V V

[ateolf]

I was dumb last night and, though I included it as my current music as I was listening to it while posting, I neglected to Officially Announce the arrival of a cd in the mail. So here I am to correct that oversight first thing: Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein: Stranger Things • Volume Two. Anyway, last night Mary Beth and I had a little bit of a horror marathon. First we watched Carrie, which I had never seen before. It was good, not as I would have expected (at least years and years ago before I was more familiar with De Palma, but I guess in light of his work it's not surprising or anything). Anyway, it was good. We also watched The Witch, which neither of us had seen before. Yeah, I'm starting to feel even more and more that it was a great movie. I had a lot of thoughts about it, mostly revolving around the treatment of the puritans, how everything is through their perspective and not from a modern sort of judgmental way and how it addresses their humanity in a way you don't often see of that sort of religious type when observed through a modern lens. It's interesting because the way we get the witch of their puritan/pioneering fears, we get their perspective and the reasons for their fears. Even though our contemporary conception of a witch, as cartoonish as it is, comes from the same source, it's just without the context of an actual world that's harsh and scary it loses a lot of what would make it scary to us. Whereas, the way the movie places us in the pilgrims' perspective, you do get a sense of genuine fear of the witches. Also, there's a modern tendency to condemn the witch hysteria and paint the witches as non-existent or the actual good guys (or at least the type where they seem the bad guy but then at the end there's the twist and you realize you were wrong for judging or whatever, and don't get me wrong as that's all super valid and aligns with my actual beliefs, but it's refreshing to get that sense through that religious perspective where they're real and evil witches from beginning to end in the sense that they are THEIR witches without being cartoonish or goofy, just pulling that off and making the witches really terrifying). Also, the same can be said of the puritans themselves. Frequently there's the approach like in Carrie for representing hyper-religious types (crazy weirdos, and again, also nothing wrong with that) or if there's an old pilgrim type, they might not be treated as crazy but they might also be cardboard cutouts of Puritanism. So it was pretty interesting to see them depicted as having this religion guide their lives but also being real and vulnerable people and having real thoughts and emotions in parallel with the religion that guides their lives. At the same time, it doesn't push this religious outlook and view of witches, it does a good job of showing it and remaining philosophically neutral. And even though it never shows the witches as good (or even "good" with quotation marks), it is possible to view things with a feminist lens. And there's the other stereotype of hyper-religious, overbearing father ruling with an iron fist in this sort of thing, but even though there is obviously a level of patriarchy, the father is genuinely compassionate towards his daughter and other children and is a much more complex figure than is often depicted (which, again, I'm not against that depiction, I also think that's something that NEEDS to be depicted for many reasons, it's just interesting how the movie doesn't take an easy type-cast and shows a portrayal you see less often). Well, I've blathered on quite a bit about that! What else now? Went to the post office to pick up a couple of packages. One had William S. Burroughs: Real English Tea Made Here (which was actually delivered much earlier in the week and I requested to have it redelivered online...and this request was apparently completely ignored, okay, fine if you can't do online requests, but to have it on the website anyway?) and another package with my first new module in a few years! I got an Edges ("quad chiptune audio generator). This site had a promo on Mutable Instruments modules for 20% off and that was almost a $70 savings and now that I actually have SOME money sitting around, I had to jump in! Can't wait to play with this bad boy, or good boy or whatever.