I'm Afraid of The 700 Club

(posted by Professor Peg for Billy Chew)



That's only tangentially important - but the reading did mention The 700 Club, so I thought I'd stick that in there as context for those unfamiliar.

I'm not quite sure if this particular post is supposed to be a response to the reading or just inspired by it, but I'm going to lean toward the latter and just kind of riff off the lines "...for the teen Witchcraft movement, the chronicling of emerging trends and practices can really only be observed at a generational remove, until these teens are of an age where they can do their own research." (121 - PEG ALOI!!)

Since I am of the age to do my own research, and eventhough I was never really a part of the "teen Witchcraft movement," I have a bit to say here just from my own experiences.

I can remember in middle school there were the goths - as in every middle school in the 80's onward. As an outsider myself (though more of a nerdy, science-fiction, awkward nose-picker than a sleak, angsty/stoic Cure fan) I was friendly with the Goths, and I think Peg's comment that "from a philosophical standpoint it may be that a generation raised in a culturally-conservative, fear-ridden culture would naturally be drawn to a form of adolescent rebellion that would stand out starkly" (117 - should I really cite what you know that you wrote, Peg?) (Peg sez: dude, I barely remember my own name some days, so have at it.) is accurate. Being a Goth kind of made sense to me, I felt drawn to it, and I had a few conversations with the Goths regarding Christianity. But despite the initial draw, I was disturbed by what I found there.

Having been excommunicated from my Catholic church, but still retaining a good deal of guilt-centered residue, I was really taken aback by the vitriol my friends spouted. I distinctly remember my friend Marcus shouting "The Bible is a story meant to teach people things, it didn't really happen! God's not real!" Now, this is a completely harmless and inoffensive statement, but it disturbed me. Those guys listened to Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson! I listened to Trance music.

Anyways, the reason I bring this poorly written memory up is because I think I may have - in that moment - felt the fear and anxiety that the entire town of West Memphis felt all day everyday. That is to say, I was momentarily an absolute conduit for ideology. Despite the closeness or distance I had from the church, my individual identity was set aside momentarily and replaced by Catholic doctrine. In a way, I still contained believed in Catholicism, despite the fact that it kicked my family out. I used to feel as though my reaction to Marcus's vitriol was because I was simply "innocent," but now I realized that I was simply a tool (another band the Goths seemed to enjoy). As time went by, and my Catholicism was left at the curb, I emerged from the doctrine, and in high school I became a Drama Kid, which is as close as you can get to Goth without surrendering the tortured artistic pretensions.

I just finished reading Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming" The Rise of Christian Nationalism." In it, there's a section that discusses the Religious Right's belief regarding homosexuality - we all know it for the most part. What some don't know is that, since they believe that homosexuality is a choice, they believe that children can be conditioned out of it. This is known as Reparative Therapy. Places like Focus on the Family - a prominent source of religious talking heads for most cable news outlets looking to "balance" debates - is one of the primary proponents of such indoctrination. And what are the signs of
emergent homosexuality in children? Goldberg quotes Focus on the Family's website: "tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy." Sounds familiar. Gay? Goth? Drama Kid? Emo (the 21st Century version of the Goth)? Damien Echols? The Trench Coat Mafia? Pagans? Abortionists? Feminists?

I bring this up because "Paradise Lost" had a profound effect on me. I'd seen miscarriage-of-justice documentaries like the "The Thin Blue Line" before, but I really saw myself in Damien Echols. Both he and I and everyone in our class and everyone Falwell mentions on The 700 Club probably fulfill Focus on the Family's non-Mook rubrick for Pavlovian reconditioning. As Peg points out in her piece we all read, the Goths, et al are a product of the very culture that condemns them - and sentences them to die by lethal injection.

Although I was well aware of it before seeing the film, "Paradise Lost" made it disturbingly clear that my friends (Marcus and the Goths) and myself could have been beside Echols in that courtroom. Not because we moved in similar circles (hell, we were in different states), but because the Religious Right is just so powerful...and crazy.