New Zombie Anthology: History is Dead

Kim Paffenroth, author of Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor University Press, 2006), and Dying to Live: a novel of life among the undead (Permutated Press, 2006), has edited a zombie anthology titled History is Dead (Permutated Press, 2007).

As the book’s back cover describes it’s contents:

Our team of crack historians has uncovered the truth you never learned in school: the living dead have walked among us since the dawn of time. In this collection of gruesome tales from throughout the ages, the ravenous undead shamble through bloody battlefields, plague-ridden cities, genteel country estates, and dusty frontier towns. They emerge from foggy cemeteries, frozen barrows, loamy bogs, cursed mines, and gore-spattered operating rooms to prey on the living.

But these zombies don’t just eat people. They help painters and writers save their faltering careers. They unwittingly push humankind on the quest for fire. They topple evil capitalists and their corporate empires. They fight crime. They fall in love.

Join us on a journey into our zombie-filled past… Neither history nor the living dead have ever been this exciting!

Those who enjoy the growing collection of zombie fiction will want to secure this new volume.

Peg Aloi: Cinema and the Occult Revival

This post brings together a number of areas of interest for me, including the increasing interest in fantasy with the counterculture of the 1960s, the connection between fantasy and Neo-Paganism, and the expression of elements related to Paganism and esotericism in film. We will explore issues related to these facets courtesy of an interview with Peg Aloi. Peg is a Pagan and a scholar who works in both the academic and popular arenas. She is a writer on Paganism and the media for Witchvox, is the co-editor with Hanna E. Johnston of the new volume The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture (Ashgate, 2007), and is currently co-authoring a book with Hannah titled The Celluloid Bough: Cinema in the Wake of the Occult Revival.

TheoFantastique: Peg, it’s a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for making the time, and for your recent help with my research project into cinematic treatments of the Witch. Let’s begin with a little of your background. How did you come to embrace the Pagan pathway, and why did this also become an area of academic specialty?

Peg Aloi: It’s a pleasure to do this interview, and it’s gratifying to see so much interest in Paganism and academia on the web these days. I also have to thank you for finally nudging me to finish Chris Partridge’s book [on the re-enchantment of the West] which is wonderful.

It is always interesting to me to hear how people first “found” Paganism or Witchcraft or Wicca, because even as there are any similarities that modern Pagans have in common when it comes to the roots of their backgrounds, there are just as many unique differences. For me, I was raised in what I’d call a somewhat lapsed Catholic household. My father wanted us to be good church-going Catholics but my Mom rejected the church based on, well, let’s say the local parish priest did not approve of decisions she made based on her doctor’s advice, and that was that. I did not know the reasons at the time, but I did know my mom did not have much use for the church. I just always found the experience of church to be both wildly exciting (the robes and songs and beautiful stained glass and shiny things) and incredibly boring (the liturgy and rote recitations) at the same time. Shortly after being confirmed I decided it was not for me at all, but I still had to go to church occasionally.

I was also required to attend religious instruction classes once a week; we called it “relidge.” It got interesting briefly when I had this teacher who told us juicy stories about teenage girls using Ouija Boards and doing séances at slumber parties who got into all sorts of trouble. It was real satanic panic kind of stuff, which was pretty ubiquitous in the 1970s when I stop to think back on it. The people who ran the classes, who were basically all volunteers from the parish, decided the students should all bring their Ouija Boards one night and we’d burn them in a big bonfire. I really wanted to go and see this spectacle, but I definitely did not want to burn my Ouija Board, so I faked illness that day. I guess I have a kind of perverse relationship to my Catholic upbringing!

More significantly, I was raised in a family that really valued the beauty and utility of the natural world. My dad was a hunter, fisherman and avid gardener, and my mom’s ancestors all had farms, so as far back as I can remember we were either growing or catching our own food, or going into the country to pick fruit or gather nuts. We’d spend summer days fishing or wandering around in the woods at my uncle’s place in Pennsylvania, or picking blueberries in the woods in New York. In winter we’d chop firewood and cut down our own Christmas tree and smoke a goose my dad had killed for dinner. At the time, this sort of thing was not considered unusual but it’s really a dying way of life in this country now…I mean, many families do not even cook dinner or eat together. If I were a sociologist, I’d love to research the connection of these sorts of foodways that are going out of fashion and chart their decline against the proliferation of Paganism and other nature-based spiritualities. I am completely convinced that my affinity and appreciation for nature and love of the natural world are a direct result of my childhood experiences.

As a child, I was always interested in the occult and Witchcraft. I remember seeing the movie Crowhaven Farm on TV when I was little and somehow identifying with the idea of someone being reincarnated as one of the Salem witches. My aunt and uncle let me watch The Exorcist on HBO with them, but made me cover my eyes during certain parts. I think I never actually saw the film in its entirety until the director’s cut came out a few years ago. I loved the images of Witches or other magical beings I saw on TV, I Dream of Jeannie was a favorite show of mine, and I loved The Twilight Zone. I vaguely assumed there must be modern witches somewhere in the world because the occult revival and the hippie movement were happening but had no idea there was any sort of living tradition in the United States, so I just devoured books on the history of the occult and folklore and the Salem witch trials and vampires and whatever.

I first found my way into the actual Pagan community when I was working one summer for Greenpeace in Amherst, Massachusetts. One night we were sitting around a fire after a day of canvassing, drinking beer and whatnot, and someone started doing some Pagan chants, you know, what we now call “Pagan Top 40” stuff like “The Earth is our mother” and that kind of thing. I was fascinated, here were these environmental hippie types, singing this Native-American-infused melody, it was the 1980s and the New Age was everywhere and I had only started to become aware that there was a Pagan community out there. Someone looked at me and said “Come on, Peg, you know the words!” I didn’t. But they were easy enough to pick up. We had some great times that summer, usually looking for secluded wooded areas to hang out in after work at night, sometimes swimming in forbidden places or sneaking onto private beaches on the Cape to sleep near the ocean.

Not long after this, I started to discover a Pagan community that was less connected to environmental or neo-hippie groups and more about Witchcraft and magic. I was attending the University of Massachusetts for graduate school, and one day I saw a flyer advertising the UMASS Pagan Student Organization. I think it was the first campus Pagan group in the US. I went to a meeting and, again, had this odd experience, just as with the Greenpeace group, of people expecting I knew more than I actually did. I had never attended a Pagan ritual before but at that first meeting when they were planning a Beltane ritual they asked me to be the high priestess. Who knows why? But I thought it was interesting that these strangers were assuming I was experienced in something I knew very little about, and I had not said or done anything to mislead them on this. Anyway, I hung out with these folks a while and they were not quite the kind of group I was looking for (they were a bit socially-awkward and not terribly interested in nature), but eventually I met some other people and attended all kinds of public and private events and I was off and running! I later moved to Boston which is a real vortext of Pagan community, so there was a lot going on, and eventually met people from the coven I later joined and still belong to. But now that I live in Albany, I do not attend rites as often and have become more of a solitary practitioner, which is what many people who belong to groups for a long time eventually become.

As for Paganism being an academic specialty of mine, well…I have an MFA in English. This is a terminal degree with a focus on creative writing. That and a couple bucks might get you a latte at Starbucks. I mean, it used to be a good degree but there are no jobs now, even PhDs are finding it hard. Fortunately, I did a minor in film when I was at UMASS. I also did an independent study course on Witchcraft in contemporary fiction, with a professor who specialized in myth and fantasy literature. After moving to Boston I was writing for an erotica magazine and a local arts weekly wanted to interview the women behind the magazine. This writer happened to be a film columnist and when he learned of my interest in film and my background he said he’d like to hire me to do short reviews for the paper. I had also taught a couple sections of Film and Literature in grad school. I did little bit of adjunct teaching here and there, including a course on Witchcraft in Film and Fiction. And eventually a friend I’d met through a film festival he was organizing hired me to teach at Emerson, where I have had freedom to develop a lot of unique courses. But I am still not really a bona fide film scholar or even a traditional scholar of any one subject. I have presented papers and published scholarly articles on everything from Celtic studies to travel writing to poetry, and of course film and media. The first time I presented a paper at a conference, the topic had a Pagan focus (it was on the unintentional destruction of sacred sites by Pagan tourists in the UK). Then the second paper I gave, I think it was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also had a Pagan focus. So I decided that every time I did any sort of academic presentation or research or published writing, it would have a pagan theme or focus. And that has held true for the last few years. It’s not like some sort of spiritual pact with the gods of livelihood, (here’s where I’d be laughing if we were doing this interview “live”), it’s just a quirky personal challenge that happens to fit well with my eclectic academic path. My spiritual path and my academic one have been similar in that they’ve both been rather untraditional, I guess.

TheoFantastique: How did you come to study film and its expression of the esoteric?

Peg Aloi: Like I said, I more or less fell into it. When I finally got a chance to teach something besides composition as a graduate teaching assistant, I had the choice of teaching Creative Writing or Film and Literature. Tough choice but I am glad I picked the film track as it has led to more teaching opportunities, and getting the job as a freelance film critic as helped, too. Anyway, one of the film classes I taught at UMASS was “Terror vs. Horror: The Psychological and Visceral Sources of Fear.” So of course I was exploring the difference between two models of horror cinema, the one a gory, shocking approach (such as one sees in slasher films, etc.) and the other a more subtle (but perhaps ultimately more unnerving) approach, the less-is-more approach. I wanted to try and expose students to things they might not normally think of as horror, like the Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock, one of my favorites. At first glance, it looks like a costume drama but it has the qualities of mystery, horror and the paranormal as well. I am very intrigued by films that can’t be easily categorized, and television shows that meld different genres together, like Buffy or Twin Peaks.

My interest in the occult and in horror films has led me to design courses, on cinema and the occult, supernatural television, and Witchcraft and Paganism in contemporary media, and that’s all been really interesting, and the classes have been popular with students. Also, this is a very fertile field in academia now, especially since there is now a whole new branch of study known as “popular culture” which can be approached from within a variety of contexts. I have noticed for some time now that what we are currently calling “Paganism Studies” is still not a separate discipline unto itself, but is comprised of scholars whose specialties are very diverse: history, sociology, film and media, cultural studies, folklore, gender studies, you name it. And even if some scholars who want to be specialists in Paganism might find this frustrating, I think it works very well, in that it shows how this spiritual movement and its attendant imagery and texts and social implications have really permeated the culture in a very comprehensive and diverse way.

TheoFantastique: In a previous blog post I commend on Robert Ellwood’s observations of the influence of the “occult revival” of the 1960s counterculture on various aspects of popular culture such as television programming. You will touch on this in your forthcoming book. Can you summarize some of this revival for us, why it might have come about, and give us some examples of how it surfaced and continues to be worked out in television and film?

Peg Aloi: I think when one talks of an “occult revival” it is important to distinguish among the different occult revivals. There was an occult revival in England at the turn of the 20th century, one in the United States shortly thereafter, and one in the U.K. in the 1960s, concomitant with a revival in the U.S. The one we are most concerned with for our book is the most recent one, and in particular we wish to chronicle the ways in which film influenced it, and was influenced by it, both in the U.K. and the U.S. There are many factors which led to this revival, and interestingly these factors were quite different in these respective countries. For example, the rise of the American counterculture in the 1960s was a conflation of many societal tensions, including women’s liberation and the sexual revolution, civil rights, the Vietnam war protest movement, the environmental and back-to-the-earth movements, and of course drug use and, overlaying it all, the increasing social influence of popular music. As well, various works of literature were influential, both older classics and newer works. All of this had an impact upon increasing interest in the occult and the spread of Neo-Paganism. (Of course, the occult and Paganism are not the same thing, but there was and is enough overlap of these communities that they are generally seen as being interchangeable, at least to the mainstream observer). The U.K. did not have the same stake in the Vietnam situation, but the runaway popularity of the Beatles and their ability to directly influence the youth culture through their own spiritual exploration (after 1966 the Beatles were pretty much done with pop love songs) generated a similar sense of unrest among working class youth, and just as the British Wave of music had dramatic impact on the U.S., the energy of the American counterculture infused this unrest in the U.K.

As everyone knows, the behavior of many young people during this period of social unrest was seen as a very negative and corrupt trend in the culture, not to mention the widespread political shift. Once people started to really understand the atrocities and the rather hopeless situation in Vietnam, the general population followed the lead of the young in denouncing the American government’s actions; but at the same time, there were so many other aspects of youth culture that were widely disapproved of, and the occult was part of that. Sex, drugs, rock and roll: this phrase had both very negative or very positive connotations depending which side of the fence you were on. I think this was a source of great ideological conflict for many people and I picked up on it as a kid (I was born in 1963). I mean, on the one hand, everyone thought that the wholesale slaughter of young men was a problem; but some people were still caught up in the 1950s and early 1960s- era fear of Communism and the Cold War and were very protective of their burgeoning American dreams. Obviously, change was in the air, and the religious underpinnings of American culture were becoming unmoored by the large questions of morality that were blazing on American TV screens and newspapers. The coverage of the war was something no one could argue with: in those days, journalism was still a very straightforward and objective discipline. The images of Vietnam spoke for themselves. This really primed the canvas for the media to have a huge influence on the culture.

Those areas of social tension I mentioned earlier were and in many ways still are seen as “liberal” causes and interests. Which made the adoption of Pagan mindsets, such as earth-based spirituality and nature worship which are part of modern Wicca and other paths, seem like a natural outgrowth of the social zeitgeist. But interestingly, in the U.K., the factors which led to a Pagan revival were seen as “conservative” or right-wing sorts of issues. Ronald Hutton discusses this far more eloquently than I am doing in Triumph of the Moon. So not only were the roots of the revivals different, the types of people interested in them may well be very different. On a personal note, I have noted an interesting difference between American and British Pagans during my travels in the 1990s, that, in general, manifested in a much more male-dominated and dogmatic way of doing things than once sees in the more goddess-centered, eclectic paths in the U.S. The reason I mention all this is that I think we will find in our research that the popularity of certain occult film texts in both these nations will be to some extent a reflection of the occult communities.

But to offer a summary of the occult revival in film, for the purposes of our book we will probably try to determine a singular moment when it all began. Since we are mainly interested in popular culture, we will consider the influence of the works of experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger in the 1950s. But the first example of occult cinema that had widespread and culture-changing impact was Roman Polanski’s 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby. In addition to its being a very artful and entertaining film, based on an equally artful novel by Ira Levin, there were some real-life occurrences that added to its aura of evil, and fuelled a widespread spirit of protest against all things occult, even as the film ushered in a palpable fascination with the occult. Namely, the murder of Polanski’s pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, by the members of the Manson family. Not long after, Polanski was accused of raping a 13-year old girl, and has lived abroad ever since because if he ever enters the U.S. again he will be indicted on that crime. Because the news media today is so obsessed with crime and scandal, we might think such a story is all in a day’s news. But at the time, the Manson family’s killing spree was a horrific, almost surreal narrative that engendered fear of “murdering cults.” Their association with the lyrics of various Beatles songs (scrawled on walls at crime scenes) helped convince the public that their aberrant behavior was somehow the result of the cultural climate.

I think also this is where the word “occult” became imbued with such negativity, because of course Manson’s clan were referred to as a “cult” under the influence of this crazy, charismatic guy. I hate to suggest the American public is incapable of making the distinction between these two very different words, but I recall the word “cult” became a buzzword associated with anything “occult.” What we now call “satanic panic” has its roots in the fear of the public that any sort of interest in the occult (evidenced by the Beatles lyrics that reflected their interest in Eastern spirituality and social protest) could potentially lead to involvement with murdering cults. A ridiculous leap in logic, perhaps. Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan in 1966, and his spurious claim that he portrayed the demon who impregnated Rosemary in Polanski’s film further reinforced the idea that fiction and real life were frighteningly linked. And the portrayal of the “old folks next door” as a coven of murdering witches was somehow both campy and horrifying. Suddenly your neighbors were capable of anything. By the time The Exorcist came out in 1973, portraying incidents of Black Mass desecrations and the demonic possession of a pre-pubescent girl, the American public was completely convinced that Satanism, Witchcraft and the occult were a dangerous trend stealing away the souls of our young people. I mean, little Regan had a Ouija Board! I am sure that was the reason for why I was encouraged to burn mine. Then Linda Blair went on to star in all these rather shocking made-for-TV films, which were great, but underscored again that this actress played nothing but troubled or evil characters.

It’s also true that we saw a real dearth of occult film and TV in the 1980s, and I think that is directly due to the rise of the Moral Majority under Reagan. It was not until the early 1990s, when we saw the rise of the New Age and Neo-Paganism and Wicca, that we see a return to television of occult, Pagan and paranormal shows, like The X-Files or Xena, Warrior Princess. Let’s face it, Buffy could not have existed without Xena.

TheoFantastique: Scholars like Christopher Partridge in the U.K. have commented on this and referred to it as a process of re-enchantment in the Western world. He says this has given rise to a “popular occulture” that surfaces not only in film and television, but also video games and music. Would you agree with this sentiment? And if so, how would we differentiate between esoterically-influenced forms of pop culture and a simple increased interest in general fantasy, myth, and fairytales?

Peg Aloi: I think Partridge was right to try and explore the shift in those terms. I also appreciate his use of the term “neo-Romanticism” over other descriptive terms because if you really look at it, the Romantics were so very instrumental in both periods of occult revival. Without the poetry and perhaps more importantly, the ideology of the Romantics, which of course was rooted in a desire to revive the imagery of classical mythology and the dream of the pastoral life, Neo-Paganism would never have happened. Some theorists also credit the Romantics with influencing not only the occult revival but the entire 1960s cultural shift. Camille Paglia wrote an essay exploring various aspects of this, including the idea of rock music and the live concert experience as an expression of Dionysian impulses. We had a movement in the 1980s called “New Romanticism” which was mainly about music and fashion…and to some extent a renewal of interest in Romantic poetry and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, for example. Partridge acknowledges the influence of various works of fiction on renewed interest in fantasy and fairy takes but also in Pagan worldviews and alternatives to mainstream spirituality, in particular Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and, more recently, Terry Pratchettt’s Discworld series. Then there was the very popular artwork throughout the late ’70s and ’80s of Brian Froud, Boris Vallejo, Sulamith Wulfing, Susan Seddon-Boulet and others. That kind of art is still very popular with lots of new artists joining the ranks, although it seems to me it is getting more and more twee, maybe because it’s all aimed at little girls now. I don’t think there necessarily was or is a general increased interest in fairy tales that has fed the trend in literature and art; I think a few writers and artists whose personal visions have led them to produce work concerned with these worlds is what has fuelled that revival of interest. And I think perhaps their interests are more likely to have originated in esoteric interests, at least Pratchett’s. But there have been non-fiction works that no doubt influenced this as well, such as the work of Joseph Campbell, which started to be popularized in the 1980s thanks to Bill Moyer’s televised interviews. Or the documentary film version of The Ascent of Man.

I think it’s very complex and difficult to trace what influenced what, because clearly there is a lot of overlap. I mean, I personally think video games that are very fantasy-oriented these days have their basis in role-playing games which started in the late 1970s with Dungeons and Dragons, which of course was directly influenced by Tolkien’s worlds and lexicon. To be honest, I think that the reach of popular culture has become so pervasive and in a way insidious, in that many of us may have no idea where an idea or image or cultural trend of phrase first emerged. This makes it hard on artists because often their ideas or work is imitated and then it is the imitation that gets noticed more widely than the original. This has certainly been true in terms of Pagan literature and art. For years now I have abhorred the trend in the Pagan community to value mediocrity, to choose the cheap imitation over the original. Maybe we have the mainstreaming of Paganism to thank for this. And people also choose the simple over the complex, the quick fix over the thoughtful solution. Someone can become a Witch overnight, no need to engage in training or study, We certainly have Llewellyn Publishing to thank, or blame, for this. That’s not to say all their books are bad, or their practices are questionable, they simply gave the public what it wanted.

Something else that intrigues me about the idea of “occulture” is the way in which some entities have co-opted the imagery or message of the occult or Paganism in order to subvert its actual ideology. I have noticed a really disturbing trend in late night television commercials for the army, though: they have these really well-produced, special-effects laden ads that make military maneuvers look exactly like role-playing games, and seem to be suggesting that, if you are good at video games, you’d be good at using this equipment. But it seems really odd to me to suggest that the sort of teenager who would be interested in fantasy video games (and who this sort of ad is clearly aimed at) would be someone inclined to join the army. Now with all the young men and women at risk in the Iraq war, I wonder if this sort of advertising campaign has been successful in reaching disaffected young people. The majority of soldiers killed have been very young and from very small towns. Okay, I am starting to think I don’t want to take this too much further but readers can draw their own conclusions.

TheoFantastique: There has been a close connection between speculative fiction and Paganism for some time, from interest in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange World informing the mythos of the Church of All Worlds. Why do you think there is such a strong connection between Paganism and speculative fiction in its various forms?

Peg Aloi: As I understand it, speculative fiction, is different from science fiction in that it posits a possible and plausible future based on the way things are now and the way things seem to be going. So in science fiction, it’s all about space travel or technology, but in speculative fiction you see a lot of interesting ideas having to do with things like ecology, biology, evolution, politics, gender and sexuality, societal structure, drugs, etc. Sometimes this kind of fiction posits a very positive vision, as with the Heinlein book, and sometimes a negative one (like Ursula LeGuin’s The Word for World is Forest). Speculative fiction often functions as a cautionary tale, and usually offers a hopeful vision, because it can point out the mistakes made along the way and perhaps inspire ways to avoid an undesirable future. At its heart, the Pagan revival is a form of speculative fiction. Modern Pagans look at the world as it is and want to change it. They (we) see a lack of connection to nature, resulting in a range of problems from pollution to obesity. We see a dearth of compassion, leading to a loss of civility and cultural awareness. We see the absence of the childlike sense of wonder all humans need to access from time to time, which is making us all cynical and depressed. We see a failure to challenge and engage our children in traditional ways, which is making our children into spoiled, underachieving, entitled little zombies. We see an obsession with technology that is making us lose touch with what it means to be human.

Paganism means rejecting the world as it is, and sometimes you find Pagans who try their best to live in a sort of fantasy world. They might spend too much time involved with sub-cultural communities or role-playing games or escape into literature or the Internet. To some extent this kind of activity can help perpetuate the popular stereotype that Pagans are anti-social or geeky or whatever. But most Pagans want to effect change in ways that will effectively allow them to exist in the world as it is, but to improve the quality of life and in some cases, effect change in the culture. To do this they look to “the old ways” and to ideas, images, stories and myths of the past, and integrate this into contemporary living, using whatever technology and products are available. And now you see a real integration of different kinds of subcultures that are engaging with Paganism. It is impossible to gauge the importance or the Internet in spreading awareness and information, but of course it also levels the playing field and perhaps makes Paganism less unique or special. And of course some “old school” Pagans would rather have the community remain insular and underground, but there is no turning back now. I do think modern Pagans should give some thought to how such changes are affecting our spirituality and social interaction. The only way to get any perspective on this kind of thing is to remove yourself from it for a while. Which is why I like to attend Pagan gatherings outdoors where you can remove yourself from the online milieu and see how this movement really is a living one.

TheoFantastique: What do you think the future of our media culture holds for the continued expression of esotericism in cinema?

Peg Aloi: It’s been interesting to see the response to esoteric texts aimed at children. The Harry Potter franchise has been hugely popular and also has generated a lot of rage. People ban the books and burn them and actually think that the whole Hogwarts model is endangering our children by introducing them to Witchcraft. Some protest literature even tries (ineffectually, in my opinion) to compare the Hogwarts style of magic to Wicca, which it has nothing to do with, of course, but the kind of people who want to ban a series of books that actually get kids reading again are the kind of people who want as accessible a target as possible, and Wiccans are the new Satanists, really, aren’t they? There is a growing atmosphere of protest aimed at the new film The Golden Compass (based on the first book in Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials) have garnered accusations of promoting atheism and being anti-Catholic. I did not read the books but having seen the movie I can’t understand where these accusations come from at all!

I have also heard that the studio funding for the sequel to The Wicker Man being filmed by Robin Hardy, Cowboys for Christ, is being held up because some of the financial backers are fundamentalist Christians offended by the title. It seems unlikely there will a change anytime soon in this kind of public scrutiny. I won’t get into the whole political situation we’re in now and how there is really a problem with people recognizing the appropriate separation of church and state. But clearly the climate of indignation and panic-mongering about the future of our children goes hand-in-hand with the very pervasive effort to turn this into a Christian, right-wing nation. It’s really feeling like the 1980s all over again, where the public outcry against the occult really did lead to an avoidance of occult topics in popular media. The only difference between how things are now and the more visible kinds of protest one saw during the era of satanic panic in the 1980s, is that the protest is now taking place among well-organized groups on the Internet, which is of course where many people believe all the most significant cultural discourse is taking place (she said/typed, in the interview which will appear on a popular esoteric blog).

TheoFantastique: You’ve already alluded to this, but does Paganism and esotericism in pop culture represent a continuing area of promising possibilities for researchers from a variety of disciplines?

Peg Aloi: Oh, absolutely. We’ve been seeing a surge in this for some time now. Perhaps the one place this really caught fire was within Buffy studies. The first international Buffy conference in England represented an astonishing array of disciplines. That was where I met Hannah. There were talks on Buffy that explored this TV show from very diverse contexts, including history, media, literature, psychology, ethnomusicology, queer studies, anthropology, etc. It was amazing. I think that has really helped set the tone for academic conferences that deal with Pagan-oriented topics as well, and in fact a lot of the same scholars who are into Buffy are also involved in Paganism studies. Hannah and I have co-organized two conferences with the Department of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard, the first one on Witchcraft and Paganism in Contemporary Media, and the second on Paganism, Folklore and Popular Culture. These were both very successful and dynamic, and the most exciting part was the wide variety of disciplines represented, even for the media conference.

One thing that has changed a lot since the 1980s is that now it is permissible to approach topics in Paganism and the occult as someone who is both a scholar and a practitioner. It used to be sort of controversial to be “out” as a Pagan if you were studying Paganism; partly because being an ethnographer usually connotes the image of an outsider. When Tanya Luhrman’s book came out (Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft) people were conflicted; it was a great book, very sensitive and thorough and insightful, but she posed an interested seeker to gain access to rituals and private Pagan events. I think that made some Pagan scholars uncomfortable and in some cases stymied their efforts to do research within the Pagan community. I also think that academics in the 1980s risked being seen as “weirdos” or being targeted with discrimination in the workplace if they came out as Pagan, but there is so much more awareness now of what contemporary Paganism is, it is less of a problem. This new trend of research being conducted by believers and practitioners is definitely an exciting trend, but a problematic one, too. Just as you find non-academic Pagans who are very dogmatic or inflexible in their beliefs, some academics are the same way, and in some cases may unwittingly or even intentionally imbue their work with aspects of their own beliefs or traditions. It is obviously crucial to remain as objective as one can if one is to maintain an academic perspective. This is the new challenge for Pagan and occult academics: objectivity fuelled by study of the many diverse traditions and expressions of esoteric beliefs and culture.

TheoFantastique: Peg, thanks again for sharing with us. I look forward to hearing more about your book as it nears completion. Please keep in touch so that we can promote the book when it becomes available.

Peg Aloi: It has been my pleasure! Thanks again for your interest and support.

Antonia Levi: Anime, Manga, and Cultural Aspects of the Werewolf Tradition

Antonia Levi was one of the early pioneer scholars researching and writing on aspects of Japanese popular culture. She has lived in Japan, and is a fan as well as academic researcher on anime. She did graduate work at Tokyo University, holds a Ph.D. in Japanese history from Stanford, and has taught on Japanese history at Amherst College and Loyola Marymount University. Antonia currently teaches Asian Studies and Popular Culture at Portland State University. She is the author of Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation (Open Court, 1996), as well as articles for Mechademia, an academic journal on anime and manga.

TheoFantastique: Antonia, I appreciated your book on anime, one of the first American academic treatments of the topic if I understand it correctly, and the article you wrote for Mechademia journal. I’d like to draw from aspects of both of these to touch on anime if we could. To begin, how did you develop an interest in anime, both professionally and personally?

Culture and Horror: Valerie Wee Sui-Lin, Ringu and The Ring

The Popular Culture Association has a subset of presentations that touch on horror and science fiction in popular culture. One of the more interesting presentations presented by Valerie Wee Su-Lin of looked at differing cultural aspects of the Japanese horror film Ringu constrasted with the American film The Ring. Valerie is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore. She teaches in a number of areas, including media and cultural studies and film theory, and her research interests include horror and science fiction films.

Valerie has agreed to share some of research and reflections on the cultural facets related to two popular horror films.

TheoFantastique: Valerie, thank you for agreeing to share some thoughts related to some of the more interesting and popular horror films in recent years, and on the fascinating aspects of cross-cultural considerations related to them. Before we discuss these films in particular, how did you develop this interest and work academically?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Hi John, thanks for inviting me to weigh in on these topics. I appreciate the opportunity. My interest in horror films has rather ironic origins, in that I hated horror films as a child. They always made me afraid of the dark. Getting into graduate school and specializing in film and media studies, I realized I had a chance to investigate and better understand my response to horror films and perhaps gain a deeper understanding of what made them so terrifying and disturbing, how these effects were achieved, why they seemed to appeal to (other) people… So, I guess my interest grew out of an attempt to intellectualize (and thus exorcise) my fears. The further I got in studying these issues, the more fascinating I found the area. That’s largely how it all began.

TheoFantastique: You have also done some work on American “slasher” films such as the Scream trilogy, and science fiction such as Blade Runner and Alien. Can you talk a little about this area of research?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Well, my work in Alien and Blade Runner actually began as an MA student. I was interested in issues of gender and how that intersected with aspects of horror (something that continues to fascinate me). My work on these two films focuses on examining how female characters, as well as broader notions of the feminine – such as motherhood and childbirth, in the Alien films – are strongly aligned with the abject (particularly as it is defined by Julia Kristeva in her book Powers of Horror).

As for the Scream films, they were released while I was in grad school and when I finally got around to watching them, I found them quite distinct from earlier cycles of slasher films. My attempts to understand just what these differences were and what motivated these developments resulted in several papers on the subject. In one, I examine the ways in which the trilogy updated the defining conventions of the slasher film genre – in particular, how the series revised the treatment of the monster-villain and the final female survivor – to reflect the contemporary issues and concerns relevant to the teen generation that came of age in the final years of the 20th century. I suggest that these texts are actively engaged in commenting on and negotiating the threats, fears and concerns that characterized 1990s American society in general, and American teenagers – the film’s target market – in particular. The postmodern, highly intertextual nature of the series was the focus of another paper where I argued that the series represented the shift to a new “hyper”-postmodern phase, an event that I traced to a range of technological, cultural and social developments.

TheoFantastique: Earlier this year you presented a paper at the Popular Culture Association national conference that explored various cultural differences between the Japanese film Ringu, and the American film The Ring. How have these films, and Japanese horror in general, been influential in influencing and shaping the American horror film industry?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Certainly the profile of Japanese, indeed Asian horror has risen internationally. I think Japanese/Asian horror has been receiving quite a lot of attention from Hollywood recently in terms of various remakes (Ringu became The Ring, Ju-On became The Grudge, Dark Water was remade, and I believe several other remakes are in the works), however, I’m not sure how deep an impact these films will have on the way Hollywood portrays and depicts horror. So far, Hollywood’s interest in Japanese/Asian horror appears to be restricted to the level of basic plot lines, and in many cases, the more distinctive cultural elements in these plots are dropped or revised to make them conform to a more traditional Hollywood narrative form and structure. Even on the level of visual (and aural) style, Hollywood still prefers to retain most of its own established conventions rather than adopting elements of a less familiar aesthetic tradition. As you know, I address these issues in my paper comparing Ringu and The Ring.

TheoFantastique: In your treatment on these films you contrast the differing perspectives on the supernatural that arise from “fundamental cultural and philosophical differences that structure Eastern and Western views of reality in general.” You summarize the basic differences as 1. Buddhist dualism and Western dialectics, 2. non-scientific and scientific worldviews, and 3. differing narrative/cinematic cultural traditions. How do these differ in the Japanese film as contrasted with the American treatment?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Well, I try to show that Ringu reflects a characteristic Japanese/Eastern viewpoint in which the Eastern belief in the vital and delicate balance between the opposing forces of order and chaos are a central consideration that structures the narrative. In fact, one of the interesting aspects of Buddhism is the absence of theistic notions of God or the Devil. As a result, Buddhists don’t usually think in terms of “good” and “evil” in the traditional Western religious sense. Instead, the Buddhist perspective emphasizes right and wrong. “Right” choices and actions reinforce order, balance, harmony, while “wrong” actions lead to chaos, upheaval, and destruction. In Ringu, the appearance of a terrifying and destructive female ghost is linked to several “wrong” acts. The first occurs when Sadako’s psychic mother is attacked and ridiculed by a number of reporters during a press conference where she provides evidence of her psychic abilities, and the second “wrong” act takes place when Sadako’s father murders her. Both are events in which chaos overcomes order, when fear overwhelms “appropriate,” responsible behavior. The rest of the narrative traces the consequences of these events.

The Japanese/Ringu world is also one in which the supernatural and paranormal are accepted as part of a larger reality. Ringu reflects an Eastern perspective that accepts the existence of what is beyond rational explanation, beyond human understanding and comprehension. Consequently, psychic powers and the presence of the undead are not necessarily marked as evil. In Ringu, Sadako’s terrifying presence is balanced by Ryuji’s helpful apparition who returns to provide the vital clue that can save his son; Sadako’s apparently destructive ability to “will” someone to death is balanced by Shuziko’s ability to predict a volcanic eruption which could result in saving lives. This is in contrast to The Ring, in which the supernatural and the unexplained are clearly coded as Other, as destructive and evil. From the moment Samara appears, she has a deadly effect on those around her. Her ability to haunt Aiden is just another manifestation of her threatening evil. The Ring, therefore, reflects a more Western/American dialectical perspective, one in which the opposing forces of good and evil battle for supremacy.

Finally, there are distinct cultural and aesthetic influences that have shaped the narrative, form and style of the two films. Ringu reflects Japanese cinema’s enduring link to classical art forms such as Kabuki and Noh theatre, and depicts the continuing influence of Japanese folk tales on contemporary narratives. The figure of Sadako borrows from the traditional tales of yurei, familiar female ghost narratives that are featured in both classical Japanese theatre and cinema. The Ring clearly borrows its narrative and visual influences from the popular and long-established genre of American supernatural horror. The figures of Samara and Aiden have clear precedents within popular American film culture. Samara is the latest incarnation of the deadly, evil child who is a threat to those around her, while Aiden is the young innocent whose sudden strange ability to communicate with the dead is a sign of an encroaching evil. In both cases, Ringu and The Ring, reflect a long history of cultural influences and in turn offer insights into their specific aesthetic contexts.

TheoFantastique: Why is an understanding and exploration of these cultural differences important for the average film viewer who wants to understand these films on a deeper level?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Well, it’s possible that average viewers experiencing these films are likely to read them in ways that tend to be culturally constructed, and built around their most familiar cinematic experiences. When we encounter something culturally unfamiliar or new, we may have difficulty understanding and appreciating the full significance of what we see, especially when it involves, as in the case of Ringu, a text from a culture that’s quite distinct and different from the Western/American perspective. Under these circumstances, I think that a viewer’s ability to fully enjoy and appreciate the cinematic experience, as well as value the film’s messages and artistic merits, can only be enhanced by a greater understanding and exposure to the differences that mark the unfamiliar culture. I think that getting a sense of the extremely different world views, ideologies and perspectives that exist at the core of two films, that appear to have such seemingly similar plots, can give us a richer understanding of the different cultures underlying these films, and help us enjoy the films better.

TheoFantastique: The vengeful female ghost figure is significant in these films, and appears to be a recurring character in Japanese horror. Can you share a little about how this character and how it developed in Japanese folklore to become a cultural icon of horror?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: The female ghost is one if the mainstays of Japanese folk tales. Many of these stories date back to the Edo period (which began around 1603). What’s perhaps most interesting about these female ghost stories is that they feature women who are perfectly ordinary and, as expected in Japanese patriarchal culture, entirely submissive and obedient, until they are brutally murdered by men in authority whose social function is to protect and look after these women. Only after this betrayal do these women return as terrifying supernatural beings with the power and ability to exact revenge. Interestingly, these vengeful ghosts appear to be free of the patriarchal constraints and limitations that the culture commonly places on (representations of) Japanese women. I think it’s also worth noting that these representations have endured through the centuries. There are a number of popular Japanese folk tales that are regularly staged in Kabuki and Noh performances, and, as Ringu proves, the stories and this particular female figure continue to capture the imagination both in Japan, and the world, as it would appear.

TheoFantastique: How is this figure treated differently in Ringu in contrast with The Ring as the character reflects differing cultural and narrative conventions?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Well, there are some fairly obvious surface differences. Sadako (in Ringu) is a teenager, nineteen, I believe, while Samara is a young girl. Sadako is Shizoko’s natural daughter and she may have inherited some variation of her mother’s powers, while Samara’s origins are mysterious and unknown, we only learn that she was adopted by the Morgans.

But what’s more interesting are the film’s treatments of these two characters. Ringu, in keeping with the tradition of the Japanese female ghost story, offers a rather ambiguous depiction of Sadako, in that she is not presented as solely and purely evil. As I point out in my paper, the only evidence we have of Sadako’s “evil” is that she is allegedly responsible for a reporter’s unexpected death. Yet the film is interesting in that there is little “objective” confirmation of this, all we have is her mother’s shocked accusation, that Sadako never responds to. Also, if Sadako is guilty, we should recognize that she was acting to defend her mother against the gathered reporters. This doesn’t redeem Sadako if she actually did commit murder, but it offers some explanation and context for her actions. Also, Sadako’s return as a vengeful spirit is in keeping with the narrative conventions of the Japanese ghost story in which a woman is murdered by a male whose socially prescribed role within the Japanese patriarchal perspective, is to guide and protect her – in this case, her father. Her actions therefore stem from the “wrong” actions of (male, patriarchal) others who have betrayed their responsibilities.

In contrast, Samara in The Ring is the epitome of a destructive, supernatural force, one who appears to follow in the tradition of American supernatural horror films such as The Omen. Her entry into the Morgan household is immediately followed by disaster – the horses need to be destroyed after succumbing to some mysterious illness, Anna (Samara’s adopted mother) becomes increasing paranoid and is driven to murder and suicide. So, unlike the teenage Sadako, whose guilt is at least ambiguous and who remains a mysterious cipher while alive, Samara’s link to evil is made much more explicit. In fact, Samara herself admits to being the source of her mother’s visions and acknowledges her supernatural power. Samara, therefore, appears to conform to more mainstream Western/American depictions of supernatural evil.

TheoFantastique: In your article on this topic you refer to the depiction of the supernatural in The Ring as fundamentally evil with no attempt to depict “any positive or redeeming” qualities. You then quote an author to the effect that this is due to Judeo-Christian notions wherein “any manifestation of the supernatural is fundamentally evil.” I wonder whether the situation might be more complex than that in that The Ring reflects both a Judeo-Christian assumptions about the supernatural, rationality a nd order, but also secular assumptions about these things. Since Christianity does allow for a positive sense of the supernatural, might the negative treatments of the supernatural in The Ring reflect aspects of both Christianity and secularism’s response to the paranormal?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Yes, you have a good point there. I must confess that I was uncomfortable with the overly broad nature of the statement about the Western view that “any manifestation of the supernatural is fundamentally evil.” As you point out, there is room in Christianity for both good and evil depictions. Certainly, when the secular perspective is acknowledged – a perspective in which reason, rationality and the need to know and understand is valorized against the less “valuable” obscurity of the spiritual – there is the tendency to cast the unknown, the unverifiable, in more negative ways. In fact, if I can jump ahead to your next question a little, I recently completed a paper that discusses, in some detail, how The Ring attempts to navigate the tension between acknowledging the power of the supernatural, while still cleaving to a narrative framework that continues to embrace a more rational, logical perspective. These ideas are explored within a larger consideration of how gender and horror intersect in both Ringu and The Ring. While the paper I presented at the PCA touched on gender and horror, there were a number of ideas that I wasn’t able to fully explore there.

TheoFantastique: Do you have any other research projects that you are working on related to such issues, Valerie?

Valerie Wee Su-Lin: Yes, in addition to the paper I just mentioned, I’m also pursuing my interest in how traditional art/aesthetics, and distinct practices within each culture’s depiction of visual images, shape the specific images found in the deadly videos in Ringu and The Ring.

TheoFantastique: Thank you again for sharing your thoughts on these things, and for your continued interest and scholarship on these facets of popular culture.

Fido: Rewarding Zombie Comedy Provides for Social and Theological Reflection

This weekend I had an opportunity to rent a few movies, and as I perused the shelves of my local video store I noticed a small number of DVD boxes that immediately caught my eye as the film Fido (Lionsgate, 2007) jumped out at me. I first heard about this interesting zombie comedy through the pages of Rue Morgue magazine several months ago, and shortly thereafter the television commercials for the film piqued my curiosity even more. Not many readers may have heard of this film due to its unique subject matter, and its likely limited theater circulation, but this is a film that is worth seeing, not only for those who enjoy zombie films and like to see a great combination of comedy and horror, but also for those who would like to think more deeply about some of the symbolism the film provides that touches on serious issues of society, culture, and yes, even theology.

Fido takes place in a fictional and stereotypical suburban town in 1950s America. In many ways it might be seen as beginning where Sean of the Dead, another great zombie comedy, ended: a world characterized by a post-zombie apocalypse. As the story opens, the film draws upon the Romero zombie mythology where radiation has blanketed the earth resulting in the reanimation of corpses who now seek to consume the flesh of the living. This leads to worldwide zombie wars until a scientist creates an electronic collar that can be used to control zombies by removing their urge to eat human beings as long as the collar is working properly. This interesting use of technology by the corporation Zomcon (with the slogan “Better Life Through Containment”) leads to the domestication of zombies who become the servants for the living and who are then harnessed to engage in the necessary but menial tasks that make everyday life possible, whether the delivery of newspapers, gardening, or factory work.

The story then focuses on an American family desperately trying to keep up with the “Jones’s” who have (sometimes several) domesticated zombies, and not wanting to give inappropriate appearances, the housewife and mother (played by the Matrix trilogy’s Carrie-Ann Moss) brings a zombie into their home (who is later affectionately named Fido), much to the consternation of her husband and son, thus setting the stage for the dynamics that unfold for the rest of the film.

This film provides lots of humor, as well as lots of social critique. One of the interesting facets of the film brings critique to typical or stereotypical American families of the 1950s, and perhaps even beyond it. The family that provides the main focus for the film is comprised of an emotionally distant father, a wife who desperately craves his affection but is more concerned by what the neighbors think of their external image, and a son who desperately craves the attention and involvement of his father. These family dynamics are then explored through the introduction of the family’s “pet” zombie, who many times exhibits more emotion, and provides for a source of emotional connectivity, far more so than the “normal” living family members.

Beyond the critique of family relationships, the zombies in the film symbolize “the others” of society that take care of so many necessary areas of human life, but who many times are not valued or appreciated by more “mainstream” parts of our culture. One of the frightening aspects of this film is how quickly the zombies are dehumanized, even when they were quite recently valued by the living. This is humorously and tragically illustrated in the phrase “don’t trust the elderly” that arises in the film as a parody is offered from the old home medical alert badges for the elderly promoted through television commercials with an elderly woman who has fallen, and pressing her alert badge utters, “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” A Zomcon commercial in the film parodies this classic commercial with the altered line of a family member shouting, “Help! Grandmas fallen and she’s getting up!,” meaning, she’s experienced a fatal incident and now she’s coming back as a zombie. Not to worry. Zomcon offers an elderly monitoring system designed to notify the corporation the instant that grandma or grandpa suffers a stroke, heart attack or other fatal ailment or accident. It responds quickly to take the former loved one away to the factory to be domesticated as yet another zombie product. Remember, don’t trust the elderly.

Fido also provides material for other areas of social and theological reflection as it looks at death and the funeral industry. In Fido‘s fictional world, the ever-present reality and threat of zombies has made specialized funerals necessary, those that provide for the detachment of the head and separate coffins and burial of the head and body that ensure zombie reanimation will not take place. This is yet another service provided by Zomcon, and it is a far more expensive process that only a few wealthy people can afford or desire. Most opt for becoming zombies after death. The film’s discourse on death and the funeral industry brings a harsh critique of the control and manipulation of the final disposition of our loved ones by an industry during a time of personal grief. In addition, aspects of the Zomcon funeral service in the context of a zombie apocalypze seem to raise questions about the Christian view of resurrection. Two funerals are depicted in the film, and in the first instance, as the minister holds the “head coffin,” he utters the words “From dust have you come, to dust shall you return, from dust shall you not be resurrected.” While the primary reference of this aspect of the service is no doubt to the process of reanimation in becoming a zombie, I found it interesting that the minister referred to a negation of “resurrection” rather than some other terminology or rising and “zombification,” seeming to leave open an interpretation with a theological application to the critique of the Christian tradition which still had strong social capital in 1950s America.

The successful mix of comedy and horror does not come along often. In my collection I have few DVDs in this category, and these include Young Frankenstein, and Sean of the Dead. I am preparing to add Fido to this collection, not only because of its wonderful mix of genres, but also because of its ability to provide food for thought and reflection on some of the pressing issues of our day.

Wired Magazine: Manga Conquers America

The current issue of Wired Magazine, issue 15:11, is no newsstands and in bookstores now. The cover features the title “Manga Conquers America,” and it is worth the reader’s time who is interested in manga, or Japanese comics, and its relationship to anime, or Japanese animation. The online edition includes several features and online extras. The main article includes the following in its introductory paragraphs:

“As you may have noticed, Japanese comics have gripped the global imagination. Manga sales in the US have tripled in the past four years. Titles like Fruits Basket, Naruto, and Death Note have become fixtures on American best-seller lists. Walk into your local bookstore this afternoon and chances are the manga section is bigger than the science fiction collection. Europe has caught the bug, too. In the United Kingdom, the Catholic Church is using manga to recruit new priests. One British publisher, in an effort to hippify a national franchise, has begun issuing manga versions of Shakespeare’s plays, including a Romeo and Juliet that reimagines the Montagues and Capulets as rival yakuza families in Tokyo.

“Yet in Japan, its birthplace and epicenter, manga’s fortunes are sagging. Circulation of the country’s weekly comic magazines, the essential entry point for any manga series, has fallen by about half over the last decade. Young people are turning their attention away from the printed page and toward the tiny screens on their mobile phones.”

Features and online extras include:

Features

“Japan, Ink: Inside the Manga Industrial Complex”

“Manga Does Shakespeare”

“How Manga Conquered the U.S.: A Graphic Guide to Japan’s Coolest Export” (which provides a timeline of manga’s growth and popularity in the U.S. in a manga format)

Extras

“This Is Your Brain on Manga”

“Manga 101”

Readers can also look forward to an inteview here soon with Antonia Levi, author of Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation (Open Court Publishing, 1996), who will discuss cross-cultural considerations related to understanding anime, and specifically she will address her article in Mechademia vol. 1 where she considers the werewolf figure and the “wolf-human dynamic in anime and manga” as well as American horror.

Adam Possamai: Jediism, Matrixism and “Hyper-Real” Spiritualities

It is no surprise to readers of this blog that I have a great personal interest in the enjoyment and exploration of the fantastic in literature, film, and television, and that I believe these forms of contemporary mythos also provide us with important tools and forms for spiritual expression and exploration as well. In my continuing research in this area one of the resources I have found helpful is the research of Dr. Adam Passamai. Adam is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Western Sydney. Among his other activities he is also one of the editors of the Australian Religion Studies Review, and he has researched and writen extensively on new religions, as well as the nexus of the fantastic in popular culture and its connection with spirituality to form what he has labeled “hyper-real spiritualities.”

Adam has taken some time from his busy academic schedule to participate in an interview on this fascinating topic.

TheoFantastique: Dr. Possamai, I have appreciated and benefited from your work in religious studies and popular culture, particularly that which looks at hyper-real religions and spiritualities. Thanks for making time to answer a few questions on this topic. Can you tell us how you developed an interest in and academic focus on religion and popular culture?

Adam Possamai: Many thanks for your interest in my work and for your very kind words. To answer your question, in my private life, I have always been a fan of popular culture and spent many years of my youth on novels, graphic novels, movies, and computer and role playing games. I also became involved in writing short stories of science fiction and fantasy and have recently published in French, Perles Noires. In my professional life, I studied sociology in Belgium and Australia and after I completed a Ph.D. on New Age Spiritualities and got a tenure position at the University of Western Sydney, I was looking for a way to remain active in research under the pressure of a heavy teaching and administrative load. Thinking of some religious groups I came across that were mixing religion and popular culture, I then remembered the old writer’s trick; that of writing on what you know. The next step was very easy and became natural for me. I was going to mix the activities from my private life with my professional one and mix my passion for the sociology of religion with that of popular culture.

TheoFantastique: How has the shift in the West from identification with organized religion to individualized spirituality melded with popular culture as a medium for expressing spiritual activity in the late modern or postmodern world?

Adam Possamai: There is no doubt that the western world has changed since the 1960s. Some theorists call this change late modern, others postmodern, and it is beyond the scope of this interview to explain this difference. However what these social and cultural changes have brought are, among many other things, a stronger focus of individuals on themselves rather than on a community; and a breaking apart of boundaries between fields of knowledge such as between academic and everyday knowledge, and high and popular culture. Because of this greater focus on the self, because of the implosion of boundaries between spheres of knowledge, and because of the development of consumer culture in western societies with its strong culture of choice, individuals are now free to choose from almost whatever they want to construct their personal spiritualities. If, let’s say, before the 1950s, people were in majority getting the religion of their parents (a sort of inherited [restaurant] menu when it comes to religious practice), now people tend to have various experiences and choose the religion/spirituality they want (in a sort of choosing a [restaurant] à-la-carte style) across various spheres of knowledge. With the New Age spiritualities of the 1980s and 1990s, it was common to pick-and-choose from various religions and philosophies to construct a spirituality that gives sense to an individual. With religions such as Jediism and Matrixism, the realm of choice has been extended from religion and philosophies to reach popular culture.

TheoFantastique: In one chapter in your fascinating book, Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament, you discuss the creation of subjective myths in consumer culture that are expressed in pop culture. Can you address how science fiction, horror and fantasy provide resources for the creation of these myths and provide some examples of how these myths surface in certain religious or spiritual groups?

Adam Possamai: Popular culture, in this context, is used as a source of inspiration as I already touched on in the previous question. Checking various Internet sites on Jediism, it is easy to find that people who are interested in this spirituality take elements from various religions (such as Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Shinto and also Catholicism) and from the Star Wars movies, and then blend them together. As in a typical popular religion, there is no established theology and Jeddists use religion and popular culture for the personal construction of their spirituality (which is what is referred to by subjective myths). For example, when the movie, The Attack of the Clones, came out, Jeddists realised that Jedi Knights were portrayed very closely to a type of Franciscan monks (i.e., withdraw from wealth and sexual activities). This impacted on the construction of the subjective myths of certain Jeddists who pulled out from this spirituality as, I guess, they could not relate to sexual abstinence. Needless to say, being a Jeddist is not necessarily a permanent source of identity. People might be one for weeks, months, or years and then move to another spirituality, or even become atheist. Indeed, in postmodern times, the relation between people and religion/spirituality is very fluid. There are other examples of these religious groups, such as Matrixism which is inspired by the Matrix trilogy, the Baha’i faith and psychedelic studies. They too have a growing faith on the Internet. They were also earlier cases of groups mixing religion with popular culture, especially in the 1960s, such as the Church of All Worlds which was inspired by the science fiction book, Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, and the Church of Satan which used some of H.P. Lovecraft fiction at a metaphorical level for some of its rituals.

TheoFantastique: Can you define what you mean by “hyper-real” religions or spiritualities that arise out of the creation and consumption of these myths?

Adam Possamai: Hyper-real religions is the name I have given to these religions/spiritualities that mix religion and popular culture in a metaphorical way. As there was no word to describe this new phenomenon when I did this research, I was looking for inspiration in finding a describer which would be ‘catchy’ and which would make sense sociologically. I then recalled the work of Jean Baudrillard who researched consumer culture and postmodernity claiming that, in our society, we are bombarded by so many signs and symbols that are being exchanged between each others to such an extent that it becomes impossible to find the reality behind this economy of signs. He also make reference to “hyper-reality” which describes the fact that the reality we are faced with through these signs, symbols, and what he calls simulacra, becomes more real for the consumer that ‘real’ reality. In this sense, ‘hyper-reality’ is an implosion of reality through this economy of signs that hides the reality outside of this consumer lead society. With hyper-real religion, elements from religions and popular culture are so much exchanged between each other that it becomes hard to find the ‘reality’ of the religions behind hyper-real religions. Furthermore, as there is a sequence in The Matrix where a copy of Baudrillard’s Simulacra & Simulation is found on a bookshelf, it became even more relevant to use his work to describe this spiritual phenomenon.

TheoFantastique: In what ways might the increasing connection between forms of speculative fiction in popular culture and spirituality be part of a re-enchantment process in the West arising in reaction to secularism?

Adam Possamai: With the growth of popular culture in its globalised and commodified form, some works of popular culture with a religious sub-text have been appropriated by some religious groups and individuals for their spiritual work. Because of this proliferation of religious sub-texts in some works of popular culture, and because of many other reasons beyond the scope of this interview, people are more fascinated by the magical than they were in the heyday of industrialism. If modernity brought the disenchantment of the world, as Max Weber puts it, postmodernity is re-enchanting the world not only through this proliferation of subjective myths (as I argue in my book) but also through the expansion of consumerism as the work of Ritzer points out. However, as I discovered in my research, although these factors re-enchant the world, some people involved in this McDonalised Occult culture might become blasé of this proliferation of myths and religious commodities, and might themselves become disenchanted with the consumerist aspect of their own spirituality. Although our western society is being re-enchanted, there is also the paradoxical effect that this re-enchantment pushes some people towards a disenchanted state of mind.

TheoFantastique: You have also talked about the increasing interest in Western esotericism and its connection to hyper-reality which creates what you have called a “McDonaldised Occult culture.” What do you mean by this and what does it look like?

Adam Possamai: Esotericism, in a nutshell, makes reference to religions which are secret and/or which are trying to reveal the secret of things. With the advent of consumerism and the Internet, all these secrets have now been revealed to the public at large. For example, the rituals from the 19th century occultist group, the Golden Dawn, can now be downloaded from the Internet. The term “McDonaldised Occult culture” has been borrowed from the work of Koening and makes reference to this previously secret knowledge that is now part of consumerism and of the virtual world, where esoteric philosophies such as Kabbalah are mixed with conspiracy theories, alien intelligence and works of popular culture such as Jedi religion and The X-Files. In this McDonaldised Occult culture,  serious/high/philosophical’ esoteric knowledge is blended with more popular and commodified version.

TheoFantastique: In your book you also include an interesting discussion of “absolutist religious actors” who “would (hypo) consume from within their religion only and would consume the type of popular culture that fits with their creed and/or that is recognized by a respected authority.” But you also note that this same actors “aim at preventing the consumption of certain works of popular culture” as part of a “‘battle’ to define the parameters of acceptable cosmology and soteriology found in popular culture.” Do you think that this dynamic, coupled with the decline of the credibility of the Christian mythos in the West, and the lack of Protestant emphasis on a theology of imagination, results in a kind of battle for the mythic imagination that surfaces, for example, in Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, and Pokemon controversies?

Adam Possamai: I have to admit that when I wrote my book, I was planning to mainly write on the innovative use of popular culture for spiritual works. I also wanted to make a small reference to certain religious groups, such as fundamentalist ones, which opposed such a use of popular culture with religion. I had the luck of having an excellent research assistant, Ashley Davis, whom I sent on the Internet to find some information on this topic. He brought me an impressive pile of significant documents and when I analysed them, I realised that there was more to what I first imagined, and that I needed to scratch the surface. This chapter was supposed to be a small one to end my book, and it became the biggest one. Through this analysis, I then found 4 types of reactions from more conservative religious groups towards the use of popular culture for religious purpose. The first one is ‘resistance to popular culture’ where fundamentalist groups openly oppose youngsters to read and watch Harry Potter and the Pokemon, or play D&D in case they, when they are older, might be tempted by Satanism and Dark Paganism. The second type is ‘re-evaluation of popular culture’ in which these groups discuss what is good in global popular culture for their religion and what does not work. They simply make comments without attempting to police these forms of popular culture. With the ‘re-appropriation of popular culture’ type, some more conservative groups finance their own works of popular culture for evangelical purposes. They have, for example, created Christian D&D, computer games, and superheroes comics with a strong Christian message. The last type is ‘meta-resistance to popular culture’. Some groups within these groups see themselves as Christian but like to enjoy global popular culture without being tempted to leave their committed Christian beliefs. They are organised in such a way that they want fundamentalist groups to know that they play, for example, non Christian D&D or like Goth Culture (such a ChristianGoth.Com) and that there is nothing wrong for them to do such things as they are deeply committed to Christianity and are not tempted by Satanism. And in case the reader of this interview would like to learn more about this research, my book, Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament, is of course available on the Internet.

TheoFantastique: It sounds as if the nexus between new religions, pop culture and speculative fiction provides a continuing source for both exploration and scholarly engagement. Dr. Possamai, thank you again for sharing some of your thoughts on this fascinating topic.

Jack Santino: Halloween, Folklore, and Death Festivals

Dr. Jack Santino is a professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, OH. His academic work has included an analysis of the cultural meaning of holidays and festivals. Among his many publications is the book Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1994) which he edited. As the Halloween season approaches, the second largest holiday in retail sales in the U.S., we are privileged to have Dr. Santino provide his perspective on this interesting holiday.

TheoFantastique: Dr. Santino, thank you for making time to share your research with the readers. Let’s begin with a little background on you. Where did you do your studies, and how did you end up teaching academically in the area of popular culture?

Jack Santino: I grew up in Boston and attended Boston College, but I really wasn’t too interested in academics. On my own, however, I had a great interest in folklore and mythology, as well as what we now call popular culture, particularly comics and rock’n’roll. Two years after I graduated I found out that there were graduate programs available in folklore. I applied to a couple, and I attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Department of Folklore and Folklife, where I got my Ph.D. From Penn I took a job at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, where I worked on the Annual Folklife Festival, and after 8 or 9 years I responded to an ad for a teaching position in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University.

TheoFantastique: What contribution do the perspectives of festival and Folklore studies bring to an understanding of Halloween?

Jack Santino: As you mention, Halloween has become a major annual festival in the United States, and the American-style version of the holiday is being introduced abroad as well. Folklore helps us understand the customs and symbols that are central to the occasion, and how we received or inherited them. But as a discipline, Folklore is not only about the past. These customs and symbols are fluid, as are their meanings and the ways people use and understand them. I got interested in writing about Halloween because I enjoyed it as a child, but also because I could see it changing all around me. The rise of grown-up masquerade parties, the explosion of elaborately-decorated homes, and city-sponsored festivals — none of these were a part of my childhood experience. So I wanted to document and try to understand the change in Halloween from a child-oriented event to a more inclusive and multifaceted one. The study of ritual, festival, and celebration offers concepts for understanding large public events such as Halloween. The idea that there are certain periods when the everyday rules are meant to be broken is one. Also, the idea that during times of transition (in the life cycle or seasonal), all bets are off–the dead can mingle with the living; children are allowed to demand treats from adults, people dress in special costumes; things are turned upside-down and inside-out. These ideas help us to see Halloween for its importance. It is a time when we face our taboos (death being a major one) and playfully accept them as part of life.

TheoFantastique: From my research, including the book you edited on the topic, I know that Halloween has a long and continually evolving history and variety of influences. But can you summarize it for us as to where its roots may be traced, some of the key influences, and how it arrived at its present form in the U.S.?

Jack Santino: It is generally accepted that the most influential forerunner to Halloween is the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced “Sawin”). The Celts were the ancestors of today’s Irish Welsh, and Scottish, among others, and Samhain, on November 1, was both the first day of winter and the first day of the New Year. It was believed that the souls or spirits of those who had died during the year previous were now allowed access to the world of spirits. So spirits were wandering on the eve of Nov. 1, and people would leave their fires lit and put food and drink on the table for any family members who happened by. Ireland was converted to Christianity in the early centuries of the first millennium, and the Christian church tended to believe that people who held non-Christian beliefs had been deceived by the Devil. So the idea of evil was added into the mix. Eventually, the church set the Feast of All Saints, or All Hallows on November 1, and October 31 was known as Hallo Even, or Hallowe’en.

TheoFantastique: Unfortunately, many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians tend to focus on the Pagan origins and elements of Halloween to the exclusion of a variety of other elements, while also ignoring the continually evolving nature of the holiday as it takes new forms and meaning in American culture. How would you respond to this narrow interpretive lens through which some view the holiday?

Jack Santino: I understand people’s objection to Halloween insofar as they believe strongly in the existence of a literal Devil who is engaged in an effort to steal our souls. But I was raised in a religious atmosphere where that simply was not a problem with the celebration. I tend to view it as a healthy occasion for the parading and confronting of aspects of life — symbolically — that we usually pretend don’t exist. Also, Halloween is tied closely to harvest imagery, and I think the lesson is that, as the natural world faces death as a part of ongoing life, so must we. Halloween is many things. It allows us to mock our fears, and to celebrate life. There is room for parody and topical satire in the costumes and displays. But it also deals with deeply important issues involving life and death, nature and culture.

TheoFantastique: What does the increasing popularity of Halloween say about Americans if we understand Halloween in part as a vehicle “for the expression of personal, social, and cultural identity?”

Jack Santino: I think a lot of the popularity of Halloween is due to the maturing of the baby-boom generation. People who had fun after WWII and in the 1950s and 1960s seem to have decided not to give this up. In addition, the U.S. is a consumerist society. I have noticed that when people start to do something en masse, commercial entities jump on it pretty quickly. So when people started decorating with homemade dummies, it wasn’t long before mass-produced Halloween figures began to appear in the department stores. Likewise, as people began decorating more elaborately for the autumn season, electric outdoor lights, similar to those of Christmas, were offered.

TheoFantastique: How does Halloween compare with similar festivals and celebrations in other cultures?

Jack Santino: Halloween compares in a couple of ways. Many countries observe Halloween; it was very popular and important in Ireland long before it was widely-known in the US. Most Catholic countries observe certain rituals and customs for All Saints Day and also All Souls Day on November 2. These may involve visiting the family graves, for instance, and not resemble the current American Halloween at all. We are becoming increasingly aware of the Latino Day of the Dead celebrations (Dia de los Muertos), which are reminiscent of the U.S. Halloween in some ways but very different in others. On the other hand, many countries have celebrations that are reminiscent of Halloween but are different occasions, such as Walpurgisnacht in Germany (May 1). And the way Halloween is celebrated in street festivals in the U.S. reminds me of Mardi Gras in Louisiana and elsewhere.

TheoFantastique: Some scholars have applied the work of anthropologist Victor Turner and his notion of liminality to Halloween. Might the process of entering a liminal space and engaging in costuming as a process of social inversion in some instances account for the popularity of Halloween among adults? I was surprised to find the holiday and related items, like the haunted attraction industry, to be huge in Utah after my relocation from northern California. This is a religiously and culturally conservative state, and might the aspect of liminality and social inversion be part of the appeal in this state’s context?

Jack Santino: Yes, I think there is enormous appeal to adults to being allowed in this period of license to break everyday social rules. I see people working in banks on Halloween dressed as moose. I see grown-ups turning there homes into haunted houses and actually scaring children. I see people who keep their front yards impeccable and the lawns trimmed to the appearance of a golf course put fake gravestones and hang ghoulish monster on their property. At any other time of the year they would have the police at their door. But at Halloween, they have friends and neighbors congratulating them on their creativity.

TheoFantastique: Dr. Santino, thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts. I hope the readers will pick up a copy of your book on the topic so that they will have a broader understanding of the history and multicultural influences of Halloween as we near the month of October.

Reflections on a Zombie Supper

I realize that this post, well, at least the image that accompanies this post, will be off-putting if not repulsive for many evangelical Christian readers, or at least some of them, but try to withhold judgment for a few moments.

I don’t know the origins of the image that is an obvious zombie reinterpretation on Da Vinci’s famous Last Supper painting. When I saw it several thoughts immediately came to mind. The first I have already expressed, the probability that many conservative Christians will be repulsed by the image. But another thought I had was to remember one of the “hard sayings” of Jesus, one that his disciples and the crowds of the first century had a difficult time understanding and accepting, and differing interpretations of it continue to be a point of minor division among Protestants and Catholics.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 6 Jesus presents a lengthy discussion about spiritual food to a hungry crowd. After referring to himself as the bread of life he says, “this bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world,” and as if this wasn’t difficult enough for the crowd to accept with its seeming reference to cannibalism Jesus continued and said “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

Protestants and Catholics have interpreted these words as a reference to communion or the Lord’s Supper, with Protestants preferring a strong emphasis on symbolism as an ordinance and Catholics holding to a sacramental view of communion’s bread and wine as a transformation into the literal flesh and blood of Christ. While I appreciate aspects of both views it is not my purpose to enter into these kinds of discussions, but instead to draw attention to the sometimes macabre and mystical teachings of Jesus. In my view Protestants tend to downplay or reinterpret such teachings which often results in a sanitized portrait of Christ. But if we put ourselves in the sandals of Jesus’s first century audience who heard these words, how scandalized they must have been! Recall as well that one of the charges the Romans hurled at the early Christians was that they were a cannibalistic cult that feasted on the flesh and blood of its allegedly resurrected founder. It seems that a number of segments of early first century Palestine struggled with Jesus’s teaching here, whether his closest followers, the curious crowds, the Jews, or the Gentiles of Rome.

I also wonder whether Christians, especially American evangelicals, have not so turned Jesus and what he stands for into a commodity for our culture that Jesus is consumed according to our consumer appetites almost as ravenously as humans are devoured in any number of zombie films. We seem to be eating Jesus in a variety of ways, but are they the ways which he envisioned for his followers?

The points I’d like to emphasize with this image are a reminder of the often controversial nature of Jesus’s teachings even among his followers, and that at times he even seemed to go out of his way to be provocative. In addition, is there not some sense in which the zombie supper graphically illustrates an aspect of the Christian participation with Jesus in a mystical identification with him through the consumption of his flesh and blood however communion is interpreted? And what about Jesus as a consumer image for the church?

If these thoughts have any merit, then reflections on a zombie supper not only fit in well with the Halloween season, but also permit different perspectives on a sometimes macabre faith. Perhaps this image should not be as off-putting as we might first imagine.

Update: See the related issues in relation to Italian zombie films at The Vault of Horror, and my previous post looking at “Zombie Crawl and Zombie Jesus.”

Pinewood Dialogues Horror Panel

I was recently made aware of an interesting panel discussion that took place in June of this year as part of the Pinewood Dialogues on film, television, and digital media. The gathering included a panel discussion on horror that is described in the following terms:

“This discussion brought together critics and scholars to talk about the films shown in the Museum’s groundbreaking series It’s Only a Movie: Horror Films from the 1970s and Today. The series was organized by assistant curator Livia Bloom, who moderated this lively discussion with: Adam Lowenstein, author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film and cinema studies professor at the University of Pittsburgh; Nathan Lee, film critic for The Village Voice; Maitland McDonagh, author of Filmmaking on the Fringe: The Good, the Bad, and the Deviant Directors and film critic for TV Guide; and Joshua Rothkopf, film critic for Time Out New York.”

Readers can review this discussion through a PDF document, HTML document, or through MP3 file.