Mass readings for the All Souls’ Day:
Wisdom 3.1-9 Psalm 116 Revelation 21.1-5a Luke 7.11-17
If you have a streaming service for your television as I do, such as Netflix, Prime, etc. you will know they suggest movies and tv shows to you. In the month of October, I saw that emphasis was given to horror films, especially for viewing in the run up to Halloween, and some particularly spine-chilling offerings highlighted for the night of Halloween itself. Of course, Friday night, I watched the Blue Jays, and not with horror, just disappointment. Nevertheless, this got me thinking about horror as a genre of literature and film, and how it reveals something in our collective modern psyche, or at least the inner life of a great many people who are fascinated and entertained by these stories of gore, violence, terror and death.
There have been stories since before history itself when human beings gathered around the campfire to be entertained that featured scary things. But the point of those stories wasn’t specifically to frighten. Beowulf, one of the oldest pieces of English literature has a monster in it, and it is a mysterious and frightening beast – but the point of the story was not to frighten, but inspire with the adventure of a hero. Today in cinema we have war movies, especially the graphically violent ones made more recently, like Saving Private Ryan and Fury depicting horrifying things, but the broad intent of the film is not to scare us. The Bible has monsters in it; ancient Greek myths have terrifying creatures and malevolent spirits, but again, the point of them is not to horrify even if they do frighten. Horror is an element of these stories, but not the point of these tales. However, in artistic horror, the express intent of the art is in scaring the wits out of us; and that’s different. And it’s a modern thing, which begs the question why it is a cultural expression particular to modern times – it expresses a fascination with death, but I wouldn’t quite call it an outright fear. That is, there is something else lurking within it. I would say that it is despair, hopelessness. And what horror does is provide the cathartic release of this emotion within people, to allow our society to “whistle past the graveyard” and not give to much conscious thought to death, even as we have evidence of a collective dread at work in our culture.
And of course, this stands in relation to the Christian story which is also about death (Jesus’ crucifixion is at the heart of it), but is far more about new life. If our civilization, at least at the level of its leadership, and most definitely among those who shape our popular culture, has lost its Christian convictions, has profound doubts about the promises of Christ, it’s understandable that we have this curious phenomenon that is horror as a popular form of entertainment. That we encounter it in milder form in the many macabre Halloween displays we could see Friday night, is a small indication that we as the Church have work to do in drawing people to the story of hope that is the gospel, and away from their fixation on the darkness that is horror.
I said horror is modern. Think about the classics that laid the groundwork for all the all that came after, including all those low-budget slasher movies, the stories of psychotic killers chasing teenagers through abandoned summer camps, amusement parks, etc., all these spring from the emergence of a particular kind of storytelling after the end of Christendom, among the first fruits of the so-called Enlightenment, the supposed Age of Reason and the social revolution that came from the massive changes wrought by industrialization that broke down community and set a trend toward growing social isolation. We’re talking about the late 18th and 19th century period – such works as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (written in 1818), the prose and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe through the middle part of the 1800s, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897. Now, at the time, these weren’t referred to as “horrors” but they were “gothic” stories. They all share a fascination with death, and it’s the fear of death that they work with to provide for the reader, the suspense, the thrills, the frights, but also the dread that persists even after the last word. It’s that quality that today’s horror stories seek to emulate, and that draws so many to read and watch horror.
No one cannot dispute the artistry of these writers. So, in no way do I condemn them, but as with anything we intellectually consume, we ought to be aware of what it is and what it contains at a spiritual level, and all of these are obviously a working out of profound despair, and a groping after a solution to hopelessness.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the aftermath of the death of her child; and she had a scandalous and rocky relationship with her husband Percy Shelley that began in their adultery, and was later marked by his neglect of her, and his many infidelities. The reanimation of the dead as a meditation on her own life that was headed for catastrophe seems quite logical, especially as there is an absence of Christ in both her marriage and her most famous novel.
Bram Stoker, was a man who for all appearances was a success, having status, a good income, connections in both political and literary world, and was married to someone who was considered at the time the most beautiful woman in London. That marriage, however, was a very unhappy one – his wife always pining for her first lover, who was none other than Oscar Wilde. One can read the story of the vampire who seduces women in a very different light once you know this, and consider who Stoker really was addressing in his character of Dracula!
Edgar Allan Poe’s father abandoned his family when he was scarcely a year old, and he then lost his mother when he was but a toddler; the couple who then fostered him never chose to adopt him and his relationship with them was not good. What happiness Poe enjoyed came from his curious marriage to a young cousin; but she contracted tuberculosis that would take her young life and that illness and death led to his own heavy drinking and decline in health. Now consider how many of Poe’s famous works have as central to their plot the death of a beloved wife or fiancée. If you know the famous poem, The Raven, you will know that these are verses of grief for a dead lover that drive the protagonist to despair and madness. The famous refrain of the black bird was “nevermore” referring to what must be understood as an irrevocable and eternal loss of the love of the beloved Lenore who is now dead and believed gone forever.
Horror, even where there is no murder, features both physical and spiritual assassination. Commonly, the stories have a relentless pursuit by an unstoppable monster, serial murderer, or malevolent spirit – the talkative raven can’t even be chased out of the room. The terrorizing of the victims hammers the point that there will be no rescue, no saviour, and even if we escape the monster, something in us will have died.
Then there is the gospel that teaches that all this evil is defeated in Christ, the powers of the world, of the devil, are nothing set against the divine. What is obvious about the horror story is that Christ is usually absent, although we know that a cross will hold back a vampire. Even if the monster is defeated, the killer himself killed, as anyone who watches these things knows, there is always the hint that the evil is never truly vanquished, and that it’s coming again. Stay tuned for the sequel: Nightmare on Elm Street part XII, and so on.
Yet we have gathered here for the Feast of All Souls, and to confess what is contrary to all this. If we celebrated Halloween at all, I trust that as faithful Christians we did so in the spirit of our ancestors who did so to mock the powers of evil and death, to thumb our noses at them, and to refuse the message of “nevermore” and instead proclaim Christ for evermore.
As our scriptures tell us now as they ever have, death while a sad departure from us in this life is not a disaster for the faithful departed, however they may have gone; nor have they gone to destruction. They are at peace. We know that by our faithfulness, whatever evil may come our way, it is a test of our mettle, a refining fire, and no matter how corrupt and dreadful it is that faces us, we will be made pure and glorified in Christ by our trust in God and perseverance through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.