Hollywood, exorcisms and evil
by Gavin Ashenden, Christian Today:
Hollywood has recently given us a new movie about the existence of evil, with Russell Crowe starring as the late, real-life Vatican exorcist, Fr Gabriel Amorth.
In The Pope’s Exorcist, the hero of Gladiator has transitioned from one Roman amphitheatre to another. In Gladiator, Crowe showed us the power of indomitable masculinity, enthused with raw courage, self-giving determination, skilled beyond others in the conflict of the body.
And now, in The Pope’s Exorcist, he moves to a different amphitheatre in Rome: that of the struggle between spiritual good and spiritual evil. It’s an amphitheatre that also calls for courage, skill, determination, fearlessness and skills beyond others, but it is the conflict for the soul.
Hollywood’s relationship with evil is a complex one. In one sense it serves evil daily. It glamourizes lust, revenge, hatred, pride, greed and power in almost every film it makes.
But the act of glamourizing them is also the act of disguising them. It sells evil as good; it promotes corruption as desirable and necessary. Like the serpent in the first garden, its task is to make false promises to disguise evil as good, and corrupt first human choice, and then human appetite, leaving us addicted to the narcotics of the lower self, and out of reach of the salvation of our souls.
So how did Hollywood come to interest itself in the unmasking of evil and task itself with presenting real evil in a struggle with real good?
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