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

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.
Back on the folk horror side of this thread, I've just thought: how does The Secret History fit into/relate to all this? I feel like it would fit a lot of characteristics on any folk horror checklist/bingo card, but I also don't really feel like the term fits for it. Is it like folk-horror-adjacent or something, and if so why?
 
Back on the folk horror side of this thread, I've just thought: how does The Secret History fit into/relate to all this? I feel like it would fit a lot of characteristics on any folk horror checklist/bingo card, but I also don't really feel like the term fits for it. Is it like folk-horror-adjacent or something, and if so why?

We're now onto novels and I don't read so much and I don't know this one. We really need Reno on this thread, but I think he's on a break from urban.
 
The Secret History is a thriller, if you’re talking about the Donna Tartt book
Yeah, I'd never really thought of it as a horror before. But if we're talking about stuff that deals with
rural cults, rituals, human sacrifice and entrapment (and also like the theme of some kind of atavistic return to primal destructive urges)
then I feel like Secret History fits that description pretty well, right? So I was just wondering why the folk horror label doesn't fit there, if it doesn't?
 
Yeah, I'd never really thought of it as a horror before. But if we're talking about stuff that deals with
rural cults, rituals, human sacrifice and entrapment (and also like the theme of some kind of atavistic return to primal destructive urges)
then I feel like Secret History fits that description pretty well, right? So I was just wondering why the folk horror label doesn't fit there, if it doesn't?
well for one they're all elite students which isn't the usual cast for folk horror.
 
well for one they're all elite students which isn't the usual cast for folk horror.
Yeah, that makes sense. And maybe there's a rule that if you've inspired a tiktok aesthetic then you're not allowed to be folk horror anymore?
Thinking about Secret History and horror conventions is interesting though (or maybe it isn't and I'm just really desperate to avoid doing any work this afternoon), like
in some ways, "young college students go off into the woods/countryside and meet a farmer" is such a horror cliche, if not a folk one then at least a pretty standard slasher format, going right back to Texas Chainsaw and that, but obv in the Secret History the whole thing of who's the victim and who's the villain is turned on its head? No idea if Donna Tartt was actually trying to write a reverse slasher with folk horror elements when she wrote it though, any more than if she was deliberately trying to inspire a tiktok trend in 2020.
 
There is a trend called "Dark Academia" that involves... dressing like an academic? Wearing a lot of tweed? I don't claim to understand it myself, but I feel like Donna Tartt bears a tremendous amount of blame for tricking young'uns into thinking that studying the classics is cool and sexy? That and probably also something to do with Harry Potter.
 
There is a trend called "Dark Academia" that involves... dressing like an academic? Wearing a lot of tweed? I don't claim to understand it myself, but I feel like Donna Tartt bears a tremendous amount of blame for tricking young'uns into thinking that studying the classics is cool and sexy? That and probably also something to do with Harry Potter.
Reading poetry out loud in caves whilst wearing a black turtleneck?
 
Always exciting seeing this thread getting bumped - are they making a new Wicker Man sequel? Does someone need advice as to whether their home-made elderflower wine is suitable for rabbis? Oh, it's just Burchill making a dick of herself again.
 
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