Kutter (00:03)
obviously, anytime you’re talking about a genre of any kind of art, the lines are blurry. And a lot of it…
is dictated by audiences ⁓ and how they kind of label and categorize different things. And so ⁓ the easiest way that I’ve come up to talk about like, what do I mean when I say horror ⁓ is to actually compare it to something that’s close, but not quite, but sometimes the same. And that is a psychological thriller, right? And so sometimes you go, if anyone’s seen the movie Seven, for example, ⁓
I would categorize that as a psychological thriller because a psychological thriller uses terrifying, scary, horrific elements in the story to tell a story.
Horror generally tells a story to terrify you. And so ⁓ that slight shift is kind of how I conceptualize the genre as a whole. And then of course, how that comes out ⁓ and how it scares us is different depending upon all those various sub genres. ⁓ And it looks different, feels different depending upon the director or whatever. But I think that for me is the big umbrella way of thinking about here’s what it means to say this is horror versus some other
Dru Johnson (00:54)
Mm.
Kutter (01:19)
thing that might have some scary elements in it.
Dru Johnson (01:23)
okay. I’m gonna drag you way outside of probably anything that you’re you’re gonna wanna talk about just for a second. because ⁓ when I I’m a a biblical studies person, so when I am teaching in the classroom, I think I’ve been using horror incorrectly, if that’s if yours is the right or a better definition than mine, which mine was basically ill defined, so or undefined. ⁓ and so I think of something like Joshua or even the gospels, the passion narratives.
They don’t actually describe any violence. They kind of just tell you what’s happening, knowing that you will know what this like you’re filling in the blanks of the violence, I guess, there. So that to me, if if I hear you right, is more of the psychological thriller or maybe doesn’t fit the categories at all, but that’s not really horror because horror is actually trying to get you to go, ooh, you know, or if it
Kutter (02:01)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Well,
so I think that’s the right question. It’s not off topic really at all. ⁓ And there’s been another book that I published called The Aesthetics of Atheism, ⁓ where I first started kind of dabbling in the horror thing. And I actually, in one of the most fun chapters that I wrote in that is me looking at the Gospel of Mark as horror fiction. And so ⁓ I think
kind of the interpretive lens you bring to it in terms of these genre categories, because again, they all break down at some level. But I definitely think ⁓ various portions of the biblical text have horror elements in them. ⁓ And then you could get, you know, start being a little more refined with each one. Like, okay, yeah, is it letting us fill in the blanks? And is that, is it intended to scare us? Is it intended to make us compelled? Like, what is it trying to do?
And then how does ⁓ bringing kind of this other kind of hermeneutical lens to it help us unpack the text? And so I actually think coming at the Bible as horror fiction is helpful, even if at the end of the day, we’re not saying, okay, yeah, this gospel is horror fiction, but it does contain those elements that I think are really interesting. in this upcoming book, ⁓ I do a lot of work in that space of like, where are these, you
Dru Johnson (03:18)
It is.
Kutter (03:41)
judges is filled with just brutal, brutal stuff. And I actually think some of it is intended. I mean, when you chop a woman up into multiple pieces and send her body parts, like, that’s, that’s horrific. And I think it’s the act itself was intended to, you know, do something, ⁓ terrify people. Yeah. And it did. It was effective. And so both the, both the events and then the telling of that story are, think,
Dru Johnson (04:01)
Right. And it did.
Kutter (04:10)
I think legitimately like a horror kind of fiction ⁓ and to then sort of sanitize it in some way misses some of the point of that I think as we’re reading the Bible.
Dru Johnson (04:20)
Yeah. Okay, can we dwell on Judges just for a second? That the Levite’s concubine, because again when I’m teaching through it, I I always think like, you know, I’m thinking out loud, how would you you know, this thing this horrible thing has happened that you were weirdly complicit in? That’s the other you the there’s all kinds of horrible things going on in judges. ⁓ how would you get all the tribes to come down and fight on behalf of the honor of this dead woman and ⁓
Kutter (04:23)
Sure.
Dru Johnson (04:48)
And then some you know, something clicks in his mind and he goes, I know. I’ll I’ll horrify them as much as I’m horrified right now. I’ll chop her up into pieces and send it send it with a note, right? And so there really is this well, it’s not stated in the text, but it seems to be so implicit in the text that it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. Is that that was an intentional h horrifying act, or he’s cr trying to create horror in them. Is that is that how you’re reading it? Is that correct? Okay.
Kutter (05:05)
Yeah.
Yeah. yeah.
I think that’s totally right. And then, and this is why, man, the Bible is so fun ⁓ and ⁓ intriguing because it then asks us like, where’s, how are we complicit in that? Right. So, and that’s another thing where when you’re watching horror films ⁓ as a Christian, I think there’s value in it because here we have this text that not only asks all these questions about the actual characters, but then our own.
Dru Johnson (05:26)
Yeah.
Kutter (05:41)
⁓ relationship to the story and this notion that we ought to be horrified by it. ⁓ And if we’re not, there’s something wrong. What’s interesting is when it’s now part of this sacred text, we’re asked to dwell on that, not just acknowledge that that exists in the world, that that story is there, but we’re actually asked and encouraged to go back to that story over and over and over again and dwell on it as
as the Word of God.
And that’s what I find interesting when we translate back over to say horror films, it’s like, oh, that’s bad for you, or that’s unhealthy, that, you know, God doesn’t approve of that. It’s like, well, okay. In this case, it’s horror fiction that we’re not just supposed to acknowledge, but actually dwell on. And I think to do it without acknowledging what you’re saying is like, what would it take for a man to do that? And then what does that say about the tribes that it took that to get their attention? Reminds me of the Flannery O’Connor quote, you know,
to what is it? I’m gonna botch it a little bit, but she says, the deaf you shout and to the blind you draw large and startling figures. And so a lot of her, you know, sort of gothic horror writing was that, like I literally have to shock you awake ⁓ and because you’re blind and deaf and dumb and unaware. And actually I think that’s a…
a really prophetic thing in terms of the Old Testament prophetic narrative of like, they’re having to just do these extra, I’m gonna go cook my food over feces to get you to wake up. And that’s very, it skews towards horror.
Dru Johnson (07:26)
Yeah, the the shocking effect. I mean, you have the kind of the you know, tell the truth but tell a slant approach, right? And then you have these like slap across the face so that they have to react to it in some way. ⁓ and you do get you do get measures of those. I don’t know if you get equal measures. It seems to be more the slap than the the slant, I guess in scripture. ⁓
Kutter (07:47)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (07:50)
I so you got a lot of things going on here in my mind. ⁓ one is maybe we should separate out gore from horror. ⁓ because I I do see I I don’t watch many horror movies, or at least not the kind that came out in the nineties and two thousands. I will admit also, I’m a little averse to horror. I used to watch this like Friday the thirteenth and stuff when I was a kid. Freddie Krueger and we thought that that was just terrifying, right? Which is now like people just laugh at these things. ⁓
Kutter (08:10)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (08:18)
But when I was in the military, I had a foreign national. I was on an island with a couple of Honduran guys and a couple of military it like a deserted island that I was working on. And I came to realize after a guy took a shot at what he thought was a ghost, and we were all in tents, and tents do not stop bullets. so we had to have a a long sober talk with him, or the commanders did. ⁓
And it turned out that this guy had like is one of the guys that just watched a ton of horror movies, right? And so he saw a ghost and took it I don’t know what he thought taking a shot at a ghost was gonna do for him. but fortunately it didn’t hit any of our cots, any of us in the tents. ⁓ but it did bring like it you know, when I was eighteen years old, it made it very visceral to me that in the dark, when there is all void outside, there was no light on this island, ⁓ your your mind fills the void with what you have.
Kutter (08:47)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (09:11)
And I think that’s always been my kind of go-to, like this can be a dangerous genre for us, but I had I hadn’t had a thought beyond that. It’s purely reactive. So help help me with that reaction.
Kutter (09:19)
Yeah.
Sure.
Well, first, just to affirm the fact that it’s not for everybody. Like, and I got into it begrudgingly, actually. So my, was, have been, and continue to be sort of averse to it in some ways, in part because of exactly what you’re describing, but I’ll get back to that in second. But.
I kind of went into it more because I claim to have this expertise on theological criticism of contemporary popular culture and the horror genre really post-COVID has just gone nuts in terms of the amount of people. ⁓
Dru Johnson (09:54)
Mm.
Kutter (10:02)
engaging it, watching it, interacting with it, the number of films that are coming out, TV shows, etc. And I was like, I can’t in good conscience claim an expertise if I’m ignoring a full third of what makes up this realm. so, ⁓ and then that also coupled with ⁓ I ran into and know just a number of filmmakers who identify as Christian.
who are making horror films. And I’m like, what? Okay. And then just this sort of curiosity about like, why am I?
why do I feel so deeply affected by these films? But then have all these other people in my life that just love it. And it’s like, I don’t, so a lot of it was, went into it kind of like an anthropologist going, okay, I’m gonna observe, I’m gonna immerse myself in the culture and understand what is going on here. ⁓ And ⁓ I will admit over time, I too have become, not calloused, but ⁓ desensitized to some things. So that’s one thing, like I realized I was so avoidant that when I did see something,
it affected me like it was it was more than like ⁓ it would have normally because now I have kind of a ⁓ some expectations and stuff going in I’ve seen a lot of different stuff and someone could say that’s good or bad I don’t know ⁓ my mom my mom would say it’s ⁓ so but ⁓ back to the your question of ⁓ does it
populate our imaginations with things that just shouldn’t be there. And I think that’s probably an individual question. And it is why I then go back to things like scripture, because I’m going, I kind of grew up with this messaging of, you know, whatever is true and good and worthwhile and life-giving, think on those things, which meant focus on pleasant things.
Dru Johnson (11:56)
Mm.
Kutter (11:57)
And in this process, this sort of anthropological approach, what I realized is, ⁓ and I don’t think it’s a mischaracterization of it, but I really do wonder about why we say that in certain realms, but then when we get to our own sacred scriptures, we don’t worry about.
the chopping up of a concubine, filling our head, you know, we don’t worry about the witch of indoor coming in, you know, ⁓ showing up in a tent. And it makes me think that maybe it’s because we’re actually not engaging those texts. We’re not actually ⁓ allowing it to populate our imaginations in that way. ⁓ And so that’s sort of the tension that I have of saying, okay, yes, focus your minds on whatever is, and the first one is true. And true doesn’t equal pleasant. And in fact,
Dru Johnson (12:30)
Hm.
Kutter (12:49)
the truest thing that the Christian faith claims about reality was the most horrific moment sort of in human history. It is a ⁓ tortured man, you know, that there’s ⁓ demonic activity, there’s the violence of the state, there is like brutal kind of like torture porn ⁓ that everyone just gets around and mocks and, you know, like this is a really horrific moment.
and it’s deeply profoundly true. ⁓ And it’s nice to get to Easter, that’s kind of pleasant, but you can’t get there without going through, you know, Good Friday. And so that I think is where ⁓ I think you’re right. We all have different sensitivities and need to be very aware of those. ⁓ And at the same time,
Dru Johnson (13:22)
Mm-hmm.
Kutter (13:37)
think through before I brush off or write off an entire ⁓ genre or type of storytelling to pause for a moment and go, well, okay, maybe there can be some value to it. And the last thing I’ll say on that too is, and at the same time, any art, any, especially in popular culture, like…
not every horror film is doing that. Some is just rubbish, right? Like some’s just crap. But just like there’s some romantic comedies that are rubbish, you know, like, you know. ⁓ And so, yeah, exactly. That’s exactly right. I think the failure almost always is aesthetic first and then later theological. ⁓ And so,
Dru Johnson (13:58)
Right. Right.
just bad film. It’s not that it’s that that horror makes it bad.
Kutter (14:16)
to find like an example in the horror genre that’s just an utter failure and use that as your text, your primary text, that’s not really fair. There are some that are actually excellent and do some really interesting things. There of course are a lot that are just failures and nobody should watch, I think, so.
Dru Johnson (14:33)
That that is very helpful. and and as you were saying that I was thinking, well, I’ve watched The Pit and enjoyed that, which had el lots of elements of gore in it. I watched ⁓ Kill Bill and loved that. Apocalypse Now is probably one of my favorite movies from childhood. ⁓ and so it’s got all of these ⁓ elements that I i if it were in the horror genre I would have a negative view towards just ’cause of my disposition. yeah, so that’s very helpful. ⁓
Kutter (14:48)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (15:02)
I’m also wondering ⁓ when it comes to horror, so different things scare different people. It’s been my lay folk observation that over the years, as I teach a lot of freshmen, so 18-year-olds, ⁓ that over the years it used to be more the like scream, you know, murder Michael Myers murderer chasing you down who has su quasi-supernatural powers.
But if you ask students what really freaks them out, a lot of it is the supernatural stuff, the possession stuff, the spiritual stuff. That’s what really scares them. So I I wonder like between F Friday the thirteenth and ⁓ super I don’t know the names of these movies, Supernatural Things are ⁓ there there was one that was
Kutter (15:47)
Just
supernatural horror, mean?
Dru Johnson (15:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was also
a movie called something like supernatural or I don’t know.
Kutter (15:53)
hmm. I’ll have to think about
Dru Johnson (15:56)
It was the one where they just
had the cameras and things were moving around and
Kutter (15:59)
⁓ that’s ⁓ paranormal activity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (16:02)
Paranormal. Sorry, not the supernatural. Paranormal. Yeah.
⁓ I y like how do you do you put these on a spectrum somewhere? Are there different axes for comparing apples to apples here?
Kutter (16:16)
yeah, well, so, okay, there’s two questions in there. Tell me which one I can do both, one is, one is fine. One is, ⁓ the students coming in, being more scared by the supernatural. And then another is how do we compare the supernatural to like slashers or other stuff? Okay. ⁓ so depending upon, you know, what you sort of grew up thinking, believing, whatever, ⁓ a lot of times I.
Dru Johnson (16:21)
Okay. Sorry, I’m that’s I’m infamous for that.
Yeah.
Yeah, let’s go in that order.
Kutter (16:44)
what I hear in the supernatural realm, why it’s so scary, is for many people, because there is the background question always of, because it could be real. ⁓ Like the reason it’s scary is because I kind of believe it. ⁓ I kind of believe a ghost could show up in my tent. I kind of believe, you know, and it’s so unsettling because then it’s like, and that could happen to me or that could happen to us.
Dru Johnson (16:57)
Yeah.
Kutter (17:15)
Even if, and this is kind of a little bit of where I go in the book, even if ⁓ to a person they would deny supernatural, like any sort of metaphysical anything, right? So ⁓ I think there’s that tension is one of the things. Now, if you are a person of religious faith, Christianity or whatever, they might go, yeah, I believe in supernatural evil. I believe these things are true. ⁓ Maybe not exactly how the film shows it. And that’s why it’s scary, right?
And I know a number of people like that. They’re like, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to mess with the demonic because it’s real. But even those in a sort of like a post-secular society where kind of transcendence has completely collapsed, I think it is. And that’s my theory is part of why that’s the uptick in horror and supernatural horror is because there’s not really another genre or place where people are kind of exploring ⁓ the immaterial.
⁓ Is there an immaterial reality out there and what does it look like? And so I kind of tend to think that’s part of why. Now, I’d have to go just on box office and films coming out. There is still a strong showing of supernatural horror, but I don’t think just offhand it necessarily is increasing over and against the other kinds. I think there’s a lot of.
Dru Johnson (18:12)
Mm.
Okay.
Kutter (18:39)
There’s actually a lot of different kinds at this point. But the supernatural is never too far away, to your point. Like Mike Myers, there’s no… It is brutally ⁓ material in its understanding of the world. But you’re right, it seems like he’s more powerful than a human should be. From where does that come from? ⁓ And that, I think, is always kind of there in any genre.
where it’s like, even when it is absolutely ⁓ like the world of the film lacks any sort of transcendence or supernatural, it still is raising that question of, know, where do we, ⁓ from where do we get this notion of like a slasher? I think raises the question of how we actually view human life as sacred. ⁓ And the reason it’s so horrific and so shocking is that we actually think bodies are sacred.
Dru Johnson (19:38)
Mm.
Kutter (19:38)
And to violate that is part of what makes it so unsettling. But where does that come from? Where does that notion of the sacredness of the human body come from? Well, from somewhere. So ⁓ I think that’s probably where those students are going. ⁓ And then as they kind of relate, I do think ⁓ for me, they’re just exploring very different kinds of questions, ⁓ like any art form. And they’re leveraging the horror genre to kind of get at that.
⁓ That kind of thing. just was talking to a person yesterday about the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, right? And ⁓ it’s it is a bizarre film. Very. Yeah, it’s it is. But, you know, it’s 1974. And interestingly, like compared to now, like ⁓ you’ve got the Watergate scandal that just happens. You got Vietnam kind of wrapping up. You’ve got an oil crisis. And then.
Dru Johnson (20:13)
yeah.
Kutter (20:37)
The film itself ⁓ makes the foreground, the sort of mass industrialization of slaughterhouses, right? That a new technology came that basically put this entire family out of a job. It replaced their jobs and ⁓ they were killing cattle and now they turn to killing humans with the same sort of logic. And so that film is exploring like what
what do we do with the people that the industrialization of society leaves behind? How do they kind of like understand the world? And when you ⁓ also add to that an economic crisis, an oil crisis, we now know our government can just straight up lie to us, you know, all these things. We have a never ending war that doesn’t seem to have like a resolution. That sounds a lot like today. And that film drew upon horror to explore, I think those
Dru Johnson (21:31)
Mm-hmm.
Kutter (21:36)
actual sociological realities that the US was going through. Fast forward to today and you go, okay, well, how are the different filmmakers drawing upon horror to explore some of those things? And again, some’s just rubbish, so they’re not doing this at all. But ⁓ the thing that I see currently that’s cropping up in a bunch, I mean, you get the repeats, like it’s Scream 7, you know, just came out, it’s like, all right, you know, it’s almost.
Dru Johnson (22:00)
Right. I it’s just IP it’s just
Marvel movies and horror, right? Yeah.
Kutter (22:03)
Exactly. And
it’s almost like a parody of itself, you know. ⁓ In fact, ⁓ Scary Movies 5 or whatever came out, which started as a parody of the Scream franchise and now is like its own… I don’t know how to describe it as a parody of a parody of a parody, but anyway. Exactly. So, ⁓ but ⁓ one thing that I’m seeing a lot of is ⁓ horror becoming a place with any of the subgenres.
Dru Johnson (22:19)
Like a parasitic parody of a parody. Yeah.
Kutter (22:33)
where artists and then I think audiences are exploring how we deal and grapple with trauma, specifically like inherited trauma that’s intergenerational. And we’re getting a lot of films that are doing really interesting things, especially when it concerns like who’s doing the haunting, who’s doing the murdering and how you, instead of like defeating or overcoming it, there’s like an integration and an acceptance of it as a part of like.
who that individual or family is. And that I find really interesting, especially when the artists are women and people of color, are really increasingly drawing upon the genre to explore that kind of inherited trauma. And I think it’s just a really interesting kind of move in the genre as a whole.
Dru Johnson (23:24)
Well, so I that that fits with where I was wanting to go, which is ⁓ you know, thinking of ⁓ in Got Gadamer categories of that art presents truth in some way. It creates a world in which things can be true. So I assume that a good horror movie for you if we think about like kitschy, schlocky, gore horror stuff, we’re ⁓ excluding that. But a really good horror movie is true in some kind of nuanced and profound way. So, ⁓
Kutter (23:36)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (23:53)
Maybe you could give us a couple of examples that maybe are surprising, about the ways in which war can be true and ways that we might I mean, even you’ve already given you’ve hinted at a couple here, but
Kutter (24:01)
Yeah, yeah,
sure, yeah. I mean, these would be, in my mind, kind of high points. ⁓ And I’ll even go on the lines of ⁓ like what I would consider the sort of trauma thing. So Hereditary ⁓ is a film by, no, it’s not Ari Aster. ⁓ his name’s escaping me. I can see it though.
It’ll come to me. But then Ari Oster also has a couple of films that are quite good. One called Midsommar, which is like, yeah, it’s… And these are more of the kind of like art house, they’re art house horror really. so, but very much horror. And I think both of those films and those filmmakers are getting at…
Dru Johnson (24:40)
⁓ yeah, I’ve seen that.
Buckle up.
Kutter (25:00)
both inherited trauma, but then also ⁓ the way that even cultic or religious kind of communities incorporate that into their lives. It’s really interesting. And so I think those are getting at some truths that are very difficult truths, they’re very rarely, do they tie up nice neat little bows at the end?
Dru Johnson (25:16)
Mm.
Kutter (25:30)
⁓ It’s very ambiguous and left, know, if we’re thinking Gadamirian ways, like it’s left in many ways to the audience to kind of complete the translation of what that means, right? And that is actually a point that I try to make with those, like watching anything, but especially this in community is really important ⁓ because of that, the potential negative effects that it could have, I think are.
Dru Johnson (25:50)
Okay.
Kutter (25:56)
accounted for in a lot of ways of being in dialogue, being in community with people to kind of discern these truths. Another film that I keep mentioning kind of anytime I’m talking to it is an Australian filmmaker who came out a few years ago with a film called The Babadook. I don’t know if you know this one.
Dru Johnson (26:13)
⁓ I didn’t see
it but I I actually in hearing a review of it I decided I was not going to see this movie ’cause like I it it stirs a childhood fear of mine, so
Kutter (26:22)
Yes. And it is very much ⁓ how, ⁓ without spoiling it in case anyone sees it, ⁓ how a parent’s sort of unresolved trauma comes to impact her child and how she kind of grapples with that. And just a really interesting ⁓ reflection. And another ⁓ one that I think that skews more supernatural is ⁓ insidious.
⁓ which is also the same thing of a ⁓ parent sort of preventing her son from dealing with and addressing his childhood trauma. And then now as a father, his son is impacted by it. And the whole kind of narrative is how does the father actually face his traumatic past in a way that can help his son not be
Dru Johnson (27:12)
Mm.
Kutter (27:21)
terrorized by it. And so I find that one, again, it’s, I think at the end of the day, it’s meant to scare us. But in doing so, kind of raises, sheds light on, brings to mind, as you just said, like, oh, I’ve got something like that in my past. And the reason it is so terrifying is because it’s brushing up against something that’s actually true, either about my own life or the world that I inhabit.
And so those are a few examples that come to mind in terms of where I think they’re doing really well. I should have in preparation for talking to you. Yeah, I just haven’t gone to see him yet, but there’s two films I’m really interested that have come out that are getting a lot of buzz. One is Obsession. And it’s, from what I understand, the setup is the guy somehow has a wish or something, does a spell to get a girl to like him and then she…
just is obsessed with them and you know, and so I don’t know how it goes, but it’s, is it getting good press because it’s just scary or it’s that truth of like, well, you know, be careful what you wish for, right? You might actually get it. The other one is, ⁓ it, it’s, what is it called? It’s with a chewatela geophore and it’s ⁓ doorways or passageways. ⁓
Shoot, I can’t remember, but interesting there, it’s about mental health. It’s about a guy that is seeing a therapist and then the therapist kind of walking into this place where he goes. ⁓ And so that’s interesting in terms of like how horror might help us think through the mental health crisis we’re ⁓ at. But I also find that one interesting because it was basically a kid, this kid who was a YouTuber and using YouTube to tell these horror shorts.
And I think he was 19 when he pitched this story to 824 and they say yes. And at the age of 21, he writes and directs this feature that now makes a hundred million dollars or whatever. Um, and I find that really interesting too, of younger generations with new sort of technological, um, access are telling these stories and they’re, they’re going to horror. Um, and that, that’s pretty interesting to me, just as kind of like from a sociological perspective. Um, and so those two, I’m, I’m
seem to be promising, but wait for my full write-up ⁓ in the days to come.
Dru Johnson (29:53)
Yeah, well and that helps me strangely when you were talking about this kind of parents and children connections, probably the most penetrating I don’t know if it was horror, but it like penetrated me to my heart. ⁓ and I think I cried a whole flight home ⁓ one time watching Tree of Life on the plane, which is not a good place to watch the Tree of Life for many reasons, but ⁓ the the kind of father son interactions there are so ⁓ not my father was not that way.
Kutter (30:16)
Mm. Mm-mm.
Dru Johnson (30:22)
I actually saw myself acting that way and e even though I’m you know, I hope I actually don’t, but I could see little bits of that kind of sin and me getting passed down and permeating my own children and ⁓ and so it wasn’t, you know, something that I’m sure Malik did not intend to be horrifying at all. I was horrified with myself as I saw just glimmers of myself in in that Bradford character.
Kutter (30:27)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I don’t know. mean,
he, you know, the pieces in that film, I mean, I don’t know if he would want you to be horrified, but I think he would welcome that. You know, if you remember the earlier scenes where the kid is like, basically like, why do I do what I don’t want to do? And there’s the other interaction. And like, I think, I think he wants that introspection of acknowledging our own sort of sin and our
Dru Johnson (31:00)
Right.
Kutter (31:10)
our tendency to kill, our tendency to destroy, even when we don’t wanna do it. So I think that’s right. is why, again, why art is effective because it’s both of those things at the same time. And that’s a beautiful film that just wrecked you and had you thinking about your own sinfulness. That’s wonderful. So.
Dru Johnson (31:25)
It is. Yeah, it did wreck me.
Yeah. It was
it was probably I I cause I used to assign it. ⁓ and I now know that that’s not how it affects everybody. Some people just hate that movie, right? It just doesn’t it doesn’t Yeah. It just doesn’t work for them. and so I it’s funny you were mentioning all these movies. The movie that kind of stood out to me in the last, I don’t know, five, seven years was Get Out, seems to have done a lot of this similar, you know, it for many of us it’s funny we think of like, that’s a real this, you know, like
Kutter (31:41)
Yeah. ⁓ my wife hates it. It’s like, yeah.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (32:02)
Racialized, ⁓ indi indifference and ⁓ disparity, kind of critical commentary on and and now I’m here as I’m hearing you talk more, I’m like, wait, all of them are doing you all horror movies are doing this. Get out is just doing this in a maybe new and interesting way, or ⁓ it it’s it’s kind of a joke that black people in horror films are like red shirts in Star Trek, right? They’re the first people to get killed because they don’t matter, right? And that is itself a commentary on race.
Kutter (32:25)
Mm hmm. Yep. Yep.
yeah. And, you know, it’s and that’s what’s so interesting about, as I said before, like women and people of color using the genre itself that has in the past exploited them as characters, as you know, like, etc. ⁓ And and and now going like, well, actually, there’s opportunities for us to. ⁓
both critique that very system and kind of explore our own marginalization. And so Get Out is a great example. ⁓ And ⁓ more recently Sinners, I don’t know if you saw that, it’s like, yeah, it’s like horror slash vampire slash slasher. Like it’s a genre mashup, but really getting at the way that sort of white normativity is vampiric off of
Dru Johnson (33:02)
Hmm. I did not, but I heard good things.
Kutter (33:22)
black people and black culture in particular, all cast in a horror genre. So it’s, you’re absolutely right. It’s long standing, there’s been, ⁓ there’s a guy named Douglas Cowan who wrote a book called ⁓ Sacred Terror. And I think he coined the term, if not, it’s where I got it from. And he talks about it as sociophobics, that his approach is essentially these films, ⁓
Dru Johnson (33:47)
Hmm.
Kutter (33:52)
tap into and are reflective of society’s deep fears and anxieties. And so I kind of call what I do theophobics, which is modeled off of that to say, ⁓ at any point, these films, and I think I approach this with any sort of popular culture artifact. It’s like, it’s both an expression of, a reflection of, and a shaping force in how society understands itself. These are the kind of, you know, it’s the lingua franca of our time.
And so if we take that seriously, then what it’s getting at is some of these underlying tensions, anxieties, and fears that we all hold. And then now here it is in concrete form for us to kind of look at, observe, and reflect on. ⁓ You can overblow that. mean, so again, is the super girl that’s coming out, is it gonna like, you know, to tell us everything? Probably not, but.
But there are times and there are moments where it’s like, ooh, that’s tapping into something. And especially when it gathers a mass audience that was unexpected, I’m going, that’s connecting with people on some level that we should be reflective on and responsive to in some way.
Dru Johnson (34:57)
Mm.
I I’ve noticed with some of these, like with Get Out, I noticed ⁓ just listening to people walking out of the theater, there was kind of a conflict of genre expectations. So it seemed like the genre expectation was, there’s a horror movie, therefore it should entertain me in this kind of horror way and was actually trying to provoke a deeper conversation. So th the the way people I heard some people talking about it, they didn’t like it because it was like it didn’t make sense and it was I was trying to figure out who’s doing what and this wasn’t that scary to me and I was like, Well it might not be that scary to you, but it certainly
Kutter (35:18)
Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (35:33)
scary for a lot of people. ⁓ I wan I wonder what questions you would give if I could give some like ⁓ what do they call it? some tasks here that we could give our audience at the end. So when you’re going into a horror movie, what are some questions you should be asking that will get you, you know, asuming it’s not a cliche schlocky movie, like get get you down the road to thinking about these things.
Kutter (35:35)
yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, ⁓ you know, some of this, would say is even applicable to any kind of media or something that you’re doing. I think the, the first, actually the first thing I would say is don’t go in with any quest, like set that aside for a second. ⁓ and, and this is to me, model off of CS Lewis and his experiment for criticism says the first task.
Dru Johnson (36:11)
Minus.
Kutter (36:22)
that a work of art asks of you is to ⁓ look, listen, and receive. Get yourself out of the way. ⁓ And so for me, the first thing is to go, this is a piece of art, and especially if it’s a film that is meant for entertainment. Like just go in and let it be what it is, which is the entertaining piece of art that it is. Okay, so you go and you just watch a tree of life uncritically, let it bring you to tears, okay.
In this case, let it freak you out. Then the questions are, think, ⁓ first off, in a horror film, I like to ask like, what, okay, what are the things that actually scared me there and why? Like what, or the things that didn’t scare me and why? Like, ⁓ I think, for example, if ⁓ you are totally unbothered by the brutalization of a woman’s body,
Dru Johnson (37:20)
Mm.
Kutter (37:20)
and
maybe the fetishization of it in the film, that itself is its own red flag. ⁓ To go like, why, I had to come to this with John Wick. Like, man, I love John Wick, I love Keanu Reeves. And at a certain point, I think on John Wick four or something, I don’t know how many people he brutally assassinate in the first 15 minutes. And I was like, something’s happening to me that I’m not just enjoying the film.
Like I’m enjoying the murdering and rooting it on. And I’m like, that hold on, cut it. know, so those are some of the questions, both what does actually scare you and what doesn’t I think are some important questions. ⁓ another sort of element is like, what is it, ⁓ kind of on the, just the, the, the formal sense, like what is it handing me? where is it kind of to your point about get out, where is it, ⁓ aligning with my assumptions about the genre and where is it, ⁓
Dru Johnson (37:59)
Yeah.
Kutter (38:19)
violating those assumptions and why would that happen, right? Like why would the filmmaker make that decision? ⁓ And then what do I think about it? And then maybe the third set of questions would be something like, how am I understanding this affecting other people, right? So the people I went to see the movie with, people I talked to about, and how does that match up with the way that I encountered and experienced it? So not to make it too clean, but it’s essentially like, ⁓
start with your own experience, how did it affect you and why, move to what do we think the filmmaker is doing and what are the pieces in the film that are accomplishing that or failing to accomplish it. And then third, what’s sort of my discursive community thinking and saying about it? ⁓ And then, I mean, it could be even online, like on IMDB, it doesn’t have to be actual, but ideally people in my life ⁓ that are also watching it.
Those few questions, I think, at least set you up for, and again, I’m a theologian, so I then I’ll ask the follow-up, which is, and what does this say about ⁓ who God is and how we understand how we relate to each other and to God? ⁓ And that’s a whole other set of questions that you don’t have to ask, but to me, I think ⁓ is the most interesting.
Dru Johnson (39:37)
Yeah, and I th that’s a very great way to look at it and including the community aspect, which I think is so important. After I remember walking out of the theater with Memento, I th very soon after talking to the people I saw it with, thought, did we even watch the same film? Like were we in this did I accidentally walk into a different theater and see something else? ⁓ so that community aspect is so important and
Kutter (39:46)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (40:01)
You know, for those who listen to the Center for Hebraic Thought here, this is i many of the things that you’re saying there could be just directly applied to scripture as well, right? ⁓ especially that community saying, What did you hear? What did you see? Why did it why did it impact you that way? Yeah, that’s fantastic.
Kutter (40:09)
Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Well, and yeah, because
it with film as I mean, I generally think we again, back to to Gadamer, we operate with sort of a hermeneutic just in life that ends up being applied at every text, every event that we interpret. ⁓ And so the way we discipline ourselves in terms of reading scripture is actually going to
pretty directly be applied to the way we interpret a film and vice versa. And so if we’re to do that with a film, why aren’t we doing that with scripture? Like I, there’s been a lot of times where initially I didn’t like a film. was like, ⁓ and then people started and in the sort of analysis and discussion and exploration of it further, I came to a really deep appreciation of that film and which I wouldn’t have if it stayed by myself. And that’s with, you know, ⁓ the biblical text.
That’s why it can be so life-giving and important is that we need to be troubled by and questioning and having it question us in conversation with other people who saw it totally differently. And that actually to me always leads to much deeper, not just understanding, but appreciation for what the text is doing. ⁓ And yeah, it’s just, it’s at least in the evangelical world, we’ve often lost that sensibility of a community of interpreters. It’s just,
me and the Bible in my quiet time. Which again, it’s not bad. don’t, you know, I would go on the record.
Dru Johnson (41:40)
Mm-hmm.
I I I’ve actually written
officially in Christianity Today against quiet time for some people. Not for everybody, but for some people it’s it’s actually not quite yeah.
Kutter (41:47)
lovely. I need to go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it’s
yeah, it just runs against the entire like sensibility of scripture of scripture. ⁓ And so hopefully that would be what you’re doing with any other text as well.
Dru Johnson (42:02)
Yeah, in that point you made about using the same kind of interpretive lenses, I I mean, I’ll just be that guy. Jesus literally makes this exact chastisement in Luke twelve where he says, You know how to interpret the meteorology, but you don’t know how to interpret this present time. And he calls them hypocrites because they’re using they’re they’re using good and hermeneutical skills with the meteorology, but not with his own words in that day. Well, Dr. Kutter Callaway, that’s the coolest name ⁓ of many people we’ve had in a long time on this podcast.
thank you so much for your wisdom. This is called Be Afraid. I don’t remember the subtitle of it though, the book. I’m so glad this happens to you ’cause this me too. I’m like, it’s the pink book. It’s the yellow book. It’s the yeah, yeah.
Kutter (42:38)
me look, I always get it wrong.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
⁓ Let me get it. It’s be afraid. I know. Well, and it’s also because, you know, I didn’t title the subtitle. What horror reveals about facing the darkness?
Dru Johnson (42:48)
Like my children, but I don’t get their name right every time, but I know what they look like.
Yeah, no, yeah, yeah.
Be afraid, what horror f ⁓ reveals about facing the darkness with IVP Academic. Is this John Boyd was your editor?
Kutter (43:04)
No, actually. Oh, you’re gonna put me on the spot. Zach Gordon. Do you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (43:07)
Rachel.
is that Gordon? Okay, yeah.
⁓ it’s got a great team at IVP academic. and you also have a podcast on the same topic where you interview people, right? Be Afraid with Christianity Today.
Kutter (43:19)
That’s right.
Yeah, it’s it’s I do interview people. There’s some you can watch that are just straight up interviews, but it’s actually more of a kind of like a scripted ⁓ storytelling rooted journey. ⁓ Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (43:30)
Yeah. Highly produced. Yeah. I if
you know C T podcasts, they’re they’re really well done. Well, thank you for your wisdom and your time.
Kutter (43:40)
Absolutely, thanks for having me on.
