Finalist, 2021 Bram Stoker Awards (Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction)
The first collection of essays to address Satan's ubiquitous and popular appearances in film
Lucifer and cinema have been intertwined since the origins of the medium. As humankind's greatest antagonist and the incarnation of pure evil, the cinematic devil embodies our own culturally specific anxieties and desires, reflecting moviegoers' collective conceptions of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and salvation. Giving the Devil His Due is the first book of its kind to examine the history and significance of Satan onscreen.
This collection explores how the devil is not just one monster among many, nor is he the "prince of darkness" merely because he has repeatedly flickered across cinema screens in darkened rooms since the origins of the medium. Satan is instead a force active in our lives. Films featuring the devil, therefore, are not just flights of fancy but narratives, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes calling into question, a familiar belief system.
From the inception of motion pictures in the 1890s and continuing into the twenty-first century, these essays examine what cinematic representations tell us about the art of filmmaking, the desires of the film-going public, what the cultural moments of the films reflect, and the reciprocal influence they exert. Loosely organized chronologically by film, though some chapters address more than one film, this collection studies such classic movies as Faust, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, Angel Heart, The Witch, and The Last Temptation of Christ, as well as the appearance of the Devil in Disney animation.
Guiding the contributions to this volume is the overarching idea that cinematic representations of Satan reflect not only the hypnotic powers of cinema to explore and depict the fantastic but also shifting social anxieties and desires that concern human morality and our place in the universe.
Contributors: Simon Bacon, Katherine A. Fowkes, Regina Hansen, David Hauka, Russ Hunter, Barry C. Knowlton, Eloise R. Knowlton, Murray Leeder, Catherine O'Brien, R. Barton Palmer, Carl H. Sederholm, David Sterritt, J. P. Telotte, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Giving the Devil His Due
Regina M. Hansen and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 1
The Sign of the Cross: Georges Méliès and Early Satanic Cinema
Russ Hunter 15
Murnau's Faust and the Weimar Moment
Barry C. Knowlton and Eloise R. Knowlton 27
Disney's Devils
J. P. Telotte 42
What's the Deal with the Devil? The Comedic Devil in Four Films
Katherine A. Fowkes 58
His Father's Eyes: Rosemary''s Baby
David Sterritt 71
From the Eternal Sea He Rises, Creating Armies on Either Shore:
The Antichristology of the Omen Franchise
R. Barton Palmer 86
The Weird Devil: Lovecraftian Horror in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness
Carl H. Sederholm 103
Narration and Damnation in Angel Heart
Murray Leeder 120
The Devil's in the Details: Devilish Desire and Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 136
Agency or Allowance:
The Satanic Complications of Female Autonomy in The Witches of Eastwick and The Witch
Simon Bacon 149
"Roaming the Earth": Satan in The Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ
Catherine O'Brien 161
Lucifer, Gabriel, and the Angelic Will in The Prophecy and Constantine
Regina M. Hansen 178
Advocating for Satan: The Parousia-Inspired Horror Genre
David Hauka 191
List of Contributors 207
Index 211
About the Author :
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Edited By)
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is professor of English at Central Michigan University and an associate editor of the Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts. He has authored or edited twenty-four books, the most recent of which are The Monster Theory Reader (2019), Critical Approaches to Welcome to Night Vale: Podcasting Between Weather and the Void (2018), The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic (2018), and The Age of Lovecraft (2016). Visit him at JeffreyAndrewWeinstock.com.
Regina M. Hansen (Edited By)
Regina M. Hansen teaches at Boston University. She publishes and presents on horror, religion in film, neo-Victorianism, and the fantastic. Her works include the edited volumes Supernatural, Humanity and the Soul (with Susan George; 2014) and Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film, and a special Stephen King issue of Science Fiction Film and Television (with Simon Brown; 2017), along with the novel The Coming Storm (Atheneum 2021). Her writing on film, folklore, and the supernatural has appeared in the Wall Street Journal Review and the children's magazine Dig Into History.
Review :
Hansen and Weinstock have collected (a lucky) thirteen new essays exploring the Devil's cinematic avatars, from his earliest appearances in the films of George Méliès to the deliciously-living Black Phillip in The Witch (2015). Including discussions of generically-diverse films like Faust (1926), Prince of Darkness (1987), and The Passion of the Christ (2004), this volume will be of interest to theologians and film scholars alike.---Harry M. Benshoff, Professor of Media Arts, University of North Texas
