46:56 GMT
One doesn't want to underplay the reality of the preternatural, but one usually expects that Satan is more subtle than to come out in the open as some of the contributers expect he does.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Apr 23, 2009 11:42:18 GMT
Does that mean the devil is more likely to manifest himself as Marian apparition?
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Apr 23, 2009 18:37:47 GMT
That seems to be a point the zealots missed.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 24, 2009 12:35:41 GMT
Alasdair - agreed, but I think you are oversimplifying slightly. One of the major manifestations of modern unbelief is a sense that the universe is inherently lawless, chaotic and amoral and that those who proclaim this directly are stronger and better than those who "pretend" it is not so. A lot of modern horror is explicitly based on this view of the world, on a self-congratulatory sense of the glamour and power of evil and the weakness and naivete of good - on the view that belief in religion and vrtue is a phenomenon of childhood and that to be grown up is to embrace a nihilistic and pornographic view of the world. (Pornography in the sense that the acts described are depicted without any moral context.) Here are two interesting pieces commenting on this point. The first is by an American conservative who writes a lot on films and popular culture. He is a very intelligent commentator but I think a somewhat dubious one because he writes a lot about a warrior-style honour code of the Dirty Harry variety, and while he professes to be a Catholic I have a nasty suspicion that in a clash between Catholic ethics and national honour he would let the second override the first. (The latest entry in his online diary attacks President Obama for releasing details of the torture of terrorists by the CIA under President Bush on the following edifying grounds - (a) If they're terrorists, it's not really torture (b) If it is torture, it's necessary for the public safety so that makes it OK (c) These sort of harsh necessities should be kept secret for the general good; it's part of growing up to understand this and anyone who disagrees is a posturing adolescent. This sort of attitude is precisely what led many people to the view that pornographers are morally righteous because honest by comparison. www.jamesbowman.net/diaryDetail.asp?The second link is to a review article on a novel about the Holocaust which the reviewer argues is pornographic because it describes the action without any sort of explicit moral perspective and without the protagonist getting his comeuppance at the end. The interesting thing about this is that the magazine where this appears is generally secularist, and the concerns which the reviewer expresses are precisely those which were laughed to scorn by formalists and modernists in the cultural debates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and which the dominant school sof art criticism would now rgard as irrelevant - but when it comes to the Holocaust the reviewer finds formalism is not enough. hpID=263http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=cdf618b2-f36b-49e0-a8e1-bd6bcae5f5e2
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 24, 2009 12:37:19 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 17:15:03 GMT
I'm going to try to sue this thread to start a discussion of the role of the Gothic/horror genre and its mixed following. as suggested in some of the posts above, part of its appeal (especially in modern times) seems to come from developing and exploiting nihilism and a view of the universe as Godless and ruled by dark forces. On the other, it seems to appeal to submerged religious yearnings (whether it always leads people to the right answers is another matter) and I can think of quite a few orthodox Catholic and Christian believers who ahve a fascination with the genre). For example, the american horror writer HP Lovecraft was an atheist of the bleakest sort, but his literary executor August Derleth was a fairly devout Catholic whose tales of the Lovecraftian universe tried to expand in ways that allowed a Christian interpretation. John J Reilly, whose site I have linked to several times on this board, is another example of a Catholic Lovecraft fan. The link will lead you to a werewolf story of his about the awful fate which awaits liturgical wreckovators. www.johnreilly.info/thotl.htmMore tomorrow
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 23, 2009 12:06:29 GMT
I am going to try to put together a few posts on the horror genre, starting with Bram Stoker's novel DRACULA and the ways it has been shaped/reshaped in modern retellings. Since there are so many versions of the story in circulation, a brief recap of the plot may be useful. DRACULA is rendered as a series of letters and diary entries between a group of protagonists rather than a continuous narrative. It begins with the solicitor Jonathan Harker arriving in Transylvnia to conclude the sale of an English property to the wealthy Count Dracula. Despite various warnings, he proceeds to the Count's castle, where he gradually realises that he is being held prisoner, that Dracula is a vampire, and that the vampire is going to England with the intention of spreading vampirism among its people. Back in England, Harker's fiancee Minna and her friend Lucy Westenra are staying with friends in Whitby (Yorkshire). Lucy is being courted by three men - Dr. Seward who keeps a private asylum near London, the American Quincy Morris, and a nobleman whose proposal she eventually accepts. Dr. Seward has a strange patient who is obsesssed with obtaining the life of other creatures through eating them, and who constantly repeats "The master is Coming". He decides to consult his mentor, the Dutch Catholic scientist Van Helsing. A ship comes aground at Whitby and a mysterious dog runs ashore; the log kept by the captain (who is found dead, having tied himself to the wheel) reveals that a strange stowaway was responsible for their disappearance. Lucy begins behaving strangely and sleepwalking. She returns to London and to Dr. Sewell's hospital; meanwhile the ship's cargo (consisting of coffins filled with earth) is brought to the estate whose purchase was arranged by Dracula through Harker. Van Helsing is called in to advise on Lucy's treatment and realsies that she is under attack by a vampire. He tries to save her by various means (she receives blood transfusions from her three lovers and from Van Helsing). Meanwhile, Jonathan has escaped from the castle by leaping from a cliff into a river, and is in hospital; Minna goes out to see him, marries him there, and as they return to England she gradually learn of his experiences. Lucy dies despite Van Helsing's efforts.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 2, 2009 18:36:39 GMT
Sorry I let Dracula lapse. Now that Halloween is just past, does anyone have any thoguhts on the difference between the relatively subdued Halloween -as children's festival I remember from my childhood in small-town Irleand in the 1970s and the wholesale importation of maerican trick or treating over the last 15-20 years. IS there an element of secularisation in this or is it jsut the spread of international popular culture? In the meantime, i woudl remind everyone that they can gain a plenary indulgence on the standard conditions by visiting churchyards over the coming month and praying for the dead.
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Post by guillaume on Nov 3, 2009 8:35:56 GMT
Sorry I let Dracula lapse. Now that Halloween is just past, does anyone have any thoguhts on the difference between the relatively subdued Halloween -as children's festival I remember from my childhood in small-town Irleand in the 1970s and the wholesale importation of maerican trick or treating over the last 15-20 years. IS there an element of secularisation in this or is it jsut the spread of international popular culture? In the meantime, i woudl remind everyone that they can gain a plenary indulgence on the standard conditions by visiting churchyards over the coming month and praying for the dead. I do not know, but i think Halloween is harmless. It is only a moment for kids to amuse themselves. They won't turn into satanism because the have a dracula costume. I love horror movies, you know. Yes, i confess, i love them. They make me laugh. This does not make me a future serial killer... Violence in cinema, usually, doe not bother me and do not interfere in my faith at all.
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 3, 2009 9:25:53 GMT
I fail to see what the problem with Halloween actually is? Maybe someone can explain it better.
Humans have a tendency in their literature and their religions to personify aspects of human nature. When we do so we tend to personify the most extreme version of it that we can. When creating “god” we personify it as all that is good, perfect, right. When we create “devils” they are vile, violent, evil.
Halloween to me is merely a personification of our fears. A way to make them more real to us so that we can confront them, laugh in the face of them and say “We are not afraid of the night or the unknown” It is a celebration of that part of us that can rise above petty fears and superstitions that our genetic make up makes us susceptible to.
Fears are not to be buried, ignored and made dirty .They are to be celebrated as another part of us and what we are. There is nothing supernatural in this, and certainly nothing “leading us to the devil” or any such tripe.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Nov 5, 2009 14:31:40 GMT
I have said before that I find it interesting that conservative/traditionally minded Catholics rely on Protestant fundamentalist material in describing Hallowe'en. That doesn't mean Hallowe'en is unproblematic - it is the fire services' busiest night of the year and there is more pressure on A & E too. However, most of what goes on at Hallowe'en is harmless. I think Hibernicus, however, has a point in the change of the nature in Hallowe'en over the past 30 years. The Irish celebration of Hallowe'en has been Americanised considerably and Hallowe'en has made an appearance on the continent where there is no previous tradition of it. In saying that, I do not believe that American influence in itself is bad, but I do believe it is a point to be questioned and debated. If all our festivals are being determined essentially on commercial basis, where are we going as a people (I should say that I have experienced Hallowe'en in the US and on the continent as well as in Ireland; and that I hear that Hallowe'en is a fixed feature in many parts of Europe where it was unknown 15 years ago.
Like I say, a civil discussion on the aspects of the Hallowe'en and its spread should be highly instructive. And I would like to hear what Hibernicus has to say about Dracula.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 5, 2009 17:19:01 GMT
If Halloween has no continental tradition, what was the German Walpurgisnacht? As I made clear to any intelligence exceeding the infinitesimal dimensions of Hazelireland's, I do not share the sort of fears expressed by Redmond and other lunatics - they think that Halloween is somehow inherently demonic so that any participation in it however innocent automatcially leads you to evil. There is a real problem, however in that some forms of Gothic sensibility tend to deny the reality of evil, to treat it as a joke or (worse still) to glamourise it and attracted disturbed minds to embrace it as a source of empowerment. This last tendency can be noticed empirically whether you believe in the Devil or not. What I wanted to explore when I began posting about Dracula is the ways in which successive versions of the vampire legend have exhibited these two tendencies, of which the latter is incomparably more dangerous, and to discuss how this trend is related to the sexual revolution (with its blurring of sexual mores). Very recent Dracula adaptations tend to make the Count the romantic hero - I have even heard of a semi-pornographic Italian film adaptation in which the happy ending is that he defeats the vampire hunters and gets the girl. More on this soon, perhaps
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 6, 2009 7:57:13 GMT
Insults demean only the insulter Hibernicus, not the insulted. Raise your game here please and grow beyond pointless and meaningless outright insults such as that embedded in your post above. You let no one down but yourself by such behaviour and discourse.
Saying some people have infinitesimal intelligence or that other users of the boards are lunatics may make you FEEL big and clever, but this kind of masturbatory patting of oneself on the back is NOT big and it is NOT clever.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 6, 2009 18:41:13 GMT
Some sane comments directed at the halloween-phobic by the Catholic film critic Stephen Greydanus. The first is a review of Tim Burton's NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS; www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/nightmarebeforechristmas.htmlextract Oh, I don’t mind the wee ghosts and goblins on my doorstep with parents in their shadows: pint-sized monsters themselves mustering the nerve to shout "Trick or treat!" with outstretched pillowcases before retreating to safety. But the older kids with lurid costumes and bloody weapons I find sad and disturbing; and by the time the high-school hooligans start coming around with no more concession to holiday tradition than a football jersey and a serious determination to extort candy from me and my neighbors, I’ve got about as much Halloween spirit as a Jehovah’s Witness. And these days, with the commercialization of Halloween approaching that of Christmas itself, with outdoor lights, orange and black, and tacky front-yard displays, my cynicism has taken on Scrooge-like proportions. Then, of course, there are those who claim that Christians shouldn’t have anything to do with Halloween at all. Popular Fundamentalist "histories" of Halloween and of jack-o’lanterns and trick-or-treating attribute it all to paganism (or to Catholicism, which in Fundamentalist eyes can amount to the same thing). And of course the neo-pagans are only too happy to try to claim Halloween as their own. But I’m equally cynical about all of this. I’ve never been able to find any compelling historical evidence that Halloween has ever been anything other than All Hallows Eve, the day before All Saints Day. The trick-or-treating and jack-o’lantern customs come from Catholic Ireland and also Protestant Scotland, and don’t exist outside the British Isles and English-speaking Christendom. (Anyway, even if there were something to the pagan-origins theory, few Christians would be moved by fears of "pagan origins" to avoid wearing a wedding ring, or using the proper names of the days of the week and planets.) EXTRACT ENDS The second is an extract on the Christian approach to horror, the grotesque and macabre, with special reference to Ridley scott's film ALIEN www.decentfilms.com/sections/articles/2578EXTRACT The grotesque does have a more disturbing and objectionable side. In too many books and films, villains become heroes, imaginative engagement of evil becomes glorification of evil, and mayhem and gore become ends in themselves apart from any sense of artistic restraint or moral context. Examples of such disordered indulgence in the macabre include the celebratory vampire novels of Anne Rice and gruesome slasher flicks like the Nightmare on Elm Street series. But abusus non tollit usam: The abuse does not abrogate the proper use. As perverse as much modern horror is, one cannot simply throw out the baby with the bathwater. Neither uncritical acceptance nor uncritical condemnation is called for, but critical discernment and moral vigilance.
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