Be Afraid: Horror, Trauma, and What Our Fears Are Discipling Us Into (Kutter Callaway)

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.

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Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 2: Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Dr. Cutter Calloway.

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Speaker 1: And he, in addition to doing the stuff that he normally does, which he is a William K. Brim Chair of Worship, Theology, and Arts and Associate Professor of Theology and Culture. and Associate Professor of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He's also written a new book with IVP called Be Afraid, What Horror Reveals About Facing the Darkness. And this is part of a new series that they're doing, Discovering God in Pop Culture. So we're going to have a conversation about horror movies in the book and how we can think theologically about this.

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Speaker 2: So Cutter, welcome back to the show. It's great having you.

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Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me in this perfect time of the year because spooky season is upon us here soon.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

00:01:17
Speaker 1: It's getting there. October's coming up. So, yeah, I've done some work on Halloween, a little bit of work on Halloween. But, you know, there are some connections there, I suppose, with horror movies. But I'm wondering, number one, sort of what drew you to horror in the first place? Is this a genre of movie that you've enjoyed for a long time or is it, you know, something that you're new to?

00:01:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, the opposite. So I, for most of my life, is like a super big scaredy cat. I, you know, because I was forced to as like a teenager or whatever, like I'd seen, you know, I'd watched some horror movies and they, of course, scarred me for life. But in part because I think that occasional encounter, it just, horror movies just affected me. Like they stuck with me, didn't like what they did when they stuck with me. And so I kind of had not written them off, but had just said, that's a domain I don't need to be worried about. And so this whole project actually came because of, I'd say, like three kind of overlapping things that all happened in similar sort of time. One, I'm based out of LA here, and you throw a rock and you hit 10 people in the industry, right? And I just happened to get to know and have relationships with a number of Christian filmmakers that were making not Christian films going to quote, but we're making horror movies, either writers and directors or actors, you know, producers, et cetera. And many of them were some of the biggest proponents of horror being a deeply, at least theological or religious, if not outright Christian form of art. And I was like, okay, but, still not for me.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: Like, uh, you know, um, I'm like, yeah, I'll hear you. Um, but then, uh, something happened during COVID and after COVID where these really interesting things happened. And that is, um, the, the theater chains almost went out of business, um, after COVID, like no one would go back to see it. Everything was streaming and it was actually a couple of horror films, a few actually, um, in like 2020, 2020 or 21 and 22 that essentially saved theaters. And you see this really interesting sort of cultural phenomenon here in the US where people, they would gather together in person in real space and time, not for a big blockbuster like Tenet. Christopher Nolan's Tenet came out just after COVID. Terrible box office receipts compared to his other films, but they would go out for horror. And you go, huh, that's interesting of what are people willing to gather together after this like collective trauma we've just gone through. And it was horror films. And then since then, um, the percentage of box office sales has just increased every year since COVID of horror relative to the rest of, um, the, the different movie genres. And I said, okay, my, I'm supposedly an expert in contemporary popular culture in North America, specifically television and film. At some point, I'm going to lose my credentials, uh, If I'm just ignoring like 15 to 20% of what everyone produces and consumes, like I can't do that. And so I was like, all right, well, the only thing I guess I can do is exposure therapy. And so I was like, I'm going to go into this. And my questions are like, one, why does it affect me in the way that it has? And two, why isn't it doing that to so many of these other people, many of whom are Christians? what what's up with that? And so I really kind of approached it like an anthropologist and said, I'm going to go in and expose myself to these practices, these strange creatures, you know, doing these strange things and see what happens. And that's really what sort of drove me to do it in the first place. And I think made it a little more interesting because it's if I had gone in as like a horror fan, it's almost like I'm I have a an outcome in mind that I'm going to go prove. as opposed to like, hey, I'm kind of open-handed here. I'm not sure what I'm going to find. And that is what made it pretty fun for me. And I think when people read the book, I hope it kind of translates that they're discovering along with me what I kind of encountered.

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Speaker 1: So when you think of like, when I think about horror movies, when I was growing up, I grew up in that sort of Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, right?

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Speaker 2: Those kind of films.

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Speaker 1: And then as I got older, you get into things like Saw or I don't know whether you'd count this, but like Obsession that just came out. You know that like they seem to have changed over time from what were a little bit more like one of my favorites is Army of Darkness with Bruce Campbell. You watch it again and you're like, this barely counts as a horror movie. This can't really be, you know, but. They have changed over time. Did you look at any of that and how maybe they're getting a little bit more sophisticated and almost a little grittier nowadays?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And the changes are interesting on a lot of fronts. The kind of early hints of what we now have, we're all kind of there, but the way they got developed and played out is interesting. Kind of depending upon the sub genre and then also the, the filmmakers themselves.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: So you can go as far back as like the exorcist is really kind of the first horror film that was made by like a legitimate filmmaker. And, and that sort of set the stage for like, Oh, wait a minute. This isn't just, you know, sort of trying to like stimulate an audience or whatever, a provoking audience. This is, there are possibilities within the genre that, that are what we would call artistic, right? Like you can do this with artistic credibility. Okay. Then you get some of the early ones that you mentioned. And in terms of both those filmmakers and those films, they then got developed, the franchises were developed in very specific ways that I think personally didn't just get grittier, but got a little more banal, a little more nihilistic. And one of the reads that I give in the book is, especially when it comes to slasher films, I can find some interesting theological, even ethical rationales for why you might watch those. But one thing that happens in the development of those is once it becomes a franchise, now all of a sudden, instead of some precocious kids defeating evil, now you're going to see a movie where the bad guy's just slaughtering people. And like the protagonist shifts, the dynamics of the film shift. And now I go, whether or not it's like a good movie, the narrative now includes this entire franchise where all of a sudden it's Freddy Krueger, who's the hero. And we're celebrating his like the sophistication of his kills rather than some of the moral complexities of nightmares and violence. Yeah. So that's one way to think about it. But another, I think just in terms of, you know, going back to Friedkin with The Exorcist and then now more recently are, and this is more in the last 15 to 20 years, some like, I call it art house horror. So the Robert Eggers of the world, the Ari Osters of the world, making like kind of high minded, high concept horror films. And they do resist categorization sometimes because it's like, whoa, this, what? why is this so disturbing? Cause it's not just a bunch of jump scare, actually maybe no jump scares, no even, you know, brutal slashing or slaying, but man, this was deeply disturbing in a horrific sort of way. That is a new sort of development that I think is really interesting. The other thing that I think has developed in terms of, it may not just be grittiness cause you know, ratings systems have changed and all that in terms of what's allowable. Um, now you can stream stuff, so you don't even have to have a rating on a lot of things. Um, but, uh, I found really interesting, uh, the different kind of filmmakers who are now doing horror and many of them, um, that I think are making some of the most compelling things are, uh, people who are otherwise marginalized voices in our society, women, people of color who are drawing upon the genre. to, I think, communicate kind of the visceral terror that they experience on a daily basis that a person like you or I just don't feel. And so I'm finding that a real interesting development in terms of, I don't think, you designed or had anything like that in mind. Now, same genre, similar sort of structure and dynamics, but a really different sort of visceral experience for the audience, being able to kind of like feel the world from a different body than the one that some of us inhabit. So I get into that a little bit, but the book is really more, I focus on sort of sub-genres and within that kind of talk about different historical moments, more so than a full historical take. So this is kind of the first I've really thought out loud about, about that change. So thanks for that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I, it's interesting to me because I hear what you're saying. And I think almost anytime you do multiple sequels, you tend to get that sort of.

00:11:02
Speaker 2: Banality in all of them.

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Speaker 1: You know, I mean, I can even think of a non horror series like the diehard series and you look at it and you go diehard was so interesting and compelling as a single movie that, And then as they went on, you're just like, how many of these things can this guy actually survive?

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Speaker 2: Like, this is getting unreal.

00:11:21
Speaker 1: No, they're still entertaining, but they don't have the same sort of feel as the first one. And I think you could say that about the Rocky movies. You could say that about the Rambo movies, you know, some of the later ones, maybe, maybe, you know, sort of bring back something, you know, that was there in the earlier ones, but you don't usually see, unless you're planning out those sequels, it just feels like there's a drift that happens and you get an unevenness in them. And you can see that in, Something like, you know, arguably the Saw series, which is the one I'm most familiar with. It's like the first one I thought was fantastic. And you could see a lot of the elements you talk about in the book there. Yes, it was scary. It was crazy and weird. But if you really stopped and stepped back from some of the what people might call gratuitous violence, you do see an underlying story here that's kind of compelling and really interesting. You know, exploring sort of human nature. but then once you get into saw two and now I think probably saw 98.

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Speaker 2: They're just not the same. Right. It's just not the same.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And, and horror is, I don't think you, it's like you said, it's not unique in this. Um, it might be a little more prone to it because of the economics. Like horror films are super cheap to make. Um, and so they don't have to make much to return their profit. And so one, you, you're, doing it on a, on a budget. And then two, you're just trying to up the ante right from before. So all of your, you know, time and resources end up going to let's make it as cheap as possible. And as shocking compared to the previous one, because we, you know, and so that I think, you know, is part of the thing, but saw is a great example of where it's like, yeah, that initial nugget was really smart. It was well-written. It's asking lots of really interesting questions. Every iteration afterwards, it's like, it's hard for me to justify, because it's not doing what that initial one was. And it is what I, you know, when people ask me of like, oh, how can you interact with horror as a Christian or whatever? I'm like, well, you know, don't approach the genre. And this is something I too learned of like, don't approach the whole thing as if the worst case example is indicative of the whole thing, right? Like you don't do that with anything else. Like there are awful biopics out there that like nobody should watch. But that doesn't mean all biopics are horrible, right? And I could even make the case that like a romantic comedy, the best quote unquote romantic comedies are profoundly destructive to our imagination of relationship, of romance, of love from a Christian perspective. And so as we think about it as a genre and in the goods, bads, whatever, I want to go, I want to talk about the best of horror. And I think the first Saw movie is, represents what i would call the best of horror saw 10 i'm like i'm not i'm not trying to convince anybody to go see saw 10 you know.

00:14:19
Speaker 1: Right you could probably skip that one just in general exactly interesting So as you're doing this, I mean, what do you think? And I saw the video on the Amazon site for the book. And you talk a little bit about some of the misgivings people would have as they start to engage horror. And I'm wondering if you can kind of walk through a few of those. You know, the first one was that sort of it seems so gratuitous.

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Speaker 2: Yes. Like, but again, I would say.

00:14:47
Speaker 1: A lot of these movies we're talking about the sequels, the, you know, the 10th saw the, you know, if they'd have made a sequel to seven, right. You would have seen something that was far less compelling than the actual first movie. And so part of that gratuity, I think comes from that dynamic you're talking about it.

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Speaker 2: They're cheap to make.

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Speaker 1: And so you make more of them, but you spend less quality time with them and, you know, those kinds of things. But do you think that's where that impression of the gratuity comes in? Or is it just more inherent to the genre?

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Speaker 2: You know what I mean?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, um, because it's hard to know, you know, I don't, I don't remember why people say that or think that, um, it's a real response. Um, and I think my resistance to that response is that it's painting with too broad a brushstroke, right?

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Fair enough.

00:15:38
Speaker 3: And I go, it of course is true. I like there's evidence for gratuitous stuff out there. Um, Another franchise that I say do not watch is the Terrifier series. I don't find anything redeemable about those movies. And I did the work for you. You can trust me. You don't have to go watch it. And it is gratuitous on purpose, right? That is true. I'm not going to deny that. But the fact of violence or the fact of horror or terror is itself not gratuitous. And all of that, of course, has to be couched in What I would say is the meaning rather than the content, right? So what is the takeaway? What is the meaning of the story as a whole in relationship to that content? Not a horror movie, but I sometimes like to be provocative and say, when I was a youth pastor, I wished I could force every senior in high school to watch Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. I don't know if you've seen this movie. It is horribly disturbing content. horribly gratuitous and should be must watch for every teenager going out in the world because I watched that thing and I will never imagine doing heroin. Like there's just no, no, I scared the heroin out of me or whatever you want to say. So the, the point of that movie, if you were just going to look at its content and whether or not it's gratuitous, it's like, well, yeah, there's explicit stuff in here. But the point of the movie is to, shake you in such a way that you can't unsee what you've just seen. And this is very much to me, a Flannery O'Connor thing, right? Like you go to the heart of hearing you shout and to the blind, you draw large and startling figures, I think is what she says. And I think that's what horror movies are doing when they're accused of being gratuitous. What they're really doing is saying like, Hey, violence is violent. Evil is evil. darkness is dark and it is actually a threat to you. If I tell a story about that and it doesn't feel that way, then I've, I've actually sanitized it in a way that, uh, that undermines, um, the actual effect and power of it. And so, um, again, doesn't mean they can't get gratuitous. They can, but for me, the best of horror actually leverages the, I wouldn't even call it gratuity, the, the, uh, the explicitness of that, that content and does something good with.

00:18:06
Speaker 1: You know, I remember when Kevin Van Hooser released Everyday Theology, and there was an essay in there, I believe, if I'm recalling correctly, about Eminem.

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Speaker 2: And I remember reading that.

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Speaker 1: Essay and sitting back and saying, yeah, this is a really great way to engage with this sort of music. It's not that we're saying, oh, absolutely, Eminem is a moral compass for all teenagers. What it was saying was, he's actually, a lot of what he's singing about he's living out this is reality this is happening somewhere and even though it may be exaggerated for the art form or what have you the way he's putting this together expresses something that is very real and for christians not to engage reality is in some ways really problematic.

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Speaker 2: Now you make the argument, you don't have to engage reality this way. Sure.

00:19:01
Speaker 3: Sure.

00:19:02
Speaker 1: But at the same time, to your point, you know, you've got these interesting directors who are trying to convey through this art form, something that doesn't seem to be getting through any other way.

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Speaker 3: Yep.

00:19:14
Speaker 1: And so I just think that's a really like that part of it. If we approach these with that in mind, we're trying to understand what the reality is here. I would think that would help, it would at least help me look past some of what otherwise I might see as gratuitous.

00:19:28
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. And, you know, a number of things to keep in mind for any of us. My argument would not be, and I wouldn't try to convince anyone, that everyone, every Christian out there needs to now become experts at war, right?

00:19:40
Speaker 2: Like, that's not a thing.

00:19:42
Speaker 3: Like, my mom is a good example. And my wife, right? They're not, they're just not, it's not going to be good for them. They don't want, so, okay. so I'm doing the work for them so they can read this and, you know, have be thoughtful about it. But but yeah, like to to say that Christians ought not to be involved. I'm like, well, that makes no sense to me. We need to be discerning. We need to know what our own sort of sensitivities are. We also need to know there is an age appropriateness. I'm not going, you know, a seven-year-old should watch Saw. Like that's not, that's clearly not what I'm saying. But to your point, I am saying as a person who is missionally minded, one of the key ways that I can understand how the people in my world are experiencing reality, how they're processing it, the fact that I would spend time and money to go watch this thing, consume this thing says something about the deeper desires, drives, fears, anxieties that they're experiencing. And so I can look to this film as a way of giving me insight into their lives so that hopefully I can speak intelligibly to them when it comes to what it means to be a person of Christian faith. And that's where like Van Hooser's work is really helpful. And most of the stuff that I do is along those lines. Like, If I'm not willing to give this broader society or culture a fair hearing, why do I expect them to give me one? And the additional point to that too is it also then, I think, gives me insight if I can understand better what those fears are. And in the book, I call it a theophobics, right? That these films and stuff, they give us insight into what fears are driving us, what our anxieties are, et cetera, et cetera. So that I can then go, huh, isn't it interesting? Now when I come back from that horror film and start reading my own sacred text, all of a sudden, a lot of the horrific parts of that start standing out in ways that I go, man, if you're a person out there that wants to go see Saw or wants to go see The Witch or whatever, and you have an inarticulate desire, you don't even know why you love it so much, I have a story for you. And this story is explicit. It is gratuitous. And it just so happens to be part of this much broader story that might speak to the pains, the chaos, the conflict, the violence and the trauma that you're experiencing in reality. And that to me is the other missional opportunity to say, how can we know the way to translate our story? If we don't know the stories that everybody else is consuming, it's almost like we're speaking a different language. And so a lot of what I do really is, I would say, a sort of a missional mindset in that in that regard.

00:22:33
Speaker 1: Do you think because your second point, the video on the website is around, you know, sort of this exposure to dark spirits and, you know, an evil spiritual side, but. One of the things that I've thought about just over time, I didn't grow up really as a Christian. I grew up Lutheran, but I didn't really have any conviction about it. I was just sort of going to church on Sunday. And so I can remember as a kid watching things like Lethal Weapon early on. And, you know, I was more the action movie genre. So, you know, you pick up those things. And as I got older and I'd still watch those things and I'd gotten a little bit more theologically savvy, I saw things in them that I wasn't seeing when I was a kid.

00:23:13
Speaker 2: And so... Now, even when I watch a movie.

00:23:16
Speaker 1: Even just more passively, I'm approaching it and thinking to myself, I wonder what this is going to be telling me. And I'm processing it in a lot different way than I used to when I was just sort of like, man, what Mel Gibson did on the screen was so awesome.

00:23:30
Speaker 2: Like, you know.

00:23:32
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if part of this is an approach that Christians need to cultivate, regardless of whether they're watching horror or whatever else there is that they're watching, that's sort of more reflective, more thoughtful, more engaging of this director is probably trying to say something to me kind of aspect.

00:23:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think that's right. Part of why I write about and teach on film, like horror is just the most recent thing I focus on, but More broadly, I do film and television and essentially like theological criticism and not critique, like not condemnation, but how do we develop interpretive tools that allow us to be credible interpreters of these things? And I think that's what I hope for with a student in my class or people I talk to or, you know, if they learn anything from me, it's we actually need to be more competent in terms of cultural interpretation. Because our credibility is on the line. Like the broader society sees how Christians understand movies and they're like, you didn't even watch the movie, right? Like that's step one. A lot of times we protest, we don't even watch it. It's like, well, okay. But then after watching it, this is what's so funny. If we did this with the biblical text, we would accuse people of eisegesis, right? Like don't import your read onto that and tell it what it is when it's clearly not what's arising from the text. So are there ways we can be consistent in our interpretation? And one of the things that you need to know is you need to know something about genre. You need to know something about the art form. You need to know something about storytelling structure to be able to understand whether it's what the director, writer-director wanted you to know or what just the film is saying. And even that relationship, what is the relationship between the author, authorial intent and the text and all those sort of things should be in play in terms of how we understand what is this particular art form capable of and how do we understand it rightly? Because to misunderstand it is, I think, well, one, just a miss. But then two, I think really reflects poorly on our ability to be, again, credible interpreters. So the one thing I'll say, the caveat, though, is and I've had students come through my class and they're like, oh, you ruined movies for me. I'm like, what? What do you mean?

00:25:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:25:54
Speaker 3: Um, and what they mean is what you're describing. It's like, I can't watch anymore without thinking through all these different things. And I was like, okay, fair enough. So another practice that I try to have people do, and I try to do it myself is for example, I don't, this is good and bad. I don't read any reviews. I hate, I don't want to know anything. Um, and so I go into it and I try as best as I can to set those, like the critical analytical things aside and just experience it first. Um, This is, I steal from C.S. Lewis on this, experiment and criticism. And he says, the first demand a work of art places upon us is to look, listen, and receive, get yourself out of the way. I would say something similar with the biblical text. We can get to the historical background, its situation, its authorship, et cetera, but can I sit and let let the scripture, the story affect me as a story, affect me as the literature that it is first, and then come back and say, okay, now what was happening there and why and what, you know, that sort of thing. That's what I encourage for my own film going and others. But ultimately, yes, to your point, I want us to be better, more savvy cultural interpreters, specifically as it concerns film, because I think it matters.

00:27:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, When we think about.

00:27:21
Speaker 1: How these things sort of start to connect us to dark spirits in an evil spiritual world, I wrote an article on the Labubus.

00:27:32
Speaker 2: Do you know Labubus? I do. I do.

00:27:35
Speaker 1: Yeah so um sadly i knew labubus we had a foster child staying with us and she was like in love with these labubus and they were all the rage and so i'm like what are we talking about here and then i find out that there's some sort of linkage to mesopotamian demons and.

00:27:48
Speaker 2: What have you so i just yeah it's actually.

00:27:52
Speaker 3: Creepy to me like just looking at him but.

00:27:54
Speaker 1: It connects through the exorcist the demon in the exorcist is the supposedly the demon these labubus were resembling now Overall, I kind of stepped back and said, I don't think any of this is the case. But you had Christians sort of saying these little boo-boos are now a vehicle for getting into dark spirituality. You saw the same thing with like Harry Potter films and all those kind of different pieces. And so I'm wondering how this approach that we just talked about might sort of buffer people from or give people.

00:28:24
Speaker 2: Some comfort, right?

00:28:28
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:28:29
Speaker 2: Right.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: That the, the actual film itself is not going to infect you with something that, you know, a whole, uh, an evil spirit is probably not going to jump off the screen.

00:28:38
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, it is, I, I, I shouldn't be, but I do keep getting sort of like surprised when that is one of the pieces because it is recurring. Right. Um, I was, uh, out of the country and another unnamed country, I would say, and meeting with some like filmmakers who are Christians and, and then that came up, Oh, I'm doing stuff in horror. And it turned out, tons of them were involved in, in horror, but they weren't admitting it to each other. Cause this is a gathering of Christian artists. And so, but one of the masks, it's like, well, you know, and he literally said something like, don't you worry that like a demonic presence is going to come out of the screen. And, and I'm like, wait, what? And I was like, okay, back up. And I realized like, I've got to unpack so many like metaphysical, theological, biblical things that, Before I even get to just the question of art and the movie, part of me wants to go, okay, if I have the kind of intellectual humility that I do, do I personally believe that watching The Exorcist or something like that, that I'm exposing myself to demonic oppression? No, I don't personally believe that. Um, and yet I want to go, but there are enough faithful Christians who are concerned about this that I go, okay, well, what is it that they're actual actually fearing? What is the thing that's driving that? And the book, the argument I make, and this kind of was my discovery that I went along the way. I went into this whole process of exposure therapy with the idea of perfect love casts out fear. This is what I'm thinking. And then I go, okay, if there's any redeemable part of the horror genre, it's somehow going to I don't know, I'm going to become callous to these things where I no longer am afraid of them, right? Like they no longer scare me. And that didn't happen. They still affect me. I'm a little more savvy now. Like I can predict things and it's, you know, not as jarring, but there's still some that really affect me. But along the way, I actually stopped and I said, you know, actually, in biblically, we also get the message that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I thought, huh, well, maybe fear itself isn't what the problem is. Maybe it's a misdirected, misplaced fear. Maybe we're actually fearing all the wrong things. And that's where, whether it's a film or a story or something we experience in real life, a lot of times we encounter this fear in a way that terrorizes us. And I think what God's calling us to is to experience encounter and lean into our fear in a way that transforms us. And so I think those are two really different ways of thinking about this. And that's where I get back to, is a demon going to jump off of the screen and possess me or, you know.

00:31:41
Speaker 2: Affect me?

00:31:42
Speaker 3: I go, well, what is it that's actually, where are your fears aligned here? Are you fearing the one who can merely kill the flesh or the one who can, you know, destroy the flesh and the soul and send them to hell? We're talking about God. And I go, I think regardless of your metaphysics, regardless of your demonology, there is a kind of misplaced fear there, I think, to cede to evil something that it ought not have. And that is it is directing and managing and co-opting and leveraging our fear in a way that I think is malforming us. So whether or not demons possess things, I'll remain agnostic. But I will say, I think it's an opportunity for us to disciple our fears and to go, okay, where am I pointing these? And where are these different forms actually exploiting my tendency to fear the wrong things? And then what are the things I actually should be afraid of? And that's where I think some of the best, even supernatural horror, it's really interesting to me that there is the threat of demons or demonic possession. Evil is very real. But there's also usually the only people that had the resources to deal with that are religious people, usually Christians. So on top of that, though, those Christians are usually the most skeptical about the supernatural of anybody in the film. And so it's like everybody else, it's not the Christians don't get it. It's everyone else that's going like, evil is real, wake up Christians and help us, right? So even that of how you understand the narrative of a film, I think goes like, oh, if anybody in society is worried about supernatural evil. It's everybody that's not Christian and we're the ones that are late to the game and need to wake up. So anyway, that is, again, I want to respect and honor people that are concerned about that. It's not my concern, but I do think it's an opportunity to go, okay, well, what is it that we actually fear and how do we actually manage those fears?

00:33:43
Speaker 1: And I think just To reiterate it again, because I think you'd say this, it's like, if you have those fears, maybe don't go see the horror movie.

00:33:51
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:33:51
Speaker 2: That's fine. Yeah.

00:33:53
Speaker 1: But then let's recognize that maybe this is one of those sort of disputable matters and where you or I might not have any problem sitting down to watch a horror movie and trying to understand it and grasp what it's trying to tell us. Another person may not, and that's okay.

00:34:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:34:08
Speaker 1: But I think your broader point of how are our fears discipling us, disciplining our lives, that's a more pertinent question that could transcend the horror genre.

00:34:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, my, again, my, my awareness of the principalities and powers, right. That are not flesh and blood are almost entirely to me, higher order systemic, uh, uh, pressures, uh, that emerge from our various activities and then exert a downward pressure on us that really does corrupt and harm us. And I think in a lot of horror as well, you see, so like Stranger Things, I can always recommend Stranger Things because it's like horror light, even though some of the seasons get a little more explicitly horror. But a really fascinating take, I think, in terms of it's the world that it builds, you get these monstrous monstrosities from the upside down, right? And they really do terrorize the kids and everything else. But you would miss it. And this is back to cultural interpretation. You miss the point if you don't realize that those monsters were created by the government and the schools and the industries and the tech builders and the parents and all of these sort of institutional organizations that are wielding power in demonic ways to actually produce the monstrosities that we then all encounter, especially the vulnerable people, the kids, right? And to me, that is a deeply, I would describe it as demonic in the way that it oppresses us. And that I think we should be concerned about. We should address that should worry us. But that's my other thing of like, well, are we, what are we more afraid of? That maybe a spirit's going to jump out of the screen or the systems that we're complicit in Yeah, and.

00:36:06
Speaker 2: I think it's a really interesting example because.

00:36:10
Speaker 1: Albert Borgman, he wrote on technology and the character of contemporary culture, and he talks about technology not taking over simply by just force of rule.

00:36:21
Speaker 2: But he talks about it.

00:36:23
Speaker 1: He's like, what you're going to see is the the embedding of inconspicuous patterns that ultimately change the course of our lives. And I think part of what Stranger Things does, which is really compelling, is it makes these inconspicuous patterns visible through the creation of these monsters like you can't miss them. And so it's not. In some ways, it's very subtle. You could watch the show and technically miss it, I suppose. But in another way, it's making something very plain that is often unnoticed. And so I think that's a great example of one of the ways they're using this.

00:36:56
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Absolutely right. And it's on the technology side. And again, back to our fears and what we imagine. Horror, it's Scott Derrickson, who does a lot of stuff. I interview him. has done a lot of horror films and he calls it the genre of non, non-deniability, I think is what his word is. But essentially like you cannot ignore or deny the evil that you're seeing. Like it makes it clear and you got to reckon with it. It doesn't give you a choice. Others, other genres, it's actually kind of opaque. You're not sure. And speaking of the everyday theology. So one of those contributors, a guy named Justin Bailey, He's written some really good theology works on apologetics and sort of aesthetics as a way of doing apologetics. And I steal from him, I'm pretty sure, that when it comes to like our techno future, that our fear, what we have in mind is something that's like the Matrix or Terminator or something like that, right? But the reality is probably more like WALL-E, where we... Without knowing it, we literally cede all of our agency to this technology because it's comfortable and it's pleasing and pleasant. And we abdicate our responsibility to this entire planet and find ourselves, we wake up and we're like, wait, we're like on recliners with a liquid diet consuming digital media designed just for me. That I think is the horror. Now, Wally's not a horror movie, but trying to go like, you should be terrified of this um, this reality is what the best of the horror genre does is like, look at this, don't look away. It's also the best of what the Bible does, right? I mean, these, these texts that it's like, we've got to put in sharp relief, um, the, the trauma and the violence and the chaos that you are inflicting upon yourselves. Um, and if you sanitize it, um, you're not going to realize, uh, its consequences, uh, and you'll, What did you say? It seeps in, you know, over time.

00:39:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's embedded in those inconspicuous patterns. It just gets in there.

00:39:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:39:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. Fantastic. Let me let me kind of pivot and ask a question.

00:39:19
Speaker 1: You'd mentioned earlier that, you know, some of the sequels, as you get into horror movies, you start to see, you know, Freddy Krueger is the hero and you're looking for the inventiveness of his next kill. There's a sense in which we've started to see this in superhero movies as well, sort of the emergence of the antihero. And I'm wondering if that's becoming more commonplace in the horror genre, just the antihero as part of the story that we're supposed to be seeing this very gray character.

00:39:48
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:39:49
Speaker 2: Not necessarily black hat, white.

00:39:51
Speaker 1: Hat, but the gray hat, who is the one that we are guided to emulate, let's say.

00:40:02
Speaker 3: I would say yes and no. So I would say that kind of happened. And then I want to say there's another new thing, newer thing that follows in line with that. So Yes. I think the rise of the antihero was real. Um, and you're like, Oh, whether it's like breaking bad or, you know, uh, uh, I'm trying to think of a good, uh, recent horror example. Um, uh, uh, you know, some of the scream franchise, I mean, I know it's sort of a parody, but a similar kind of like, Oh, these, you know, um, I think one of the responses to that has come in maybe two ways, both in the superhero and the horror thing is, um, what I see in like, did you see the, uh, it's like the new, the new Avengers, Thunderbolt, Thunderbolts. Is that what it was?

00:40:48
Speaker 2: Thunderbolts.

00:40:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:40:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:40:50
Speaker 3: And that was a good example of now that they're the bad guy, right? These are all complicated heroes to begin with. None of them are like complete morally upright, but then also the bad guy, the bad guy, actually, this is what I would say. This is back to my psych background, trauma informed research or ministries. The fundamental reframe is not to say, what's wrong with you? It's to say, what happened to you? And you see even the great bad guy that they have to fight, they go, actually, you're a traumatized person. You're not just born a monster. Something happened to you. And part of their task as superheroes is to acknowledge their own flaws. But then rather than celebrate them as the antihero, they're actually integrating the the enemy back into some sort of like life. I find that a really interesting move in the MCU. We'll see what happens with, with future films. You go DC and like the most recent Superman, it's almost the opposite. It's like, he's now incredibly morally upright and pure and sincere. And, you know, so it's, it's confusing, confusing, but then on the horror side, I see a similar move in some of the best films that I, appreciate the most. I think it best is, you know, um, but the ones I appreciate the most, uh, there's a film, for example, called, um, the Babadook. I don't know if you've seen this one, Australian filmmaker. And, uh, it is a story of this. The Babadook is like a, a boogeyman kind of figure terrorizing this, this mom and her kid. And over time, rather than defeat, uh, the Babadook and eliminate him, or, you know, um, it, she learns to actually, live with this creature that then she essentially nourishes underneath her house in her basement. Right. Um, it's still terrifying, so hard, but it, the Babadook for her represents her traumatic past that continued to terrorize her. And the, the, the story arc is her actually integrating that terror and that trauma into her life, um, as opposed to eliminating it. Um, another film called, uh, appendage, um, kind of a body horror thing. And, uh, all of a sudden this lady's like an actual thing starts growing on her side. Um, and she has to like cut it off. But, um, that, that movie in spoiler alert, if you haven't seen it, um, with literally her, um, she tries to cut it off and does, but it actually keeps living. And so instead of killing it, she, um, cares for it like a child. Um, so the ending scene is her like caring for this monster. And so, um, that I find a really interesting turn in terms of how we think about, I think the anti-hero, just me thinking, you know, in terms of how do, how do we identify, how are we being called at it? It's, um, it's a little unfulfilling, I think, you know, um, it, it's despairing a bit. Um, and I do think, especially emerging generations are kind of looking at the older generations going like, you people are kind of anti-heroes, like you, you, You set up society to benefit yourself and you're still doing it and you still are making decisions that, you know, are going to screw us all over and you're going to you're doing it anyway. And I think that just that generational thing is making people a little less open to like, I'm going to celebrate the antihero because it's like a cool Gen X thing to do or something.

00:44:28
Speaker 2: It is a very Gen X thing to do. Let's just be real about that.

00:44:31
Speaker 3: I'm an anti-hero.

00:44:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

00:44:34
Speaker 1: Nurturing the monster that grows out of my side is not really something I would think of.

00:44:39
Speaker 2: But I think.

00:44:41
Speaker 1: It does express sort of, I don't know, we could say the Vorlaga of our time, right? It's like this sort of interesting concept of we're all trying to deal with some level of trauma in our lives at this point. And so these things that we suffer, we don't just want to kill them and leave them alone. We, we want to redeem them in some way. We want them to, we want to incorporate them in our lives so that we're back in control of them perhaps, uh, or have some semblance of control of them perhaps, but we don't want to get rid of them.

00:45:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:45:15
Speaker 2: Um, which is really interesting. Yeah.

00:45:17
Speaker 3: Um, and again, we all bring our interpretive lenses to it. So I could be reading too much into them, but it does seem there's enough data piling up that I go, yeah, this is, um, this is the thing that a lot of horror is dealing with either in the story itself or what precedes it is like a distinct trauma. Now the characters are navigating it and that trauma is terrorizing them. And the movie hinges on either it continues to, and it kills them or they transform it somehow. It transforms them and the trauma into something else. And that I think is what people are yearning for of like, okay, how do we actually, what then do we do right? Like now that we've gone through this, uh, and then what are the resources I have to draw upon to help me do that thing? Um, and that's, that's why stories are so, I think powerful in that, in that regard.

00:46:09
Speaker 1: So I wanted to ask just, and, We're about out of time, so I wanted to ask this last little arc of a question. I've been involved in the fitness industry for a very, very long time.

00:46:18
Speaker 2: You can't tell.

00:46:20
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:46:21
Speaker 1: I started lifting when I was 14. I was a personal trainer when I worked through my MDiv. I've been around it and in it. My bachelor's degree is in exercise physiology.

00:46:29
Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Cool. I've been around. Yeah.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: Your last chapter on the sacredness of the body or sacredness of bodies, I find– For one, I think there's just an evangelical sort of we don't have a real strong theology of the body. For whatever reason, we just haven't really developed it. And so as I watch trends in the fitness industry, I kind of sit back and say, wow, we probably need a theology of the body as people are moving more and more and more toward this. And so when I saw that chapter in your book, I'm like, that's great. Because I think that, you know, approaching it from the horror genre gives it something that we can tangibly look at. really deeply understand and then start constructing off of. So I'm wondering if you can talk about that chapter a little bit, the sacredness of bodies and yeah.

00:47:17
Speaker 3: Um, interestingly, so, so a lot of this book started as this podcast that I did, same title, be afraid. Um, so if anyone wants to go and be super scared of scary sound design, do that. This book is for those who can't handle it. Right. Um, but, um, when I was revising, doing some stuff, trying to like adapt and see what would work and what I need to expand. Um, actually one of the, um, one of my editors said like, well, all the other sub genres, you end up having something charitable to say, but when you get to slashers, you don't like, it's like, you know, are you even trying that? I'm like, Oh, huh. And, and, and, and this, I don't think she said that, but, um, it was something like that. And yeah, that she was, she, I thought was really interesting. She, appreciated horror genre. And then she was the one. And a lot of the slasher films also, they don't aren't just do violence to bodies. It's usually to women's bodies like this. There's a, and I had a problem with that. I've got three daughters, you know, and I go, okay, well, let me stop and think through what could be something going on there. Let me just do my own method. Let me follow my method and go like, okay, well, what is the, What is the fear? What's the anxiety? What's driving people to consume these in some way? And that's where I kind of was like, well, I think maybe for it to scare you and to trouble you. And this was specifically slasher films, right? That these bodies are being violated. And for a body to be violated means you have some working sense or assumptions about this is actually an inviolable body. There is a what I would call sacredness to it, meaning you ought not to do that. And so the whole genre functions on the fact that we respond viscerally to the violation of bodies because we as humans, we assume my body is actually sacred in some way. And that's sort of what I develop. in that particular chapter. And I think you're exactly right. Where I don't, just because it would have been taken another book, but I think you're absolutely right that one of the core conflicts, even back to the gratuitous stuff, right? Most of the concerns about gratuity have to do with bodies, right? how we experience our body, what we show, what we don't, you know, these sorts of things, specifically within Protestantism and then more narrowly within evangelicalism, you go to Europe, nobody cares about boobs. Yeah. Like, but you would have thought if I saw a boob, I was just going straight to hell, you know, like when you're growing up, but, but it is a deeply impoverished sense or theology of the body. And it spins out into, all of the worst in, you know, instincts that we've got, including in the, um, the wellness, uh, thing that Christians should be there because that can get distorted too. And now you have looks maxing and stuff. It's like, wait, wait, wait, hold on. That's not sacred either.

00:50:23
Speaker 1: Right?

00:50:23
Speaker 3: Like that's not, um, accounting for the integrity of the human body either. And so, um, I think, yes, we have an opportunity to go bodies right now are in play for all sorts of reasons in the broader society. And we need to articulate and develop a better, more robust theology of the body to address all those different concerns. I'll quote another friend. If you're interested, you might know his work, but his name is Eric Daly. And his dissertation he wrote turned into a book called The Fit Will Inherit the Earth. And so it's his theology of fitness. He teaches a sports and fitness class here at Fuller. And so we go back and forth in terms of like what What does embodied life look like? What are the values that that assumes? And how do we actually articulate that? And even back to the AI thing, right? Part of the reason that the tech revolution that's coming that should terrorize us, Christian, for me, my sort of line in the sand theologically is about embodiment, right? Incarnation. Yeah. our bodies, physical life, ultimately with God, it's God dwelling, tabernacling with us, is both the hinge around which all of reality turns in the incarnation and then God's ultimate vision. And so for us to be caught up in a disembodied technology should not just horrify us and scare us, but should be fundamentally recognized as anti-Christian for this very reason. But we don't currently... We have so many anxieties and problems with the body or our bodies that it's really difficult, I think, for evangelicals to articulate that vision. But right now, it needs to be more than, I think, probably any other sort of theological subcategory.

00:52:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the reason I liked what you did in the chapter is I do think that people would look at that and go, yes, that's disgusting, right? If they looked at it that way, I suppose. They could look at it and they'd go, there's something wrong there.

00:52:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:52:29
Speaker 2: And then you go, oh, okay, there is something wrong there. Well, what's wrong there?

00:52:33
Speaker 1: And that happens in a way different than when you're scrolling Instagram and you're seeing people who are just shredded and doing 400 pound bench presses or whatever they're doing.

00:52:44
Speaker 2: And you go, wow, that's impressive.

00:52:46
Speaker 1: And you start to miss that there's like a distortion of body image there just as much as there is in the corner. And so I think there's a way that that chapter really sort of pulls us into that discussion in a way that the fitness industry just probably won't.

00:53:03
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00:53:05
Speaker 1: And then I'd say the AI stuff, I agree. I think AI is going to do the same thing for us. I think it's going to force us to develop a theology of embodiment. I wrote a piece on the Good Samaritan. And I said, what if instead of the Good Samaritan helping this guy, he gets on his cell phone and dials up an AI powered robot.

00:53:28
Speaker 3: Yep.

00:53:28
Speaker 1: And he knows it's coming. So he doesn't have to worry about it anymore. He just keeps on going. And Jesus ends the story. And, you know, the guy's been helped. He goes, you know, he's flown to a hospital. He gets all the medical help he needs. And then Jesus ends the story and said, now, who is this man's neighbor?

00:53:41
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.

00:53:43
Speaker 1: We have a fundamentally different conception of neighbor that's conveyed for somebody who's just going to type, you know, call somebody on the cell phone to come get this guy versus what the Samaritan actually does in the story. And to me, that's where embodiment has to come in. But it's a it's a fascinating study, man, is a fascinating book. And I just encourage people to go out and get it. This has been a great discussion. I appreciate you being back on the show, man. I love this kind of stuff. So really, if anyone.

00:54:11
Speaker 3: Wants to get it, the easiest way is beafraidbook.com. Beafraidbook.com. Beafraidbook.com is where you can order it. And if you want to follow me, I can send you links. But my newsletter where I kind of do this, I do horror, I do other sort of cultural interpretation stuff. Just cuttercalloway.com slash newsletter. And you can follow me in my readings, my musings, my various musings.

00:54:35
Speaker 1: I'll make sure we put both of those in the show notes. And everybody, I just encourage you to check this book out, whether.

00:54:40
Speaker 2: You're a horror fan or not. I think it's.

00:54:42
Speaker 1: A really helpful way into how should we think about entertainment more generally? How should we think about engaging reality more generally? And so I think it's, it's a bigger book than, uh, than just horror. And so I just encourage you to pick it up. And, um, again, Carter, thanks for being here.

00:54:59
Speaker 2: Um, thanks everybody. Yeah.

00:55:02
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody for taking the time and sticking with us and we'll catch you on the next episode of thinking Christian.

00:55:06
Speaker 2: Take care.

00:55:07
Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.