evil
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.
I missed you last week.
In September, Lexi Kent-Monning, author of Burden of Joy, and I talked about my books, journaling, Apt. #408, “community in writing” and more in Full Stop. Myriam Gurba, who is about to deliver Poppy State unto the world, talked with me about my books, dreams, spell-casting, survivorhood, and more in Flaming Hydra.
Part of the process of raising a kid sometimes feels like I’m downloading giant swaths of my experiences, curated and not, of my tastes, my preferences, the cultures that made me, into a new human, who then begins discerning her own tastes and preferences and starts adding and subtracting to create her own culture. And I have to remember it’s more complicated than just downloading. The other night we happened upon the AMC channel which was showing the film The Exorcist. I have a long relationship with this movie, starting when I was about 6 years old and it appeared on television. Part of my own relationship to the movie is grounded in my experience of being raised by a mother and a grandmother who believe in “God” and “Satan.” My mother allowed me to watch the movie, probably seeking to download some of her own fears into me. My grandmother downloaded as much as she could to me in the form of her version of Christianity, which included the existence of pure evil and the shapes it would take in the world (usually human). The malware of her download into me included the conclusion that the content of a movie such as The Exorcist could very well be taken literally (and if not, that was your own error in judgment).
I’ve never transmitted fears of “Satan” to my child, she watched portions of the movie in a completely different way than I ever had. It did not emotionally scar her. It did not threaten her sense of what is real and what is not. I’m not saying I was emotionally scarred, but it left its imprint, and for decades after seeing it the first time, I found it terrifying. Images that could be described as “Satanic” sometimes entered my dream life and I combatted those elements by shouting memorized prayers and psalms at them. It was only in my thirties that I started viewing it differently. Maybe it was the time I went to the beautiful movie theater in Seattle with friends to see the remastered, uncut version of the film? The spider walk was unforgettable and splendidly disturbing, but I was already starting to feel less provoked by the film. When I watched it last night with my kid (who popped in and out, pointedly missing any green pea vomit scenes), I noticed that I was humored. Laughing. We were eating pancakes and bacon for dinner watching The Exorcist! I love that movie. I love the young me who carried these images around with her her whole life, who fought evil forces in her dreams with, essentially, religious poetry. And I especially love that my kid could see this film and was, like, inoculated against it already. Any malware I may have downloaded into her baby consciousness does not include Christian notions of good and evil.
I’ve resisted the term “evil” to describe people often. The dichotomy of “good vs. evil” leaves out a lot. To describe a person who commits heinous acts as “evil” can flatten the perpetrator and on occasion, their victims.
However.
I found myself wondering last night if part of the reason I am so humored now by The Exorcist is in part because the flavor of “evil” in this film feels almost quaint. Priests, rituals, the particular Catholic iconography, all of it versus THE DEVIL. The power of Christ compels you! we say dramatically in unison with the priests over the body of the possessed. See, he gets out his magic kit, I said to the 14-year-old, as Father Merrin opened a small bag and took out its contents to prepare for the exorcism.
I can laugh at what is trying to scare me in this movie, finally, because it feels clever and entertaining, but also because we are living, right now, in a country, in a state, in a city, where people are being kidnapped off the streets, flown to countries they’ve never been to or had connections to, and in many cases, have not been seen or heard from again. A man tasked with the abductions says on camera the phrase “illegal alienage,” as though he himself would be safe, never suspect, if he wasn’t wearing the uniform of the kidnappers. The vice president of the country lies on television, saying that the reason people experience long wait times in the ER is because “often somebody who’s there is an illegal alien,” conveniently leaving out the fact that many hospitals are overloaded due to the lack of universal healthcare and private equity firms buying out regional hospitals in the pursuit of profit.
There are times when I’m scared living in this country. There are times when I’m in denial about my own fear. The Exorcist—and indeed any movie or book that used to scare me because it was rooted in the supernatural and “evil” don’t work on me anymore. We already live in a thriller, an ongoing true crime serial. I feel like I can start using the word evil, now, to describe those in power. They’re heeeeere, and they generate and foment hatred, they (as in the case of the “secretary of war” who was aptly described as “basically a meat cybertruck” online) encourage violence, they hoard wealth and resources, and don’t think twice about the harm they’re causing. They revel in it.
It walks, it lives, it breathes among us. It doesn’t require a soundtrack or admission fee. We may disagree on what to call them—authoritarians, fascists, whatever—but they, those in power, are the true evil, the real specters. They’re directing the waking nightmare we’re in.
Assemble your magic kits, your spells, your righteous poems, gather your wits, your allies, and your accomplices. See a showing of One Battle After Another. Take good care. I’m with you in spirit and in solidarity.
my books are waiting to be read by you