Dreher dissects the doctrines in "Nosferatu"

There's no way tmatt wants to swim in this bloody flick on dark re-enchantment

It was one of the the questions that I heard the most from seminarians and pastors during my teaching days at Denver Seminary in the early ‘90s.

Normally, it sounded something like this: “You keep telling us that it’s important to pay attention to what the culture is saying to us through films like (insert name of a major movie that is making headlines). But what if we sincerely think that we shouldn’t go see it, because of the subject material or the rating?”

My standard answer was simple: “By all means do not go see it. Never violate your conscience on a matter like that.” However, I often added statements such as these: “If you know this movie is being discussed by your people, if you know that it’s affecting young people, for example, then find out if a layperson you really trust has seen it and find out what he or she thinks. Ask them if they took any notes.”

I would also suggest that they consider seeing the movie in the presence or two or three members of the church staff, especially those involved in ministries that might be linked to the target audience of the film. If anyone is offended or believes the movie is worthless, then get up and walk out.

In my chapter in a book written in honor of the late Dr. Haddon Robinson, the famous homiletics teacher who led the seminary when I arrived, I described one of these encounters:

The Baptist preacher had a mysterious look on his face as he gestured to me across a crowed hall at Denver Seminary. He was using that discreet come here" index-finger waggle folks use when they're trying to get a specific person's attention without getting anyone else's attention. He spoke in a low voice, like an embarrassed teen in a drug store asking the person behind the counter to sell him a copy of Playboy.

“Look, Mr. Mattingly," he asked. “What did YOU think of Thelma & Louise?"

I had just delivered a lecture explaining the mass-media “signal” concept that, decades later, is at the heart of the Rational Sheep project. Many of the clergy in the audience were not amused.

This follow-up passage is quite long, but essential — since it provides lots of information about the pressures that pastors and others are under:

One after another, three different pastors found a way to raise the same question: What did I think of Thelma & Louise, referring to director Ridley Scott's explosive feminist manifesto that had been making headlines all summer. Eventually, actresses Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis ended up on the June 24, 1991, cover of Time, with the confrontational headline, “Why Thelma & Louise Strikes A Nerve."

I gave the preachers an honest answer. I hadn't seen the movie. But I did have an entire file folder full of essays and reviews about the film. I was aware it had served as the latest spark igniting the gasoline of our culture's ongoing debates over sex roles. I was planning to wait and see if the movie would have a lasting impact. Then I would rent it on videocassette and, with pen and notepad in hand, sit down in a responsible and controlled environment — perhaps with seminary colleagues — and take careful notes.

But clearly, I needed to turn this question around. I didn't have a pulpit. They did. They were pastors, with the responsibility of guiding pilgrims in the modern world. They were experienced preachers. Plus, it was these preachers — not me — who had on this occasion ventured into the risky environment of a multiplex sanctuary.

By the time the third Baptist cornered me, I was ready to ask the questions that needed to be answered: What did HE think of Thelma & Louise? Why had HE chosen to go see it?

Well, yes, he saw the Time cover. And, yes, he had heard about the movie from his wife, who heard some of her friends talking about it. And then he overheard a conversation in the church office. He knew that some women in the church had seen the movie and were still talking about it. His instincts told him this was something worth pursuing.

So far, so good, I said. What nerve did he think the movie struck?

Now he was on uncertain ground. Clearly, he said, it had something to do with female anger.

OK, I asked, what were Thelma and Louise angry about?

Well, he said, husbands and lovers had abused them, or abandoned them, or both. Other men tricked them, or attacked them, or failed to make or honor commitments. Even good men who were sympathetic managed, in subtle ways, to keep a safe distance. Thelma and Louise felt stranded. Then they got mad. Then they tried to get even.

This is very interesting, I said. Why did he think this message appealed to more than a few women in his conservative Christian flock? Why were they forming packs, or slipping off solo, to sit in the dark and watch this movie? And, come to think of it, did he have any angry women in his church?

Now he was very uncomfortable. Sure, he said, some women in his church were angry for some of the same reasons. His congregation contained its share of divorces and some had been messy. There was emotional abuse and one or two cases of physical abuse. A few husbands had vanished and there were times when he wished some other men would take a hike, too. Behind the scenes, many wives complained that their husbands were workaholics and emotionally distant. Some of them felt like single moms.

Yes, he said, there were angry and grieving women in his church.

Are some of them, I asked, the women who were going to see Thelma & Louise?

He nodded — yes.

Well, to me this sounded like this might be worth a sermon.

Yes it did, the pastor said. But he knew that there was no way he could preach it. For one thing, he wasn't sure he could afford to preach about such an emotional, volatile topic. He also knew that many in his congregation would be upset if he quoted an R-rated movie, let alone suggested that it raised questions relevant to the church. Even some who had seen Thelma & Louise, and identified with it, might be upset if their pastor said that the film asked valid questions, but offered dangerous answers.

It would just be too risky. He could go and see the movie, but he couldn't admit that he had done so. The insights and feelings inspired by the movie couldn't be applied, at least directly, to the lives of his people. He was caught in a painful dilemma, a wrenching separation of church and life. Trouble was, this signal was coming from a sector of life that his church had declared out of bounds.

I asked one final question. So, his people went to the mall and the movie multiplex to find sermons on these kinds of life-wrenching issues?

Once again he nodded — yes.

I should mention why I had not seen Thelma & Louise, because it is relevant to what happens next in this post. I didn’t see the film because movies that include images of violence against women and children drive me crazy. Also, I was not a movie critic. It wasn’t my job to watch pretty much everything released by Hollywood.

I bring this up because of a new Substack essay by my friend Rod Dreher that ran with this headline: “'Nosferatu': Sex, Death, Bloodsucking — And: Why Keir Starmer Ought To Have Read Dostoevsky.”

The title of Dreher’s latest bestseller is “Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age.” Much of the book focuses on the positive side of what many people are calling “re-enchantment,” as in regaining the ability to see that reality exists outside of the material world.

The problem, however, is that opening the door to the world of signs, wonders and miracles can, for many people, have a dark side — depending on the experiences that they welcome into their lives. “Dark” re-enchantment is a reality, too.

Dreher’s essay opens with an anecdote that is rather like the Thelma & Louise conversations that I had with Denver Seminary folks.

“You going to see Nosferatu?” my friend Isaiah asked. No, I said; I’m not a fan of horror, even though I really liked what the director Robert Eggers did with The Northman.

“Too bad,” he said. “It’s like watching a chapter from Living In Wonder.”

What? I read a review of the movie (trailer here), and saw what he meant. It’s a film about how a demonic evil being, Count Orlok, comes to menace a group of people, and indeed an entire city. Because nobody there understands that the nature of the evil they’re dealing with, evil runs rampant for a time. Ah, yes. This I have to see.

So, last night I watched the film, and oh boy, is it ever scary, and well done — but it has a major religious flaw, from my perspective. Nevertheless, it is a near-perfect parable of the cost of disenchantment.

Note that Rod stresses that he is not a fan of horror movies. Neither am I, in part for the reasons I mentioned earlier. In this case, because of the subject material of his new book, Dreher headed to a nearby theater.

It’s important to realize that, during his journalism career, Rod spent several years as a professional movie critic.

That was his job, even though that meant seeing quite a few films that he later decided that he really didn’t need to see. Click here for a sample of some of his film criticism from decades ago — which was often quite controversial because of his traditional Christian beliefs and moral standards.

Now, Dreher is not an easy writer to dissect by copying a few passages of his work. His take on this particular horror movie is quite complex and nuanced.

The key is that the movie includes Christians who take the occult seriously and have learned how to avoid it and to fight it, when need be. Then there are people who welcome dark spiritual experiences — yes, sexuality is the doorway in this story — and pay the price.

Here is a key passage from the essay, in which Dreher compared the events in this film to the experiences of a person he knew in college:

Watching the film brought to mind a story told me in college by N., a friend who had dabbled in the occult, with automatic writing. She was a serious person (and still is, by the looks of it: though we lost touch, an online search shows that she has since risen high in the legal world), and not religious. She told me how, after doing automatic writing for a while, she gained the ability to travel outside her body at night. She sensed that there was an unseen male presence traveling with her. Eventually he asked her to have sex with him. Naturally she found this deeply disturbing, and resisted. One night, sleeping in her dorm room, she awakened to feel the grip of hands around her wrists, some unseen entity pinning her to the bed, and trying to force her legs apart to rape her.

“Did you pray?!” I asked. No, she said; she was not a Christian. She told me she imagined the purest possible light, and concentrated on it. This loosened the incubus’s grip on her enough for her to reach over and turn on the bedside lamp. The thing disappeared. She got out of bed, destroyed her automatic writing notebooks, and never again had a problem. I knew she was telling me the truth. N. was not religious, or even, well, weird; this seemed out of character for the young secular woman I knew, but she could hardly have been more serious. Many years later, researching the world of the demonic, I read similar accounts, and knew that N. had told me the truth.

Rather than dive into the details of the movie, let me end with Dreher noting why this topic of dark re-enchantment is so important at this moment in time.

This is a complex passage from a long essay, but it is essential.

Eggers here trafficks in the Freudian concepts of eros and thanatos — that is, the life-drive and the death-drive. In Freud’s thought, the desire for life manifests itself in part through sexual desire, through an eagerness for life, and doing things that promote life. The thanatos drive is entirely about destruction. Freud observed that in patients who had been traumatized by war, they frequently dreamed about death — in particular, the events that traumatized them. Freud theorized that there is within all of us an unconscious desire to die (thanatos), but it is usually held in check by the desire to live (eros). Whatever you might think of Freud’s theories — and they are not held in high regard today — we see in Nosferatu the destruction that occurs when Ellen confuses eros with thanatos — or, to be specific, when she directs her eros toward thanatos. She does this under the influence of the demon Nosferatu, who perverts her craving for love and companionship into a desire for death, and in fact pleasure and wholeness when she experiences erotic fulfillment while sexually possessed by the spirit of death.

If you can’t see the implications in that for the way we live today, you are blind. In Nosferatu, Ellen’s disordered sexual desire summons a catastrophe that envelops her entire society. This is not a politically correct point to make, but then, Eggers never has been interested in flattering our prejudices. Indeed, he makes a twist on the traditional vampire story that I’m not going to spoil, but that turns Ellen into a kind of occult Christ figure.

You may wonder: why not the real Christ? Why don’t any of these people call on the church to help?

To be blunt, this movie takes on a serious, relevant, subject linked to life, death, sexuality, morality and even the life to come. Dreher makes it clear that it is asking worthy questions about important subjects — but ends up with a non-Christian interpretation of what is happening.

However, “Nosferatu” is also putting a spotlight on spiritual yearnings — the desire for enchantment and spiritual experiences — that are easy to see in this day and age.

Will I head to a movie theater in this case? Almost certainly not.

But here is my question: Can anyone imagine a setting in which a pastor or a religious educator could, in effect, DEBATE the contents of this movie, knowing that souls are at risk? What if “Nosferatu” becomes highly popular and, perhaps, triggers a wave of movies on this topic?

Thus, I will ask readers two questions:

(1) Where do you go for input on movies of this kind, for insights into the impact of these kinds of films in the lives of the churched and unchurched? What websites? What academic voices, even?

(2) Do you think that a film of this kind is a valid hook for apologetics? Are there Christian thinkers and shepherds who are called to this kind of ministry? For example, click here for a video about vampire movies from the Catholic priest and apologist — now Bishop Robert Barron — who for years was known as the bishop of Hollywood.

Again, I still believe that people need to be careful about making decisions to view movies of this kind. Dreher is very clear about that.

But when is the risk worthwhile? When do Christian leaders need to exegete and then debate the spirits of the age in which they live?