Horror as it Should Be

Horror is one of the most profoundly theological genres of fiction. Other genres can be theological (or at least religious) without much effort, but the implications of horror are essentially theological. It deals with the life to come, the meaning and limits of humanity, and so on.

That's why it's so truly horrible when it goes wrong. The cheap scare, the sleazy accompaniment to the gasps--comic relief is better than jiggle, but not as marketable--all signs of shallow horror. It's probably the hardest genre to do right, given the theological weight, but it's too effective to leave to people who don't even understand the symbols they're using. At least the early Hollywood horror movies acknowledged their sources. Nowadays that's played as camp. But our guide for good fiction of any kind is always based on Philippians 4:8--Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-- think about such things. (NIV) Writing by this rule will always be true to its sources.

The other side of the problem is people who go for the gasp even if the theology is bad--assuming that they can be bothered to check it at all. One of the reasons I'm writing my essay on fictional demonology is to give would-be horror writers some idea of how horror can be handled in a theologically responsible way.

Acknowledge your sources. Know your sources. Remember the limitation of fear and of fiction: you can at best spark a teachable moment in your reader. But don't throw that moment away!

Frankenstein's Monstrance

For anyone who doesn't get it: a monstrance is an object (typically cross-shaped) that holds the consecrated host--in Catholic terms, the Body of Christ. Anyone made in God's image can likewise carry Christ around. But what about Frankenstein's monster? What about clones? In other words, what if we could bring something to life?

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, I sketched out a story about a kind of Frankenstein's monster. Because it was created from dead parts, it had no soul (I would now likely say "spirit") of its own, but it was intelligent and immortal, so it spent its years awaiting Doomsday, when the God it could not know or serve would finally shut it down.

Is that valid? Or would it care? For that matter, would it necessarily be at odds with God?

A proper exposition would take a book or two, but here are my conclusions:

First, God's intervention on our behalf seems to be unique to us. Thus, God forbids murder (based on our being made in God's image--Gen 10:6) at the same time he allows us to kill animals for meat (v. 3). God helps us, not angels (Hebrews 2:16). So I would suggest that our uniqueness stems from our being made in God's image--a quality nowhere associated with any creature but man.

Second, I don't think it's possible for us to create in God's image. In our own image, yes; but not in the image of God. If that's true, nothing we create will have God's image. It may not be evil, but it can't be eternal, either. (This is similar to Jesus' remark in John 3:6.)

Third, I don't think there's any danger of our creating life anyway. So far we've only modified it. Cloning might be an exception: by its very nature, it avoids the normal process of transmitting life. While the soul--the life force--of the original creature is retained, I see no way for the spirit to remain after the creature's cellular brain has been removed. This would set up three possibilities:

1. A kind of zombie, because the spirit directs higher mental function;
2. A vehicle for a demon, because it would have the creature all to itself; or
3. An intelligent being driven only by whatever instincts (such as self-preservation) may have been transmitted to it. Although as intelligent as a human, it would be effectively amoral because it wouldn't have a spiritual component.

But what about Artificial Intelligence? I don't think that matters either. There is a difference between intellect and spirit, though the spirit powers the intellect. So even a highly intelligent machine will lack a spirit, as in option three, above). That should mean that it can't appreciate its situation, because all the Big Answers are spiritual. It would also be without moral imperatives, because as Lewis noted in The Abolition of Man, logic and research can't produce moral imperatives; they can only provide data for pre-existing morality. So while clone #3 would be an intelligent animal, possibly a dangerous one, AI would have no way of engaging the universe. It would be autistic unless it had built-in moral motions--and even then it would mostly just simulate moral thought and action.

It seems to me that the best example of full AI is actually Tik-Tok from the original Oz books. This clockwork man is not good or evil but simply does what it is wound up to do. The example of Tik-Tok is important to resolving a problem that occurs in the final installment of the League of Superheroes Origin Series.

Adios, Suckers!

Vampires are more theologically interesting to me than werewolves, though perhaps that's because I see them as fairly straightforward. While a werewolf can be tortured by the knowledge of what he becomes and does, a classic vampire is comfortable in his own skin and someone else's neck.

But what is a vampire? In the early Hammer films, Van Helsing claimed that vampirism was a Satanic parody of and response to the Church. It's an intriguing thought, but unfortunately over time the Hammer films went from speculative theology to PC babble and over-sexed scripts. Avoid any of them from the seventies, and be careful of any from the late sixties. The two best vampire movies I've encountered are Return of the Vampire (with Bela Lugosi playing a vampire that specifically isn't Dracula) and Brides of Dracula (even though the vampire isn't really Dracula). Odd note: the Spanish version of Universal's Dracula somehow has a better script (or else the English version I saw was cut badly). I'd recommend the Spanish one to those who know Spanish or don't mind a subtitled version.

Now, the status of "traditional" vampires (much of the tradition deriving from Hollywood) is fairly clear: they are corpses animated by demonic entities. In some fashion, the soul or spirit of the victim is bound to the corpse, a fact that presumably enables the possessing spirit to use the body. When the victim is released (generally with the wooden stake bit), the demon can't maintain the lifelike appearance of the corpse, which then rapidly degrades as the demon leaves. Theologically tricky at best.

The "St. Judas Syndrome" is especially common for vampires, particularly in modern work. The problem is that a corpse, even if the victim's spirit is somehow bound to it, is still a corpse. The victim, if able to act freely to begin with, can at best hope for a blessed death, as happens in Brides of Dracula.

So a common solution these days is to have a non-traditional vampire. The condition is a metabolic quirk (Ann Rice), the result of a disease (as in the movie The Last Man on Earth), or something similar. The problem is that these aren't vampires as such; they are merely vampiric. It's like having fairies turn out to be just vaguely humanoid bugs.

If I were going to do something along this line, I would have a traditional vampire, but with one (not uncommon) difference: the victim isn't dead, just possessed. The demon has a hang-up about death, so the victim lives in a tomb (Mark 5:2-5). The victim may even enter a death-like state when the demon is less active for whatever reason. I'll pursue this idea in a later version of my essay on fictional demonology.

For another Christian take on the subject, see Sue Dent's novel Forever Richard.

The "Saint Judas" Syndrome

Hope is not enough. Just as the doctrine that God is love can be distorted to eliminate God's justice and eternal punishment, so hope can eliminate the point of no return. But Moses really did lose the Promised Land through one impetuous sin. King Saul forfeited his kingship and life through several acts of what might seem like minor disobedience. Yet we tend to assume automatically that no such line exists, and that's the basis for some bad stories, some of them horror.

The classic example of this is Judas. From time to time, someone comes up with a story about how misunderstood Judas was, how he meant well but messed up, and so on. Some even claim that he was acting on Jesus' orders, so he was saved.

Nonsense. Jesus said he was "a devil" (John 6:71-72), which doesn't sound so innocent. Yet people not only try to save Judas but sometimes even a demon or Satan himself.

Why?

Because we can't bear to say that someone is without hope. And the good news is that if someone's still alive, there's technically hope. (I do believe that there is an unpardonable sin, which involves knowingly attributing the Holy Spirit's work to the Devil, as in Mark 3:28-30. But it's not as easily or lightly committed as you might think.)

Now, in horror, this tends to come out in the idea of the monster in search of a cure. In the old Universal werewolf movies, he was always looking for a cure. I admit I have a theological problem with the standard werewolf concept, as we'll see in a later post, but the idea is that there are some curses you just can't get out of. Ask Jephthah's daughter (Judges 11:29-40)!

There's an intriguing scene in the Hammer film Brides of Dracula, where Van Helsing confronts a woman who has been vampirized by her own son. He says that vampirism is a curse, but she can renounce it and be saved. The problem is that she's dead, so although she does make things right with God, part of that involves submitting to the stake that frees her spirit. The theology is quirky to say the least, but the balance isn't bad: there is hope, but it is the hope of a blessed death and eventual resurrection. Would we accept that kind of hope today? Probably not. But like it or not, hope has its limits.

Christian Horror?

We have a reputation as copy cats. And not even as good copy cats. If a type of book or music starts selling well, you can be sure that someone will turn out a "Christian" knockoff of it. And what's worse, we seldom bother to figure out whether the thing really can be copied without messing up our core beliefs!

So can horror stories be Christian? It depends on how they're done. And that leads to the two types of horror. Simply put, these are

1. More-or-less happy (hopeful) ending and
2. More-or-less hopeless ending.

Even an unhappy ending can be hopeful, in which case it provides a warning. Look at some fairy tales for example. (The old ones, not the la-de-dah modern versions where everyone gets counseling in the end.) In fact, fairy tales may be considered the first horror stories (together with some myths).

What about hopeless stories? Well, pretty much anything by Lovecraft, or most any modern horror movie--and most horror books. Lovecraft was an unusually candid atheist. He believed that the universe was at best indifferent to mankind, and more likely actively hostile. Christians shouldn't copy that view.

Sometimes the hopelessness comes from the desire for a sequel--you've got to leave some room for the Horror to return, which means that the story doesn't altogether resolve. And resolution matters, because it's the frame of the story: the thing that marks the boundary between fact and fiction, the sign that you can close the book and go on with life.

Now, since one of the foundations of the Christian message is hope, I think we can eliminate right off anything that produces despair. A hopeful ending is called for. In our next post, we'll see why it isn't enough.

Other posts in this series:
The "Saint Judas" Syndrome
Once in a Full Moon
Adios, Suckers!
Frankenstein's Monstrance
Horror as it Should Be

Fear Factor

I'll be dealing with horror topics through Halloween, with a brief detour to horrify Frank Creed of Flashpoint fame.

One thing you see a lot of about now is churches doing some kind of illustrated sermon about Hell in place of the old haunted house project. There's a slight point to that: they show you how obnoxious Hell is, and maybe you'll repent. Not as likely to happen with a haunted house.

However...

Although Jesus did refer to Hell more than most moderns think, he didn't go into detail very much. The story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 is about as graphic as he gets, and that only says that the rich man is tormented by fire. Elsewhere he mostly just warns us that Hell exists and leaves it at that. Why don't we?

To begin with, we like to be scared, and Hell is a scare you can feel good about. I went to a church once that gave a dramatic presentation wherein people died and went to Heaven or Hell. The piece was at least three times longer than necessary, given that most of the individual vignettes were interchangeable. Worse, Jesus popped out like a character from a game show to tell the lucky contestant what he'd won. You know something's wrong when the demons have better stage presence than the Son of God. As I recall, I originally concluded that only about five or six of the skits were fairly good, which would've cut the time down to half an hour or so. (After sitting through the whole thing, I believed in Hell in a way the writers didn't intend.)

Did it work? Yes, remarkably well. So well, in fact, that when the church had a second presentation about a year later, a lot of the people who got saved at the first one got saved again.

Today's Free Clue: Salvation involves faith in God and love for him. Fear is opposed to both. Sure, we're supposed to "fear" God reverently and based on the fact that he is a consuming fire. But that's fearing who he is, not fearing for our lives.

Fear can lead to a very shallow commitment, and sometimes, by the grace of God, that develops into something deeper. But Jesus and the apostles generally gave their audience a greater scare by confronting them with their sinfulness and need for God. They also used miracles to show that God was willing to help them out--he's not looking for an excuse to throw people into Hell. He already has that.

We'll look at the problem tendency to focus more on fear and evil than on God later this week.