The Folklore Fallacy. A Folkloristic/Filmic Perspective onThe Wicker Man

Abstract

of 2006, the Catholic broadcaster on Dutch public television, KRO, screened the Lord of the Rings trilogy on prime time, three nights in a row 1 . The airing of this fantasy trilogy on the most important Christian holiday illustrates the typical twenty-first century take on spirituality and religion. The focal point of a Christian celebration (along, of course, with the joint family dinner) was a fantasy story depicting a world populated by elves, dwarves, and wizards, composed of fragments of Norse and Germanic mythology, Christian elements, European history, New Zealand nature, British nostalgia, Hollywood conventions, and much more. Indeed, to many viewers of this globally successful blockbuster trilogy, watching The Lord of the Rings is a spiritual experience, Christian or otherwise.The Lord of the Rings trilogy is not just a visual spectacle but also a multilayered narrative: it deals with the battle between good and evil, loyal friends, true heroes, vile villains, and as such is a traditional fantasy fairy-tale. But the story also involves supernatural powers, spiritual moments, fate, redemption, self-sacrifice, self-fulfilment, and, at the end (after all, Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic) the Return of the King. The KRO's choice to air these films on Christmas, therefore, was more than strategic programming of a film fit for the entire family on a family holiday. The Lord of the Rings speaks to modern-day spirituality, which has to some extent replaced traditional organized religion. The trilogy's worldwide success reveals the importance of popular culture for the display and construction of this contemporary spirituality. Even though the majority of Dutch viewers may not have gone to church on Christmas Eve or morn, they still could have their spiritual moment at home, in front of their television.A century after Max Weber, in 1905, announced the disenchantment of the world 2 , we seem to witness quite the opposite: a highly mediated re-enchantment of the world. New forms of spirituality, drawing on traditional Christianity as well as many other sources, flourish, and appear to partly replace tradition-organized

Recomposing the Past: Representations of Early Music on Stage and Screen

“…The score's medievalism is doubly synthetic: old music is presented anew, new is presented as old. The effect is to create an out-of-time Summerisle, through the manipulation of musical signifiers of 'now' (represented by psychedelic and folk rock elements, sometimes on electric instruments) and 'then' (comprising manipulated folk / fakesong, and early music, on classical, period, and electric instruments) (Harker, 1985;Koven, 2007).…”

“Sabrina, You’re Not Yourself.” The Borrowings of Sabrina Spellman

“…She wore an ugly costume and a terrifying face mask. 29 While approaching the witch's carnivalesque masks, it is necessary to take into consideration the historical evolutions. Not each type of mask is still in use; sometimes, the contemporary rituals are far from the ancient practices and beliefs.…”

“…11 A. Papahagi,Wyrd,29. THE WEIRD SISTERS. HISTORICAL-RELIGIOUS GENEALOGIES 55 the ruin of Macbeth, and they seem to respect a form of higher knowledge that they hold.…”

Towards a folk cinema

“…Folk is frequently employed as a by-word for 'popular', and appears as such in discussions of popular cinema and genre. Parker Tyler declares 'cinema is a folk art' (Tyler 1971, p.1), and elsewhere Mikel Koven has explored interdisciplinary intersections of folklore and film studies, and the connections between different modes of popular culture, looking in particular at the appearances of urban legend and lore in horror films (Koven 2006;Sherman & Koven 2007;Koven 2008). Folk concepts are also frequently used to describe 'democratized' manners of folk production, such as 'sweded films' (Walters 2012) and other 'peopled' processes submitting the discrete forms and 'hard edges' of popular cinema to public purchase and reinterpretation.…”