Mimetic Desire in the Bad Girls Club

"A Bad Girl knows what she wants and how to get it. She makes her own way, makes her own rules and she makes no apologies. A Bad Girl blazes her own trail and removes obstacles from her path. A Bad Girl fights and forces her way to the top with style and beauty. A Bad Girl believes in jumping first and looking later. People will love you. People will hate you. Others will secretly wish to be you. A Bad Girl is you."

-Bad Girls Club Oath

Public Domain Pick of the Week: Haxan

This week's pick is the 1922 Swedish/Danish co-production Haxan or Witchcraft through the Ages. This is the original longer version without the William S. Burroughs narration or the free jazz soundtrack. Instead, the soundtrack is early 20th century recordings of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, and others. I like the way it sounds so much I just play the movie in a separate window while I'm working to listen to the music.

If you've never seen it, it's an exposition of beliefs about witches in medieval and early modern Europe (including lots of recreations) that ends with a coda about the rationalization of witchcraft beliefs into modern concepts about mental illness.

You can watch this entire brilliant Swedish movie online here.

Non-Canonical Scholarship in the NYT

I am trying to slowly but surely get this blog back on its feet after months of neglect, so here's a start. This article from the November 12 New York Times mentions Jeff Kripal and his work at the AAR, but sadly not the panel on which he sat when he gave his paper on Charles Fort.