Eve’s Children: Horror, Satan, and Women

Posted on 2/2/2020 by Charles R. Bernard

Julieann Stipidis has quite an excellent piece up at Bloody Disgusting: “The Devil to Make Her Do it: ‘The Blackcoat’s Daughter’ and Depictions of Satan and Women in Horror.” In it, she weaves together analyses of The Blackcoat’s Daughter and many other media, ranging from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (about which I have also Had Thoughts) to Pyewacket to The Witch and many others. Stipidis suggests that horror films have historically taken an exploitative view of the relationship between women and Satan, depicting them as the Prince of Darkness’ victims, little more than objects. Now, however, in the post-Exorcist, post-Rosemary’s Baby era, women are more often portrayed as possessors of volition, agents who choose Satan. I find this to be a compelling argument, and well-supported by the reservoirs of evidence that Stipidis marshals to her point.

I particularly enjoyed her description of the climactic scene in Robert Eggers’ masterful The Witch. Stipidis summarizes the climactic sequence of events (Heads up for spoilers):

For the first time in her life, Thomasin is given agency, as she has likely never been asked this question before: What does thou want? After years of caring for her siblings and tending to her chores, Satan has given her the gift of self-servitude. He asks her if she desires to see the world and wishes to experience the pleasures of taste and beauty. But we are only left to imagine the delicious life (we hope) Thomasin is about to have for herself, because the film ends before we get to experience it with her. Dissimilarly to Blackcoat and Pyewacket, we will never know if there are possible consequences to Thomasin’s relationship to Satan— we just witness her liberated ascension.

From the allegory of the Garden to the present-day fight for abortion rights, the battle for choice – for volition – has often been led by women and opposition thereto almost always framed at least in part as a claim upon their bodies. Whether the “Bride of Christ” or “Bride of Satan,” women in religion (and horror) haven’t been given much of a say in matters – much of an “I do” moment, if you will. That appears to be changing. It’s changing more slowly than may be ideal and good grief, is there ever backlash to such a vision of autonomy (as there always is). From Gamergate to Vox Day’s Captain Europa, even a lot of seemingly-unrelated reactionary nonsense is undergirded by some truly effervescent misogyny.

Speaking of which, I’ve had occasion to revisit William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist and I have to say that the amount of hatred for women contained in that book is as thick as (if you’ll forgive me) pea soup. This is a theme which somehow flew over my head on my most recent read-through, over a decade ago, but it was brought to my attention by some fairly offhand remarks about The Exorcist in George Case’s “Here's to My Sweet Satan: How the Occult Haunted Music, Movies and Pop Culture, 1966-1980.” First off, Case reminded me of the crude and awful sexual violence visited upon a child in the story. Worse than that, William Peter Blatty – himself a devout Catholic – claimed to have based the events of the novel on a real incident. While there was a case of “demonic possession*” that inspired the story, it bore little resemblance to Blatty’s portrayal, and had literally none of the hideous sexual undertones that Blatty lent his version.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, the Christian narrative of The Exorcist is that young Regan MacNeil is “possessed” – implying that she becomes a “possession” of Satan. However, in the Christian macronarrative, it isn’t Satan who forced himself on a virgin to birth his son, nor Satan who constantly seeks to restrict choice or autonomy. If anything, I’d argue that followers of a cosmic tyrant that calls itself “the Lord” are the ones being treated like possessions.

Horror reflects both what frightens us and what exhilarates us and it changes constantly, just as human society does. Whereas previous visions of the relationship between women and Satan – Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist – reflected the milieu of the late 1960s and early 1970s, new visions of autonomy and liberation like The Witch reflect ours, and in a way that I find encouraging. There’s always going to be backlash and bullshit in the face of human liberation; that is to be expected.

One final note. Stipidis writes:

But the questions remain: Is Satan freeing these women? Harming them? Or a mixture of both? The answers aren’t black and white. However, as more and more women find themselves openly admitting to practicing witchcraft, subscribing to Satanism, and/or belonging to the Church of Satan or The Satanic Temple, etc. and this contemporary trend in horror attempts to reflect this, we have to wonder if the genre is giving Satan quite enough credit. In his 2017 book “Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture”, author Per Faxneld suggests Satan to be a feminist ally and rejects Christianity’s notion that his kinship to women is problematic, while documentaries like 2019’s Hail Satan? shine a revisionist light upon The Satanic Temple’s search for social justice and empowerment for historically oppressed groups (like women.)

I applaud Stipidis for acknowledging the increasing numbers of people – including and especially women – who courageously “Come out of the broom closet” as Satanists or witches. I also applaud her for asking an important question: is horror, as a genre, giving Satan quite enough credit?

Obviously, I have a dog in this fight – but my answer would be no, Satan is not getting enough credit. As I’ve argued in my piece on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, our current cultural moment affords us an opportunity to tell new stories, better stories that reframe humanity’s relationship with our symbols of tyranny, submission, and liberation. This is particularly true when it comes to women and other groups traditionally excluded from cultural conversations about Satan.

While it’s a classic horror film, I’m glad we may be moving beyond the era of The Exorcist when it comes to portrayals of women and Satan. True, studios still crank out low-budget exorcism films every year (often of the found-footage variety), but when it comes to bigger-ticket, higher-concept films like The Witch, things may be trending in the right direction.

*: Regarding “demonic possession” and exorcism, I feel I should say a few additional words. This is extremely dangerous behavior. Exorcism kills people – literally. Vulnerable people – often children – are denied medical and psychiatric care for often-serious problems and are, instead, treated with Christian magick. Seizure disorders and other afflictions that can be mistaken for “possession” need to be treated by medical professionals.