Um, Zach, Zach, but Jennifer is, I'm close to friends with Jennifer.

Yeah.

And I believe as a horror fan, um, uh, she actually submitted to a contest we had called Feared Makers where it was pitching horror films as biblical adaptations.

So like it was a short film, you're adapting a biblical text as a horror film.

Really interesting.

But all these Christians were telling me that they saw horror actually as the most theological genre that there is in part because, uh, evil is named and it's seen as something that is not good, right? Like we want to overcome it, defeat it, resist it, something.

And they're like, that's an important thing.

Yeah.

Terrifier, like what kind of films are not helpful?

So as you rightly said, there's there's not like a a clear like here it is and here it is.

Right.

Right.

famous i i can't remember exactly where it was but it was there was a famous like senate hearing on with the fcc about what you could be shown on you know public uh broadcasts and and when and where it was pornography versus art right and and the senator i can't remember who was said something like well i can't define it for you but i know it when i see it you know um so That's a little bit it, right? Like, yeah, it's hard to say here's exactly what's going on.

But I'm like, oh, there's this doesn't pass the sniff, the smell test, right? Like this is doing something that is potentially damaging, you know, destructive.

I would say the place that I start in answering that question.

Hmm.

yes okay oh

yes yes so um and and and one of the you know when it comes to them a theology of a film or any audio visual medium one of the things i i think i say in the book or maybe i've developed since then is because of that, there are these nested narrative worlds that we inhabit when we go see a film.

It's also true if you read a book or something, but with film, there's an interesting way in which the medium itself, those boundaries are porous.

And so you go in as a spectator to a world that you know a narrator is telling you, and then you have the world of the characters, and it gets really blurry as to which parts are fascinating for the characters, which parts are for us, which parts are just kind of hovering out here.

And sound is the place where those boundaries are the most porous.

And so I kind of say like, for a film to even work, you have to go in kind of assuming what I would call transcendence.

There are worlds outside of these characters' worlds that are impacting them.

day,

What were, besides the intellectual breakthroughs, what were the... emotional impacts or influences or experiences that you would describe came out of this?

So one kind of Well, maybe a couple of things.

One, I walked away going, I'm this is a silly answer.

I'm still as creeped out by dolls as I've ever been.

And and actually just yesterday or the day before, my younger sister, she had this classic story when she was little.

She's at a gymnastics class and a friend of hers just told her about this movie called Child's Play.

And she never saw it, but it terrified her.

How do you respond

You do talk about Stranger Things and the Demogorgon and Lots of different examples, but whether it's a supernatural monster or just a monster that's deeply human, I'd be curious to know in your view, what is the monster actually mirroring in our culture right now that maybe we can learn from?

Yeah, probably a number of things.

I think, maybe I'll start with sort of the personal or individual side of things.

And that is, I think the best horror, and this is where I'm probably taking my categories a bit from scripture, right? That the texts of scripture that I would categorize as like in the horror genre, and not horror fiction, because it's you know, describing real world things that happened, um, many times, not always, but many times that I think what I appreciate about scripture when it's doing its work is that it, it both forces us to kind of stare into the dark heart of this monstrosity, whatever those are.

I mean, we've got monsters like a Goliath, like a literal monster, right? You know, um, the Leviathan, you have actions, but regardless of, of, of what happens with that monster, um, the best of scripture calls us to account, right? We are never left off the hook as readers, as people who are reading this or experiencing it.

We come to realize, I think, that we often are implicated in creating the monster or creating are ourselves monstrous, right? That we are the ones that are actually the monster.

And this gets back to that mirror.

Hmm.

So keeping horror in mind and then keeping like the hope and fear, how do those things go together? Right.

Yeah.

So, yes, you made a connection that probably most people wouldn't know.

And that is how much I learned from Rich Mao.

And he's he's used that frequently.

In fact, the book ends with an exploration of a Christmas carol.

It actually ends in Christmas as you know, where we tell ghost stories.

Yeah, well –

Um, and so is, is the horror genre helping us fear rightly? And what does it look like to fear rightly and not manage fear, and what's the difference?

So the answer is, I, I think the answer is it can, uh, and that's why I just want to qualify.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes it's awful and, uh, and I say that, it, and I always want to say, "And so are all sorts of other genres and such." So it's not unique to the horror genre that there are some failures, and I do think it's important.

It...

And most of the time for me when they, when I call them a failure, I think it's an artistic failure first.

Usually, there's something that it's like, oh, before I even get to the sort of theological Christian, even psycho...

... help us in fearing rightly?

Use that to unpack this for the audience.

Yeah, so number one, yes, you're right.

I think for people that are sort of hesitant, I often say horror is not for everyone.

I'm not trying to get everyone to go watch it.

But there are some things that are kind of like you can dip your toe into the deep end.

Stranger Things is one of those.

It's more psychological thriller, but a couple of the seasons are pretty horror, like a supernatural horror type stuff.

Do you have any examples of that to sort of illustrate

[laughs] And I said, "Yes."

And it's like, "Oh, well, let me, let me, let me give it a try." Um, so I'll try to do that.

I, I think I'm doing sort of three related things.

Um, and this wasn't, I won't, I don't wanna say intentional, but it kind of emerged after the fact.

Um, and the first really is just to say that the best of horror fiction, um, and I focus primarily on, on movies and television, but you could expand that.

The best of horror fiction provides us a, an actually safe space to grapple with real fears, um, and in doing so, I think, um, both psychologically, theologically, et cetera, actually flexes or, or, or exercises a muscle that allows us to go back out into the actual real world of chaos and, and, and trauma and violence and, and have the capacity to reckon with that in a way that we wouldn't otherwise.

I think that's the sort of core argument that I'm, that I'm making, but there's two related ones for people of Christian faith, and that is that, uh, for me anyway, I, I study sort of pop culture and, um, cultural engagement from a Christian perspective, and one benefit of engaging something like horror, [laughs] which a lot of people are like, "What?" Um, is that anything, um, outside of the Christian faith that can, that we can interact with, um, and explore I think has this opportunity to shed light on our own sacred texts, our own theologies, and we might call this reversing the hermeneutical flow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's like the, like a black mass version of what we think about is this sort of sacred American ritual, right? The Norman Rockwell.

Yes.

That is, it is.

And even today, right? I mean, that people will talk about the nuclear family as like the thing that is propping up all of western democracy you know like if if that goes down the whole the whole thing goes down and um And so you could take it a few different ways.

One, clearly, I think the film is doing that sort of like black mass thing, right? Like this is a profane version of something that is held sacred.

I think that comes through beautifully.

Oh yeah.

I think you're right.

And you know, I can come at this from a few different ways.

One is just pure sort of self-motivated reasons to have anyone listening go and sign up for my newsletter that's called The Wrong Kind of Christian.

And the very first I just started, it just started a sub-sack like a week or two ago.

So it's new, but...

And really what she found out was like, no, there was a flag thrown and we have to go all the way back to the beginning.

Oh, yeah

... that exists in the world, that that story's there.

But we're actually asked and encouraged to, to go back to that story over, and over, and over again, um, and dwell on it as, as the word of God.

And that's what I find interesting when we translate back over to, say, horror films.

It's like, oh, that's bad for you, or that's unhealthy, or that, you know, God doesn't approve of that.

It's like, well, okay.

[chuckles] In this case, it's, it's horror fiction that we're not just supposed to acknowledge, but actually dwell on.

Let's go in that order.

reaction.

Sure.

Well, first, just to affirm the fact that it's not for everybody.

And I got into it begrudgingly, actually.

So I have been and continue to be sort of averse to it in some ways, in part because of exactly what you're describing.

But I'll get back to that in a second.

But I kind of went into it more because I claim to have this expertise on theological criticism of contemporary popular culture.

Do you put these on a spectrum somewhere? Are there different axes for comparing apples to apples here?