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.
Interesting piece. Thanks for mentioning my book, "Here's To My Sweet Satan."
ReplyDeleteyou'll be pleased (I hope?) to learn that your book was a selection for a Satanist book club I was part of (the non-theistic variety of Satanist)
ReplyDelete