Readings (3 July 2014)

Filmmaker Scott Derrickson on Horror, Faith, Chesterton and His New Movie, by Steven Greydanus, from the National Catholic Register. Greydanus asks the director of the new movie Deliver Us From Evil, a Protestant Christian, if he agrees with Roger Ebert’s claim that “When it comes to fighting vampires and performing exorcisms, the Roman Catholic Church has the heavy artillery.”

I think there’s some truth to it. Catholicism is so steeped in imagery. It’s one of the many reasons Catholicism has given birth to so many great filmmakers compared to the Protestant tradition — even in America, where we’re primarily Protestant.

I also think that when it comes to the supernatural, I think there’s a general appreciation of the fact that the Catholic Church at least is rigorous about it. They’re not hucksters selling the idea for show. Every Catholic I’ve ever met who was involved in the actual process of exorcism — they’re always looking for a reason to not do it, to discredit it. I don’t think that’s the tendency in the Protestant tradition.

And:

Suppose you were talking to a timorous moviegoer who hadn’t seen any horror films but was interested in some of the things you’re saying about what horror can do for us. Are there any movies — other than The Exorcism of Emily Rose or Deliver Us From Evil! — that you might point them toward?

There are horror films that non-horror fans tend to like. I’ve never met anybody who regrets seeing The Sixth Sense. It’s scary, it’s got ghosts in it, but it’s a very soft, beautiful movie. I do know that a lot of people who don’t watch horror, especially people of faith, who have seenEmily Rose and like it. The same is true, weirdly, of The Exorcist.

If I was going to start somebody out in the genre, to test the waters, I would probably pick … Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage. Spanish-language film. Beautifully made film. Incredibly emotional, touching, relevant; serious things being dealt with in that movie about grief and human processing. Very frightening in places, but the reward of the whole experience is so deep and so rich.

If you watch something like that and don’t feel rewarded by it, you should never watch another horror film. But if you do, just know that there are movies like that out there. Everybody should be a discerning viewer. That’s a movie I would feel comfortable recommending to almost anyone.

Jeff Sharlet on Radiant Truths, from Harper’s. An interview with the religion writer who founded the web journal Killilng the Buddha, wrote the expose The Family, and the like, who when asked why he doesn’t like the term “spirituality,” says

Here’s this word that millions of people find lovely and liberating — an alternative to all that seems calcified about religion, and what do I do? I complain. I think that in nine out of ten cases “spirituality” is a con — not a con by the person invoking it, but a con on that person. It offers the illusion of individual choice, as if our beliefs, or our rejection of belief, could be formed in some pure Ayn Randian void. For better and worse we make our beliefs and live our beliefs together. That’s what you get with the word “religion,” which means to tie, to bind. You may not want to be bound! I don’t. But we are. We’re caught up in a great, complicated web of belief and ritual and custom. That’s what I’m interested in, not the delusion that I’m some kind of island.

Thanks to Micah Mattix’s Prufrock for the link.