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A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray and Celluloid Hinterlands: The Rural Dreamscapes, Reimagined Mythical Folklore and Shadowed Undergrowth of Film and Television
The book undertakes in-depth studies of films, television programmes and documentaries and wanders amongst depictions of rural areas where normality, reality and conventions fall away and the landscape becomes deeply imbued with hidden, layered and at times dreamlike stories, taking in modern-day reinterpretations of traditional myth and folklore and work that has become semi-obscured from view through being unofficially available or otherwise having become partly hidden away.
It explores film and documentary hinterlands including, amongst others, the embracing of the ‘old ways’ in The Wicker Man ; John Boorman’s creation of an otherworldly Arthurian dreamscape in Excalibur ; the alternate retelling of folk legend in Robin and Marian ; the unreally vivid seeming snapshots of folk rituals in Oss Oss Wee Os ; the slipstream explorations of The Creeping Garden and stories from the ‘haunted borderlands’ in Gone to Earth and The Wild Heart .
The book also investigates the hauntological spectral and ‘wyrd’ undergrowth of television, including, alongside other programmes, the unearthing of mystical buried powers in Raven ; the utopian meeting of starships, pedlars and morris dancers in Stargazy on Zummerdown ; teatime Cold War intrigues amongst bucolic isolation in Codename Icarus ; the layering of time and myth in anthology drama series Shadows ; Frankenstein-like meddling away from the mainland in The Nightmare Man ; the magical activation of stone circles’ ancient defence mechanisms in The Mind Beyond episode ‘Stones’; and the ‘Albion in the overgrowth’ recalibrating of mainstream television in Mackenzie Crook’s Worzel Gummidge .
Other subjects discussed in the book
Paul Wright’s Arcadia : views from a not always Arcadian Idyll.
Play for Today and ‘Rainy Day Women’: village mob rule and the spectres of archival television.
Bagpuss : portal views Into a magical never-never land.
Takashi Doscher’s Still : explorations of Southern Gothic, wyrd Americana and eternal cycles.
Strange Invaders , Robert Fuest’s Wuthering Heights , Kate Bush, Oklahoma Crude and Twilight a time warp small town invasion, passion amongst a downbeat landscape, untamed frontiers and a media sunset.
The Mind Beyond and ‘Stones’: activating ancient preternatural defence mechanisms and a sidestep into the pioneering work of Irene Shubik, Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire.
David Lynch's The Straight Story : road movie quests and a gently Lynchian view of journeying through a near-mythical landscape.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker : seeking answers in the forbidden zone.
Radio On and Fords on Water : escape and exploring the state of the nation in British road movies.
Whistle Down the Wind : adventures in a time capsule landscape.
Hell Drivers and The Bargee : searching for freedom and autonomy in an overlooked corner of the landscape and during the end of an era.
* * *
The book is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, which via the posts on its website, music and book releases explores wyrd rural and folk music and culture, work that draws inspiration from the hidden and underlying tales of the land and where they meet and intertwine with the lost futures, spectral histories and parallel worlds of what has come to be known as hauntology.
* * *
“Stephen Prince’s impressively comprehensive multimedia project... has created a tangled, overgrown enclave of twisted, rustic oddness and continues to weave its own darkly entrancing magic over the countryside.” Bob Fischer, The Haunted Generation
It explores film and documentary hinterlands including, amongst others, the embracing of the ‘old ways’ in The Wicker Man ; John Boorman’s creation of an otherworldly Arthurian dreamscape in Excalibur ; the alternate retelling of folk legend in Robin and Marian ; the unreally vivid seeming snapshots of folk rituals in Oss Oss Wee Os ; the slipstream explorations of The Creeping Garden and stories from the ‘haunted borderlands’ in Gone to Earth and The Wild Heart .
The book also investigates the hauntological spectral and ‘wyrd’ undergrowth of television, including, alongside other programmes, the unearthing of mystical buried powers in Raven ; the utopian meeting of starships, pedlars and morris dancers in Stargazy on Zummerdown ; teatime Cold War intrigues amongst bucolic isolation in Codename Icarus ; the layering of time and myth in anthology drama series Shadows ; Frankenstein-like meddling away from the mainland in The Nightmare Man ; the magical activation of stone circles’ ancient defence mechanisms in The Mind Beyond episode ‘Stones’; and the ‘Albion in the overgrowth’ recalibrating of mainstream television in Mackenzie Crook’s Worzel Gummidge .
Other subjects discussed in the book
Paul Wright’s Arcadia : views from a not always Arcadian Idyll.
Play for Today and ‘Rainy Day Women’: village mob rule and the spectres of archival television.
Bagpuss : portal views Into a magical never-never land.
Takashi Doscher’s Still : explorations of Southern Gothic, wyrd Americana and eternal cycles.
Strange Invaders , Robert Fuest’s Wuthering Heights , Kate Bush, Oklahoma Crude and Twilight a time warp small town invasion, passion amongst a downbeat landscape, untamed frontiers and a media sunset.
The Mind Beyond and ‘Stones’: activating ancient preternatural defence mechanisms and a sidestep into the pioneering work of Irene Shubik, Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire.
David Lynch's The Straight Story : road movie quests and a gently Lynchian view of journeying through a near-mythical landscape.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker : seeking answers in the forbidden zone.
Radio On and Fords on Water : escape and exploring the state of the nation in British road movies.
Whistle Down the Wind : adventures in a time capsule landscape.
Hell Drivers and The Bargee : searching for freedom and autonomy in an overlooked corner of the landscape and during the end of an era.
* * *
The book is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, which via the posts on its website, music and book releases explores wyrd rural and folk music and culture, work that draws inspiration from the hidden and underlying tales of the land and where they meet and intertwine with the lost futures, spectral histories and parallel worlds of what has come to be known as hauntology.
* * *
“Stephen Prince’s impressively comprehensive multimedia project... has created a tangled, overgrown enclave of twisted, rustic oddness and continues to weave its own darkly entrancing magic over the countryside.” Bob Fischer, The Haunted Generation
347 pages, Paperback
Published June 6, 2022
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About the author
Stephen Prince
44 books12 followersStephen Prince teaches film history, criticism, and theory at Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts . He received his Ph.D from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 16, 2022
The third book in this series by social analyst Stephen Prince is dedicated almost entirely to tv shows and films that relate to his ongoing quest to pin down ephemeral elements in British culture. These elements are related to, and may overlap but are not synonymous with hauntology, folk horror, wyrdness and similar streams in the vast landscape of 21st century life. Prince's writing style is discursive and distinctive but its eccentricity feels appropriate to his subject matter.
I found quite a few films and shows here that I have never seen, including a few that I have never even heard of, or want to see again, something that all by itself makes the book worthwhile. I also really like the chapter on Southern Gothic fiction and film in the US because I have long thought the American equivalent of much of "folk horror" is found in the world of Faulkner, Crews, and company. America's ambivalence toward its rural side is very similar to the modern English attitudes toward the bucolic past.
I miss the regular updates on Prince's excellent A YEAR IN THE COUNTRY website, but as long as he's writing books, I'll be reading them. Recommended.
I found quite a few films and shows here that I have never seen, including a few that I have never even heard of, or want to see again, something that all by itself makes the book worthwhile. I also really like the chapter on Southern Gothic fiction and film in the US because I have long thought the American equivalent of much of "folk horror" is found in the world of Faulkner, Crews, and company. America's ambivalence toward its rural side is very similar to the modern English attitudes toward the bucolic past.
I miss the regular updates on Prince's excellent A YEAR IN THE COUNTRY website, but as long as he's writing books, I'll be reading them. Recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review