The Question in Bodies #26: Sorry to Bother You (2018)

I'm a sucker for the sort of film that messes with genre, and especially for the sort of film that uses genre to get away with saying things that you couldn't in a serious social realist drama. When a Serious Film, capital S, capital F, actually does make Serious Issues, which is a vanishingly rare occurrence, for all sorts of reasons, the issues become the tail that wags the dog, almost; people begin to watch the film because it is about the issues, people argue with it on the grounds of the issues, people make it part of the issue and it's almost as if it loses the ability to say anything because you know what it's going to say before you start. It becomes part of the conversation rather than starting a new one.

For example, Ken Loach's film I, Daniel Blake (2016), caused questions to be asked in Parliament. The conversation around it was impassioned, but centred around whether it was an accurate representation of the experience of poverty (spoiler: it is) and, reduced to a political statement, it became the sort of film you watch either to hear what you knew already, or to pick holes in.

But genre films have been sneaking this sort of thing past audiences for a long time. That's not always a good thing: cinema audiences aren't necessarily literate enough to get the point (and indeed, as I keep saying, a big stream in fan culture lionises illiteracy), and might even seize on an entirely different point to the one you meant to say (see The Matrix). But the simple joy to be found in a film that's slipping things past people can't be discounted. Even if these things are blindingly, sledgehammer obvious.

Which I suppose brings us to Sorry To Bother You. As always, this post carries a spoiler warning.

Guest Post – The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, episode 1 (2019)

The Dark Crystal is one of my favourite childhood movies, one that had a powerful formative effect on me. So the news that there was going to be a Netflix prequel series was not a thing that I had simple feelings about. My friend, frequent collaborator and BERGCAST co-presenter, Jon Dear felt the same way, and when he offered to write about the first episode, which he got to see previewed, I leapt at the opportunity. And unlike most of the posts here, this is more or less spoiler-free.

We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror and Pagan Film

The Gorsedd, Singleton Park, Swansea. 

Updated: 6th April 2021

Towards the end of October 2016, I thought, "I know! I've got this copy of The Witch sitting here and I could spend a few days going through some of the other stuff I never got round to watching and it's years since I had a Halloween movie binge, and hell, why not write about them?" I had a copy of The Wicker Man I'd found in a record sale in 2010 that I'd never watched; a copy of Beasts that cost me 50p at a stall in the Summer. I last watched Simon Magus before I had kids, and now my oldest is 11. I planned my viewing carefully.

It spiralled out of control.

The Question in Bodies #25: Blue Sunshine (1977)

It's been a while since I've done a cheap, fun 1970s exploitation movie, and recently I was reminded of the existence of Blue Sunshine, which is one of those movies with a mild but attractive infamy in film buff circles, one of those legitimate minor cult films, in the category of Lemora, or Liquid Sky, or Carnival of Souls, or Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

Jeff Lieberman's Blue Sunshine is one of those quirky little low-rent shockers you find from time to time, the sort that I enjoy watching far more than any number of “good” movies. Let's take a look at it.

Neopagans, Neoreactionaries and Folk Horror

We know that the neofolk movement has a problem with the far right; we know that paganism, specifically white paganism, has also long had a problem with the far right. Neither of these things are things I’m going to write about much. Many more interesting and proficient and knowledgeable people than me have tackled those things.

But they’re related to Folk Horror fandom, and it has a problem with the far right too. So this is about that problem, and about how the (specifically) pagan far right problem intersects with that.

Cult Cinema #15: Exiles Part 3

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015-2019)

(I'm looking at Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt today. I will spoil episodes, of course, because that's what I do, but the main thing is that this is a show about a woman who spent fifteen years trapped in a bunker by a man who did exactly what you would expect the sort of man who would imprison a woman in a bunker for fifteen years to do, and if reading about this sort of thing would really ruin your day, you really need to stop reading now, because I talk about this a lot.)

Is it surprising that this is here? Really? After all, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is four seasons of a sitcom ostensibly about a cult survivor adjusting to a world she missed out on for a couple of decades. Obviously. That’s just the setup; there’s more to it than that. Possibly less, too.

Herodotus

Those who would detect his lies and fictions would need many books – Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus