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SMNTY Classics: What Possession Movie Tropes Say About Us · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. What coome stuff? I
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: never told you, but actuld buy Heart Radio now here
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is a classic. We have to revisit, Samantha, because you
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: were not with me. You had COVID, and I recorded
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: this by myself, and I think you would have a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about it. It is about what possession
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: movie tropes say about us. Oh yeah, who gets possessed?
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Why did they get possessed? Yeah, all of those things.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And this was a Monday mini so I think there's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of room too. Okay, you know what we're
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: putting it in here. It's going to be in our
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: October episodes. We're going to do this one. Yeah. I
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot to say. I have thought excellent.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Well until then, listeners, please enjoy this classic episode. Hey
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: this is Annie. I'm welcome to stefan Never Told You
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio. Yes, I am still by myself.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Samantha is down for the count with COVID. Right now.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: We've got a lot of travel coming up, so trying
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: to get ahead. And I will say for this episode,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I am largely quoting one article from tour dot com
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  Speaker 1: called from the Exorcist to talk to me Possession Films
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: teach Us to Fear the Wrong Things by j R. Farasteros.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I hope I got that someone correct. That my good
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: friend Barry sent to me because he knows I love
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: all things possession, which is funny. I thought it was
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: kind of appropriate because we're wrapping up our religious miniseries Promise,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: but I'm not religious. I am not religious at all,
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  Speaker 1: but I do find myself drawn to these stories, and
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: we're really focusing on Western Christian ideas of possession for this.
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  Speaker 1: My mom wouldn't let me watch The Exorcisse. She wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: let me have it in her house because she was
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  Speaker 1: so afraid of it. And I have just found myself
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  Speaker 1: gravitating to a lot of these stories sometimes, and sometimes
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  Speaker 1: that gives me pause. I'm like, why am I being
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  Speaker 1: drawn to this when I'm not religious? And I think
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that's you know, I don't believe in ghosts either, but
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I love ghost movies, so I don't think that's necessarily strange,
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  Speaker 1: but it is strange when a lot of Christian war
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: is wrapped up in it. One of my favorite movies
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: now is The X. And another reason this was on
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: my mind is because William Friedkin has died recently, and
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I also happened to see the new movie Talk to
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  Speaker 1: Me with some friends. There will be minor spoilers for
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that in here, but not that many. But when I
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: was watching it, it just occurred to me a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the stuff in this article, a lot from these
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  Speaker 1: quotes we're going to read that. I was kind of like, huh,
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  Speaker 1: it's interesting who gets possessed in a lot of these movies?
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  Speaker 1: What that says. So that being said, let us start
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: with our first quote. Possession films are inescapably religious. What
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  Speaker 1: that means changes from generation to generation and from culture
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  Speaker 1: to culture, As fans of South Korea's The Whaling can attest,
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  Speaker 1: The Exiorcist is undeniably the grandfather of possession films as
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  Speaker 1: a subgenre. Directed by William Friedkin, The Axiosist was really
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  Speaker 1: at least in nineteen seventy three, and it's based on
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a book of the same name written by William Peter
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  Speaker 1: Blattie that was released in nineteen seventy one. The Exorcist
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  Speaker 1: was a box office juggernaut, becoming the highest grossing movie
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  Speaker 1: of all time, a title it held for forty years
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  Speaker 1: and receiving ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Now, if
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  Speaker 1: you haven't read about this movie and the reactions people
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: had when it came out, they're quite dramatic. People were
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: getting sick, they were passing out like it was a
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  Speaker 1: very intense and for some people, very formative experience. I
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: remember when I first started at this job, I asked
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: my coworkers what was the scariest movie they'd ever seen.
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  Speaker 1: I'd say over half of them said The Exorcist. Then
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  Speaker 1: I would not describe them as religious. And it's just
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  Speaker 1: fascinating to me that it had that much of a impact.
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  Speaker 1: And I do think it's important to keep in mind
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  Speaker 1: the time when this came out, and who was being possessed,
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  Speaker 1: what was the story going on behind it in terms
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  Speaker 1: of You've got your single mother who is a career woman,
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  Speaker 1: and her sweet daughter is the one that gets possessed.
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  Speaker 1: So that being said, here's another quote to that point.
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  Speaker 1: The Exorcist is a baby boomer horror movie. Through and through.
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  Speaker 1: The good guys here are the institutional church embodied by
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  Speaker 1: the two priests. Both the book and film were released
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  Speaker 1: in a time of cultural anxiety, particularly with regard to religion.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: The FDA authorized the birth control pill a decade later
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty, which gave women control over their reproductive
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  Speaker 1: system for the first time in history, with predictable outcomes.
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  Speaker 1: Not just the free love movement of the sixties, but
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: a massive change in marriage habits and the twenty years
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  Speaker 1: after that the pill was released, divorce rates more than doubled,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: are the percentage of adults over eighteen who are married
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  Speaker 1: plummeted into this milieu, Laddie and Friedkin give us the
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  Speaker 1: story of a broken home in which a young girl
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  Speaker 1: is tormented by puberty demon and can only find solace
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  Speaker 1: when a father comes into the house. As Jude Doyle
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: explains in Dead Blonds and Bad Mothers, Reagan's smooth baby's
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  Speaker 1: skin erupts and scabs over into weeping, discolored mess. She
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  Speaker 1: has outbursts of temper, insults, and resists authority figures, makes
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  Speaker 1: display of sheer pointless defiance. She talks obsessively about sex,
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  Speaker 1: mostly to shock people. She masturbates, she bleeds from her vagina.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, Reagan becomes a teenager. Her demon is puberty,
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  Speaker 1: and yeah, I would also add she curses a lot.
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  Speaker 1: That's kind of a plot point. Is like, oh, she's cursing. Now. Basically,
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  Speaker 1: she goes from like you're very innocent and heavy quotes
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  Speaker 1: young child, too, not messy, angry, somewhat violent. I don't know,
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  Speaker 1: maybe I'm being too nice, fit violent, obsessed with sex, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: obsessed with shocking people, like saying things to shock people.
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  Speaker 1: And she she is like she set the right age
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  Speaker 1: for puberty, for sure, and she does. I thought that
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  Speaker 1: was interesting pointing out, like the father has to come
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  Speaker 1: into the house. I hadn't really thought about that. And
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I also want to come back and do a follow
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: up episode about nuns now that the nun has become
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  Speaker 1: this horror icon and talk about nuns and horror. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's how she's saved. As a father comes into this
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  Speaker 1: house with where her biological father is notably accent, she
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  Speaker 1: gets the church father is the one that saves her.
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  Speaker 1: The quote continues. The exiosist is family based on a
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  Speaker 1: true story and exorcism perform in Saint Louis in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forty nine. The real child was a boy, not a girl,
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  Speaker 1: and he came from a two parent home. The framework
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  Speaker 1: that resonated so strongly with moviegoers in nineteen seventy three
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  Speaker 1: was entirely artifice, a reflection not of the true story,
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  Speaker 1: but of white American anxieties. So yeah, that's I mean,
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  Speaker 1: that's interesting that they thought this would hit more with
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  Speaker 1: audiences that it was a young girl. And in a
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  Speaker 1: lot of the extorcism movies I've seen, it is often
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a young girl or young woman. I had a friend
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: say to me recently, why is I think he was
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: talking about Monster Squad. It's been a long time since
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  Speaker 1: I've seen Monster Squad. But why did the virgin have
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: to be a woman? Why what? There is a lot
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of male virgins about. But yeah, I mean, I think
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  Speaker 1: that goes back to the ultimate corruption. In a lot
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  Speaker 1: of our horror is young usually white girls, who are innocent.
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  Speaker 1: But when it happens with men, I feel like it's
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  Speaker 1: much more often usedes they kill their whole family or something,
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  Speaker 1: are a very violence, whereas with women it's much more
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  Speaker 1: like take their soul. That's just my experience. There's a
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  Speaker 1: lot of movies without possession and extioucism. The quote continues.
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  Speaker 1: Compare that to James Wand's twenty thirteen The Conjuring, also
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  Speaker 1: based on a true story, though set in the early
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  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, the conjuring embodies the anxieties of millennials rather
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: than their boomer parents. The Warrens contact the Catholic Church
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  Speaker 1: to obtain an exioroucism, but because the parent family isn't Catholic,
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  Speaker 1: approval for the right must come from the Vatican, and
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  Speaker 1: the Warrens are convinced the family won't survive long enough
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  Speaker 1: for that approval to come. In the reality, the child
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  Speaker 1: of another family did die in Bashida's care, and she
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  Speaker 1: was tried for murder, with rumors swirling that she had
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  Speaker 1: sacrificed the child in an act of witchcraft. The court
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  Speaker 1: found her innocent, however, But yeah, that movie is very
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  Speaker 1: much my friends and I like to joke again, I
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  Speaker 1: enjoy this movie, but we like to joke that it's
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: sort of like superhero Christians like swooping in and it
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  Speaker 1: is that the first one is very much about motherhood,
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  Speaker 1: and that's sort of how it's like Basheebah's ultimate sin
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  Speaker 1: is that she's killing these children, and that's how they
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  Speaker 1: save the main woman, the mother of the family, is
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: they remind her of like how important her children are
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  Speaker 1: to her, which is not necessarily a bad storyline. It's
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  Speaker 1: just worth examining why that is. There's also a lot
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  Speaker 1: of messaging about the dangers of not following God. There's
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  Speaker 1: a whole warning about you, you know, you need to
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  Speaker 1: get your children baptized or else, sort of almost blaming them,
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  Speaker 1: like this wouldn't have happened if you had followed God.
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  Speaker 1: The quote continues ed Warren is successful not because of
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  Speaker 1: the church, but despite the Church. What matters in the
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  Speaker 1: conjuring is not religious affiliation but belief, a particularly millennial
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  Speaker 1: attitude embodied by the phrase spiritual but not religious. Nearly
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  Speaker 1: a third Millennials claim no religious affiliation, compared with just
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  Speaker 1: thirteen percent of boomers and twenty percent of Gen X,
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  Speaker 1: whose defining possession film might be the middle finger to
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  Speaker 1: the American dream that is Beetlejuice. And I think that's
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  Speaker 1: really fascinating. I think that's interesting to look in how
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: it's shifted with generations, because I would agree. When I
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  Speaker 1: read that the whole spiritual but not religious, I was like, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that describes a lot of my friends. I even I
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  Speaker 1: remember having a very long conversation with a big group
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  Speaker 1: of my friends about this movie that was pretty much
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  Speaker 1: about like the Vatican was trying to cover up this
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: lost I don't know part of the Bible, and the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: lost part of the Bible was just saying, like the
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  Speaker 1: religion is, it's not the church, it's not the stone,
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  Speaker 1: it's not the building that is spiritual or religious or
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  Speaker 1: is going to save you. It's within you. It's being spiritual.
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  Speaker 1: And it was funny to me because I can't even
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  Speaker 1: remember the day. If I just tried to some of you,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I bet some of you do know right in. But
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't like a really well known movie, but a
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  Speaker 1: lot of us have seen it and had heard that
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  Speaker 1: part like yeah, resonated. But the quote continues to generalize
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  Speaker 1: a bit. Boomers love church. Gen Z rebelled against church.
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  Speaker 1: Millennials look for spirituality outside of church. Gen Z doesn't
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  Speaker 1: think about church much at all, which there has been
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  Speaker 1: a lot of headlines about that recently. I've I've seen
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  Speaker 1: quite a few, and we have been talking about that
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  Speaker 1: in our religious mini series. Okay, and then here is
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  Speaker 1: final quote. It's perhaps an unavoidable feature of Possession films
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  Speaker 1: that they teach us to be afraid of the wrong things.
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  Speaker 1: Often what's implicitly demonized is equality and dignity. Single parents,
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  Speaker 1: female sexuality, grief. We didn't even cover how insidious Chapter
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: two demonizes transgender people. Possession films, whether intentionally or not,
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  Speaker 1: communicate that a world without institutionalized faith is a world
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  Speaker 1: where we're at the mercy of evil powers that wish
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  Speaker 1: to do as harm. But when the institutions we're told
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  Speaker 1: should protect us prey upon us instead, maybe it's time
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  Speaker 1: to take our chances. Possession films, even those, as Groundbreaking
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: has talked to me, are conservative at their heart, but
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  Speaker 1: maybe gen Z has the right of it. Perhaps those
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  Speaker 1: institutions that have proven themselves so untrustworthy aren't worthy of conservation,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: which I think relates back to what we've been talking
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: about in this religious mini series, that we have so
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  Speaker 1: many examples of harm that these institutions have done, and
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that's not to say they haven't done good and that
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  Speaker 1: inherently makes religious people somehow wrong or something like that.
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  Speaker 1: Not at all. I think it's just questioning, as always,
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  Speaker 1: these messages that are being communicated to us through entertainment
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  Speaker 1: that we enjoy, which I enjoy. Like I said, the
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  Speaker 1: Exorcist is one of my favorite horror movies of all time.
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  Speaker 1: I really love the conjuring it. But it has always
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  Speaker 1: struck me who is targeted, who is possessed? Who does
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the saving? And that sort of message is still there,
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  Speaker 1: and I think a lot of us recognize that. I
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: think a lot of us recognize that it's often very
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: conservative in nature of like, oh, why does it have
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: to be a virginal girl who gets possessed and is
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: being tempted that going through a few aka a demon?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of us know that. But I
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: just wanted to bring that up because I have been
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: thinking about it recently, and in case anyone else has
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: any any other thoughts about it, maybe you remember the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: name of that movie I was talking about. I'm sure
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: it's gonna come to you right after this is over,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: or if you have any suggestions, Samantha and I would
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: love them. I'm really sad she wasn't here for this one.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I bet we'll have to come back to it in
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the meantime. You can email us at Sefida mom Stuff
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• 15:41
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