Category Archives: nature

American Horror Story (Coven) 2 – Othering Voodoo, Race, & Rationality

Posted on 29/04/2015 by

As mentioned in my previous post on Coven, the series is set in a boarding school for witches in New Orleans, Louisiana. One of the witches is Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe), who is human voodoo doll. She can harm others by … Continue reading →

Posted in 'othering', America, body, Enlightenment, fantasy/supernatural, femininity, horror, magic, nature, postcolonialism, race/diversity, reason/rationality, ritual, The Coven (American Horror Story) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

American Horror Story (Coven) – Witchcraft & the Dark Goddess

Posted on 28/04/2015 by

The Coven is the third installment of American Horror Story, the first being porn and film plagiarism, the second concentrating on the plagiarism. The third benefits from an injection of irony. It is set in a boarding school for witches … Continue reading →

Posted in America, consciousness, Enlightenment, fantasy/supernatural, femininity, gender, horror, knowledge/epistemology, magic, nature, reality, reason/rationality, religion, ritual, The Coven (American Horror Story) | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Good Women, Bad Women, and Witches – Hocus Pocus, The Craft, Practical Magic

Posted on 27/04/2015 by

Hocus Pocus is fun. It is for children so the evil witches are more fun than scary. Yet, they follow the traditional cinematic construct of the evil witch as a bad woman, a woman who does not adhere to the … Continue reading →

Posted in 'othering', body, family, fantasy/supernatural, femininity, gender, good & evil, Hocus Pocus, love, magic, morality, nature, patriarchy, Practical Magic, sexuality, The Craft, witchcraft | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Indiana Jones & Empire Strikes Back – Belief

Posted on 26/04/2015 by

Religion, as argued in my post on the West Wing, is often assumed to be a person’s belief in a supernatural God. Yet anthropologists and sociologists of religion would wince at this statement. From a social scientific perspective, belief is … Continue reading →

Posted in belief, Empire Strikes Back, Enlightenment, faith, fantasy/supernatural, Georg Simmel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, knowledge/epistemology, magic, Malcolm Ruel, myth, nature, reality, reason/rationality, religion, scifi | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Sleepy Hollow – Science, Magic, and Modernity

Posted on 16/04/2015 by

Faithful to gothic tradition, Sleepy Hollow has fear at its centre. Fear is here understood as what cannot be controlled by scientific reason, but it also associated with the horror of the sublime, as argued by Edmund Burke. Tim Burton’s film … Continue reading →

Posted in 'othering', belief, Enlightenment, fantasy/supernatural, gender, Godfrey Lienhardt, horror, knowledge/epistemology, magic, masculinity, Max Weber, myth, nature, reality, reason/rationality, religion, science, Sleepy Hollow (1999), Stanley Tambiah, witchcraft | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Francis of Assisi (part 2) – Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Posted on 17/03/2015 by

In Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), Franco Zeffirelli’s Francis (Graham Faulkner) is a romantic rebellious youth. He echoes the ‘Jesus freaks’ of the sixties. Zeffirelli’s Francis rejects the other-wordly divine, the representations of heaven and hell, to emphasise creation in an almost … Continue reading →

Posted in Brother Sun, Francis of Assisi, freedom, humanity, humility, innocence, institutions, morality, nature, poverty, power, purity, religion, Sister Moon, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Francis of Assisi (part 1) – Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis

Posted on 17/03/2015 by

Francis of Assisi was a complex character, who has been too often imagined as the sweet and gentle fool delighting in the singing of birds. In reality, he was a radical and uncompromising figure, and yet also compassionate and pragmatic. … Continue reading →

Posted in faith, Francis of Assisi, humanity, humility, innocence, morality, nature, poverty, purity, religion, The Flowers of St. Francis | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fight Club – Authenticity, Consumer Culture & Masculinity

Posted on 12/11/2014 by

Fight Club has the pretension of being sociological by pretending to critique consumer society. It’s never a good idea for film-makers to play sociologist unless they are well versed with it and David Fincher ain’t . As a results, the film … Continue reading →

Posted in America, authenticity, C.W. Mills, consciousness, consumerism, Fight Club, gender, good & evil, Karl Marx, masculinity, nature, personhood | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Black Sheep – The Enlightenment Project & Nature

Posted on 16/07/2014 by

Black Sheep is a true classic! It  presents a critique of the Enlightenment project by exploring modern science, phobias, environmentalism, myth and monster sheep. Henry (the hero) develops a phobia of sheep due to a childhood trauma and leaves the family farm. … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Sheep, Enlightenment, fairytales, fantasy/supernatural, good & evil, horror, myth, nature, romanticism, science | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment