-
That’s Detente, Comrade
James Bond, The Cold War, and Camp For a franchise born out of the Cold War and so heavily associated with it, it took a surprisingly long time for James Bond to engage directly with it. The villains of the Connery and Lazenby years are, with only a single exception, associated with SPECTRE. SPECTRE is, […]
-
Smashing Time
Smashing Time (1967) is a gentle satire of swinging London, starring Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham as two teenaged girls who go down to the City and “Go stark mod!”, as the film’s tagline says. The film was largely forgotten after its initial release, occasionally playing on TV in Britain, but almost entirely unknown in […]
-
Red Velvet Cake and George Washington’s Dentures: Race, Identity, and American Folklore
A few years ago, on a bus near San Jose, a passenger was surprised when a woman on the bus got up and started handing out cards containing the recipe for the Waldorf-Astoria hotel’s famous Red Velvet Cake. when asked why she was doing this, the woman recounted how she hd once stayed at the […]
-
The Saucer People Want Twinkies: Folk Practice as Cultural Behavioral Therapy
In his 2016 book written with UFO abductee Whitley Strieber, The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained, Jeffrey Kripal notes Grays were, in appearance, strikingly similar to the fairy folk of Northern Europe. Also like them, they were frightening, came out of the night, and abducted people. I might note in passing that the […]
-
Nixon and the Dinosaurs: A Folkloric View of Time
A substantial number of years ago, a friend of mine explained to me his view of history. “Everything that happened before me happened at the same time. Nixon. The Dinosaurs. All of it.” He was joking. Mostly. But it’s something that has stuck with me for thirty years now, because as a view of how […]