Your God had his chance and he blew it : modernity, tradition and alternative religion in 1960s and 1970s horror

• Main Author: McCarthy, Linda Mary Kathleen
• Published: University of East Anglia 2016
• Subjects: 791.43
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709767

The period of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, falling at a crux between the influences of modernity and postmodernity, was an era undergoing vast paradigmatic shifts. Defined by cultural historians as The Final Phase of Modernism, A Rage against Order, The New Sensibility, an era of Getting Loose, or The Culture of Narcissism, this decade was increasingly fracturing along conservative-liberal fault lines. Presumably, as a result of this socio-political dichotomisation, debates were being forwarded about the need for and efficacy of grand narratives including historical imperatives, familial connectivity, and traditional spiritual affiliation elicited across this cultural spectrum: from orthodox institutions, such as the Catholic Church to more left-wing establishments such as the Civil Rights and Counter Culture movements. Given prevalence of these conundrums, this thesis will explore how these concerns were discussed and disseminated within the United States through the popular media and, more specifically, works of horror. Indeed, at least since the Gothic literary period, and its qualified revival in the New Hollywood Alternative Religion Horror cinema this discursive thread has, arguably, articulated concerns surrounding the legacy and effects of modernity, traditionalism, the supernatural and affiliations of faith overall. In focusing upon American and British/American co-productions such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and The Wicker Man, their shared concern in addressing spiritual questions will be taken seriously not merely as metaphors but instead as viable contemporaneous debates. This reading thus offers up an alternative to those currently presented by academia wherein religion is regarded as a mere metaphor for restrictive socio-political mechanisms, or as symbols of plenitude and power.