Hell Houses: Angels or Demons? [Group 4]

Halloween means different things to different people. Some will enjoy free candy from neighbors, others will dress up just for a party, but thousands around the nation spend their Halloween screaming in a haunted house. However, the idea behind traditional haunted houses has been revamped by Churches across America. The first of these “Hell Houses” was founded in the late 1970’s by one Jerry Falwell, the house itself donning the name “Scaremare”. Now, thousands of Churches have made their own Hell Houses, all with one goal in mind. Some Pastors believed regular Church was not effective enough. Through scripts and some fake blood, they want to scare young adults into conversion. The personifications of sin in American Hell Houses are excessive and inappropriate.

Instilling fear is no way to get someone to see your point of view. It is the definition of scare tactics. Now, there is a documentary about Hell Houses simply titled “Hell House”, and it shows how one Church scared their patrons. Compared to other similar organizations, it is modest. Among the common sins addressed by Hell Houses, abortion and homosexuality are a favorite. In reality, an abortion is as simple as a needle and not walking for a few hours. These staged abortions have enough blood to make Dracula need a doggie bag. Liters of fake blood cover the set while a blond-haired innocent teen cries for the manic doctors to end the pain. They laugh in her face, while one screams they may need to amputate the poor girl’s leg. Somehow instead of teaching how abortions are immoral, or how all life is important, they make it about the girl. Depicting her physical pain comes before caring about life.

This evangelistic take on homosexual marriage is equally skewed. Suddenly the word gay becomes synonymous with “godless sodomite”, or even “Satanist”. As the curtain rises, you view a satanic figure asking two women if they swear to be freaks, and to live in a repulsive, disgusting lust for one another. They nod in agreement. Openly admitting how confused they are, and how a life without God lead them to such a terror. The act sits in the bottom of my stomach like a bitter dish that refuses to digest. Homosexuality does not equal Satanism. These Hell Houses are teaching young adults to fear gays because they have a powerful bond with the Mourning Star.

Their intentions might be as pure as the Virgin Mary, but both the ends and means are inappropriate. Targeting impressionable teens like this is not the right thing to do. Even if sitting down with them and using logical reasoning and evidence to prove an idea to them does not work, these Hell Houses are still unjustified. This is not teaching the Bible, but intolerance. You may think homosexuals, atheists and Muslims are the epitome of evil, but you have no right to attack them for just their harmless lifestyle, or beliefs.

Discussion Questions:

1. Some Hell Houses are visited by tens of thousands of people each year. They are becoming more popular, and common across the nation. Have you every visited one of these establishments? If so, what impression did it leave upon you? If not, do you possibly know someone that has attended a Hell House?

2. Can the ends really justify the means in this case? Will exaggerations brought on by bias properly educate young adults, or are those exaggerations a means of achieving another goal? Are these going to help or harm patrons?

3. Upon our research, we stumbled across videos that showed some of the graphic misinterpretations Hell Houses flaunt. These acts may be appropriate for teenagers able to make such decisions for themselves, but the cut off age for these Halloween attractions was twelve years old. Many parents took even younger children to see the show. Do you think this is an appropriate cut off age? On a more significant note, how old need a person be to be religiously independent?

Queering Halloween

"Halloween just happens to be the only day that makes the other 364 bearable. This and the Tony Awards."

-Jack, Will and Grace

Artifact for Discussion (YouTube link): "Anything Can Happen on Halloween"

The above link connects to a brief clip from The Worst Witch, a 1986 made-for-tv movie based on a children's book series of the same name. Though the movie is aimed at the 3-9 year old demographic, as an adult it is impossible to ignore the overtly queer implications of nearly every element of this scene. The term "queer" seems appropriate here (rather than "gay," for example) because this performance alludes to a variety of forms of non-heterosexual culture, including (but not limited to) drag performances, gender transgression, and homoeroticism. In this post, I want to draw out three of the elements of this scene that create its meaning as a queer text, and use these features as a starting place to think more broadly about how queerness emerges in children's media in general and in the genre of Halloween films specifically.

1.) Subtext: First of all, this clip is full of subtext that, to a viewer "in the know" with regard to LGBTQ subculture, signals its queerness. Not only is Tim Curry's performance evocative of a drag number (for example Harvey Fierstein's Torch Trilogy or Hedwig and the Angry Inch) but also--it's Tim Curry. When The Worst Witch premiered, Curry had recently become famous from his performance as Dr. Frank-n-Furter, the "sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania," in Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). So, basically, this is a scene in which a well known gay icon swirls his oversized pink cape around like a ballgown as he announces "It's great to be here with you young witches on this fabulous night." Fabulous, indeed. Fabulous and queer.

2.) The theme of transformation: Secondly, the lyrics and video of "Anything Can Happen on Halloween" are all about transformation. Halloween is a day for transformation--dressing up in costumes and pretending to be someone else--but this takes on a special resonance for certain viewers: for example, the transgender boy or the closeted lesbian who feel they must put on a costume and pretend to be someone else every day to fit in. The line "I wouldn't change places with anyone tonight" portrays Halloween as liberating night, in which every person is free to be who they secretly want to be all year round--or free to experiment with a new identity. This message is most explicit in the line "your dentist could turn into a queen," again a reference subtle enough to avoid censorship but still an undeniably present subtext for the viewer in the know.

3.) The All-Girls' School: Finally, this film takes place at an all-girls' school for witches. Both witchcraft (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and all-girls' schools (e.g. Madchen in Uniform) have a history of being associated with lesbianism. By making the one major male character a queer figure, the film preserves the all girls' school as a space which privileges women's relationships, one of the few places in society in which romance between women is overlooked or even allowed to flourish. Furthermore, if Tim Curry's character were masculine and heterosexual, his song to the girls could come across as "creepy"--he might seem kind of like a pedophile. By making him queer, the film avoids raising this anxiety.

At first I thought it was unusual that a children's film would contain so many queer elements--but, then again, children's media certainly doesn't shy away from heterosexuality. In fact, most children's media, from fairy tales to commercials, contains an explicitly heterosexual, gender-normative message. So it's no weirder for queer messages to emerge as well. The following questions attempt to use this analysis of The Worst Witch to look for the ways queerness tends to appear in these texts.

Discussion Questions:

1.) In the 1993 film Hocus Pocus, Bette Midler does a performance of "I Put a Spell on You" which, like Tim Curry's performance of "Anything Can Happen on Halloween," is both campy and seductive, and essentially amounts to a coded drag performance. Can you think of any other instances in which such performances occur in Halloween movies--both in those intended for children and in Halloween movies in general? Can we trace a genealogy of such performances? Do you think it is more common for queer characters to play villains (as in HP) or heros (as in TWW) in children's movies? Is it significant that HP is an American movie produced by Disney while TWW is a British movie produced by the BBC? Is the gender of the protagonist (a boy in HP and a girl in TWW) significant?

2.) Why do you think Halloween is frequently taken up as a site through which queerness can be explored and/or expressed? Can we trace a history or genealogy of the relationship between Halloween and queerness? What is the significance of the fact that The Worst Witch came out during the post-Stonewall era in which queer subculture became significantly more public? Does queer representation on Halloween emerge differently today now that LGBTQ rights are becoming so much more accepted?

3.) Where else have you encountered queer characters and/or a queer sensibility in children's media? In what genres besides Halloween stories does queerness tend to occur? How would you compare this clip to stories intended to teach children acceptance, such as Heather Has Two Mommies. What about stories that are not "about" sexuality but contain explicitly gay characters, such as Dumbledore in Harry Potter?