The Satanic Screen on eBay!

For those who are trying to order this...

It is up for auction on Ebay.

Starting bid: $6.66. I thought that was cute. Yes, I did.

Exorcisms for all! But do we need them?

You too can get an exorcism! Just google the word “exorcism” and you will find a paid advertisement by a pastor named Bob Larson, whom you can e-mail to arrange an exorcism. Not only that, you will be filmed for his new reality tv series!
Am I the only one that finds this odd? And how did a centuries-old spiritual rite go to on-demand service advertised on the web?
The demand for exorcisms have gone up dramatically in recent years. In the early 80's, the US Catholic church had one sanctioned exorcist. Now they have ten. In Poland, the number of sanctioned Catholic exorcists has doubled in the past five years.
And that doesn't even count the unsanctioned practitioners or the evangelical version of the practice, called “deliverance”. In 1999, the Catholic Church revised the rites of exorcism for the first time since they were written in 1614, in order to accommodate modern demand.
One of the more interesting, and thorough, things I've read on the subject is the book American Exorcism by Michael Cuneo. You can find an excerpt of it here. In this example, he talks about a deliverance he witnesses. In the book he describes the many exorcisms he attended, including a graphic multi-day mass exorcism.
But the most interesting part of the book explores why we need, or think we need, exorcisms.
One important question is did media like The Exorcist expose us to the reality that we need this spiritual cleansing, or does it give us a convenient scapegoat for our personal fallacies? Does believing someone is possessed blind us to the possibility of personal failure? Or worse, a severe psychiatric need?
Or, perhaps these rationalizations are placed in our heads by our demons, in order to hide their evil deeds. You can't empirically prove it isn't necessary, because there is much anecdotal evidence that it does. But you can't prove it is, because we haven't built a machine to measure demon levels in people. It's a bizarre thing to think about.

Women are the Devil.

In the last class we talked about the use of children, babies or the unborn in terms of the devil and cinema. This anxiety about children and Satanism, or evil in general, affected society’s fear for children’s safety from the occult. On a related note I wondered what role women might play in terms of Satan and popular movies, and if their role or depiction could be boiled down to affects on society or cinematically.
While as a film major this may be embarrassing to admit, but the first thing that came to my mind was the semi-popular, critically unclaimed 2000 film starring (the possibly dead, certainly forgotten) Brendan Fraser and more significantly (at least to this) Elizabeth Hurley as the Devil. While the latest version might be little more than pure entertainment the original Bedazzled was a 1967 Stanley Donen film, and while the concept of the devil appearing before a down-on-his-luck guy and purposefully messing up his wish granting was the same, the devil was in fact played by a man; possibly confused with Raquel Welch who was acting the part of Lust. Both of these stories were based off the Faust legend, which is “the story of the German necromancer and astrologer who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power" (source: http://www.mystical-www.co.uk/faust.htm)

While the Faust legend is extremely significant seeing as it influences literature, films, and art dealing with the occult, it deviates just a bit from my original topic—women playing the devil. I’ll offer another seemingly quite different example that will actually tie in with the point you may have doubted I had. Like a lot of the occult cinema, Girlfriend from Hell, was labeled and distributed as a B-Movie. Because of the environment (high school) and main situation (house party) the movie is also one of the teen-romp genres but the nerdy girl attending the party has been taken over and made over by the devil. A fellow high school girl is of God’s power and there in lies the heavenly catfight. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girlfriend_from_Hell)

What these two movies (and even Raquel Welch’s character in the original Bedazzle) illustrate in relation to the woman’s role as the devil is that the woman is merely used as a tool of seduction; seduction both in the literal sense, but mainly of the soul/faith sense. Putting the devil in an hourglass package only physically embodies the idea of temptation or the attraction that evil has on certain people (like the down-on-his-luck Brendan Fraser or the nerdy girl at high school). While I can’t really explain why women aren’t depicted as the devil more (I don’t mean that in a negative way) I can only assume that part of it is contributed to the fact that the Devil has largely, in all forms of culture, been depicted as a male, and this possibly stems from the fact that men have been doing the majority of these depictions.

Other Things to Check Out / Consider:

- Since we discussed the color use in Danger’s films, a more blatant yet significant use of color appears in Elizabeth Hurley’s portrayal of the devil in terms of her wardrobe and in the wishes she grants for the man.

- This New York Times article on the general portrayal of the Devil in media, mainly focuses on male actors and therefore if you want the gender-equal discussion maybe take a look at this…I feel like the male portrayal of the devil centers more on the sense of “power” (ala Al Pacino in the Devil’s Advocate) rather than the “attraction” or “seduction” aspect that woman tend to embody.

-also IMDB has an entry for all the movies mentioned in here…

Hope this isn’t too far off topic, just thought it was an interesting thing to consider; the idea of gender in terms of the cinematic representation of the Devil. I’m sure there are more examples as well; a more extensive search or prior knowledge and one could illuminate me further.

The Seal's Occult Secrets Revealed!

Today on AOL News, amid the usual celebrity claptrap and grisly headlines, is an intriguing story about an exhibit at the State Department attempting to debunk myths that the United States Seal is a repository of occult symbolism and hints of secret society influence in American government...

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

At this year's Sundance Film Festival, director Marina Zenovich premiered her new documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired". The film containing a lot of archival footage of interviews with Polanski, Sharon Tate and others was the first film to be bought at the festival.

Roman Polanski was a very interesting one to say the least. However, out of everything he went through and experienced, Zenovich chose to focus on the infamous sex scandal involving Polanski and a thirteen year old girl. (It is said he raped her in a pool at Jack Nicholson's home). While it is true, Polanski did commit the crime (there is a lot of controversy about this), the documentary focuses a lot on Judge Laurence J Ritterband who worked on this case because he used this publicity of the case to his advantage. However, he is actually not intereviewed in this documentary. Rather, the victim, attorneys, film industry reporters, Polanski's lawyer, and others were interviewed. On MSN.Com it is said that "they all revealed troubling behavior by the judge, now deceased, who was so driven by media coverage that he kept a scrapbook of clippings. Polanski presumably fled because he feared unfair treatment amid the media frenzy"

Zenovich says her documentary does not apologize for the French-Polish director, but rather a take on the murky justice and media hype around the Polanski case.

Interesting fact:

"Perhaps the most fascinating fact (and this was something I did not know) came in the reveal that, when a new judge was assigned to the case in 1997, he agreed to throw out the charges if Polanski were to return to the States - on one condition: that the hearing be televised. Because of that, Polanski decided against coming back," notes Erik Davis at Cinematical. "And who can blame him?"

ALL IN ALL....Go see this movie when it is released!!!
"Even for those familiar with the general details of the case," writes Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab, "Wanted and Desired will likely prove revelatory."


Another interesting fact I didn't know...Roman Polanski was raised in Poland and his home was imprisoned in a jewish ghetto. His mother was sent to a concentration camp to never be seen by Roman again and his father left him with a family so he could escape getting caught.

Ordo Templi Orientis = Freemasons?

So I was doing some random surfing online about occultism, Crowley, and the OTO. when I came across a few articles linking these things to the Freemasons. I'm not totally sure if we talked about it during class, but apparently the Ordo Templi Orientis group that Crowley was a memeber of was actually a part of the high ranking Freemasons BEFORE he took over. I had no idea that the OTO. was originally supposed to be a part of the Freemasons, but apparently Crowley had other ideas. This article talks about him reorganizing the OTO and has some more biographical information about him. His reorganization of the OTO made me wonder if he was opposed to Freemasonry, and if the Freemasons really do have any link to the occult because we all know Crowley was totally into that stuff.

This got me thinking about how the Freemasons have been tied to the occult in history. I'm sure most of you know about the history of the Freemasons, which dates back to the 1600s but this got me interested in how the occult could be tied to this mysterious fraternal organization. Of course, I'm not completely sure of the authenticity of these two articles, but they are actually pretty interesting. Freemasonry is a Religion says that "Freemasonry currently serves as the conduit between the political organizations of the global elite...and the occult groups of the Theosophical network." Maybe a bit of an extreme decleration, but it can't be argued that for centuries people have blamed the Freemasons for magical practices and some have seen it as an evil power.

This article offers the answering that Freemasonry is part of an occult partially because occult means hidden, and what could be more hidden than what happens in the Grand Lodge? It goes on to talk about how the first users of the Grand Lodge, the Illuminati, were developing evil plans of some sort and using magick, and that in the past century many groups who have played a part in the occult revival can all be linked to Freemasons.

It's obvious that we'll never know exactly what part the Freemasons have played in occult revival, or if behind those closed doors they're lighting candles and chanting spells. I think that the mystery surrounding the Freemasons is the only thing that keeps it interesting, and keeps people conjuring up those rediculous conspiracy theories.

Hooray!

The Believers has arrived at last. I can't wait to watch it this weekend. Must also dig out my VHS tapes of the Satanic Panic talk show footage from Oprah, Geraldo, et al. Despite the film's focus on voodoo, it's a close parallel to the satanic cults portrayed in 1970s films, but with the added bonus of 1980s-style paranoia of children being snatched up for human sacrifice.

Why doesn't anyone else post to the blog??? Dudes, it's a requirement. Just sayin'.