Daily Archives: April 9, 2024

Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (2) The Critical Drinker

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Youtube channel banner as at 9 March 2024

 

(2) THE CRITICAL DRINKER (UNITED KINGDOM 2006)

 

 

“I drink and I say things. I’m here to deliver reviews, breakdowns and analysis on modern entertainment media. Expect a healthy dose of sarcasm, biting criticism and low-functioning alcoholism.”

 

The second of my holy trinity of Youtube popular culture commentators hailing from the British Isles as its Scottish member – and Youtube alter ego of writer Will Jordan. He perhaps prompts the most controversy of the trinity, given that he has a profile of an entirely different higher order of magnitude than the other two – closing in on 2 million followers – and people online seem to love him or hate him with little middle ground.

 

I fall somewhere in between, although obviously falling more towards the former, given I’ve placed him second in my Top 10 Youtube rankings. The fact that there is such a divide – and that it is so intense – between his fans and his critics may well illustrate his recurring theme about political messaging in entertainment media (or as he puts it in his videos, the MESSAGE!), as his fans and his critics are usually on opposite sides of that message.

 

I often don’t agree with his criticism or for that matter his recommendations but I usually find them entertaining, which is my primary criterion for these rankings. The usual example off the top of my head is his criticism of Midsommar – I agree that film is flawed but for different reasons than the Drinker and which do not detract from my appreciation of the film as a whole, particularly for its visual and stylistic elements.

 

Similarly, the points where I disagree with the Drinker do not detract from my appreciation of the Drinker’s video content as a whole, including the persona he adopts for it – “a Scottish drunkard with a crude attitude, a penchant for black comedy, speaks in biting sarcasm and snark, and frequently uses running gags and catchphrases” as well as a “snide demeanor…juxtaposed by his intelligent critique of the art of filmmaking and storytelling.”

 

Although he can be as caustic as the other two members of my holy trinity of caustic critics from the British Isles, he is perhaps the most positive of them – with videos appreciating or recommending films or TV series, including some that might surprise those on the other side of his caustic catchphrases “updated for modern audiences” and “reflecting the world we live in today”, as well as videos proposing ways to fix the issues he criticizes.

 

Also I have a soft spot for Tatiana, the Critical Drinker’s fictional muse and with whom he is said (by himself) “to live out many of his most perverted desires”.

 

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (2) Necromancy

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Free “divine gallery” art sample – OldWorldGods

 

(2) NECROMANCY

 

Dead men do tell tales!

That’s right – it’s the mancy everyone knows, virtually synonymous with evil and death or the undead in popular culture, hence its high ranking although I refuse to give it top spot.

For example, Sauron styles himself as the Necromancer in The Hobbit, although he doesn’t seem to do much actual necromancy – he probably would have done better with armies of the undead in The Lord of The Rings. Of course, he was also a vampire AND a werewolf at various points, because the First Age was trippy.

Necromancy has a far older literary pedigree – indeed the oldest, at least for the two sources of Western literary culture, the Bible and the epics of Homer, albeit the Odyssey rather than the Iliad.

The Bible has the Witch of Endor, whom Saul consults to raise the prophet Samuel from the dead. Interestingly, it is presented as working, although both Samuel and God seem pissed about it. It could also be argued to present with the same deception or trickery as a séance.

The Odyssey has the archetypal journey into the underworld by its protagonist to consult the shade of the prophet Tiresias, with the nice necromantic component of pouring out sacrificial blood to attract the dead – also perhaps demonstrating the substantial overlap with hieromancy and blood magic from the previous entry.

Interestingly, in both cases, while the necromancy involved raising or summoning the dead person, but the actual divination or prophecy part did not originate from them being dead, but that they had been prophets in life. Although Odysseus’ dead mother also has useful information for him – and I have read (and prefer) adaptations that extend the divination to other shades.

Necromancy has a pedigree older than literature or writing, as its inclusion in the Odyssey, originally an oral epic, suggests. Indeed it has probably the oldest, likely one of the first methods of divination in history or prehistory – originating from when humans first associated death or the dead with a mystical or supernatural realm, from which one could see things not seen by the living.

Strictly speaking, necromancy is defined not as the hardcore zombie apocalypse type of necromancy we see in popular culture, but only calling on or communicating with the dead for divination – divining things beyond the knowledge of the living, whether past, present or future. After all, the dead reside in eternity as opposed to time.

As such, it was not necessarily evil in origin – indeed, quite the contrary, seeking out or summoning the spirits of ancestors or dead heroes for guidance. To the extent that it extended beyond communing with ancestors or heroes, it probably involved positive aspects of keeping balance between life and death, or with the spirit realm or souls, for purposes such as healing.

“But since that’s not nearly as interesting as zombies”, necromancy in popular imagination and culture is, as I said, virtually synonymous with evil and death, or rather, the undead – the ultimate crossing lines that were not meant to be crossed between life and death, animating or controlling the dead (or generally playing with dead things).

“The career of necromancer is an excellent choice for evil-doers who are not a ‘people person’. Though some might say there is not much point to turning the earth into one gigantic graveyard, these people are fools and will never understand anyway. Good career entry points for becoming a necromancer include occultists, dabblers in voodoo, grave diggers, morticians, possessed eight-year-old girls, and inheritors of scary books wrapped in human flesh.”
— Neil Zawacki, How to be a Villain

As TV Tropes points out, necromancy commonly overlaps with the trope of necromantic (a pun of necromancy and romance) – bringing back a loved one lost to death. Also, “it’s not unheard of for a necromancer to be one of the undead themselves, often a lich. Even if they aren’t liches or other forms of undead themselves, they are likely to have unlocked other ways of prolonging their own lives to unnatural lengths. Furthermore, they may become partially undead.”

As a means of divination, it’s up there with the original and the best, the dead perhaps being second only to the divine or infernal (and often overlapping with those) in secret knowledge. Speaking of infernal, necromancy definitely overlaps with the more rarely used necyomancy (or divination by summoning damned souls) or demonomancy (or divination by demons).

As a school of magic, it is similarly one of the most powerful, if distasteful. It was notoriously overpowered in Dungeons and Dragons, such that opting out of it was effectively nerfing your wizard – although ironically the class of cleric made for better necromancers than wizards, which certainly makes me think differently of the average priest.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
GOD-TIER (OR IS THAT DEVIL-TIER – OR DEATH-TIER?)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (2) Classical

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Free “divine gallery” art sample – OldWorldGods

 

(2) CLASSICAL

 

“What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy!”

I believe in all the gods – especially the goddesses!

And I’m into classical mythology for the nymphs.

Or pining for them. As I said for Egyptian mythology, if there’s one of two things I lament about Christianity, it’s the decline of the Egyptian pantheon. Of course, the other thing – indeed the foremost – is the decline of classical paganism. It’s all I can do to stop myself yelling “This isn’t over! Pan isn’t dead! Julian the Apostate was right!” in churches.

“What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
For creeds that refuse and restrain?
Come down and redeem us from virtue”

If only we continued to follow the gods of classical paganism! If there is any mythology that tempts to me to actual religion within the deepest levels of my psyche, it’s classical mythology. I can see myself as a devotee of Aphrodite or Dionysus.

Classical mythology is of course the combination of Greek mythology and Roman mythology in ancient Greece as well as the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Even as mythology rather than religion, it is one of the major survivals of ‘Greco-Roman’ culture that in turn is one of the two predominant cultural influences in what is often termed as Western civilization. Of course, many devotees prefer to refer to it simply as Greek mythology, seeing Roman mythology as Greek mythology with the serial numbers filed off. Which is somewhat ironic, as prior to the so-called Greek revival of the nineteenth century, Europeans primarily referred to names from classical mythology in their Latinized form. It is also a little unfair, as Roman mythology was not entirely derivative of Greek mythology – more a continuity reboot in the words of TV Tropes.

Anyway, you know it – or should. The gods and goddesses, primarily the twelve Olympian gods, but all the other deities as well as the demi-semi-hemi-gods that pop up because the gods can’t keep it in their pants. There are the heroes – a concept that in its very name actually comes from Greek mythology – primarily the heroes of the Trojan cycle. And there’s all the other beings, notably the various monsters that represent all the chaotic or chthonic forces in classical mythology.

And of course there’s the nymphs…

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (2) Bulfinch’s Mythology

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Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

 

(2) BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY (1867)

 

I believe in all the gods –
especially the goddesses.

Now we get into the second of my three B’s, the top trinity of my top ten books of mythology. And we’re going old school for this one, as in nineteenth century old school – named for its American author Thomas Bulfinch and published as a collection of three volumes after his death in 1867. Yet Bulfinch’s Mythology still remains a classic reference (and handily in the public domain) – as indeed it was for me as my introduction as a child to the world of classical mythology. Well, technically that was the first volume – the Age of Fable – which also featured a briefer recitation of Nordic mythology, admittedly a close second to my love for classical mythology. (The second volume – The Age of Chivalry – featured Arthurian legend, while the third volume The Legends of Charlemagne is pretty much what it says on the tin).

Looking back to it now, it’s somewhat dated and has its flaws as a reference – particularly as his obituary noted, it was “expurgated of all that would be offensive”. Or in other words, half the fun of classical mythology or all the sex and violence. (Indeed, his Wikipedia entry includes an uncited reference that Bulfinch was an anti-homosexuality activist in his final years. If true, that would have made for some awkwardness when compiling classical mythology – those gods tended to swing all ways). Which is somewhat disappointing, because having learnt that Bulfinch was a merchant banker, I fondly imagined him as staid banker by day and Bacchanalian by night, similar to the hedonistic heathen imagined by Chesterton in The Song of the Strange Ascetic.

However, it remains one of the most accessible single-volume references to classical mythology for the general reader – as Bulfinch wrote in his preface:

“Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.”

Anyway, its impact as an introduction to classical mythology remains profound – if, deep within my psyche, there is any mythology that tempts me to actual religion, it’s classical mythology.

Yes – it’s the nymphs.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)