Movie Review: "Sinners" and Other Horror Films with Christian Themes

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The Core Four return for a post-finals horror-themed episode of Church Potluck! After a movie night together, Dale and his guests (Christy, Mike, and Michael) discuss Sinners, a new horror film with bold religious and cultural themes. They unpack everything from the film’s unexpected twists and theological metaphors to its commentary on colonial Christianity, music as sacred memory, and the seduction of "polite evil." Then, the group shares their favorite horror movies with spiritual themes—ranging from The Exorcist to I Am Legend. Plus, a game of "Vampire or Theologian?" that goes hilariously off the rails.

The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, here we go.
So Christy said that she doesfeel like it's summer already.
Are y'all feeling like summeryet?
Yeah, gradually it's becomingsummer.
I've been actually pretty busy,though I haven't got that real
total freedom feeling yet.
Well, welcome everyone toChurch Potluck, where we are

(00:25):
serving up a smorgasbord ofChristian curiosity.
I'm your host, dale McConkie,sociology professor and United
Methodist pastor, and you knowthere are two keys to a good
Church Potluck Plenty of varietyand engaging conversation.
And this is exactly what we aretrying to do here on Church
Potluck Sitting down withfriends and sharing our ideas on

(00:45):
a variety of topics, from avariety of Christian
perspectives, from a variety ofacademic disciplines.
And we have a fun show for youtoday.
We've got the little nickname Ihave attributed to us.
Now we have the Core Four.
Love it, I like it?
Oh yeah, okay, we're good.
The Core 4.
Love it, I like it?
Oh yeah, okay.
Well, good.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
The Core 4.
This Core 4 actually competeswith the Core 4 in my family,
and that's when Lydia is away,then it's the other two children
, and I don't know how thatbecame the Core 4, but because
she went off first to college,so yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
How does Lydia feel about that?

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Do you think Lydia cares?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I think she's just fine.
That's good.
Well, let me go ahead and we'lljust get right into it by
introducing the core four.
We'll just go around the tablehere.
First we have Dr Michael BaileyGreetings.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Hello everyone.
It's been a while, it has been.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Partly because we haven't recorded, but then also
we didn't have you on for any ofthe Pope stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, no, well, you know, I could provide a little
comic relief, but not much morebeyond that, maybe not even that
much.
So yeah, Just lameness is whatI would provide.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Well, it's great to have you here and you got your
very summer shirt on.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I got my Clint Peters shirt on Actually very much by
design because Clint really isour horror movie expert, right,
and I just did this in honor ofhim.
So if this were a horror movie,I'd be probably haunted by
clint somehow, or he'd be in mycloset or something at this
point, or if this was a videoproduction of any kind, then it
would be effective.
Yeah, no it's you can.

(02:14):
I got some beautiful leaves.
I don't know what they are somesailboats to our sailboats.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I didn't know if they're marijuana leaves, but
I should probably be.
No, I think they're palm trees.
I should probably be able todistinguish between palm trees,
doesn't everything look?

Speaker 4 (02:27):
like marijuana to you .
I don't know You're trippingman.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
The shirt does lend itself to a marijuana feel,
though I guess how would I know?

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Not on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Anyway, great to have you here, dr Bailey, and next
we have Dr Michael Bapazian.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's good to be back, and I don't know if I'm ready,
because we're not talking aboutthe Pope.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
No, we're not talking about him, but you were ready
for the Pope.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
If he comes up, I'm ready, that's right Well, he is
coming up.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
and, christy, I haven't introduced you yet, but
I'll just give you both a momentof thanks that we ended up
doing three podcasts.
One was in the reserve, but wedid three podcasts and I
listened back at those and Ireally may be too strong of a
word, but I was proud of those.
I thought that was goodinformation and for a very
timely subject, and so hopefullysome people got some benefit

(03:20):
out of those.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, I really enjoyed doing them.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
When are they coming out?

Speaker 4 (03:24):
They're out.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
I'm going to listen to them today.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
They're going to be so good, I know.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
That's another thing I was proud of is we recorded
one in the morning and I had itout in the afternoon.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
That's very good, dale, I'm impressed.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
That's why it hasn't felt like summer yet, but it's
good because you want to be.
You know.
I mean the Pope was in the news.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
He's going to fade away, probably in the next
couple of days he won't be asprominent.
There you go.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
So you have to get the podcast out right away.
That was on my mind, so yeah,we got.
Pope fever is what we've gotthere, we go there, we go there
we go, and there we go, there wego, and we've been holding off
long enough.
Our third and final guest,christy Snyder.
Dr Christy Snyder, helloeverybody, glad to be back.
Well, good, well, what are wegoing to be talking about today,

(04:14):
folks?

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Well, that's not what we're going to be talking about
today already.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
That's right, we could do the game show, but it
would be better to have thetopic on.
But here's the topic.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
This is really one of the great musicals.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
It really is.
It really is, except I'vechanged it here Jesus Christ
movie star.
Sure, do we believe what moviessay you are Jesus Christ movie
star?
All right, it's time for anepisode of Jesus Christ movie
star, where we go to the moviesand look at the religious themes
.
And today we are talking aboutthe movie Sinners.

(05:02):
And we turned in our finalgrades on Monday, the four of us
and I put out a message sayinghey, I've been told that I need
to go watch the movie Sinnersand I'm thinking about going.
And so I put out an email toall three of you and, very
graciously, all three of yousaid yes, and so we went and had
a movie night together.
And so we have seen the movieSinners and we're going to talk

(05:22):
about it and its religiousthemes.
But then we're going to alsojust expand out to talk about
some of our favorite horrormovies that have Christian
themes in them or religiousthemes in them.
So I thought we'd go ahead andjust open it up to the movie
Sinners.
Let me start off this way.
Dr Bailey, we'll toss it to youfirst.
When we walked out of the movietheater, you seemed like you
did not like it.
You kind of said that youdidn't like it.

(05:43):
I'll let you describe what itis, but the next morning the
four of us had a pretty gooddiscussion thread where it
seemed like you were much moreengaged and were interested in
the themes that we were talkingabout.
So did you shift at all, orwhat is your reaction to the
movie?

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah, I appreciate the movie more, which is not
necessarily the same thing.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
I think I would agree with that.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
I enjoy it.
So you know, it seems like howdo you measure what a good movie
is?
And there's all sorts of.
There's not one singleobjective way.
But it seems like there's anobjective way that you can be a
bad movie and that is if you can.
It can be unpleasant to watchand that can still be a good
movie, but it can't be boringand it can't be uninteresting.
And I found the real timeexperience of watching it.

(06:27):
It just didn't.
I didn't find it riveting.
I found it much moreinteresting to think about after
the fact.
So the while watching it, Ithought this is a very long
movie.
I can come back to my thoughtson it, let others speak, but I
just, while going through themovie, I was thinking that this
movie would never end.
And then there was a kind of afalse ending and I just wanted

(06:49):
to cry.
I can sit through really greatmovies that are very long, so
that didn't speak well to me.
I have some critiques.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
we can come back to and you mentioned the false
ending, something I should havementioned at the very beginning
spoiler alerts throughout.
We're not going to hold back onanything, and so if you don't
want to hear about the moviebefore you watch it, then
definitely don't listen to thepodcast and also the other
movies that we talk about aswell.
We're just going to givespoilers all throughout.
So, christy Michael P, what doyou all think?

Speaker 4 (07:19):
So I enjoyed the movie.
I did.
I mean, it is a two-hour movie,I think at least, so it is
longer than typical movies.
But I think part of the reasonI enjoyed it is I teach the
history of rock and roll classand we start with the blues, and
so the fact that this bluesmusic joint is kind of at the

(07:44):
center of it.
I was able to make a lot ofconnections there for things
that I talk about in class aswell as just the South during
the Great Depression, referencesto, you know, service in World
War I by the two of the maincharacters, and so all of those
things were enough to hold ittogether for me, even without

(08:05):
the horror aspect, which wasalso kind of interesting.
So, yeah, so I enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
There was a lot of backstory, as you put it.
Oh yeah, Tons of backstory.
But I felt like I wish they hadmade a movie about the
backstory, which I think theymight be doing.
I wouldn't be surprised ifthere are sequels and prequels
to this, but I think they set itup.
Wouldn't be surprised if thereare sequels and prequels to this
, but I think they set it up.
And while they're talking aboutsome of the backstory, I
thought I don't see how thisreally plays into character, but
it's more interesting to whatwe're going through here.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
But yeah, michael Papazian, go ahead and give your
initial reaction, and then weprobably should get some context
to what the movie's about.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
So yeah, I mean I had I shared a lot.
I mean I did enjoy, there was alot going on.
I liked that.
It was a lot to think about.
So I think I enjoyed it morethe next day, kind of like Mike
was saying.
But I just found, you know,just the general sort of part of
the issue was that it kind ofwas a mix of two different kinds
.
It was sort of a historicalmovie and also a horror movie,

(08:58):
and it became more horrortowards the end and so it was
kind of a hybrid film, andintentionally.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
so I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, but also.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
I tend not to like hybrid films, although I do kind
of like this.
Okay, and I was never bored, itwas engaging throughout and it
was, you know, as you said, asChristy said, a two-hour movie.
I had no point.
I didn't get the sense.
Oh, I want this to end now.
No, I was really into it.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
I echo everything you said.
That was your experience and myexperience were very similar
that I enjoyed it Never crossedmy mind that it was going too
long.
I actually liked the falseending.
No, the false ending was okayand there was more to it and I
enjoyed that.
But I usually try very hard notto know anything about the
movie before going into it, andso I didn't read anything about

(09:45):
it and I didn't know reallyanything.
And then this is one moviewhere I wish I had probably read
some context and read some, youknow, and I might have
appreciated things in real timewhile I was watching it better
than I did I.
Looking back and reading thereviews afterward, I really
started to appreciate it moreand more as well, just like you
said.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yeah, but I mean I feel like it's.
This is a really critique ofmovies.
More than this one is that, Ithink you know, if you know a
lot about something, as Chrissydoes about that particular time,
then that adds some richness toit, especially if they are
insightful or, you know,enlightening.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Or it drives you crazy when there's mistakes
right.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
But I feel like movies aren'tbooks, and movies have to stand
on their own two feet and so youknow you can think like the
Wizard of Oz.
The Wizard of Oz may be somesort of ridiculous metaphor for
silver currency or gold currency, but you don't have to know any
of that for it to work as amovie.

(10:43):
In some sense it doesn't evenreally work as a metaphor.
I think this was trying so hardto be a metaphor that the
primary stuff itself, the art,to me didn't stand.
It's more interesting to thinkabout the implications of what
it was hinting at as an allegory.
I saw Silence of the Lambs atthe theater.

(11:04):
My sister was in Austin, whereI lived, and she wanted to see a
movie.
I did not want to see this.
I'd never heard of it until thetime she mentioned.
I said what is it about?
She said it's a serial killer.
I said I do not want to seethis movie.
I was captured within 90seconds of that movie.
So I feel like a good movie canbring you in independently of

(11:24):
the knowledge of it, and if youhave to read reviews.
I feel like it doesn't work asart.
It might work as propaganda, itmight work as a thing I think
it's kind of a thinker but Idon't think it works as a
standalone piece of art.
That's my own and I'll comeback to that, okay.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
All right, well, we've given our impressions, but
what is the movie about?
How would someone give anoverview of what this movie is
about?
Because it's a hybrid, it maynot be easy to encapsulate.

Speaker 4 (11:47):
I'll start All right.
So you have these twin brotherswho come back to the
Mississippi Delta.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Can I be bad and have a confession here?
Yes, it wasn't until I talkedto my son afterward that I
realized that they were the sameperson I should have known.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
But that's how passively I was watching them.
No, it just shows theastonishing degree of technical
prowess that they have, thatthey could film the same person
obviously some sort of greenscreen or something and there is
nothing that would give thataway.
It was incredible.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
And I think the acting was really well.
He did a good job portrayingthose two.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, because you got the personality differences,
Even if the physically he lookedthe same.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
But that's how identical twins are.
They do look the same, yeah,exactly but their personalities
can be quite different.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Jordan, they do look the same.
Yeah, exactly, but theirpersonalities can be quite
different.
Yeah, he's a good actor.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
Yeah, they're the smokestack brothers or twins,
because one's Smoke, I guess,and one is Stack.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
The other's Stack and the name their actual.
I guess their birth names areElijah and Elias.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Which are biblical names.
In fact, they're the sameperson, aren't they?
Because Elias is a variant ofElijah.
Really, I think so, becauseoriginally I thought it was
Elijah and Elisha, but Elias isjust a different form.
I think it's the Greek form ofElijah, so they actually have
the same name.
And also, the other thing justcame to me is Elijah is one of

(13:10):
two people who never died in theOld Testament, that's great.
I have no idea if that wasdeliberate, but I'll just throw
that out there.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, no, of course it was deliberate.
Oh, that is kind of interesting.
I mean that shows the thoughtthat went into this I mean.
Clearly this was just a work ofsystematic theology, in a way.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yes, I mean they really went.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
The director and writer?
I suppose, yeah it just I wishit were more interesting.
I suppose, yeah it just I wishit were more interesting
Continue.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
So the twins come back.
They've been in Chicago earningmoney.
Apparently there's, you know,mentions of like Al Capone and
bootleggers.
This is 30.
It's set in 34.
So prohibition would have beenrepealed by now, but you know
that was 32.
I thought it was the movie set.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
I thought the movie I by now, but you know I thought
it was 32.
I thought it was the movie isset.
I thought so.
The movie, I think, is set in1932.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
from what I've read, yeah, so it is not repealed yet.
Right, and they had actuallyleft the Delta, I guess, to
serve in World War, but insteadof coming home went, but now
they have some money they'regoing to open up this joint,
they were earning money too.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Some of the earning is in quotes, probably yeah
that's right.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, they're going to open up this place.
This was a place where youcould listen to the blues dance,
a place where African Americansperformed and socialized.
They buy an old slaughterhousefrom a white plantation owner,
or at least a wealthier whiteman and a lot of the beginning
of the movie is them setting upthe place.

(14:38):
One of their cousins is a greatguitar player blues guitar
player Great voice.
His father is a preacher, runs achurch, and so that sets up
some of the first religious, Ithink, conflict that you see in
the movie about the father takesthe guitar to the church, the
kid's looking for it, andthere's this little talk about

(15:00):
you could be a musical artist,but an artist for you know the
church.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
You could be part of the praise band.
Oh boy, yeah right.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
And so yeah, and so, while they're setting it up,
both the brothers run into oldloves where they've both been
separated for different reasons.
One of the old loves, I think,is also a religious element.
Is there because she'spracticing maybe a voodoo type
of faith?

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, it's definitely an indigenous.
African tradition, somethingabout the ancestors.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
Yeah, the other one's been separated because she
could pass for being Caucasian,being white, and actually is
married to a white man who livesin Arkansas.
So that could lead to, you know, definitely significant issues.
And then you have the firstkind of horror bit.
That starts when some man showsup at a white couple's door.

(15:59):
He has been burned very badly.
They don't want to let him in,but he offers them money.
When they do let him in, youthen discover he's a vampire and
from there things proceed.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Things get worse yeah get yeah, very quickly.
And were you all aware thatthis had vampire elements to it
before, before walking into thetheater?

Speaker 4 (16:19):
I didn't I did not I did and you did.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, my daughter saw this movie.
At least two of them didn't.
They loved it and I agreed togo to this because of their
recommendation you know so, andit was my, it wasn't our company
well, I mean I agreed to it soreadily because of them, but I
would have just, you know,delayed a little bit and said
yes, of course.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
No, it was my son who told me that I needed to see it
as well, and he's alreadywatched it twice.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
He said so did you know there was a vampire element
in it or a horror element in it?

Speaker 1 (16:47):
I don't.
I think I knew that there was abig twist and so it didn't
surprise me, and so it didn'tsurprise me, but no, I did not
know the thing that'sinteresting is that, just so the
listener and potential viewercan know, is that that develops
maybe an hour into the movie.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
And so it is.
This kind of traditional movie,sort of like a period piece of
history, has its own arc.
And then I mean, really out ofnowhere, more or less, there's a
few hints that there'ssomething ominous and dark, but
the actual event of theappearance of this vampire it is
like act two of a differentplay it just comes out of

(17:26):
nowhere.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
There were, as you said, there are some
foreshadowings, I mean partially.
Also, the pastor is warning tohis son about you know what is
going to happen if he goes tothe juke joint, and then yeah,
so they're just some very brief,but you're not thinking
vampires at that point.
Well, you also see severalpoints.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
I think it's three crows in the background and you
see this like multiple times.
There's three crows just flyingand I think that's very much
meant to suggest a kind ofanti-Trinitarian type of
perspective.
They represent evil and we'llcome back to that maybe.

Speaker 4 (17:59):
I do think also that I mean one of the.
So where I kind of thought itwas going to go is they start
out the movie and then itrepeats, like if you can play
music so well right, or the, Idon't know if it was just the
blues but if you can play sowell, you can like open up this
doorway to the past, the future,and so that's kind of and that

(18:21):
is an element of this, but it'snot the main horror.
That's where I thought it mightbe going.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
And that's where it starts right.
The whole movie starts with alittle intro preface about the
people throughout history whohave been able to connect the
divine with the earthly throughtheir music, so powerful that it
connected these two realmstogether.
Well, it also connects.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
I think this is important is it connects
generations, both the past aswell as the future, so it allows
the present generation to,through the music, to be with
their ancestors and so all hasnot been taken from them, and it
shows that they can have aneffect on the future as well.
And it's kind of did you wantto carry on with the story?

(19:06):
You said it's like two parts,and that was an excellent
summary, by the way.
That's why you're a historianand I don't do, I'm not good at
narrating but so there is thiswonderful scene.
The music is great, at leasthalf of the music is great, the
African-American music is great,but there's this wonderful
scene on the dance floor wherethis gifted guitarist, gifted
from the divine, who can,through his music, link these

(19:29):
generations playing, and thenthe movie depicts generations
from Africa participating in themusic with their own African
instruments and then it showsit's very jarring, it's 100%
nuts, and to me it worksperfectly because it shows then
people who are hip hop stars,who are spinning platters and

(19:51):
they're rapping, and all of thismassive mashup of music where
you have all of the time righthere at this particular moment
and I took that to be.
I'd like to know where it was inthe movie, because it seems to
me that's almost right in thecenter and it seems to me that's
really what the movie is tryingto do is trying to be a mashup
of multiple genres, multiplethemes, multiple ideas, and I

(20:15):
think it worked on the dancefloor, but I don't think it
worked so well as a movie.
There's a lot there to teaseapart, but I guess it doesn't
cohere, I think, in the moment.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Did you all find that scene very powerful?
Oh yeah, Very much.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, there's a sense of historical continuity that I
think the movie was trying toconvey, and that that continuity
has been uprooted by theenemies.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, that's right.
I mean it demonstrates thatthere's still a connection with
the ancestors and what you domay be a life of apparent
drudgery, but it will have thiseffect rippling forward into the
future in a positive way, andit's all part of the divine and
that can't be taken from you.
So you think, yeah, right.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
I mean, that's a theme that I bring out in the
history of rock and roll, somuch that you know this didn't
emerge from nowhere.
It comes from a yes, it comesfrom a specific time and place,
but it's built on things thathappened before, and then
everything that happensafterwards is a part of you know
, the beginning, and so, yeah, Ithought that was so well done.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
And horror movies are also like that.
I mean horror movies.
I think half of the fun of ahorror movie is to try to figure
out what.
Is it paying homage to the pasthorror movies?
I think this is.
I don't think this movie couldexist, and it wouldn't try to
exist, without a bunch of otherprior horror movies that we can
talk about.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
And so you mentioned something about enemies.
Who are the enemies in?

Speaker 2 (21:37):
this.
That's a big question, I mean,I'm not quite sure.
I mean, at least at first itseemed to me that the enemy was,
I guess, either Christianity orevangelical Christianity or
white Christianity.
That was, you know, trying to,you know, bring, convey this
notion of the, at least tryingto appropriate the culture or at

(21:57):
least to destroy the indigenousculture or to change it in
certain ways that make it lesspowerful.
But then I kind of moved awayfrom that and I saw it more as a
political or economic statementabout how sort of the modern
capitalism and liberalism tendsto break us away from our roots
and try to appropriate blackculture and other cultures but

(22:20):
doesn't really respect it anddoesn't, you know, it just tries
to make money out of it and soin some sense it ends up really
depriving it of its power andits authenticity.
That's where I am right now,because it seemed to me that
there was a little bit ofambivalence about the portrayal
of the black church here.
I mean, the father was kind ofwrong, but he was kind of right

(22:41):
too.
I mean, something bad didn'thappen to Sammy, even though it
was a great night in retrospectfor him.
Well, it was.
It was, you know, also a badnight too.
So there was a sense in whichyou know this wasn wasn't
necessarily negative about theblack church, so I didn't see it
as anti-Christian in general,but just sort of anti some of
the manifestations ofChristianity.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Okay, and I actually well certainly colonial
Christianity right, colonials.
Yeah, I guess that's a good termand your term of white
Christianity.
I think that probably had a lotto do with it as well, had a
lot to do with it as well, and Iactually thought that the movie
and I probably got this fromsomebody else and not my own
mind, but that even the blackchurch that Sammy's father led

(23:23):
it was kind of they were alldressed in white, there was kind
of a whitewashing right and itwas a very tepid kind of faith,
and even the music was very, youknow, stayed, and so it didn't
have that same kind of life toit, and so the life had kind of
been drained out of that churchas well, just as life is drained
out by vampires.
I think that's correct.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
That is to say that there was a vitality to black
spirituality that kind of hasbeen sapped by whatever
colonialism.
One reason why I thought aboutthat is-.
And yet still far more vitaland I got this also because the
director, I think, was also thedirector of black panther and

(24:04):
and you, I, you get a similar.
I got a similar sense, asimilar message from that film
as well.
I don't know if you all sawblack panther but it's the.
is it Wakanda?
Is that the fictional mythicalkingdom?
But it's actually rooted inreality and here, okay, as an
Orthodox, this is, I'm going tomake a connection.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
You found a way to work it in, is it?

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Wakanda Is the kingdom that has not been
spoiled by European colonialism.
It's the part of Africa that hasbeen meant to be authentic.
And there is one majorcivilization in Africa, in the
heart of Africa, that is kind oflike Wakanda.
That's Ethiopia, an ancientChristian Orthodox nation.

(24:48):
And there's the sense I got outof that movie and I'm reading a
lot into this because of my ownheritage, in part as an
Armenian Orthodox who is in fullcommunion with the Ethiopians
that there's a sense in whichthere is an authentic African
Christianity that is reflectedin that Ethiopian culture and
great civilization that producedenormous, you know, and

(25:10):
continues to produce enormousliterary and other achievements,
and it's that that has beenkind of suppressed, or Africans
have not been allowed to developthat sort of indigenous
Christian tradition and insteadthere is this sort of more tepid
white Christianity that hasbeen imposed upon them, and I

(25:32):
saw that carrying on as well inthis film too.
So that's my kind of take onthis.
So I don't see it asanti-Christian so much as
anti-sort of inauthentic formsof Christianity being forced
upon people by colonialists.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
So help our listeners understand, and you help me
understand this too.
So my strong sense was thatthis was a vampire movie that
inverts the role of Christianity, that historically Christianity
has been the great savioragainst the evils and the
sexuality and the temptationsand all that vampires provide,

(26:09):
and Christianity holds thoseforces against.
But here the vampires have beenkind of sucked in by
Christianity.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Well, or I think they may represent sort of a toxic
form of Christianity.
I think you see like I said, youdo see these three crows that
are flying around and you see,finally, when this head vampire,
he doesn't really go after thisjuke joint until he gets two
other people, so they approachas three.
They're very much like comicaldepiction and, by the way, this

(26:38):
movie was wildly lacking inhumor.
That was actually one of myproblems with it.
It is a humorless movie and itseems like it's so ripe for
humor.
Also, just another aside wasthat I did not know until I
found out afterward that this isthe same director as the Black
Panther and I kind of had thesame response to the Black
Panther as well.

(26:58):
I found it just sort of boring,and so I think it's ponderous.
I think, in part because it isso ambitious and there's not a
whole lot of humor, is that itjust tries to do too much.
So these vampires come to thedoor like an evangelist.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
These three are all white.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
They're all white, they're super white.
I'm not going to namedenominations One's Irish right.
Well.
Ramek is the first vampireRamek is Irish, right, and he's
an English actor, but yeah, he'sIrish.
And so he comes to the jukejoint with two other white folks
.
They're very polite, they pointout this is really not for

(27:36):
folks like you and they sayalmost explicitly we don't see
color.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
We don't see race.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
We are beyond that.
And they said we're verypatient, we can be polite, and
they were supremely polite.
And then they played really badmusic and I think that's
important, that there was thiscontrast between the blues music
, which is life-affirming andcelebratory, to this other kind

(28:00):
of phony praise music.
I thought as well.
And then at one point they allrecite the Lord's Prayer, which
I think is not a very subtle wayof saying what they represent.
So I don't know if peopleremember that.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
And there was a pseudo-baptism scene, right,
yeah, there was a pseudo-baptismand that actually was trying to
kill them through baptism.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Right, yeah, so it was again an inversion of the
sacrament of baptism?
Yes, very much.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Instead of restoring you to life, kill it drowning
you.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Yeah, exactly, but the baptism theme was very
obvious in that.
So do you think that it was nota coincidence that it was
someone who was Irish in anotherarea where Christianity had
gone in and destroyed theindigenous faith?

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, I thought of that too, that you have another
example of victims ofcolonialism, in this case
British colonialism, that itseemed there might be a
connection there too, I presumeso I would absolutely assume so,
because it's something whereyou can throw into the mix here.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah, why not?
It's about the potato famine,I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Michael Bailey is like a dog with a bone.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
All right.
So, yeah, I did not pick upwatching it, and if it had been
for you guys talking on thethread about it, like the whole
Christian fundamentalist kind ofaspect, I'm not sure I would
have picked up on.
Instead, I was thinking more ofyou know the vampires they are.
They're turning all the AfricanAmericans that could get their

(29:29):
hands on into you know, intovampires.
And then it did seem like colordid not matter, as opposed to
one of the final scenes wheremembers of the Klan show up who
are whites, who do see color,and that seems way worse than
being the vampire.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
And so yeah, how does ?

Speaker 4 (29:52):
that fit into.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Let me pick up and then you get the right answer.
But, chrissy, I was the sameway that you know.
They seemed naive, but they didseem nice.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
And welcoming.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
And love and fellowship, yes, and we'll have
community together forever.
You know, this is yeah, and soI was like this doesn't sound
unappealing.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Well, it is superficially, but underneath it
it's still nefarious, it'sstill right.
So the idea is in some senseit's more dangerous than the
Klan.
The Klan is overtly racist andhostile and hateful.
This is hate sugarcoated bylove.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah, and it's culturally right.
It's a particular peacefulwhite representation.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Let's all get together.
We can forget about all theterrible things we did If we can
go back to marijuana for aminute.
Okay, sure.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
No, I mean you can't really understand the usage of
drugs unless you understand theappeal of it.
I mean, if you just think of itsimply as a bad thing, that
people go into it becausethey're pursuing something bad
and want it to be bad, you willnever understand that right.
It has an appeal, and so Ithought one of the strengths of
this movie was that it depictedthat allure as very seductive
for very real reasons, as itdepicts some sort of fellowship

(31:03):
and joy and freedom from otherkinds of deprivation.
So I thought that made sense.
But I think it's reallyimportant, as I sort of hinted
at earlier, that Remick is thathis name?

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Remick is the Irish vampire Was really going for.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
He says we are here for the guitarist, that's why we
came here, because what hewanted to do was destroy this
gateway to the ancestors,because it's through the music
that you have access to theancestors and to the future,
this kind of connective,indigenous or African type of
religion.
So it was, I think, veryexplicitly trying to destroy

(31:39):
that.
We're going to take that awayfrom them.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah that's a great point.
That's a great point.
So who are the sinners?

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Well, okay, does it have to be one it?

Speaker 4 (31:49):
could be everybody.
There's lots of sin, lots ofsin, yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
And the twins I think are.
You know, they sort of startwith a lie about their identity.
They're cousins, they claimright, but you know that they
have these ill-gotten goods,they have this past history
hinted at would be a very goodmovie, better than the one we
saw.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
They're working on it now.
Yeah, they are.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
I'm sure they are, because they do open it up to
the possibility of a sequel atthe end as well, but so, yeah,
it shows them, as the maincharacters are clearly sinners
and say, basically I'll see youin hell.
And it says that at one point.
So I don't think the idea isthat there's a group of people
who are sinners and those whoaren't, but I think there is
this sense of you should letpeople have their authentic

(32:29):
culture and not destroy it.

Speaker 4 (32:31):
So I also wondered, like so both the brothers end up
in different situations, right,one of them becomes a vampire
and he is turned a vampire bythis woman he's always loved,
that he's never been able to bewith because life, and the other
one decides not to become avampire, in part because the

(32:53):
woman he loves makes him promiseto kill her if she gets bit
because she wants to be withtheir child who had died, and so
this idea of an afterlife.
And so you know both of them Idon't know like was one wrong
and one right, or they both justchoose different paths that

(33:13):
worked given their situations.

Speaker 3 (33:15):
It goes back to, I think, a theme that maybe three
years ago we talked about, whichis the centrality of erotic
love to all of this.
And so you know, for example,in Midnight Mass, this is, you
know, seven episode or so, maybe10 episode miniseries, and it
turns out that the maincharacter does this who is a

(33:35):
priest, deep theological reasons.
He actually does this again toconnect with a lost, unrequited
love.
There does seem to be somemessage here that's really
central to who we are as humanbeings.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
I like that theme Interesting, because I tend to
dislike that theme.
So that's another topic foranother podcast and we can talk
more about senators if we want,but for now let's do a game show
there.
Now's the right time to pressthat button.
All right, today's game show?
Vampire or theologian?
Oh, I love this All right.

(34:10):
Or both.
Well, I actually did take oneout.
I took a quote out by Anne Ricethat was kind of.
They actually were calling hera theologian, yeah, so I'm going
to give a quote and you have totell me whether it's from a
vampire movie or whether it's atheologian, or from the Bible
itself.
So here we go the blood is thelife.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
Oh, that's Bonhoeffer .

Speaker 4 (34:32):
All right, I'm going to.
Yeah, I'll say theologian toothe the life.
Oh, that's Bonhoeffer.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
All right, I'm going to yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:35):
I'll say theologian too, theologian.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Boo, that is from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Did I say I meant to?

Speaker 2 (34:43):
say Stoker, he's not.
Stoker is not a theologian,apparently.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
No, no, no.
And Rice is.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
That's not fair.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
All right, all right.
So here's the next one.
So, for the life of thecreature is in the blood.
It is the blood that makesatonement for one's life.
That's Richard Niebuhr.
I have no idea.
That sounds like a theologianto me.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
I would have said movie but I'm sure they know.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
That's Leviticus 1711 .

Speaker 4 (35:08):
Okay, it's the Bible.
It's not just the theologian,it's the Bible.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
All right, death is.
Death is not even the beginningof the end.
It is the end of the beginning.
I think that was.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Winston Churchill.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
Theologian.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Vampire.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
This is horrible All right, there's not that much of
a difference.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
And Bailey's just tossing his hands up.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Oh, calvin, I know Calvin, this is the first one.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
You didn't say it, it was Bonhoeffer.
So you finally got yourBonhoeffer there, all right.
So let's see we got some morehere.
God has abandoned you.
He didn't watch, he didn't care.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Vampire.
I mean, it sounds vampire, soI'm going to say it's Abraham
Kuyper.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
That would be pretty dark for a theologian.
Well, there are some darktheologians.
Oh, there really are.
I mean it seems I mean okay.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
So Jonathan Edwards, right, you get to your game.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
But Jonathan Edwards.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
He has this post, like you know people apparently
asked him questions like mychildren died, they were
unbaptized.
How can I be happy in heaven?
And he said you will be moreblissful watching your
unbaptized child burn foreverbecause you will, in heaven,
understand the justice of it alland you would not be nearly as

(36:24):
so.
Yeah, that's, I mean it couldbe a theologian, yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
All right, here's one that sounds a little bit like
that.
The day of death is better thanthe day of birth.
That's theologian.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Yeah, that's got to be Jonathan Evers, right there.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
That's Ecclesiastes 7.1.
We live forever and yet we arealways dying.
Vampire, that sounds vampire-y,theologian.
Oh, this is for MichaelPapazian.
The rest of the other two wereright.
So that's a paraphrase fromOnly Lovers Left Alive from that
movie.

(36:58):
All right, let's do this lastone here.
Last one.
Children gather round for nottoo long for this world, am I?
But we had a good run.
That's not Pope Leo, is it?

Speaker 4 (37:09):
I did not gather round.
We had a good run Vampire.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
It can't be a vampire because you know yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
It could be Like it could be a I don't know Children
.
It could be.
It could be I don't know.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
Children gather round .

Speaker 1 (37:18):
That is Michael Bailey, according to his family.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Is he a vampire or not?
I was going to say that I saychildren gather round all the
time.
I came up with this idea liketwo minutes before the podcast,
I texted him.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
I said I'm doing this game show.
I said tell me some thingsabout death that your dad said
that's good, that's good.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
I that's good.
I like that.
It's a good quote.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Children gather round for not too long for this world
, am I, but we had a good run.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
I mashed up some of the things.
I had my first gather roundwith my son-in-law, Zachary,
this last weekend.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Is that right?
So I did.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
I said Zachary gather round.
I must tell you.
I said you must love oneanother and be kind, and I'm not
long for this world.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Well, because I was here, yeah, of course.
And they said if you're notclose to death, but just sick,
it's Paul Widow.
Mikey, yeah, so that was theother one.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Just not text my children anymore.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Okay, I should have gotten permission ahead of time.
No, that's fine.

Speaker 4 (38:13):
But thank you for playing.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Vampire or Theologian , all right.
Well, I don't think we shouldgo into great detail here, but
spend a little bit of timetalking about some other horror
movies that made an impact on us, especially because of the
religious imagery.
So who would like to get usstarted here?

Speaker 4 (38:30):
So mine might be the oldest, mine's 68.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Okay, yeah, mine is 73.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
So the historian wants us to go in chronological
order.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
I think mine's 1960-ish 1960.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Okay, you better go, so you go first.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Oh well, I'm not going to talk about Midnight
Mass, all right, so I just wantthat on the record.
Okay, I mean I will talk aboutit really and interpolate it
into no mine is one of myfavorite horror movies, which is
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
And the original.
And one thing I like about thismovie is I think it's a little
bit like Groundhog Day in thesense that no matter what your
ethical worldview is, you thinkthat Groundhog Day is a
beautiful depiction of that.
It illuminates your particularview and I think you can sort of
throw anything into Invasion ofthe Body Snatchers, kind of

(39:17):
like they did in Sinners.
Well, this is not a mashup atall, unlike Sinners, but
Invasion of the Body Snatchersis very much what the title
suggests.
And so there is some sort ofalien being that is taking over
human beings in their form andthey become which I got this

(39:37):
phrase pod people right.
They never use that particularexpression, but there's these
pods.
And so the idea is, you havethe sense of the uncanny or
uncanny valley, as you havethese people walking around who
don't have souls and you can'tput your finger on what it is
about that, and so it's probablysome sort of at the time

(39:59):
discussion of communism andcollectivism.
But it can also be thought offrom a Christian perspective of
how do we know we have souls andyou have this imperative to
share people about the threat,and so I think it's important
that in this movie you lose yoursoul when you're sleeping.
So you know you have to beawake and alert and vigilant,

(40:20):
and then no one believes theperson, you know the person who
has figured out what's happened,and so he's trying to, you know
, evangelize what's happeningand no one is believing, and so
this horrible, sinful, outsidealien collective is taking over.

Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, so I never would have thought of that as
yeah, having the religiousconnotation, so you know
religious theme, it makes sensenow that you explained it.
I always thought, yeah, it'sabout communism.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
I think it is about communism.
But I mean depends on what youmean by a Christian movie.
So I think of a Christian movieas one that's consistent with
sort of Christian sensibilities,that's all.

Speaker 4 (40:54):
Yeah, so all right.
So all right.
I'm going to go with the 1968Rosemary's Baby right Starring
Mia Farrell, who does a greatjob, Directed by Roman Polanski,
Really well done film whereit's a think inversion of the
Immaculate Conception, All right.
So it's a couple who's livingin New York.
They move into a new apartment.

(41:16):
The husband is a strugglingactor looking to get ahead.
There's neighbors who for mostof the movie seem like they
could just be nosy and kind ofintrusive, but the husband gets
really close with them.
They're very encouraging on hisacting career.

(41:39):
The woman they try to have afamily and this is where I guess
you start to see the film'smore religious connotations, or
the horror part of it.
While dreaming, it's hard totell what's going on.
She's kind of in this haze.
She is raped by Satan, butyou're not sure whether she just
thinks that's what has happenedor whether that is really what

(42:01):
has happened.
And it turns out it's reallywhat has happened.
And she goes through thispregnancy.
It turns out her husband hadagreed to allow this to occur in
order to advance his actingcareer.
Yeah, she finds out that theneighbors really are like the
leaders of this satanic.
They're witches as well and sothey're using magic to do things

(42:24):
she tries to escape.
She's brought back, has thebaby.
She's told it's dead, but it'snot really dead.
She hears it crying, and themovie ends with her kind of
realizing what she has givenbirth to and them trying to
convince her that it is the dutyof a mother to take care of
this child of Satan and to raisethis child, and it looks like

(42:47):
at the end of the movie she'sgoing to do it, that the
mother's love is more important,and so just this whole kind of
yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
And they leave it ambiguous at that.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
Yeah, kind of.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
That is terrifying.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
It is terrifying, incredible movie yeah, kind of,
that is terrifying, it isterrifying, incredible movie
yeah, it's really great and wewatched it last night knowing
this was coming up and I didn'teven catch this.
The first time she was raisedCatholic.
She says and the Pope issupposed to be visiting New York
, but yeah, and they're havingdinner with the witches, their
neighbors when this occurs andthey're like, oh, organized

(43:22):
religion it's all costumes andshowbiz, right?
So, unlike Satanism, I guess,where you go around nude.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yeah, so it was very interesting.
I thought the neighbors wereall, if I recall I was in your
side, but weren't they all likereally innocuous, like you
expect them to be part of, oflike a Maxwell house coffee
commercial right?
You know, just old and verysweet, sophisticated you know,
that's how the devil appears.

Speaker 4 (43:47):
Sort of like the vampires in sinners Very much
yeah, so, yeah, so that was yeah, so that is the one that I
found yeah, great.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
That's it.
It was a good, that's a good.
These are both great examples.
So mine is the Exorcist, whichcame out in 1973, based on a
novel that was published in 1971by William Peter Blatty.
And I was okay, so I was eightwhen the Exorcist came out and I
remember adults talking aboutit.
I remember like people saying oh, you know, you go to the movies

(44:18):
and you throw up or you faint,and apparently things like that
happened.
And so immediately I wasintrigued.
When I was only eight Icouldn't watch it, so it was
kind of like taboo.
But of course, if it's a tabooyou want to do it, you want to
watch it.
But it wasn't until I think Iwas in college and it was on

(44:38):
like late night, it was likethree in the morning, which is
probably not the best time towatch it For our younger
listeners.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
there was a time when you had to actually watch the
show when it was scheduled to beon the television.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Before there was Netflix or streaming.
It was terrible, it wasprimitive.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
We were like animals.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
You had to go find a VCR or somebody who had the tape
Right exactly.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
So I watched it and I find it just a.
I mean, I was completely takenin.
This is like a great work andit's a horror and it's a very
effective horror, but it's alsovery theologically profound and
it makes sense.
It was Blatty.
He was a graduate of Georgetown, educated by Jesuits, a very
serious Catholic, and I justlove the way it was filmed.

(45:24):
It begins with a scene in Iraqwhere a priest, who's also an
archaeologist, discovers thistalisman of an ancient god who
turns out to be the demon thatpossesses Linda Blair, who's the
actress who plays the Regan,who's the who's was the one who
was possessed.
And it's filmed in Georgetownarea in DC, and there's a priest

(45:47):
, young priest, father Damien,who has doubts about his, about
his faith.
I mean just the portrayal, Imean he actually I think he
embodies for me, like thetortured priest.
Yeah, I mean just perfectacting and it was just, it's
just wonderful.
And so there were a couple ofthemes that, first of all, he's
a psychiatrist too, and there'sa scene where he's speaking with

(46:10):
Chris it was played by AlanBurstyn who's the mother of
Regan, of the possessed, andwhen they first meet each other
and she's first of all, he comes, he's not dressed as a priest.
He said I'm sorry, I'm dressedas a civilian, but then he says
that.
You know I'm a psychiatrist anda priest too, and she's kind of
surprised at that.

(46:30):
And but he said he was a priest.
I mean, he was ordained alreadyand the Jesuits sent him to
Harvard and Johns Hopkins tostudy psychiatry and medicine.
And so there's this, right away.
There's this sort of, you know,science versus religion thing
going on as well, andparticularly the assumption is

(46:52):
that it was his psychiatriceducation that caused him to
have these doubts.
So in a way it's very sort of,you know, a profound critique of
modern psychiatry.
You know, making everything amedical condition.
There's no such thing as justsin or evil.
You're sick, right, and I thinkthat was what the movie and
Blatty were critical about.
And so, you know, when EllenBurstyn asks you know the actor,
father Karras or Father DamienKarras is his last name, you

(47:15):
know I need to find an exorcisthe says you'll have to go back
to the 16th century.
The church is way beyond that.
We don't do that Well, but itturns out that's not the case.
The movie is trying to portraythat you know, the evil is still
there.
The church still recognizesthat.
So in a way it's a sort of avery conservative move
politically and religiously.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
And it's sort of you know, there's this's this notion
, that?
No, that there's a realitybeyond.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
I mean, that's what all horror points to that the
supernatural and that we can'tjust sort of explain everything
away scientifically.
Let me interrupt you just for asecond because that's a point
that you know.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
I have no interest in horror.
You know, on its own I don'tenjoy horror movies at all.
But I have become over the lastcouple of years more aware and
just more, finding it moreinteresting that it's the one
place that takes religionseriously.
In some ways it's the one genrethat takes religion seriously,
because there is somethingbeyond our earthly existence and

(48:12):
at least religion is.
Even if it's faulty, even ifit's doubtful, they're still
taking it.
The supernatural realm is thereand needs to be dealt with.
Yeah, there is something tothat.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
I'll just interject yeah, go ahead.
Cs Lewis talks about and Ithink when we last time talked
about horror film, I may havebrought this up as well he talks
about this distinction betweenkind of fear that you have out
of your own self-interest.
He says imagine if there was atiger in the next room.

(48:45):
Right, he said.
Well, you'd be fearful, howwould you get out, and so on,
and obviously you might approachsomething like terror.
But he said you know, if youwere told and believe that there
was a ghost in the next room,he said that would elicit a
totally different kind ofreaction where essentially you'd
feel dread and what is at stakein that would be not so much
just your self-interest but yourplace in reality your own
identity and your nature of howthings work, and I do think you

(49:08):
have lots of movies that, likeJaws, is considered to be a
horror, I think it's a thriller.
I make this very sharpdistinction that's probably
unwarranted between horrormovies and thrillers, and I
think for horror they have tohave the noumenal or ineffable,
they have to have some sort ofsense of mysteries that can't be
explained by science.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
That shark is kind of more than a shark.
There is some element.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
I think of no Country for Old Men is basically a
horror movie because AntonChigurh has the same sort of
Jaws-like otherworldly.
I think he represents death andit works, though, as a symbol,
so carry on with the exercise,yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
So well.
One other thing is that thiswas, I mean, people lined up to
see it, even if you know thiswas like the biggest gross.
Apparently, when the novel cameout it wasn't.
It didn't sell very well untilBlatty was the author, was
interviewed by Dick Cavett.
I think it was a really oldinterview show, he was great.
Yeah, and Dick Cavett askedBlatty, you know, is Satan real?

(50:09):
And apparently the audience wasenthralled when he started
talking about.
Yeah, there is a Satan and thereare demons and all, and the
sales for his book went afterthat interview.
There were just there's thiskind of fascination for also for

(50:30):
and it's interesting, you knowa largely Protestant and at that
time mostly more mainlineProtestant country where you
know there was more sort ofChristianity, was had sort of
you know kind of moved away fromthe more ritual, the more
mysterious, yes, and become morerational.
This was a sense of kind of athirst for that more.

(50:50):
What's what?
sometimes people call weirdChristianity.
Yeah, the rituals, the ancientlanguages, the incense and all
that that.
There was this, you knowthere's this, yeah, there's this
rite of exorcism in theCatholic Church.
There are Catholic priests whoare certified to be exorcists
and you know they performexorcisms.
That this is a side ofChristianity that maybe had not

(51:13):
the same kind of profile that ithas now, and I think there was
a sense in which, you know, evenwithin the heart of the most
rationalist Protestant, therewas a yearning for this kind of
older, more traditional kind ofspirituality in Christianity,
Christianity is just spooky, Ithink.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
I think probably most religions are spooky, but
Christianity is no less spooky.
I mean the sense that deathisn't death, you're not really
dead when you die.
I think that's a big issue.
The idea that people God, maybeangels, certainly Satan, maybe
certain prophets know whatyou're thinking without you

(51:49):
saying it.
The idea you're beingconstantly watched.
I mean, seen from oneperspective, it is kind of a
horror movie.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
And that you have to drink blood in order to have
eternal life.
So the notion is let's makeChristianity spooky again.
It is kind of a horror movieand that you have to drink blood
in order to have eternal life,right, I mean, so it is, yeah.
So the notion is yeah, let'smake Christianity spooky again.
Yeah, right, because it is atits core.
Any attempt to de-spookify itis also taking away the power of
the faith too.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
So that's what I got out of the Exorcist.
Very cool, very cool, and mymovie and I'll try to do this
fairly quickly was much morerecent.
It was I Am Legend and alsobased on a book, and this was a
movie that I had no intention ofseeing, didn't know anything
about it.
Ingrid had a doctor'sappointment on the other side of
town when we were in Pensacolavisiting a specialist, and there

(52:39):
was a mix-up and so we weren'table to visit.
We weren't able to go untilmuch later in the afternoon, and
so we just found a place whereyou could have a little food and
we sat in a movie to take thetime away, and it was I Am
Legend, and it's this movieabout Something that seems to be
pretty popular In movies todayA virus that breaks out.
Is this Will Smith?
It's Will Smith, yes, yes, andeverybody dies.

(53:01):
Basically, there's just ahandful of people who are immune
to this virus, and Will Smithis one of them, and basically
he's in New York City, right,new York City.

Speaker 4 (53:11):
Yeah, I don't think I've seen it.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
Is that right?
So New York City, totally emptyNew York City, and it sort of
shows his day very slowly.
But at night there are thesedark seekers that come out and
they're basically vampire-zombiehybrids, which are all the
humans that were infected by thevirus.
And this movie while I'mwatching it, I just had this

(53:34):
almost epiphany.
These dark seekers were in theuncanny valley because you could
tell that they were human, butthey had lost all their human
qualities, or all of their humanqualities had been tainted in a
way that they were not whatthey were supposed to be, but
you can still tell it.
That's what they were.
And I had this revelationalmost like oh my goodness, this
is when we talk about sin andhow sin impacts all of us.

(53:55):
I said I wonder if I'm lookingat these dark seekers like God
looks at us right in terms ofhow sin has changed us and we
are not the creations that weare supposed to be, that there's
something that falls short.
And so I just had this reallyprofound moment of thinking that
I understood my sense of sin ina new way that I found very
profound the end of the movie.
Well, there's Christian themesthroughout the whole movie.

(54:17):
There's posters everywhere thatsays God is still with us.
There's butterfly themesthroughout the whole movie.
There's posters everywhere thatsays God is still with us.
There's butterfly symbolismthroughout.
And, just for anyone who doesgo and watch this, some people
miss this butterfly symbolism.
When the dark seeker smashesagainst the window at the very
end, the breakage of the windowis in the shape of a butterfly
even, and so you have thatsymbol of new life.

(54:39):
But the movie takes a verydifferent ending than the book
and some people were infuriatedby this because the ending of
the movie is very Christian,very Christocentric.
And again, I probably like thismovie because the imagery was
so obvious.
Right, will Smith cries out.
He's a researcher and he's beenlooking for a cure and he

(55:00):
finally figures out the cure andhe yells out the cure is in the
blood.
I thought you'd say it isfinished no, he didn't quite do
that, but he out the cure is inthe blood.
I thought you were going to sayit is finished no, he didn't
quite do that, but he said thecure is in the blood.
And ultimately, to get theblood to the few people who

(55:20):
still live on Earth that canhelp the zombie vampires become
human again, he sacrifices hislife.
Now there's not a resurrectionmoment for him, but he
sacrifices his life to providethe blood that saves humanity.
And so there's thisresurrection, the book, and
there's also an alternativeending that you can see on
YouTube.
Actually, will Smith recognizesthat these people, even though
that they're tarnished, stillhave the capacity for love.

(55:41):
They still love one another,and so he decides not to try to
change them back to human.
Oh, wow, yeah.
And so it's a very differenttheme, but it's a theme that
love is still possible even inthat broken state.
So, either way, I think it hassome powerful Christian themes
to it and I really enjoyed it,and there was some good humor in
it as well.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
So you would have appreciated that part.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Michael so great.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
But what I like about your analogy a lot is you're
suggesting that these darkseekers is that what?
They're called Right or notmore lovable, but they're
somehow tarnished right.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
And in your analogy you said you were seeing this,
trying to think of how God mayview us, but then to think,
knowing what you know or whatyou proclaim about God, and I
believe that you believe this isthat God loves us despite that.
And so that does reveal, justsort of an astounding way, just
the beauty of that story.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Yeah, you said that much more clearly than I did,
but had intended to say it thatway, so I'm just gonna splice
your voice into mine somehow andtake credit for that.
So great, well, is thereanything that we didn't say that
we wanted to talk about?
No, well, I had fun talkingabout it with you and thank you
all again for coming to themovie with me.
I had a good time, and I justwant to thank our audience for

(56:53):
sitting around the table with ustoday, and I hope that we have
provided you with some food forthought and something to chew on
, and we might have a few morecomments after this.
We all got to run out toanother event here in a second,
but we might say a few more.
Have some leftovers for you toenjoy.
We appreciate your support andif you have a chance, please
consider ranking us andreviewing us wherever you get
your podcasts.

(57:13):
And until we gather around thetable next time, this has been
Church Potluck.
Thank you so much so.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
I got a question for you.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Is Wizard of Oz a horror movie?
I mean, it terrified me as akid, right, it definitely has
elements of fantasy.
There's things that you can'tquite explain, despite.
I mean, you have witches, right, you have flying monkeys, yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
I don't know, I've never thought of it that way,
but it is interesting that youcan make the case, I guess.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
I just know that as a kid, two years in a row I had
to run out of the room.
I stood and watched the sceneswith the flying monkeys in the
doorway between the kitchen andour family room, where they were
, and I felt my body moving awayfrom the TV.
I had no control over it, sothat was probably when I was
like 17, 18.
No, I'm joking.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
I think of myself as a scaredy cat, but I have always
loved the flying monkeys.
Even as a young child I foundthem cool.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
So you went and saw Wicked right.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Yeah right.
Is that horror I was thinkingthat, because it's told from the
Wicked Witch's point of viewright.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
So is that one horror , Because it doesn't seem to me
like Dorothy makes it home andyeah, she has to overcome these
things, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
No, I mean part of again.
For me, what makes a horrormovie versus, you know, a
thriller is there does have tobe for me, and I'm not saying
this is I'm not trying to becategorical here for everyone,
but I feel like there needs tobe a sense of the noumenal, of
the uncanny, and I feel like theoriginal Wizard of Oz has that
to me more than Wicked.
But you know I can't back thatup because I don't know either

(58:51):
film especially well.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Well, is it just because the flying monkeys are
unnatural Like?

Speaker 1 (58:55):
is it because you can have a cartoon where, like a
rabbit talks.
And the Wicked Witch right andDorothy's life is in peril.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Yeah, and that's you know.
When I first start teachinghere, I used to ask people I've
asked this to christy and Iwould I'd ask people what's more
frightening for you?
would encountering someskinheads or flying monkeys and,
like everyone says, oh,skinheads you know, and I always
thought it was flying, becauseI just thought, no, it doesn't
seem like an evolutionary thing.

(59:24):
This seems like they are.
They got some sort of magicalthing going on.
I mean, I couldn't go toWalmart if I was afraid of
skinheads, I think, so that'sprobably a bad joke, yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, I think a case can bemade.
There are horror elements to it, but it's also fantasy too.
Yeah, right, and there's aconnection between fantasy and
horror.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
I mean, there's not a lot of blood, you know, because
even the witch just kind ofmelts.
Yeah, it doesn't, it's not, Idon't know.
It seems like gore isn't well.
Where's Mary's baby?

Speaker 1 (59:58):
Would you rather be gore to death or melt to death?
Melt, I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:00:02):
I Melt, I guess, I don't know One more.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
If you were very squeamish about gore, then
Sinners may not be your movie.
That's about as much.
It was almost Tarantino-esquewithout the humor.

Speaker 4 (01:00:15):
Just so over the top, even the end scene, which does
not include a supernaturalelement, is full of gore and
death with the machine gun.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
I mean, I think of Alice in Wonderland as kind of
really scary.
Oh, it's terrifying so thatcould be horror literature.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
I really hate that.
Yeah, I mean, I respect it, Iappreciate it.
I think the guy did a reallyscary thing.
Oh, he was nuts, yeah, and allthe right ways, except for that
one way Terrified me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
I mean, he was a brilliant log and mathematician,
but also in a really strangemind.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
And wrote something so irrational.
Well, it goes together.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
When you study reason , you also understand
irrationality.
I was going to say how can youknow what's irrational if you
aren't very clear on what isrational?

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Are any of you fans of the horror genre?
Do you typically go to gorythings or horror things?

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
I'm not like, I don't go out of my way to, but I
appreciate it a lot.
I mean, there was something.
I mean this is a question thatpsychologists and philosophers
have been puzzling over is whywe find, you know, entertainment
, why we find horrorentertaining, and how we can
sort of suspend our belief thatit's all just acting or fiction,
and yet we still find itenjoyable.

(01:01:25):
And, you know, it's kind oflike eating foods that are very
spicy, or roller coasters too.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Or listening to true crime podcasts and all the
details that come out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Well, they say that.
I mean one evolutionaryexplanation is that this is
preparing us for the things wemight encounter in life, and
some people have argued thatnightmares are doing that
function.
They're kind of the mind isprepping itself for these
nightmare situations which mightbe real and that horror is kind
of an extension of that.
So, we do inflict horror movieson ourselves involuntarily.

(01:01:56):
Those of us who experiencednightmares.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
No, I definitely like scary movies.
I would see a lot more, but I'mnot necessarily encouraged at
home to see them, so I wastrying to think of like a list
of horror movies that I like andwhether roughly call them as
you know, consonant with someChristian sensibilities.
And there is a fairly long listof scary movies that I've seen.
I probably I haven't seen a lotof the contemporary ones.

(01:02:20):
So yeah, I one one trend.
I don't know if we're out ofthat trend, but there was a
trend for a while where in the70s although you think this is a
70s thing, but more in theteens, in the aughts, is where
it all goes to pieces.
I mean, it does not end, it's aterrible ending, and I, as a

(01:02:41):
film lover of the 70s, I alwaysthink, well, I don't need a
happy ending, but it turns outin a horror movie when it just
ends with dread, I don't likethat.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
So yeah, so this kind of gets us back.
I want to go back to Sinnersjust for a second Sure Alternate
ending versus what I thoughtwas going to be the ending,
which is leaving us not knowingwhether he drops the guitar or
not, right, yeah, I thought thatwould have been a great ending.
What did you guys Did youappreciate it?
I thought so, too, would havebeen a great ending.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
What did you guys, did you appreciate it?
I thought so too.
In fact, I thought it was goingto end.
Yeah, me too, I thought it was.

Speaker 4 (01:03:08):
Yeah, so don't leave as soon as the credits come on,
if you haven't seen this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
I want Please.

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
I want to say drop it , please drop it.
That's not.
I really thought he was goingto.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
I really thought he was find it fascinating and I'd
be curious to see what you allthink about this.
You know, at the very end Ithink it was at the second
ending it says I still think ofthat day as one of the best days
of my life because until it,all broke down.
But that's kind of part of it,isn't it?
You can't have, you can't havethat without the other, and
there's just so much I want youto say.
I got more to say, but you goahead.
You were gonna say something.
Well, went back to.
You think it's sort of profoundthat everything is about erotic

(01:03:49):
sex, right, and so it seemslike there is a type of movie
attitude.
Eros is what I'd prefer to sayEros yeah.
Okay, that's better.
But that hedonism, that fillingup the senses, really is where
everything is at.
That is true.
The true epitome of humanexperience is filling up the
human senses, which I thinkChristianity has been wrong

(01:04:12):
historically to say you got toavoid all of those things in
order to be pure and holy, butto think of those as the
ultimate you know, just even tothink of Eros as more ultimate
than agape just seems yeah.
Well, I don't think it has tobe just about the senses, though
I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
To me you can be inspired by art.
I don't know if that's just amatter of it appealing to your
senses.
Help me out here.
But Kant doesn't he say that,when it comes to art and
aesthetics, that if it appealsto your.
So if you look at a painting ofsome fruit and you get hungry,
painting has failed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
It has to appeal to something higher.
It has to be.
There's a sublimity to it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Yeah, so the neon of the sublime that is inspiring,
that you know, that lifts you up, or just you feel awe, those
can be related to, can bemediated through the body, but
it doesn't, I wouldn't say,carnal.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
This is one of the blind spots that I have how
aesthetics can lead to thesublime For sure.
I typically don't experiencethe sublime that way that's
really.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
without that I probably wouldn't be a believer
at all.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
That's definitely a conversation we'll have on air.
Yeah, love it as well as off.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
I love the ending, by the way, the second ending,
even though I was ready to bedone.
I felt like the ending in asense almost redeemed the whole
movie from my perspective.
It also, I thought, was aconclusion completely consistent
with Christianity, the sensethat you've been given a gift,

(01:05:43):
you have the whole package.
It comes with death, it comeswith sadness, it comes with deep
sorrow in the valleys, but it'sworth it still.
And he was able to find thatbeauty and expression and he was
willing to take all of the badbecause of so much good that
comes with creation.
And I feel like I'm a creationguy and more than a fall guy.

(01:06:04):
I used to be a fall guy, right,but now I think that gives too
much power to human beings todestroy God's work.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Yeah, no, I'm with you on that, Even though my
movie example was all about sinin the fall.
I totally agree with you.
I like that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
So it's more godly to keep playing when God has given
you this gift than it is todrop it so you could stay in
your desk church.
Drop it so you could stay inyour desk church, and that was
kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
One of my criticisms, again coming from a very
Christian perspective, is thatalmost for me it created a false
dichotomy right that you canonly do good music, you can only
experience that sublimeaesthetics outside of the
boundary of the church.
But there's some kind of goodevidence for that too.
In some ways in certain partsof history you made a little

(01:06:46):
mocking about the praise band.
Yeah, but Bach is a goodcounter-argument.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
There you go, probably the best, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
Cool, all right, all right.
Well, thank you all very much,sure.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
Yeah.