This raises the question as to why we are so fascinated by the idea of demonic possession, and in turn, why we produce so many horror films that build upon this premise (with little depth or variation). Psychology Today explores this topic with an essay by Dr. Stephen Diamond titled “The Devil Inside: What Fascinates Us About Exorcism and Demonic Possession?.” Diamond introduces his topic with reference to The Devil Inside by asking

What does the astounding and unexpected popularity of this movie say about us and our culture psychologically? Why are high-tech, scientifically-minded, religiously secular twenty-first century cynics so fascinated with a (bad) film about exorcism, Satan and his demons?

A number of social, cultural, and religious elements could be explored in an attempt to answer such questions, but given Diamond’s area of training, and the focus of the publication in which he is writing, Diamond challenges his colleagues in psychology to consider what belief in possession and exorcism might tell us about the human condition in this area.

Perhaps it’s time psychologists start asking some of those same questions. What is exorcism? How does it heal? Can we learn something valuable about psychotherapy from exorcism? Are there certain techniques employed by exorcists that psychotherapists should consider when treating angry, psychotic or violent patients? Are there vital existential or spiritual questions addressed by exorcism–for example, the archetypal riddle of evil–that psychotherapy detrimentally avoids or neglects?

One need not necessarily accept either religious or psychological interpretations for what Diamond labels “possession syndrome” in order to benefit from an exploration of this topic through this essay. It serves as another reminder that horror films have much to tell us about our fears as well as how they are informed by cultural and religious ideas.

Related posts:

“Satanism, Exorcism, and Social Horror Trends”

“Cinefantastique Online – THE RITE: Satan, Possession, and Unlikely Sources of Faith”

“Satanic Cinema”

“Scott Poole: Satan in America”

That trend is now being repeated thanks to the internet according to the Catholic Church. A surge in Satanism fuelled by the web has led to a sharp rise in the demand for exorcists, as information on Devil-worshipping and the occult is at the surfer’s fingertips.

As a result exorcism is now the subject of a six-day conference being held this week at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome, under the authority of the Vatican.

These claims raised red flags for myself and others, and in order to explore this topic I turn to a researcher and colleague, Jesper Aagaard Peterson. Petersen is a Research Fellow at the Dept. of Archaeology and Religious Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has published extensively on modern Satanism and is currently finishing his dissertation provisionally entitled “Between Darwin and the Devil: Issues of Articulation and Legitimacy in Contemporary Religious Satanism“.

TheoFantastique: Jesper, thank you for making some time to discuss your research as it relates to current events in popular culture. As you know, an article in The Telegraph in the UK reported on an alleged rise in Satanism, and according to the Roman Catholic Church, a corresponding need for more exorcists as a response to alleged increases in possession. There is a lot to unpack here, but let’s look at the various elements of significance here. To begin, what type of research have you done on Satanism, can you define Satanism in terms of your research, and has there indeed been any kind of rise in Satanism as the article reports?

Jesper Aagaard Petersen: My research focuses on modern religious Satanism, a heterogeneous assortment of individuals, groups and networks using Satan and other mythological beings as a short-hand for their work on the Left-Hand path. This manifestation of Satanism is recent, only gaining ground and formalization during the occult revival of the 1960s; the most well-known exemplar is of course Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. Even so, there are many other interpretations alongside LaVey’s – some are atheist and materialist just like the Church, others are explicitly theist, although it often takes a Gnostic or esoteric form rather than a direct mimesis of Christian stereotypes. And there are positions in between. I tend to distinguish ‘rational’ and ‘esoteric’ Satanism as fully developed, autonomous and organized types of religious Satanism. These types should in turn be separated from ‘reactive’ Satanism, which is the (often deeply meaningful, yet fragmented) Satanism of the pact, the teenage bedroom and the black metal concert, and from various demonological discourses on the satanic throughout history.

My studies are primarily based on texts, websites and message boards, but I have complemented these sources with both ethnographic, sociological, and media work. What I do is study the discourses and practices of religious groups through the resources and strategies they bring into the struggle to actually define Satanism. As such, I see contemporary Satanism as a satanic milieu of people, organizations, ideas, practices, and channels for communication. This satanic milieu is both separate from and in dialogue with modern occulture and the wider cultural narratives on the satanic. It is distinct, because modern religious Satanism is about the self and not some diabolical ‘other’. The mythological beings used in this identity work have been disembedded from their original context and ‘de-otherized’ (to use Joseph Laycock’s term). Satan and Satanism are no longer solely defined within a Christian context. As such, ‘Satanist’ has followed the same trajectory as ‘witch’, ‘vampire’, ‘pagan, and ‘queer’, to name a few. Rather than positions of (dangerous) inversion, they are now hybrid roles, used within both cultural narratives of the other and as identities for the self. On the other hand, we should acknowledge some dialogue as well. First of all, dark occulture and cultural narratives do work as pathways to and from the satanic milieu, as Satanists engage with both subcultural and mainstream representations and take what they resonate with. Conversely, real Satanists are not totally below the mainstream radar, even if the media representations are sketchy at best and work more along the lines of freak show exhibits. Although I can say with confidence that theories of slippery slopes are mistaken, these relations thus make popular culture one important socialization ‘stage’ for modern Satanists.

"Little Satanist," by watchtheicemelt, Deviant Art

Regarding the rise of Satanism, that depends on how you define it. The article you mention calls it a “surge” and a “revival”. It is true that the 1990s and early 2000s saw an increase of interest in Satanism alongside Witchcraft, Neopaganism, and other religious currents with roots in esotericism and occultism. This has to do with the general re-enchantment of the West in the past 50 years (an enchantment that never really went away, actually, but that is another story), which has developed in dialogue with popular media. It is also true that Satanism is more visible and more accessible because of the Internet, and that it flourishes on the de-regulated arenas the Internet provides. On the other hand, membership figures are hard to come by, and should be seen in relation to degrees of affiliation – a majority of witches or Satanists are tourists or dabblers, and only a small minority affiliate with a group and/or develop a long-term engagement. It is likely that more people are attracted to Satanism than before, and they are more visible today, but actual members still amount to thousands and not millions. In any case, where I differ from the article’s conclusion is in the effect of mediated religion on susceptible youth. Watching a movie, accessing a website or participating in a discussion forum does not automatically make you a Satanist, and it certainly does not make you possessed.

TheoFantastique: Is there any reason to make a connection between Satanism in its various forms and the occult and the phenomenon of possession?

Jesper Aagaard Petersen: Well, the simple answer is no. The article in The Telegraph caught my eye, as it fits the recurrent dialectic between real satanic groups on the one hand and anti-satanic discourse on the other, a dialectic covered by for example Phil Jenkins in Mystics and Messiahs (2000). Satanism as a religious option is definitely more visible and has been so since the 1960s witchcraft revival, in no small part because of LaVey’s Satanic Bible and the high media profile of the Church, as well as the meteoric rise of the Internet. On the other hand, the satanic panic and ritual abuse cases of the 1980s and early 1990s did much to reposition anti-satanic discourses of evil as the default interpretation of Satanism. Even though the religious (mainly Evangelical and to a lesser degree Catholic) basis of the moral panic has been exposed, and the secular madness of the media, law enforcement, judicial, education, and social care systems has been criticized extensively, conspiracy and scapegoating remains as a cultural resource. Satanism remains associated with evil in popular discourse and culture.

That is why I have a problem with the phrase “rise in Satanism” and “occult” in the article. The connotations become conspiratorial and not statistical. The word occult has a specific meaning within Religious Studies tied to the etymology of the word, as hidden. But in popular parlance and Catholic research it has a sinister ring to it. The article posits an causal connection between ease of access and demand for exorcists, but I think a lot of elements are missing from that equation. We have to ask who is searching online and who is in need of an exorcist? Are they even connected? Who makes the connections? There has been a re-enchantment of sorts, and it could of course be interpreted as the work of a cabal of Devil-worshipers influenced by demons. But there is absolutely no reason to see a rise in Satanism, Witchcraft, holistic spirituality and whatnot as anything sinister. Here, modern religious Satanism and the theological discourses on the satanic are two entirely different animals. On the other hand, a higher visibility of things dubbed “occult” and explicitly diabolical might stimulate a higher rate of possession experiences in Evangelical and Catholic communities. Certainly the interpretation of possession is connected to cultural resources at hand. And by extension, possession narratives are in fact reported in movies, talk-shows and so on outside these milieus. But then we have moved our attention to very different arenas of religiosity which is not directly associated with the people I study, namely Christian communities and the ‘secularized’ paranormal demonologies of horror movies (The Entity [1981] or Paranormal Activity [2009], for example).

TheoFantastique: I too have noted the continued presence of the devil, possession, and spirit entities in various horror films and television programs. This relates to what has been labeled as popular occulture. Why do you think the devilish in popular occulture is so prevalent, and how might this not be a factor in reports of the need for exorcism?

Jesper Aagaard Petersen: The Devil and his minions certainly sell. They are protean figures that can be molded to fit your narrative needs. And all narratives need bad guys, so why not use the Devil as has been done in popular culture for hundreds of years? Various elements of Christianity are topoi we all recognize (or at least most of us): The savior, the corrupted, the alluring, the end and so on. In addition, social anxieties and the speed of change needs a narrative interpretation. But this is cyclical. The 1960s explosion spawned not only the somewhat eccentric satanic witch of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), but also the unabashedly evil Antichrist of The Omen (1976) and the home invasion of The Exorcist (1973). And then came Michelle Remembers (1980), Multiple Personality Disorders and the MacMartin Preschool. Although thoroughly dismissed, these “real” stories never really went away, they just went back to the milieus from which they emerged, and, crucially, into popular culture as fictional tropes. They also underwent secularization: Aside from explicitly religious demonic fantasies, they continued as spiritual or paranormal narratives. For some two decades, anti-satanism has slumbered, while we have witnessed a resurgence of occultural themes in popular culture and as religious currents. This fin-de-siecle re-enchantment is now met with The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Last Rite (2010), and The Rite (2011), to name a few recent movies. Hopefully we will stop before the next stage.

Of course things are more complicated than this. Yet, we have to see re-enchantment, the mainstreaming of occulture and the conservative reaction as parts of a whole. Nevertheless, to argue that movies or the Internet makes demon-possessed victims in need of exorcism is the worst kind of hypodermic needle-argument on the effect of popular culture. We appropriate culture according to need, context and previous experiences. Of course, the Catholic Church has the Devil and his demons pushing the needle, so all constructivist and reception theory arguments are in vain. In a sense, the periodic resurgence of exorcism and other re-enchantment reminds me that we are not that far removed from Hellenistic times. They too ascribed everything to demonic influence, in part because of the changes they experienced.

TheoFantastique: What kind of conclusions do you draw as a scholar about the kind of sensationalistic and inaccurate reporting in The Telegraph article, as well as that produced by the Catholic Church about this phenomenon?

Jesper Aagaard Petersen: First of all, that causality is still a misunderstood phenomenon. A simultaneous decline in storks and childbirths does not prove that children are brought by long-legged birds. But such “explanations” are easy to sell. Further, it proves that popular accounts of academic research on Satanism and other occultural phenomena are sorely needed. While I have little confidence in the “seriousness and scientific rigour” of the Vatican conference, it obviously has a stronger network in which to promote its views. I might scoff at this article (I did yell at the computer screen when I read it), but it is read by a far wider constituency than any article I have ever written (all of them combined too).

Ultimately, these things move in cycles. In the famous 1972 Time magazine article “The Occult Revival: A Substitute Faith”, many of the same issues are reported. They even comment that the UK is experiencing such a boom in witchcraft and occultism that the Anglicans and Catholics have convened to suggest the appointment of exorcists in each diocese. Sounds oddly familiar in 2011. It is all about social mobilization and the reframing of perceived social problems. The Catholic Church is at odds with a dominant subjectivist trend in modern culture. At times, it tries to accommodate it. At other times, it rejects it and reframes it a social and moral decay. The availability and visibility of Satanism online is an easy target. When connected to the unrelated rise in exorcism movies and popular interest in spirits, demons, and – well, old-school fire and brimstone – a false causality is formed.

TheoFantastique: Jesper, thank you for your time and thoughts on this.

(This interview is also posted at Jesper’s blog.)

Related posts:

“Douglas Cowan and Sacred Terror: Part 1″

“Paul Meehan: Cinema of the Psychic Realm”

“Scott Poole: Satan in America”

“Satan is Busy at the Box Office”

The Devil and the related phenomenon of demonic possession, have been the source of several horror films for the years. Previous decades offered THE EXORCIST (1973), with its Roman Catholic perspective, and the various films that made up Protestant responses to it in THE OMEN (1976) and its sequels. Moving forward into more recent cinematic history, we have seen THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005), and a dual release of diabolical films in 2010: DEVIL and THE LAST EXORCISM. Our fascination with the ultimate supernatural villain continues in 2011 with the recent release of THE RITE, which returns the horror treatment of Satan and demonic possession to the Catholic roots of THE EXORCIST. As a result of our present social and cultural circumstances, which echo much of the turbulence of the 1970s, we may be calling on Satan to help us deal with our current angst. As we will see, paradoxically, he may also provide some with faith in God.

The essay may be read here. See also TheoFantastique Podcast 2.1 on this film involving a discussion of the film with Douglas Cowan, Paul Meehan, and Scott Poole.

Our fascination with the devil in popular culture as informed by the Christian tradition continues, or at least Hollywood’s assumption that this figure is of interest to us, with the release of The Rite in January 2011. The film is “inspired by” the book of the same title by Matt Baglio. See the film’s website for a brief description of the story and further production information. The Rite is scheduled to open in theaters January 28.

Be sure to return to TheoFantastique after the film’s premiere to listen to a podcast discussion of it and the related topics of Satan in religion and popular culture, and the phenomenon of possession among our participants including Douglas Cowan, author of Sacred Terror, W. Scott Poole, author of Satan in America, and Paul Meehan, author of Cinema of the Psychic Realm.

Related post:

“Satan is Busy at the Box Office”

With all of this Satanic cinema spectacle we might pause and ask why the Devil is so prevalent. As W. Scott Poole has noted in his book Satan in America: The Devil We Know (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), “the devil played a significant, and at moments determinative, role in the shaping of the American religious and popular imagination.” Even in a post-Christendom, late modern cultural context, the current focus on Satan in horror appears to substantiate Poole’s claim for not only America’s past, but also into the present. Given all of the threats around us, whether economic collapse, rogue nuclear nations, or environmental degradation, perhaps some see a Satanic hand at work, while others benefit from a mythic construct of the figure of Satan as an embodiment of whatever evil they fear.

Film trailers and related videos for this post topic, and others, can be found at the TheoFantastique YouTube Channel. And, of course, copies of The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose can be purchased through the TheoFantastique Store.

Related posts:

“Scott Poole: Satan in America”

“Satanic Cinema”

“Carrol L. Fry-Cinema of the Occult: New Age, Satanism, Wicca and Spiritualism in Film”

“Paul Meehan: Cinema of the Psychic Realm”

Joseph Laycock: The Exorcist, Secularization and Folk Piety”

TheoFantastique: Joe, as a younger scholar who likely did not see The Exorcist when it appeared in theaters in the 1970s, what is the personal interest in it for you personally and as a researcher in religion and theology?

Joseph Laycock: As I allude to in the paper, I first saw The Exorcist when it was re-released in 2000.  I saw the premiere at the SXSW music and film festival in Austin, Texas.  I remember there was a bat flying around the theater. (Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world).  I sat in the back row and the man sitting in front of me turned out to be William Peter Blatty himself.  Afterwards he went before the audience and took questions.  There were a lot of film buffs and he seemed slightly annoyed by their inquiries.  He must have repeated three times that nothing was meant to be symbolic and that everything in his story was based on actual experience.

I didn’t get around to reading the novel until the summer of 2008, but when I did I immediately wanted to write a paper on it.  I think what struck me most was not the supernatural elements but the little things, like a character chanting “Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.”  I remember thinking that The Exorcist is a sort of time capsule of what America’s religious landscape looked like circa 1970.  Similarly, the description of Father Karras’ crisis of faith and his struggle to reconcile it with his scientific training has an amazing verisimilitude that I thought could only come from actual experience.  The final catalyst in starting this project was working with Dr. Jon Roberts of Boston University.  Roberts uses The Exorcist in a course on American religious history for the very reasons I’ve described.

TheoFantastique: How influential was The Exorcist both on the original audiences who watched it decades ago, and in the subsequent development of aspects of pop culture?

Joseph Laycock: In the 1970s, The Exorcist was on the New York Times best-seller list for fifty-five weeks.  Its commercial success paved the way for Stephen King and other best-selling horror novelists.  But it was the film adaptation in 1973 that is most remembered.

A Time article described a line 5,000 people long to buy tickets.  And in almost every screening of the film, people would become overwhelmed and have to leave, faint, and, of course, vomit.  There are numerous articles from 1973 describing theaters soaked in vomit after showing The Exorcist.  The film even appears in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, because it was linked to cases of psychosis.  It also created a demand for actual exorcisms.  Numerous charismatic “deliverance ministries” arose after the film.

Obviously, nothing like that happened when I saw The Exorcist in 2000.  Since the re-release you can find Regan’s demonic face covered with vomit grinning at you from T-shirts and even bobble-head toys.  The “hipster” culture has been accused of “fetishizing authenticity” as they plunder all of post-war culture searching for fresh artifacts of retro chic.  Sadly, I think this has become the fate of The Exorcist. On the other hand, only a handful of horror movies are remembered in this fashion.  I think Generation Y has fetishized The Exorcist precisely because they can sense its authenticity.

TheoFantastique: Can you sketch the ways in which the film has been interpreted critically and how this contrasts with your own interpretive approach?

Joseph Laycock: Relatively little has been written on the novel, but volumes have been written on the film.  One thing I noticed was resistance to the idea that this could actually be a story about religion.  Numerous theorists (including Stephen King) have read possession as code for something else that we fear either consciously or sub-consciously. According to most film theorists, The Exorcist is actually about fear of the counter-culture, fear of children, fear of women, etc.  Conversely, many critics who thought The Exorcist was actually about demonic possession found it distasteful.  S.T. Joshi, for instance, characterizes Blatty as a Catholic evangelist and The Exorcist as a sort of hellfire sermon.

While psychoanalytical readings are interesting, I don’t believe they can explain the behavior of audiences watching The Exorcist in 1973.  I think those reactions can be attributed to a very literal fear of demonic possession.  Furthermore, I think these readings of the film point to a disconnect between popular religion and the idea of secularization.  The secularization narrative is so powerful, that even when audiences are fainting from terror while watching The Exorcist, it is assumed that this is the catharsis of some repressed and previously unknown fear, rampant in our collective subconscious, because the idea that modern Westerners could actually be afraid of the devil seems an impossibility.

TheoFantastique: How might The Exorcist reflect author William Peter Blatty’s life experiences?

Joseph Laycock: Blatty has described himself as a “relaxed Catholic” and his spiritual life is reflected in both the Catholic character Father Karras and the secular character Chris MacNeil.  Like Karras, Blatty was raised by his mother in extreme poverty and was extremely troubled by her death.  He attended Georgetown University, a Jesuit school, which serves as the setting for The Exorcist. Blatty suffered the same doubts as Father Karras and described a longing for a miracle that might shore up his faith.  This “miracle” came in 1949 when a story appeared in The Washington Post about a boy from Mount Ranier, Maryland who had become possessed and been successfully exorcised.  Blatty had already heard rumors of the exorcism through the Jesuits and successfully tracked down the exorcist.  However, he would not begin writing his novel for another twenty years.  After Georgetown, Blatty learned Arabic and worked for the US Information Agency in Beirut.  His time in the Middle East became the inspiration for the opening scene of The Exorcist in Iraq.

Chris MacNeil and her family are based directly on the actress Shirley MacLaine who was once Blatty’s neighbor.  MacLaine was an actress and single mother with a young daughter.  MacLaine’s French housekeepers were also turned into characters, as was the British director J. Lee Thompson.  Although MacNeil is not religious she experiments with a variety of spiritual practices, including using a Ouija board “to access her unconscious.”  In fact, Blatty used a Ouija board after the death of his mother and, according to MacLaine, once organized a séance at her house.

TheoFantastique: Can you describe secularization theory and how The Exorcist would seem to counter this in your thesis regarding folk piety?

Joseph Laycock: There are two versions of what has been called, “The cultural myth of universal secularization.”  In one version, belief in the supernatural is unable to compete with scientific rationalism: Accordingly, religion will be forced to renounce supernaturalism or else die out.  In another variant, religion will continue to exist but only as a very private phenomenon with no social or political significance.  While both these trends have occurred in Western culture, most sociologists of religion now agree that any sort of universal secularization is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

However, the secularization narrative carried a lot of weight when Blatty was writing his novel.  The Exorcist was written in 1969, three years after Time magazine ran its famous cover asking “Is God Dead?”  A Gallup poll taken in January 1970 indicated that 75 percent of survey respondents felt religion was losing influence.  This is the highest percentage ever recorded since Gallup began this poll in 1957.  I argue that by simply showing the religious elements from his own life-world in his novel, Blatty created a counter-narrative to the myth of universal secularization.  I also think that this critique is part of the appeal of The Exorcist.  For people who wanted to believe in demons, The Exorcist gave them permission to do so even if the intellectual elite didn’t.

The Achilles’ heel of the secularization narrative is folk piety.  Folk piety, or popular religion, is distinct from ecclesiastical religion, the official doctrines of the church.  Since the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church has been forced to take an increasingly guarded position about the supernatural.  Issues of exorcism and the demonic in particular, are often regarded as a source of embarrassment by the modern church.  This trend would seem to support the idea of universal secularization.  However, supernaturalism lives on in the form of folk piety.  The Exorcist portrays numerous examples of supernaturalism and the fantastic from American folk piety such the belief in demons, the use of Ouija boards, parapsychology, and rumors of Satanic cults.

Today, sociological data suggests that the America Blatty presents in The Exorcist is accurate.  While ecclesiastical religion may frown at talk of demons, we have numerous polls indicating that many Americans do believe that angels and demons are active in the world.  Furthermore, these beliefs are not always private but are continually leaking into the political sphere.  One example of this comes from a research report on a Christian picket of pornography.  98 percent of the picketers reported a belief in an active personal “transcendent” force of evil that was directly involved in pornography.  Another example is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who has openly described his participation in an exorcism.  Clearly, supernaturalism is in no danger of disappearing anytime soon.

TheoFantastique: One aspect of disenchantment that I find intriguing, and which I wish more ecclesiastical authorities would become aware of, is Weber’s idea that you discuss in your paper wherein “church apologists had a hand in bringing about ‘the disenchantment of the world’ as they defended their doctrines through rationalization, banishing the supernatural to an increasingly transcendent role.” Doesn’t this mean that ecclesiastical authorities have to walk a fine line in late modernity in seeking both rationality and a level of enchantment?

Joseph Laycock: Weber argues that church apologists were forced to “rationalize” their doctrines or else be accused of superstition.  So in ecclesiastical religion, the supernatural became increasingly less immanent and more transcendent.  These changes made religious doctrine more resistant to the critiques of rationalists, but they also made religion less meaningful to practitioners.

The process of disenchantment can be seen quite starkly in the Christian tradition of exorcism.  There are virtually no demons at all in the Hebrew Bible.  By contrast, the world of the New Testament is full of demons.  Christians have the power to cast them out and, in their own way, demons affirm that Jesus is the messiah and that God is immanent in the world.  It seems that the early Christian church had a rich tradition of exorcism.  Early writings suggest that Pagans sometimes went to Christians for exorcisms, and this may have furthered the spread of Christianity.

This changed after the Protestant Reformation, which Weber cites as a seminal moment in the history of disenchantment.  Exorcists were accused of being in league with the demons (a similar accusation is made against Jesus in the Gospel of Luke).  Not wanting to lose face in front of their Protestant critics, Catholic authorities began to regulate who could perform an exorcism and to consolidate what had been essentially a folk tradition into the formal rite of exorcism that appears in the Ritual Romanum, written in 1614.  (A passage from this text appears in the novel).

With the rise of medical science, exorcism became even more regulated and increasingly deferential to scientific authority.  While the church has not denied the reality of possession entirely, the criteria for a case of genuine possession are now so demanding that an official exorcism is nearly impossible to obtain in developed countries.  Of course, rationalism is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has left many Catholics dissatisfied.  Those seeking an exorcism now frequently turn to groups that have splintered from the Catholic Church or to charismatic Protestant movements.

For Weber, there was no happy medium to be found: We can either stubbornly cling to supernaturalism, or we can stoically choose the path of rationalism and disenchantment.  Both reactions can be found among American Catholic clergy and The Exorcist actually exasperated these differences.  I think that the ad hoc solution lies in the division of labor between ecclesiastical religion and folk piety: The church can worry about reconciling religion and reason, while the lay people are free to pursue meaning through supernaturalism.  In some cases, Catholic clergy have arranged “under the table” exorcisms in order to maintain this division of labor.

TheoFantastique: How is folk piety expressed through the rite of exorcism and ouija boards in the film and its cultural context?

Joseph Laycock: Ouija boards were incredibly popular when Blatty was writing The Exorcist.  There was also a Ouija board connected to the Mount Ranier exorcism.  Structurally, using a Ouija board is very similar to conducting an exorcism.  Both activities involve calling out, engaging, and then dismissing a supernatural being and they are both regarded as perilous endeavors.  Not surprisingly, the Catholic Church has attempted to control both practices.  A campaign to warn American Catholics about the spiritual dangers of Ouija boards was launched as early as 1918.

Blatty seems to have experimented with Ouija boards for the same reason he was interested in exorcisms: He wanted a direct experience of the supernatural that ecclesiastical religion could no longer provide.  I think that most people who are interested in these activities have similar motives.

TheoFantastique: You conclude that The Exorcist “fueled a resurgence of folk piety” for audiences of the 1970s. How might contemporary films that touch on the demonic, particularly in the context of apocalyptic, serve the same function in our time?

Joseph Laycock: Millennial expectations are often not amenable to established religious institutions.  In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI commented that the Book of Revelation is not about imminent catastrophe but the struggle of Christian churches in Asia in the first century.  Benedict’s historical-critical reading still has a message that is relevant for modern Christians, but it makes poor fodder for charismatic religious movements or Hollywood movies.  Recent apocalyptic films like Knowing and the upcoming Legion draw on folk piety rather than ecclesiastical religion.  These films take a few elements from the Christian tradition and combine them with occultism, extra-terrestrials, and fears of planet-wide disasters.  The result is a supernatural story that seems somehow both strange and familiar.

Tonight I saw Paranormal Activity, which (spoiler alert!) I think is actually a re-telling of the Book of Tobit.  So far this film has grossed over $48 million and seems destined to be a cult classic.  It may be the closest thing the millennial generation will ever have to The Exorcist. As the title suggests, it derives its plausibility more from fringe science than from Catholic tradition but the same elements are there including demonology and the ubiquitous Ouija board.  Although no one vomited, as the credits rolled someone shouted, “That was the scariest movie I’ve seen in my life!”  What is interesting is that the events on the screen were not scary.  Most of the shrieks and gasps were in response to things as mundane as thumps or a door slamming.  These elements are frightening because of what Julia Kristeva calls “intertextuality.”  Regardless of their religious affiliation, the audience knew from folk piety what a door slamming at 3 AM signifies.  It this knowledge, and the belief that such things might actually happen, that makes the slamming door scary.

Obviously, a film like Paranormal Activity could not have been created, let alone frightening, if there was not already widespread interest in investigating the paranormal.  But it is also likely that in response to this film more people will discover their houses are haunted, conduct amateur experiments in parapsychology, and report belief in demons on Gallup polls.  As with The Exorcist and exorcism, art imitates life and life imitates art.

TheoFantastique: Joe, thanks again for discussing your article. I appreciate your research interests.

TheoFantastique: Thank you for an enjoyable read, and for your willingness to discuss the subject matter. How did you come to develop the personal interest in an exploration of the “occult” in general, and particularly its expression or influence in cinema, and how are you defining the term?

Carrol Fry: The term occult is pretty slippery, but in general it means hidden knowledge and the ability to alter what we think of as reality through esoteric practices.

How I got interested in the occult is a long story. I discovered the joys of public radio production when I first came to Northwest Missouri State, as the local radio station, KXCV, was anxious to get faculty participation. I discovered I had a knack for interviewing and scripting and did a number of pieces on folklore and oral history for local distribution. I had sort of run out of ideas for programs, and about that time an India Airlines plane was blown up by Sikh terrorists—must have been about 1985. I was talking to my sister, who lived in Kansas City, on the telephone and happened to mention the incident. “What’s a Sikh?” I asked. “Well you know, she responded, “they’re the people who operate the Golden Temple [a vegetarian restaurant in K. C.].” We had eaten there on a couple of occasions, and the kids who ran it were young Caucasians who dressed in vaguely looking Indian garb. I thought they were a bunch of zoned out hippies. The boys had long hair and beards (if they could grow one), and the girls were similar in appearance (without the beards). Now that’s interesting, I thought. Right here in the middle of the Bible Belt. I started checking around and found that Sikhism was just one of many religions practiced here that were well outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. So I decided to do a series on new religious movements and did five 30-minute documentaries that we distributed nationally by satellite. Somehow (and I don’t remember now how I stumbled onto it), I discovered Wicca and did one of the programs on New Paganism. I thought it was by far the most interesting of those religions I met, because it connected to some of my readings and to film. I went on to do documentaries on cults and intentional communities, but wrote journal articles on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s and Katherine Kurtz’s adaptation of the Old Religion in fiction. And I kept up my Neo-Pagan contacts. When I started seeing film adaptations of Neo-Paganism, I thought it was time to consider occult religions in general as they are adapted on screen. Hence, Cinema of the Occult.

By the way, for convenience and brevity, I mix the terms Wicca (or the Old Religion to its practitioners) and Neo-Paganism, and I should specify that Wicca is one of a larger group of return to occult Pagan religions.

TheoFantastique: You state in your introduction that as filmmakers draw upon the occult it is usually part of a general plausibility mechanism for storytelling, and that it is “usually an extrapolation of its potential to establish sensational plots rather than a totally correct representation.” Given certain aspects of the culture wars where fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, as well as some Neo-Pagans, have complained about such elements in film as either propaganda tool for the occult, or failing to properly represent esoteric belief, isn’t your observation important for viewers to remember? In other words, the esoteric is drawn upon for frame of reference and storytelling in order to create what might be viewed as new forms of fairytale and perhaps the culture wars are unwarranted on one level and might be telling us something else about the continued clashes between certain religious or spiritual subcultures. What would your thoughts be on this?

Carol Fry: Movies about the occult are, well, movies after all and are made for profit not education. The occult is by its nature sensational and sensationalism sells. Filmmakers have target audiences, but they want to reach a broad spectrum of customers. And you have to remember that a lot of films that adapt occult paths are part of the horror genre, and that audience demands sensationalism. So even those Wiccan films that give a favorable spin to the Old Religion might well offend not only Wiccans but conservative Christians, the former because they don’t accurately reflect their beliefs and practices and the latter because they are made at all. I think the one Neo-Pagan film that most Pagans I’ve met would, and do, enjoy is The Wicker Man. This is ironic because director­­­ Robin Hardy and script writer Anthony Shaffer intended it to be a warning against occult practices as leading to cults. As I say in my book, those Wiccan films that reflect negatively on the Old Religion, B movies such as Silent Night Deadly Night IV: the Initiation or Suspiria are unrelentingly sexist and even misogynist and reflect on the challenge to male authority that feminist Wicca presents for some people.

TheoFantastique: You also state in the book that the occult in cinema might be construed as a reflection of “the spiritual searching of those who seek alternatives to traditional religious teachings the quest for the numinous.” Can you illustrate or expand on this?

Carol Fry: TIME recently had a cover issue on the decline of Christianity. The feature article makes a good case that most Christian and Jewish paths, excluding the more, uh, “enthusiastic” denominations, have suffered losses and that political clout of conservative Christianity has declined. The Pentecostals and Southern Baptists have responded to the findings of science and the new Darwinism by simply denying anything that conflicts with biblical teachings, and those who search for the reassurance of certainty respond favorably to that line. But to many others, the sexism and authoritarianism of the Religious Right and the Catholic Church are simply unacceptable. Mainstream Christianity has failed to provide an alternative to those who actually think about spiritual matters. I don’t think there is much of a decrease in spirituality in the U. S., but many simply don’t find it in churches. Many of those who are seekers find that spirituality in new religious movements—African American Islam, the Baha’i Faith, various eastern religions, and yes, New Age and occult paths.

TheoFantastique: One of the recurring features of horror in general, but particularly in horror cinema that draws upon the occult, is a depiction of our fear of the Other. Can you describe this phenomenon and provide a few examples of how this takes place in occult cinema?

Carol Fry: Actually, I’m working on a book to be called Primal Screams, Primal Dreams that addresses this issue in depth. The term Other has become one of those undigested buzz words in post-modern criticism since the rediscovery of Hegel and the adaptation of the term by neo-Freudians like Lacan. The other as critical concept gets many different adaptations. To Marxists, for instance, it generally refers to minorities, Third World countries, gays, women, all those marginalized by Western society.

I mean something quite different based on the writings of sociobiologists like E. O. Wilson, Desmond Morris, and recently Richard Dawkins and many others, who speculate that adaptation through survival of the fittest and natural selection did more that create our physical form. These forces of adaptation also created the “whisper within” from thousands of years of evolutionary adaptive behavior. Successful adaptation, for instance, meant being suspicious of the other from the next valley who might kill you and take your women and children. Until recently, psychology and sociology had pretty much adapted the Lockean concept of the mind being a blank tablet at birth, on which experience (and association) writes, the tabula rasa. Sociobiologists would suggest that the tabula isn’t so rasa after all: that we are genetically prompted for many kinds of behavior, including fear of the other, who looks and behaves differently and who poses a perceived threat to our genetic kin group and territory. We see everywhere evidence of this fear of the other: at the mildest and probably most harmless level acted out in sports rivalries (the Yankees and Red Sox) but ranging to tragic violence between Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda, Shi’ite and Suni in Iraq, Nazi Germany’s holocaust against Jews, Poles, and homosexuals in the death camps, and the killing fields in Viet Nam. Killing in these instances is perceived as o.k. because those killed are other. There is a nature/nurture issue here, of course, as education leads us to civilized behavior despite the whisper within. Anyway, that’s a long answer to the question. I believe the horror genre, as in the Satanic film especially, plays on our fear of the other and the invasions of territory for its evoking vicarious fear. This fear of the other seems an obvious effect in the early vampire novels and films, werewolf, zombie, and slasher films which establish our fear and hatred of this invading other and prompts our satisfaction with the vampire’s stake in the heart (although that formula seems to be changing as we get romantic vampires), the werewolf’s silver bullet, and head shot for the zombie.

TheoFantastique: In my view, a neglected cinematic gem that incorporates “New Age” ideas in connection with near-death experiences (NDEs) is Flatliners. You discusses this in your chapter on New Age in film. Can you touch on this as an example of a thriller incorporating New Age ideas?

Carol Fry: Yes, I thought Flatliners was one of the better New Age films, not only in its adaptation of the near death experience phenomenon but in the creation of screen ambiance and visual symbolism. I don’t think those who believe in NDEs would have much objection to the film’s treatment of the concept. I thought the poster child for New Age movies was an even more neglected classic, Jacob’s Ladder. Few people saw it in theatres when it came out, but it has become a cult classic of sorts in DVD. The darned film is so deep and so demanding that few people are prepared to deal with and understand its message, which is, of course, detachment, as described in the works of Meister Eckhart, whose name comes up at a critical moment in the film. Meister Eckhart is a major inspiration in the New Age movement, even though he wrote 600 years ago.

TheoFantastique: How has the portrayal of Satan and the satanic changed over the course of horror films?

Carol Fry: I think the fear of the New World Order among conservatives and especial conservative Christians has given a different spin to the Satanic film. The cult mania starting in the sixties and all the folklore about Satanic groups has created a great potential other. The Omen was a dandy horror film, but as the franchise developed it because more and more an experience in vicarious paranoia about the enemy within. So the Satanic film has gone from being a religious allegory in Faust movies like The Devil and Daniel Webster and The Sorrows of Satan to the political subtext from all the Omen sequels and other films of that type.

TheoFantastique: Cinema has also changed in its depiction of the witch. Are fairytale depictions as in Harry Potter, as well as those which depict the empowerment of the feminine perhaps the most common modes of expression in contemporary film?

Carrol Fry: Yes, the empowerment of the feminine is the most popular adaptation, whether the film is supportive of critical. I’m sure this has to do with attracting an audience for the film. But Pagans might well feel that Hollywood slights their spiritual paths by concentrating nearly exclusively on feminist Wicca, and then just on the most sensational elements. By the way, there’s a strong subtext of feminist Wicca in The Da Vinci Code that no one much notices, most obviously in Sophie’s (named for Sophia from the Gnostic tradition) blunder’s into a Wiccan ceremony in which her grandfather is “drawing down the moon” as a coven ceremony. There are a few other witch films that are not part of the culture wars, romantic films such as I Married a Witch and Bell, Book and Candle that are neither the silly version of witches (that have nothing to do with Neo-Paganism) such as the Harry Potter novels and films nor adaptations of Wicca.

TheoFantastique: Spiritualism is another aspect you touch on in your book. In your thinking, what films best illustrate this significant expression of the occult in cinema?

Carrol Fry: Spiritualism makes a wonderful frame for ghost movies. Not all ghost movies adapt Spiritualism, of course. A true Spiritualist film uses Spiritualist beliefs on communication with spirits, why spirits remain behind as part of the frame and/or descriptions of the afterlife. A Rumor of Angels comes to mind as an obvious Spiritualist film because it’s based directly on Ruth Boyland’s 1918 book Thy Son Liveth, a classic of Spiritualist literature and an early version of electronic voice phenomenon. Ghost and Sixth Sense are interesting adaptations on why spirits remain behind as ghosts. White Noise is pretty much high concept based on actual Spiritualist electronic voice phenomenon practices, and What Dreams May Come seems based on Spiritualist beliefs about the afterlife. Ghost stories have been with us forever, and Spiritualism give a distinct and interesting spin to these old stories.

TheoFantastique: Thank you again for your book and the exploration of an interesting cinematic expression of the fantastic.

Related articles of interest:

“Peg Aloi: Cinema and the Occult Revival”

“Jason Winslade Interview: Esotericism and Witchcraft in Entertainment and Commodification”

My friends and neighbors who know of my interest in horror and other aspects of the fantastic assume that I enjoy every film connected with the genre. Many times I am asked if I have seen the television ads for a new film and whether I am going, and my answer is often that I have seen the ads, but no I’m not going because the film doesn’t look like it will be any good. I’m pretty discriminating in my consumption of the fantastic. But I must admit that the trailer for a new horror film has caught my attention.

Over the last couple of days ads have been running for The Unborn which opens in theaters January 9. The website for the film provides the following synopsis:

Sometimes the soul of a dead person has been so tainted with evil that it is denied entrance to heaven. It must endlessly wander the borderlands between worlds, desperately searching for a new body to inhabit.

And sometimes it actually succeeds.

Writer/director David Goyer (Blade: Trinity, The Invisible, Batman Begins) gives a terrifyign glimpse into the life of a young woman pulled into a world of the undead in The Unborn, a supernatural thriller that follows a young woman pulled into a world of nightmares when a demonic spirit haunts her and threatens everyone she loves.

Casey Bell (Odette Yustman) hated her mother for leaving her as a child. But when unexplicable things start to happen, Casey begins to understand why she left. Plagued by merciless dreams and a tortured ghost that haunts her waking hours, she must turn to the only spiritual advisor, Sendak (Gary Oldman), who can make it stop.

With Sendak’s help, Casey uncovers the source of a family curse dating back to Nazi Germany – a creature with the ability to inhabit anyone or anything that is getting stronger with each possession. With the curse unleashed, her only chance at survival is to shut a doorway from beyond our world that has been pried open by someone who was never born.

Several elements make this film look intriguing for me. First, I have enjoyed the director’s previous work, particularly in Blade: Trinity and Batman Begins. Second, Gary Oldman is a veteran actor with experience in horror and fantasy films (such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Dark Knight and others) who should help bring credibility not only to his own role but perhaps also to the project as a whole. Third, the trailer for the film includes some arresting visual imagery that promise to provide a dimension of fright to the film.

From the storyline and visuals it is possible to detect a number of influences in the film which also add to the expectations. These include demon possession and exorcism elements from films like The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, demonic children from influences such as The Omen series of films, ghost story elements from any number of horror films, and the influence of Japanese horror cinema and its American remakes in narrative and visual elements.

Perhaps I’ll be disappointed after January 9 like many other horror fans. But at least The Unborn gives me something to look forward to in horror for the first part of 2009.