Today 01:03 AM
(This post was last modified: Today 01:23 AM by C C.)
RELATED: Jon Del Arroz actually loves "Widow's Bay" on Apple TV
While WB provides an opportunity to recruit it for that kind of discussion, it seems like this is reading too much of an intellectual or conversational trend into the show. Since it's a usual part of the genre to open with one or more characters who are skeptical. A "found footage" film like Dagr starts with that -- it's a routine expectation. A simulated reality series would actually be more evocative of or illustrate how a "supernatural" or transcendent realm could be possible than a horror or comedy-horror hit.
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AFTER PARTY with Emily Jashinsky
https://youtu.be/ckII9s1BOGI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: The show is considered to be in the Stephen King vein. The director himself (Hiro Murai) has talked about how it is an intentional sort of homage to Stephen King. King posted just a few days ago, "Widow's Bay is good."
So basically Stephen King gave Widows Bay his endorsement. [...] I saw this interesting post from Jack Posobiec on Monday who said, "Yes, everyone was right. Widow's Bay is phenomenal. Lovecraftian New England horror is back with a dash of office humor at that."
Matt Walsh was one of the first people I saw to pick up on the show. This was probably a month ago. He posted a really positive review of Widows Bay.
And I took what Jack said and just wanted to push it a bit further if you've been plugged into this big Christian discourse right now on the re-enchantment of the world. Which is totally pulling from Max Weber and other thinkers in the 19th and 20th centuries who were responding to rapid mass-industrialization. It goes, actually, in some ways to Marx, who talked about "Everything holy is profane."
[...] Weber wrote that the great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world -- which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and in conjunction with scientific thought -- had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition, and sin came here to its logical conclusion. Weber really sees this being a time where the demagicking, the disenchantment of the world as most people refer to it now, is starting to manifest in a really obvious way in the West.
[...] I think that with the rise simultaneously of neo-paganism and neo-traditionalism, or this and that religious revival ... We may look back on the last 100 years as ultimately an aberration in history where we decided we could explain everything with science.
[...] Rod Dreher tells the story of someone named Jonah who he says is a trained scholar of religion. I'm going to read some long quotes from Rod here. Bear with me because I think this is very interesting in light of Widow's Bay.
He says, "Jonah cautions me to be careful with the concept of re-enchantment. People are religious by nature." He says, "What modern disenchantment has done is convince people that Christianity is false and empty, which has opened the door for the popularity of psychedelics, UFOs, tarot cards, and all manner of occultism. It's no longer fringe enthusiasm."
For example, the University of Exeter announced in 2023 that it would offer a postgraduate degree program in occult studies. [...] The emerging forms of post-Christian religion, Jonah says, will provide plenty of opportunities for ecstatic spiritual experience with none of the ascetic discipline, epistemic rigor, and doctrinal depth of the original faith.
Jonah doesn't fault people for wanting a deeper experience of God as he did as a bored young evangelical. But he strongly warns against seeking enchantment for its own sake. If you summon the devil and his servants and ask them to dazzle you, they will come.
[...] I interviewed Rod back on Unherd's Undercurrents about some of his Protestant versus Catholic and Orthodox theories with which I may disagree with over the course of the book. But it's an interesting point that he's making here with Jonah.
He says at the university where Jonah began his doctoral program, he fell in with a cultist community and began to participate in rituals often incorporating psychedelics. Eventually, he began to have visions and communicate with demons. On a number of occasions, they entered his body, sometimes against his will. For a couple of years, Jonah thought he was being initiated into special knowledge of the Gnosis with a group of elect who had been chosen by the gods as their acolytes to enlighten humanity.
Those early experiences of visions were genuinely beautiful and truly meaningful. If they had not been, Jonah would not have been seduced into slavery. Behind this idea of morally neutral, psychedelic enchantment was the most satanic evil possible. Jonah now says: "This is the final part: I have no excuse for it."
But I have to say that I have been primed, had been primed by these ideologies over the years, to explain away all this to my family and friends that it's just the natural world. Why is that significant in light of Widow's Bay?
Well, you see again this technocratic mayor who doesn't want to believe that some silly Puritan-era curse on the island could actually be real. Right. Gentle spoilers ahead. He's dared to stay in haunted locations, and he kind of gladly does it and ends up with strange experiences and even psychedelic ones. This is a bit more of a spoiler, but psychedelic mushrooms come into the picture at one point. And interestingly, all of this is so on the nose if you have been following the enchantment discourse, in especially Christian circles, but also in circles that have dealt with the legacy of the New Atheists.
So people like Alex O'Connor, a cosmic skeptic on YouTube, who have waded into these debates, have been hearing about all of this. And so it's hard for me to believe that Widow's Bay is not intentionally situating itself in the context of this big conversation. And it's a really interesting conversation.
[...] We do live in a very sterilized world where ancient supernatural ideas -- this is also a big part of the UFO discourse -- are looked upon as outmoded and totally out of step with where modern technology has put us. ... Everything that seems weird or supernatural will eventually be explained by science. Because people believe in so many cases that have been true...
What Everyone Is Missing About the Hit Show "Widow’s Bay" ... https://youtu.be/ckII9s1BOGI
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ckII9s1BOGI
While WB provides an opportunity to recruit it for that kind of discussion, it seems like this is reading too much of an intellectual or conversational trend into the show. Since it's a usual part of the genre to open with one or more characters who are skeptical. A "found footage" film like Dagr starts with that -- it's a routine expectation. A simulated reality series would actually be more evocative of or illustrate how a "supernatural" or transcendent realm could be possible than a horror or comedy-horror hit.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
AFTER PARTY with Emily Jashinsky
https://youtu.be/ckII9s1BOGI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: The show is considered to be in the Stephen King vein. The director himself (Hiro Murai) has talked about how it is an intentional sort of homage to Stephen King. King posted just a few days ago, "Widow's Bay is good."
So basically Stephen King gave Widows Bay his endorsement. [...] I saw this interesting post from Jack Posobiec on Monday who said, "Yes, everyone was right. Widow's Bay is phenomenal. Lovecraftian New England horror is back with a dash of office humor at that."
Matt Walsh was one of the first people I saw to pick up on the show. This was probably a month ago. He posted a really positive review of Widows Bay.
And I took what Jack said and just wanted to push it a bit further if you've been plugged into this big Christian discourse right now on the re-enchantment of the world. Which is totally pulling from Max Weber and other thinkers in the 19th and 20th centuries who were responding to rapid mass-industrialization. It goes, actually, in some ways to Marx, who talked about "Everything holy is profane."
[...] Weber wrote that the great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world -- which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and in conjunction with scientific thought -- had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition, and sin came here to its logical conclusion. Weber really sees this being a time where the demagicking, the disenchantment of the world as most people refer to it now, is starting to manifest in a really obvious way in the West.
[...] I think that with the rise simultaneously of neo-paganism and neo-traditionalism, or this and that religious revival ... We may look back on the last 100 years as ultimately an aberration in history where we decided we could explain everything with science.
[...] Rod Dreher tells the story of someone named Jonah who he says is a trained scholar of religion. I'm going to read some long quotes from Rod here. Bear with me because I think this is very interesting in light of Widow's Bay.
He says, "Jonah cautions me to be careful with the concept of re-enchantment. People are religious by nature." He says, "What modern disenchantment has done is convince people that Christianity is false and empty, which has opened the door for the popularity of psychedelics, UFOs, tarot cards, and all manner of occultism. It's no longer fringe enthusiasm."
For example, the University of Exeter announced in 2023 that it would offer a postgraduate degree program in occult studies. [...] The emerging forms of post-Christian religion, Jonah says, will provide plenty of opportunities for ecstatic spiritual experience with none of the ascetic discipline, epistemic rigor, and doctrinal depth of the original faith.
Jonah doesn't fault people for wanting a deeper experience of God as he did as a bored young evangelical. But he strongly warns against seeking enchantment for its own sake. If you summon the devil and his servants and ask them to dazzle you, they will come.
[...] I interviewed Rod back on Unherd's Undercurrents about some of his Protestant versus Catholic and Orthodox theories with which I may disagree with over the course of the book. But it's an interesting point that he's making here with Jonah.
He says at the university where Jonah began his doctoral program, he fell in with a cultist community and began to participate in rituals often incorporating psychedelics. Eventually, he began to have visions and communicate with demons. On a number of occasions, they entered his body, sometimes against his will. For a couple of years, Jonah thought he was being initiated into special knowledge of the Gnosis with a group of elect who had been chosen by the gods as their acolytes to enlighten humanity.
Those early experiences of visions were genuinely beautiful and truly meaningful. If they had not been, Jonah would not have been seduced into slavery. Behind this idea of morally neutral, psychedelic enchantment was the most satanic evil possible. Jonah now says: "This is the final part: I have no excuse for it."
But I have to say that I have been primed, had been primed by these ideologies over the years, to explain away all this to my family and friends that it's just the natural world. Why is that significant in light of Widow's Bay?
Well, you see again this technocratic mayor who doesn't want to believe that some silly Puritan-era curse on the island could actually be real. Right. Gentle spoilers ahead. He's dared to stay in haunted locations, and he kind of gladly does it and ends up with strange experiences and even psychedelic ones. This is a bit more of a spoiler, but psychedelic mushrooms come into the picture at one point. And interestingly, all of this is so on the nose if you have been following the enchantment discourse, in especially Christian circles, but also in circles that have dealt with the legacy of the New Atheists.
So people like Alex O'Connor, a cosmic skeptic on YouTube, who have waded into these debates, have been hearing about all of this. And so it's hard for me to believe that Widow's Bay is not intentionally situating itself in the context of this big conversation. And it's a really interesting conversation.
[...] We do live in a very sterilized world where ancient supernatural ideas -- this is also a big part of the UFO discourse -- are looked upon as outmoded and totally out of step with where modern technology has put us. ... Everything that seems weird or supernatural will eventually be explained by science. Because people believe in so many cases that have been true...
What Everyone Is Missing About the Hit Show "Widow’s Bay" ... https://youtu.be/ckII9s1BOGI