Season of the Witch

When I was a kid I watched a lot of horror movies....like, essentially all of them. It didn't matter how scary, how gory, how disturbing, I watched them all, and a great many of them countless times. Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kreuger, Leatherface, Michael Myers, Pinhead -- if you are a child of the 80's you likely know each of these references -- were almost as much companions and friends to me as the kids I went to school with. This isn't an endorsement of that, it's just an accurate depiction of my history. I neither became warped, dangerous, and violent because of them, nor obsessed with them. In fact, I eventually became numb to them. Desensitized is what they call it, and I pretty much lost all interest. I could count on one hand how many horror movies I've seen in the last 25 years. I attribute this to a couple of reasons. One being that I've pretty much seen it all when it comes to scary and horrific ways to kill people in movies, the other being, I started to feel that horrors I encountered in the real world were much scarier than seeing them depicted on the silver screen.

One of the most popular horror movie franchises in my youth, and still to this day, is the Halloween series. Even if you haven't seen the movies, you are no doubt familiar with the blank faced mask worn in the film by the unstoppable killing machine that is Michael Myers, or at least the iconic theme music created by writer, director, and composer John Carpenter. The original movie was written in ten days and made for $300,000, but it would go on to spawn 13 films over the next 40 years that have grossed just below a billion dollars. Anyone who is a fan of this franchise knows there is one very bizarre anomaly in this film catalogue -- Halloween III: Season of the Witch, released in 1982. It is the only film in the franchise that does not feature the antagonist Michael Myers. Simplified, the plot of the movie is this: a toymaker uses Halloween masks embedded with a piece of Stonehenge to kill children watching a specific television commercial on Halloween night....not exactly Oscar worthy writing, HOWEVER, reflecting back on this as an adult, there are some themes being explored that are much scarier to me now than Michael Myers was to me when I was eight; namely, the use of technology in association with dark forces, enabled by unchecked corporate power and the commercialization of every aspect of life. In much more real ways, the horrors being conveyed in the film have become a reality, leaving me with the feeling that we are indeed living in the "season of the witch." Not pointy black hats and bubbling cauldrons witch, but more like the story I'm sharing below. More and more I feel a dark shadow coming across our lives, accompanied by an eerie sense that an emotionless, faceless, unstoppable monster is stalking us one by one through our tv screens, our laptops and our smartphones. I recently listened as celebrity podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan, and Texas State Representative -- and seminary student -- James Talarico discussed the harm being done by the modern delivery systems of media and (dis)information. Rogan quoted James Madison University Professor of Religion Dr. Alan Levinovitz who said, "the same way consuming processed foods is bad for you, processed information is bad for you."

For transparency, the following is not original to me -- and I have yet to locate the source of where I got it -- but I wanted to share it as a cautionary tale for us all. Only the last line is from me...and even that is not original with me ;)

One of my friends told me about a powerful lesson in her daughter's high school class this winter. They're learning about the Salem Witch Trials, and their teacher told them they were going to play a game.

"I'm going to come around and whisper to each of you whether you're a witch or a regular person. Your goal is to build the largest group possible that does NOT have a witch in it. At the end, any group found to include a witch gets a failing grade."

The teens dove into grilling each other. One fairly large group formed, but most of the students broke into small, exclusive groups, turning away anyone they thought gave off even a hint of guilt.

"Okay," the teacher said. "You've got your groups. Time to find out which ones fail. All witches, please raise your hands."

No one raised a hand. 

The kids were confused and told the teacher he'd messed up the game. "Did I? Was anyone in Salem an actual witch? Or did everyone just believe what they'd been told?"

And that my friend is how you teach kids how easy it is to divide a community. 

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.