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Julie Burchill forced to apologise for twitter comments , and pay out a fat wedge .

That's the thing, I don't have a definition. It's rural - a farmer in the outback even though that's very different to English countryside, it's part of modern Australian folklore (backpackers do go missing) and the landscape is very much part of the story as well themes of isolation.

I was pointing to the fact that they’re both “one lone mad guy” films too. Not sure that gels with what I have in mind (which is also a bit vague and impressionistic).
 
Youtube keeps recommending me this version of Empty Pocket Blues. It's from 1970 so well into their scientology phase, but it shows that musically they were still on top form when they wanted to be. Rose and Licorice's naïve singing with Robin and Mike harmonising in completely different ways both both on guitar and vocals (both both - 2x2 that's four different ways). All on the edge of jangly mess but it all makes sense and they're belting it out looking like they're having the time of their lives. I've been singing this song all lockdown.

Edit: Of course that's an appropriate song if you've just seen the fees from your dianetics sessions.
 
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I was pointing to the fact that they’re both “one lone mad guy” films too. Not sure that gels with what I have in mind (which is also a bit vague and impressionistic).
Something to do with like traditions? I mean, idk what folk horror really is beyond Wicker Man, which I've seen, and Midsommar, which I haven't. But I think they're both to do with like traditions and that, right?
 
Yes Midsommar even more than Wicker Man if anything. I think folk horror often means "films that are roughly inspired by or similar to the Wicker Man". So Midsommar, Children of the Corn, Black Death, Kill List etc.. So rural cults, rituals, human sacrifice and entrapment. But that doesn't cover films like A Field in England, The Witch or indeed The Witchfinder General.

Edit: I suppose a unifying factor is that they are all mainly outdoors and mainly daylight (ramped up to 11 in Midsommar). The terror is hiding in plain sight and the films are about building an oppressive atmosphere.
 
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Yes Midsommar even more than Wicker Man if anything. I think folk horror often means "films that are roughly inspired by or similar to the Wicker Man". So Midsommar, Children of the Corn, Black Death, Kill List etc.. So rural cults, rituals, human sacrifice and entrapment. But that doesn't cover films like A Field in England, The Witch or indeed The Witchfinder General.

Edit: I suppose a unifying factor is that they are all mainly outdoors and mainly daylight (ramped up to 11 in Midsommar). The terror is hiding in plain sight and the films are about building an oppressive atmosphere.
Have you seen And Soon The Darkness? I remember that as being a really effective example of outdoors/daylight/pastoral horror. Might be a bit uncomfortable watching it in light of recent events, though. I've only seen the original, no idea how the remake compares.
 
"Riotous ... currently my on-tour bedside companion" (Bryan Ferry Daily Mail)

"A joy to behold. Burchill knows no fear. I would man the barricades with her any day…any Jew who feels anxious in these days of palpable anti-semitism ought to read this book. It’s funny, and we all need a laugh. But more importantly, it’s a timely reminder that no, my friends, you do not walk alone" (Monica Porter Jewish Chronicle)
 
This twitter thread collects some choice paragraphs from Burchill's book Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philo-Semite and oh my goodness. Click through for the full horror.


Wow, that is worse than I expected and my expectations were low. Cancel culture has not gone far enough my friends. Not nearly far enough. That book should have got her cancelled years ago and yet here we are still having to hear about her shit opinions.
 
This twitter thread collects some choice paragraphs from Burchill's book Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philo-Semite and oh my goodness. Click through for the full horror.


Oh my days. I absolutely fucking lost it at this one:
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I know saying "satire is dead" is a bit of a cliche and that, but I genuinely can't imagine how anyone could write a parody of Julie Burchill that'd be funnier than the real thing.
 
Even with the anti-Semitic and racist sections, it still reads like a poorly written Glenda Slagg column
 
Good lord, there's more: What did this lesbian rabbi do to make Julie Burchill mad?

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah had been warned that welcoming one of Britain’s most controversial writers into her synagogue might have its pitfalls.

But when Julie Burchill, who lists “spite” among her hobbies, showed an interest in the Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue in spring 2009, the rabbi was keen to give her a chance. “I thought she was a very good writer and I knew she was interested in Jews,” Rabbi Sarah recalls. “I also knew that she was a bit of a loose cannon but… we don’t try to label people.”

Things began well. Burchill attended the Saturday shul regularly and was talking about converting. After a few weeks Rabbi Sarah and her civil partner, Jess Woods, even had the journalist and a friend over for a Shabbat dinner at their home.

But a couple of months later the rabbi got a sharp insight into her new congregant’s views. An email had gone round asking whether people would help with the synagogue’s 75th anniversary celebrations. Burchill replied: “No, because your rabbi respects PIG ISLAM”.

“I could have done a big public exposure,” Rabbi Sarah told The Independent this week. “But what I did was email her and said: ‘Julie, firstly this is deeply, deeply offensive. Both Jews and Muslims don’t eat pig. I don’t know what you’re doing but this is really unacceptable and offensive. I was incredibly polite.”

When this newspaper asked Burchill about the email, she replied: “PIGS AND APES are what some Muslims call Christians and Jews, by the way. Even in school textbooks! Google it.”

Burchill is not Jewish but describes herself as a Philo-Semite, and has become a vociferous defender of Israel. In a book out next month, The Unchosen, she charts her love affair with Judaism – but ends with an acerbic 23-page rant against Rabbi Sarah, whom she dubs “Call-Me-Elli” for her informal style.
Loving Judaism so much that you want to convert but then give up on the idea because actual Jews don't hate Muslims enough is... quite something.
 
A small mercy. I just looked up Unchosen and it is already out of print. So it largely lived up to its name.
I think it's more that it was never really in print - from the Will Self review:

There isn’t a shred of reason in this text, which – one hopes because all the publishers it was offered to turned it down – has been produced by an imprint funded by subscribers including such beacons of enlightenment as Richard Littlejohn.

the crowdfunding page for this book has some interesting numbers - I reckon i could probably raise this kind of interest for a book myself:


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(I wonder why she hasn't used this novel method of vanity publishing for her latest tome? I suppose the three friends who chipped in a grand each last time probably aren't up for it again...)
 
JB's shallow and obsessive and these traits seem to get worse as she gets older. Ash Sarkar as a sexually liberated, fun loving, witty, left wing young woman represents exactly Burchill's ideal working class woman and also her ideal Jew. Except she's Muslim and supposed to be the opposite of all those things. I think that's the driver of the stalking. Burchill is so neurotic these days, it's hard to take her seriously.

I liked Sarkar's statement blaming the media for sugar coating Burchill's behaviour. I think they're more of a problem than Burchill, who is really just a bit of a weirdo now. For most hacks Sarkar and who she is and what she represents is fair game.
 
I think it's more that it was never really in print - from the Will Self review:

There isn’t a shred of reason in this text, which – one hopes because all the publishers it was offered to turned it down – has been produced by an imprint funded by subscribers including such beacons of enlightenment as Richard Littlejohn.

the crowdfunding page for this book has some interesting numbers - I reckon i could probably raise this kind of interest for a book myself:

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Trying to think whether it would be weirder if the one person who paid for this was Jewish, in which case why would you do that, or if they were gentile, in which case why would you do that. There's not really a good answer either way, but at least there's only one of them. A very small Shabbat celebration indeed, by the looks of it.
 
The elderflower wine stuff is also a marvellous bit of... Mr Burns isn't quite right, but some kind of similar cartoonish evil rich person, possibly a Viz character?
Burchill’s deconstruction of the meal extends to the drinks the hosts did (and did not) serve, after Burchill brought bottles of champagne. “Surely I started to dislike Call-Me-Elli at the moment she substituted her homebrew for my Veuve Clicquot,” she writes.

For Rabbi Sarah, the critique epitomises the writer’s betrayal of their hospitality. “It’s such an invasion… We served the elderflower [wine] that my partner had actually made,” she says. Burchill is unrepentant, telling The Independent: “I don’t call giving someone home-brewed elderflower filth when they’ve brought two bottles of Bolly ‘hospitality’.”
 
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