{"id":483,"date":"2005-08-06T14:48:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-06T14:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=483"},"modified":"2010-08-25T14:25:23","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T20:25:23","slug":"483","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"Apples and Honey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Even though it was billed as a horror film, and even though no one whom I knew ever endorsed the ending, the 1973 movie The Wicker Man<\/em><\/a> still inspired many of us who were then in the Pagan movement. We loved the idea of a place like Summerisle, a functioning society based on Pagan principles.<\/p>\n

The new version<\/a> that’s in the works, starring Nicholas Cage as the interfering policeman and directed by Neil LaBute<\/a>, moves the island from the Scottish coast to Puget Sound.<\/p>\n

But the remake lacks the tension of the original, says this script reviewer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My problems with this draft all stem from the changes made to the main character. Malus isn’t anywhere near as intense or conflicted as Howie; indeed, compared to him, Malus is a relative dork. He is allergic to bee stings and carries his bee sting kit with him when he travels to SummerIsle (along with his rosary beads and self-help tapes). He is a California cop out removed to this isolated Washington community. His very modern manner contrasts with the simplicity of the locals; think Witness<\/a> but if it were remade as horror-lite.<\/em><\/p>\n

This island community produces honey rather than apples. The cop’s name, Malus (rather than Howie as in the original), is the botanical genus for apples–a little tribute to the original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though it was billed as a horror film, and even though no one whom I knew ever endorsed the ending, the 1973 movie The Wicker Man still inspired many of us who were then in the Pagan movement. We loved the idea of a place like Summerisle, a functioning society based on Pagan principles. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,5],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-movies","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-483","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":116,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=116","url_meta":{"origin":483,"position":0},"title":"\"Hello, Pagan\" Despite the best\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Hello, Pagan\" Despite the best efforts of those of us at The Pomegranate and such writers as Michael York, author of Pagan Theology (and a member of The Pom's editorial board), some people continue to use \"Pagan\" as a synonym for \"irreligious.\" Consider the \"Pagans Only\" page at the fundamentalist\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1284,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1284","url_meta":{"origin":483,"position":1},"title":"Too Much Pagan Writing is Too Bland","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I wish Pagan writers would stop giving advice and writing bland how-to articles. A lot of what makes Pagan magazine publishing is its bias towards advice-giving. That and poor graphic design, in some cases.Look at Circle magazine, for example. Circle reminds me too much of the bland publications of cookie-cutter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2697,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2697","url_meta":{"origin":483,"position":2},"title":"Wikipedia and the Pagan Academics","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Last weekend Cara Schulz wrote a piece on the trouble some Pagan writers were having with Wikipedia. It started when people noticed some Pagan-related entries, such as \"Paganistan\" being flagged for deletion. Much editorial chat ensued. Brendan Cathbad Myers, author of The Other Side of Virtue and other books, saw\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":235,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=235","url_meta":{"origin":483,"position":3},"title":"Missing Texts","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 31, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The Wiccan\/Pagan times has reviewed Graham Harvey's and my anthology, The Paganism Reader. So far, no review (of two that I have seen) has noted our big, accidental omission, James Frazer's The Golden Bough. It is easy to see what happened. Neither Graham nor I make any use of this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5016,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5016","url_meta":{"origin":483,"position":4},"title":"The P-word","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Since the early 1990s, I have been working in my small way to get the word Pagan capitalized in books and articles \u2014 of course, I was not the only one doing that. Ironically, the most resistance seems to come from certain British academics. Neither of the two conflicting editing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1113,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1113","url_meta":{"origin":483,"position":5},"title":"Copyediting Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Orthographic payback is a bitch.For years--starting when I wrote for Gnosis in the 1980s--I was one of those pushing for the capitalization of the words Witch and Pagan when used to describe first, the followers of the new, self-consciously created polytheistic mystery religion and, second, Pagan as a more general\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1783,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/1783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}