Edgar, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3483-8605 (2024) “Mohawk this guy”: New York Wyrd. In: American Folk Horror. University of Wales Press (In Press)

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Abstract

Drawing on theories of the Urban Wyrd, this chapter will argue that the history of New York City demonstrates a pattern where one group displaces another, which then becomes the “folk” with (very recent) rituals and rites that have the appearance and weight of tradition. Foundational literature which describes a developing city includes Washington Irving’s History of New York (1809), Robert W. Chambers” municipal weirding (The King in Yellow 1895) and Herbert Asbury’s reporting/naming of the “gangs of New York” as if they were ancient tribes (1927). This form of New York Wyrd is evident in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985). Rather than just being part of the “Yuppie Nightmare Cycle,” After Hours creates a city infused with a sense of threat, and it represents the folk horror dichotomy between the rural and the urban in the distinctly separate districts of Manhattan. Paul Hackett is the outsider entering the “village” - the “traditional” and bohemian SoHo - on a romantic quest, only to find himself subject to a series of strange local people and their peculiar nocturnal rituals. He narrowly escapes a forced Mohawk haircut - a notable reference to the original inhabitants of the area, although, otherwise, Scorsese portrays a city where diversity is largely economic. Hackett is pursued by a “monstrous tribe” seeking his death and, at the end (with echoes of The Wicker Man), is encased in papier mâché ready to be sacrificed. New York City’s difficult relationship with the “folk” of the recent past is, moreover, something Scorsese returns to in Gangs of New York (2002). These representations are of an “indigenous” population that evokes rituals rooted in a form of folklore which has the appearance of tradition, but which has a much more recent colonial and (latterly) economic migratory history.

Item Type:	Book Section
Status:	In Press
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/10710

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