Author Archives: William the Bloody

About William the Bloody

Cat lover. 18C scholar on the dialogue and novel. Co-convenor OGOM Project

Burn the Witch

I’ve just been alerted to this by a friend. The music alone is wonderful; the subject and the brilliant video make it a must for OGOM. We were chatting below about disco and Gothic; Sam commented there about folk Gothic … Continue reading

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Disco and Dystopia

With regard to Sam’s remarks on my previous post of a disco Walpurgisnacht, where we saw disco music as antithetical to Gothic, I was just reminded of this. It’s a dystopian Dr Moreau-like fantasy of science going wrong and mutating … Continue reading

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Disco Magic

But what I’m dancing to tonight, when I’m not swirling in the air on my besom, is this great generic mutation of Mussorgsky–very apt for the hedonism of the 1970s New York club scene.

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Disney’s Walpurgisnacht

Witches and magical transformations are themes that OGOM will be pursuing over the next year or so. Disney’s wonderful adaptation of Walpurgisnacht in Fantasia (1941) makes full use of the potential of cinematic technology to depict the transformative powers of … Continue reading

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Walpurgisnacht: Musical and textual variations

Sam has posted some fab items on witches below to celebrate Walpurgisnacht, so I’d better follow suit before dawn arrives and the wild partying has to end. The Walpurgisnacht motif has inspired artists in all sorts of media. It’s a … Continue reading

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OGOM website changes

I’ve made some changes–I hope for the better–to the OGOM website. I’m working towards a redesign that will make the site more attractive, more informative and interactively communal, and easier to use. There is now a sitemap (with a link, … Continue reading

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Changes to Twitter – @OGOMProject

If you’re following either Sam, Kaja, or myself via our Twitter accounts, I’ve now set up a special OGOM one — @OGOMProject. Any future blog posts will send a Tweet via this account as well as our original ones. To … Continue reading

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Free Course: Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales

I came across this free on-line course on Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, presented by The Hans Christian Andersen Centre at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark, via Future Learn (with whom I’m also doing a fascinating course … Continue reading

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OGOM developments April 2016

Sam and I met up with Kaja yesterday in Café Rouge, St Albans to plan various developments for the OGOM Project. There was much enthusiasm and some exciting ideas will be coming to fruition over the next few months. First … Continue reading

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The Jungle Book and wild children

Here’s an interesting article on the new film of The Jungle Book, touching on themes of wolves, wild children, and the opposition of nature and culture much discussed at the Company of Wolves conference (and covered in the forthcoming book, … Continue reading

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