Your God Had His Chance and He Blew It
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Linda Mary Kathleen McCarthy Your God Had His Chance and He Blew It: Modernity, Tradition and Alternative Religion in 1960s and 1970s Horror Submitted for the Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Art, Media and American Studies September 2016 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 2 Abstract The period of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, falling at a crux between the influences of modernity1 and postmodernity2, was an era undergoing vast paradigmatic shifts. Defined by cultural historians as The Final Phase of Modernism, A Rage against Order, The New Sensibility, an era of Getting Loose, or The Culture of Narcissism3, this decade was increasingly fracturing along conservative- liberal fault lines. Presumably, as a result of this socio-political dichotomisation, debates were being forwarded about the need for and efficacy of grand narratives including historical imperatives, familial connectivity, and traditional spiritual affiliation elicited across this cultural spectrum: from orthodox institutions, such as the Catholic Church to more left-wing establishments such as the Civil Rights and Counter Culture movements. Given prevalence of these conundrums, this thesis will explore how these concerns were discussed and disseminated within the United States through the popular media and, more specifically, works of horror. Indeed, at least since the Gothic literary period, and its qualified revival in the New Hollywood Alternative Religion Horror cinema this discursive thread has, arguably, articulated concerns surrounding the legacy and effects of modernity, traditionalism, the supernatural and affiliations of faith overall. In focusing upon American and British/American co-productions such as Rosemary’s Baby4, The Omen5, and The Wicker Man6, their shared concern in addressing spiritual questions will be taken seriously not merely as metaphors but instead as viable contemporaneous debates. This reading thus offers up an alternative to those currently presented by academia wherein religion is regarded as a mere metaphor for restrictive socio-political mechanisms, or as symbols of plenitude and power. 1 By modernity is meant a series of socio-political norms and mores coalescing around an increasing rejection of traditional systems of personal and cultural cohesion. These mechanisms relate to historical imperatives and include traditional religion, and familial or generational connectivity. The aforementioned ostensibly were rent asunder as a result of the concomitant legacies of the Enlightenment and the Reformation both of which upheld science and rationality over what was perceived to be the irrational: superstition, the supernatural and any adherence to a faith that supported them. This understanding is based upon the writings of historians and cultural critics including Daniel Bell, Christopher Lasch, Marshall Berman and their contemporaries all of which are herein referenced and problematized. 2 For an understanding of postmodernity, this work relies upon the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard who discusses this ethos as involving a loss of historic grand narratives and a resultant search for meaning in the wake of this cultural forfeiture. 3 This various phraseology representing definitions of the era by, respectively, Marshall Berman in All That Is Solid Melts into Air; Daniel Ball in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism; Susan Sontag in an essay of the same title from Against Interpretation; Sam Binkley in his book of the same title, and finally Christopher Lasch. 4 Roman Polanski, Rosemary’s Baby, DVD. Directed by Roman Polanski (United States: Paramount Pictures, 1968). 5 David Seltzer, The Omen, DVD. Directed by Richard Donner (United Kingdom and United States: 20th Century Fox, 1976). 6 Anthony Shaffer, The Wicker Man, DVD. Directed by Robin Hardy (United Kingdom and United States: British Lion Pictures, 1973). 2 3 Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................... 5 Section One: Witchcraft, and Satanism as Alternative Religious Discourses in 1960s and 1970s Horror ............................................. 55 Chapter One: Look Ro, It’s The Pope at Yankee Stadium. Christ What a Mob: Modernity, Commodification and Spiritual Affiliation in Rosemary’s Baby ......................................... 56 Chapter Two: “I Don't Know If We've Got the Heir to the Thorn Millions Here or Jesus Christ Himself”: Catholicism, Satanism and The Role of Predestination in The Omen ..................................... 91 Chapter Three: Lord Satan, I Have Nothing That Is Not Thine, Witchcraft, Satanism and Christianity at the Culmination of the Modern Age ...................................................................................................... 123 Section Two: Paganism and the Old Religion as Alternative Religious Discourses in 1960s and 1970s Horror ........................................... 154 Chapter Four: Searching for Sunken Sherds: Paganism versus the Modern in Eye of the Devil and Robin Redbreast ....................... 155 Chapter Five: Sumer Is A-Cumen In: Paganism and the Underpinning of Christian Beliefs in The Wicker Man ................. 191 Chapter Six: What No Man May Know and No Woman Tell: Paganism, Feminism and the Search for Self in Season of the Witch and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home ............................. 217 Conclusion: ..................................................................................... 252 Bibliography: ................................................................................... 264 Filmography: ................................................................................... 274 3 4 This thesis is dedicated to Richard Sheppard without whose support and love none of the following would have been possible 4 5 We believe in the dignity indeed the sacredness of the individual. Anything that would violate our right to think for ourselves, make our own decisions, live our lives as we see fit, is not only morally wrong, it’s sacrilegious7. The richness of horror fiction testifies to the complexity of the cultural changes which have taken place in the last two hundred years. But the continuity of its rhetoric, its narrative methods, and its symbolism also reveals that the ground-conditions for fantasy projection of this kind have not passed away in the least8. “That is the big theme I see all over society. People focused on their own thing.” George Romero9 Introduction During a decade beginning in the mid-1960s and continuing through the mid-1970s, a significant outcropping of horror films that articulate concerns regarding the efficacy of non-traditional, alternative religions may be seen to arise. This occurs at a moment in history in which there are, concurrently, intense debates regarding spiritual affiliation and the role of traditionalism overall. These debates foregrounded fundamental questions as to the manner in which adherence to a coherent and morally grounded life may be preserved under the guise of the opening of historically established orthodoxies. Such religious affiliations including: a drive to break down ecumenical division between Catholicism and Protestantism following the Second Vatican Council; an increased popularity of the religious right, an alternative Christianity offered up through the ministries of 7 Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 142. 8 Victor Sage, Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition (London: Macmillan Press, 1988), 69. 9 Tony Williams, “An Interview with George and Christine Romero,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 18 no. 4 (2001): 52. 5 6 televangelists and the fundamentalist church of Billy Graham; and an augmented cultural acceptance of secularism and atheism disseminated by popular journals like Time Magazine and its article entitled “Toward a Hidden God” from the infamous ‘Is God Dead?’ issue10. These alternative religion horror texts address such concerns by debating the viability of unorthodox, and indeed radical, spiritualties including Satanism, Witchcraft and Paganism as being agents of potential cultural cohesion and individual grounding11. Additionally, in presenting these spiritual affiliations as an anathema to an increasing cultural scepticism regarding the power of faith, these works also challenge more classical horror tropes within a genre that is known for offering up a central conflict of good versus evil. Up until this time, arguably, the classical horror film set up clear narrative dichotomies wherein those who supported or came to adhere to the tenets of Christianity were on the side of ‘good’ while those who practiced other faiths, or who held no faith whatsoever were either discerned as being decidedly on the side of ‘evil’, or at the very least rendered ineffective in terms of agency. The classical horror text, in this way, seems to fall in line with traditional monotheism, which argues that to follow Christ is to be right-minded, while any alternatives may be regarded as being abhorrent, and sinful. Thus, 10“Toward a Hidden God,” Time Magazine,