G(o)od Versus (d)Evil: Exorcism Horror

 

G(o)od versus (d)Evil is a trite, boring horror conceit.

I say this as a person interested in religion, as an author whose work often touches on themes of religious horror, and as a reader. In recent posts including my review of Stephen King’s Holly, I’ve poured scorn on the normative framing present in most traditional horror. It’s a familiar formula; normality is interrupted by a monstrous event or presence, a hero or heroes reassert normality, and the status quo is resumed. In these tales, the monster or disaster is often either a direct or symbolic representation of some perceived threat to the social order. This framework is, in a word, reactionary.

It is rarely noted that Stephen King's "The Stand" is a Christian novel

Traditional horror isn’t the only game in town; nor, despite its recent resurgence in popularity, is religious horror. Some subgenres reject this framework entirely. These range from splatterpunk and extreme horror to cosmic horror, queer horror, and anarchist/anti-fascist horror. These are worthy niches, and I’d strongly encourage any horror reader or horror-curious person to explore.

However, traditional horror is the format that sells. Stephen King’s sales figures alone indicate this, as do the horror charts more generally. The exorcism story in particular is as common as dirt these days (more on that in a moment). So much so that I’m comfortable classifying it as both traditional and religious. Which is amusing, because traditional and religious – in the normative sense – are exactly what these stories are. To be blunt, that just plain sucks.

The Stephens King and Nicks Cutter of this world have turned a tidy profit playing to normie fears and insecurities, but they wouldn’t have the careers they do if the protagonists in those stories didn’t prevail. When G(o)od prevails, those fears and insecurities wind up safely locked away by the end of the narrative. That’s all well and good if you view the established social order as desirable, but what if the social order itself is the true horror? Authors like Thomas Tryon and Ramsey Campbell have spun fantastic tales on this very theme, as have legends like Shirley Jackson and Robert W. Chambers. My personal favorite entry in this genre is the exceptionally disturbing film Vivarium, which is an underappreciated gem.

The work of Jeff Vandermeer is among the best horror out there

Even if one confines one’s preferred horror to the traditional camp, more and better things could be done with the tried and true framework pioneered by authors like Stephen King, Peter Straub, et. al. For an example of what not to do, consider this: even authors who aren’t overtly religious fall back on “God” as a representation of all that is good. This Sunday-simple idea of a godhead is the one fed to children, but such a flimsy, flaccid philosophy can’t endure even a moment of scrutiny. Theodicy – the riddle posed by evil and suffering (“Why does an all-powerful, benevolent God allow evil to flourish?”) – is never satisfactorily addressed in any of these narratives.

Even more disappointingly, purveyors of traditional horror don’t give evil the respect it deserves. What motive drives supernatural or theological antagonists? Invariably, Satan is invoked as the enemy. That’s fine – I often write fiction in which godblown true believers are the antagonists. However, I give those characters believable motivation. When Satan is invoked in fiction, the why of Satan is rarely if ever addressed. Why are demons out to get humanity? Because that’s their nature? Fair enough, if you address what that nature is. Alligators, for example, don’t eat Florida toddlers out of an irrational, bone-deep hatred of mankind. They do it because they’re hungry and toddlers are delicious. In fact, one could even blame God for that situation, for He hath made a world in which universal suffering is common currency and the satisfaction of irrepressible needs is the order of the day.

The nadir of modern religious horror is the exorcism story. This subgenre was launched into regrettable mainstream popularity with the book and subsequent movie The Exorcist, a nasty, sexually rancid little piece of Catholic propaganda whose closest ancestor is Là-Bas by Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans. Là-Bas is the novel that gave us the Black Mass, a Satanic inversion of the Catholic Mass. While France has a more complicated relationship with Satanism than most cultures, I don’t think It’s necessary to point out that no Satanic conspiracy as described by Huysman has ever existed, nor was the Black Mass a thing before Huysman cooked it up for his book. That has never stopped Christians from slandering real or fictional Satanists before, nor is it likely to in the future.

An exorcism committed against a woman in Bogota

Some well-reviewed (Whisper Down the Lane by Clay Chapman) and well-selling (Chills by Mary SanGiovanni) books not only fall back on this tired, worthless framework; they do so while perpetuating blood libel against Satanists. This is the oft-repeated slur/conspiracy theory that a vast network of secret Satanists are involved in Satanic Ritual Abuse, a nonexistent practice that fueled the so-called Satanic Panic throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Any and all allegations raised during this time have been disproven and/or thoroughly debunked, but evidently that hasn’t trickled down to horror writers.

For Lucifer’s sweet sake, Clay Chapman opens Whisper Down the Laner with a quote from Geraldo Rivera’s infamous “Devil Worship, Exposing Satan’s Underground” episode. Like most forms of bigotry, this phenomenon isn’t just a matter of repeating churlish slurs against those one doesn’t understand. Satanic blood libel has real world consequences. If you doubt me, just ask those jailed during the McMartin preschool hysteria, or ask the West Memphis Three. During the height of the 80s/90s Satanic Panic, 12,000 accusations of child sexual abuse and Satanism were tied together and used to slander innocent people. Not one case was ever substantiated. Not one. Ever.

A place where lies ruined lives

And yet this nonsense has gone on for roughly 2,200 years. The question no one ever seems to ask is, as I pointed out earlier, why? Why would a Satanic underground perform a meticulous, point-by-point inversion of Mass? Why would a Satanic underground dedicate itself to child abuse? To mock God and perpetuate evil, “just because?” That begs the question of why an omnipotent and omniscient God would allow such mockery, not to mention the perverse torture of the innocent and His devoted servants. There are complex questions which could be explored in such fiction, but they rarely are

Fiction in which the menace which drives the narrative is human evil rarely falls short in this department. Since John Fowles’ The Collector (not to mention the watershed novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris), fiction hasn’t lacked for motivation when portraying murderers and sadists. Cosmic horror is, in my opinion, the best approach to questions of supernormal evil because it both acknowledges and ignores the question. Why are incomprehensible beings from beyond our cosmos tormenting us? We don’t know because they are, by definition, incomprehensible.

Whether you believe in supernatural evil or merely in human loneliness and depravity, evil should never be given short shrift. Not only because the question of what drives harmful human action is fascinating, but because horror that deals with evil in a dumbed-down manner is, well, dumb.