Lint Hatcher: Are you referring to my book,
The Magic Eightball Test: A Christian Defense of Halloween and All Things Spooky, available for a reasonable price on
Amazon.com and fine internet booksellers everywhere? I thought you might.
First and foremost, there was a shelf in our tiny, rural library which I used to haunt as a kid, constantly checking out the same books. In particular, there was the First World Fantasy Awards anthology edited by Gahan Wilson which provided several modern classics of literary horror, plus a retrospective on artist Lee Brown Coye, and an overall celebration of H. P. Lovecraft’s influence on the modern horror tale. Gahan Wilson, in his introduction, focused on the idea of “encroachment” in Lovecraft’s work. The protagonist discovers the normal world has been encroached upon in various subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways by some incomprehensible alien intelligence. Creepy little clues gradually built up to a sort of cosmic epiphany that leaves the protagonist either insane or dead. That’s the sort of horror and fantasy I have always enjoyed most: the cosmic horror branch of fantasy lit.
Lee Brown Coye created some extremely creepy art for various Arkham House books and he often would include an odd arrangement of sticks in the design — crisscrossing each other like an anti-symmetrical tik-tak-toe game. You would think it was merely a strange decorative element, except that they seemed more significant than that.
One day, I ran across a book in which Coye explained their inspiration. He was trout fishing in the forests of New York state when he found an old trackless railroad embankment and began to follow it. He was led through a forest and then into a wide pasture filled with scrub growth. As he walked along, he noticed odd arrangements of flat stones on the ground and then, here and there, strange individual lattice works: branches, sticks and boards nailed and wired together in bizarre patterns. There were dozens of the things sticking out of piles of stone or sections of stone wall. One was as large as a child’s treehouse. They seemed to multiply as Coye headed toward an abandoned, partially collapsed farmhouse. The front lawn, the house and the surrounding trees were covered with these indecipherable arrangements of sticks. Then he went in the house and discovered charcoal drawings on the walls: weird abstractions which in some rooms became huge otherworldly murals.
This story, it seems to me, was an obvious influence on The Blair Witch Project; those guys probably read the same First World Fantasy Awards anthology which featured Karl Edward Wagner’s fictionalized retelling of Coye’s little adventure. Anyhow, Coye claims that he followed a series of stone steps down into the cellar of the farmhouse. There he discovered a huge stone slab with grooves cut into the surface and rusty red stains. He was examining this when suddenly a hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed him. Coye managed to disentangle an iron frying pan from his pack and struck out. The hand let go and Coye made a run for it.
As Gahan Wilson put it, “In June 1963 Coye returned to the Mann Brook site and found it obliterated. It is a strange region, as HPL knew.”
My tastes in film fantasy run along a similar vein: Curse of the Demon, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao and more recently Incident at Loch Ness, Ringu, Ju-on, The Mothman Prophecies. There is a certain part of my brain reserved for “survival horror”. My mom took me to see Dawn of the Dead on the big screen back when I was twelve or so. If you recall, Romero released it without a rating, so my mom saw no reason not to take us! I was transfixed after the first five or ten minutes. Never, ever had I seen a film so devastating. I have been on the alert for a zombie apocalypse ever since. (Yes, my mom allowed us to sit through the entire film!)
TF: I know this might be tough, but if you had to list the five greatest influences, what would they be, and why?
Lint Hatcher: Lovecraft for reasons described above. Bradbury for his lyrical sense of wonder — although I wish he could somehow bring that dandelion wine sensibility into the present world (something like Pan’s Labyrinth, I would imagine). C. S. Lewis for introducing me to two-fisted Christian apologetics and helpng me to integrate the world of imagination with the world of faith. Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, because it showed me how a subculture could develop around shared enthusiasms and flourish and find its own voice and establish own icons. Flannery O’Connor, for introducing me to the idea of violent, intrusive grace (the redeemed form of encroachment) which saves us despite ourselves in and thru what appear on the outside to be horrific events. And, if I may, I would add Harlan Ellison simply for conveying a sense of “the writing life” — in which his convictions and daily experiences and imagination all blended to produce the confessional style essays he provided as intros to his anthologies.
TF: You mention in your book that some people have the “spooky gene,” and some people don’t. Can you define the “spooky gene” and speculate as Mr. Spock might, as to some reasons why people either have it or they don’t?
Lint Hatcher: The Catholic Church includes in its teachings the concept of “invincible ignorance” and that, I believe, is at work when people reflexively label “spooky” things as “demonic”. It’s not that they have tried to understand, weighed the arguments, and then taken a firm stand. Rather, they shoot first and ask questions later.
Actually, they shoot first and that’s that. No questions at all. It’s as though they are going thru one of those tests in which a two-dimensional cutout appears in a doorway and you have to decide whether to shoot. A cutout of Satan appears. They shoot. A cutout of Boris Karloff appears. They shoot.
They would even argue it was more necessary to shoot Karloff, because that was Satan in a disquise. I once heard a guy in a Christian bookstore argue quite earnestly and without irony that It’s A Wonderful Life is a satanic deception. His reasoning was that the Scriptures say “No man does good. Not one.” and the message of the film is that George Bailey really did a lot of good in his life. This gives people the false confidence that their good works will save them. Prevents them from facing up to their own sinfulness, etc. It’s not that his logic isn’t compelling in a certain slant of light. It’s that most of us have a built-in sensibility that says, “I don’t exactly know why that guy is wrong. But I do know one thing: that way lies madness.” The logic of his position leads to throwing Capra films out the window.
The logic of the anti-Halloween position leads to telling kids they can’t go out dressed up like princesses and vampires and ring the neighbors’ doorbells and get some free candy. Most of us follow that logic along and stop at a certain point: the point where choices begin to seem somehow inhuman. The fanatic presses onward. I probably sound cut and dried about this — as though I just shrug and ignore the anti-Halloween crowd.
Actually, though, I’ve been working on an article that is basically a sincere, convoluted attempt to gain some understanding about this. When you get down to the very core of it, I think you find gnosticism. Gnosticism, I believe, is one of the most basic, primal outlooks a person can embrace. By that, I mean that other outlooks can be traced to deeper influences, those can be traced to still deeper influences, etc. But gnosticism is simply ground zero.
You either accept and enjoy our strange mixture of body and spirit or you reject this and attempt to embrace spirit alone, tossing the body aside as something contemptible. Everything flows out of that decision. And, ironically, it isn’t really a decision in the usual sense of the word. It’s an accumulation of decisions — intuitive decisions — between this course of action which is human and this other course of action which is inhuman.
A person who continually chooses the inhuman — who says for example, “No Christmas tree in my house. It’s pagan.” — feels that he is nobly sacrificing all for his faith, but ends up a brittle, lifeless husk. A person who chooses the human — who says, “I don’t understand this whole thing about paganism. But I do know my kids’ happiness about that Christmas tree is pure and good.” — they tend to be kind, merciful, and to have a sense of humor.
This is a touchy thing, because the Gospel calls us to moral choices which go against the grain of society and which, to the non-Christian, may register as rather inhuman. I’m thinking about dignity of life issues, in particular, in which we have to keep insisting innocent human life should not be aborted and the handicapped should not be systematically eradicated through eugenics. Avoidance of the possibility of suffering is not a trump card that overrules these things.
But that’s how society measures things these days — so we come across like heartless fanatics when we insist the life of the child outweighs potential hardships. Knowing when a stance is humane or inhumane — that’s where the formation of one’s conscience through prayer and Scripture study and attending to the voice of the Church come into play.
But, the thing is, in matters of culture we’re talking about something different. Are there people in culturally Catholic Mexico who do not have the spooky gene? Who feel an immediate, intense rejection of those funky, colorful paper mache skulls? Who refuse to have an ofrenda in their home, because any display of photos and mementos and favorite foods of the departed amounts to necromancy? I really doubt that there are. The anti-spooky outlook has its roots in our largely Protestant culture and Protestantism, in its rejection of things Catholic, may have tossed the baby out with the bath water (as you have noted). At the very least, the Reformation created a climate in which the Catholic sacramental perspective was no longer a given.
I suppose rejection of sacraments as channels of grace went further in some faith communities to include rejection of any symbols, any icons, any ritual whatsoever. This iconoclasm, I would say, is born of gnostic rejection of the bodily aspects of our existence and it isn’t only a Protestant thing; the denunciation and outlawing of icons was a terrible problem in the Byzantine corner of the Church hundreds of years before the Reformation.
I suppose I am saying that a person who grew up in a de-sacramentalized environment will be starved for the deep resonance of symbol, ritual and myth. Some of us found these things in the world of spookiness — especially in the monster resurgence of the Sixties which put icons like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein on the TV screen and gave birth to Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Universal Studios struck mythic gold when they re-imagined these folktales and gothic horrors through the lens of Jack Pierce, Curt Siodmak, James Whale, Boris and Bela.
When, as kids, we discovered monster fandom, the deep resonance we lacked was suddenly there in the most fluid, natural, energetic way. You felt like saying, “I’m home!” On the other hand, some folks, I think, find that very same resonance sickening. They shove it away, quickly and hard — like they were slamming the trashcan lid over some particularly rancid garbage. And they believe this immediate, powerful conviction is a spiritual thing — it is so deep and sudden and seemingly irreproachable that it must be the Spirit of God grieving over sinful mankind. So they feel quite comfortable denouncing Halloween and all things spooky indescriminately and without offering much of an explanation.
TF: How did you come to be involved with Wonder magazine?
Lint Hatcher: When I became a Christian back in 1984 I tossed everything prior to 1984 out the window. I thought I had to pare everything down to a kind of barebones wartime maneuverability. I utterly believed in the entire supernatural landscape of Christianity (and still do) and assumed, largely because I attended a charismatic church, that life would now consist of one supernatural battle after another. Art didn’t matter, literature didn’t matter (ironically, I was an English major with an Art minor). What mattered was getting the word out to millions of people who, like me prior to 1984, were floating along, going whereever the Zeitgeist led, embracing whatever “intelligent people everywhere” seemed to embrace. So I ended up working for a prison ministry for about $100 a week.
Then, it dawned on me, gradually, that the daily Christian life was not actually “life during wartime”. In fact, the charismatic leaders of my church seemed rather placid and unperturbed — even after rollicking sermons about spiritual warfare and the gifts of the Spirit and such. So, as the “life during wartime” model began to seem inaccurate, I found myself sitting in this mental space: something like a bare, unfurnished apartment. It felt like I was compromising, backsliding, but all I could think to do was to pull boxes out of the closets and reintroduce some of my favorite cultural pursuits like comic books, monster movies, fantasy fiction, etc. I didn’t know how to integrate these things, though. If it didn’t say “Jesus” on it, I didn’t know where to put it.
So I tried to integrate it while keeping my current Christian concerns in the driver’s seat. I set out to create a magazine that would witness to geeks like myself. When I tried to get a local comic book shop to carry the zine, the owner kindly pointed out to me that although there was a rocketship on the cover, along with other fantasy icons, there was nothing but Jesus articles on the inside. I was shocked to discover he was totally right. So I went out to my car and had no idea what to do. But gradually it came to me that it might be possible to put my love of fantasy in the driver’s seat and let the chips fall where they may.
My friend
Rod Bennett joined the magazine at this point and was a great help, as were the writings of C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. Basically, I was treating culture as something that interfered with faith, as though paying attention to cultural questions was not important so long as there was evangelizing to be done. The fact is, culture is pretty much inescapable. It’s the given assortment of references and symbols that we must use to communicate.
I threw away issue #2 I had been working on and we proceeded with a fantasy-oriented pop culture magazine that took our Christian perspective for granted. Basically, we sort of asked ourselves, “What would it be like if C. S. Lewis reviewed Terminator 2?” Or “What would it be like if Dorothy Sayers was a big fan of Ray Harryhausen movies and wanted to write a tribute/retrospective?” Or “What if J. R. R. Tolkein just loved going to the drive-in to see Godzilla imports?”
For some readers, it was a real revelation. They had seen no connection between their beloved pop cultural pursuits and this oblique world of religious obligations that hovered at the edge of their awareness. But, as it turns out, Universal Studios monster films, for example, are crammed to the gills (pun intended) with universal themes (again, pun intended) regarding sin and redemption, truth and deception.
As Lugosi’s Dracula once intoned, “There are things worse than death.” Discussing the religious and philosophical underpinnings of the pop culture didn’t have to be a dry academic exercise or an awkward insertion of religious themes where they did not belong, but was an exploration of why these things resonated with us in the first place. Cushing’s Van Helsing comes to mind, as well as that remarkable movie, Curse of the Demon. But those are just obvious instances of Christian themes.
The very idea that our actions have significance, that we live in a universe filled with meaning is a Christian theme that runs through all the supernatural thriller. The very moment you establish the supernatural in a horror film you remove the possibility of meaningless absurd actions. Everything is seen under the aspect of heaven or hell. So religious themes are unavoidable and they breathe life into the things we love.
It’s just that some people associate religion with ignorance, repression and boredom. The sense of wonder these films and books inspire in them doesn’t match up in their mind with “religion”. So some folks thought we were mixing oil and water. We pointed out that a Christian perspective on fantasy was hardly something new and artificial, referring them to Spencer’s The Fairie Queen and, of course, Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein. Horror minus a religious outlook was the aberration, a modern exception to the rule.
TF: What were some of the topics and articles that you wrote which were near and dear to your heart?
Lint Hatcher: Frankly, and mostly thanks to Rod, we put out some of the best writing you could find in that odd little cultural ghetto called “monster magazines.” Rod has an uncanny ability both to remember all the various details and trivia fans love to hash out and to somehow integrate all this within a sort of wistful rumination on themes and cultural undercurrents.
We began to refer to this as giving something “the Wonder treatment”. My favorite is Monster Fan 2000, a lengthy, utterly sincere tribute to classic horrors as compared to modern horror since the late Sixties. We had mostly focused on introducing people to sources of wonder up to this point, so Rod was particularly dubious when I mentioned I wanted to do an article on modern horror. “So,” he would say, “we’re gonna get to hear Lint Hatcher’s perspective on The Wonder of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” But I assured him I knew what I was doing and once he read the first draft he was enthusiastic about adding his own thoughts as well.
I also like our Wonder History of Miniature Golf and our review of the Dinosaur Land roadside attraction. Also, the mega review of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was fun, since there was quite a controversy among the Wonder staff as to the merits and demerits of the show. I got a call from Joel Hodgson a couple of months after the issue came out and would loved to have interviewed him — he said he understood what we were trying to do and sounded pretty positive about it — but the magazine had bit the dust by then.
TF: In your book you not only talk about the great joy have experience in the celebration of Halloween, but the book is devoted to defending a Christian’s participation in it as if there were a conflict with the faith. Why do you think some conservative Christians see this as a problematic holiday?
Lint Hatcher: Like I said above, I think it ultimately comes down to gnosticism versus sacramentalism. I know I am using “sacramentalism” very loosely to mean “acceptance of the role of symbol and ritual as bodily expressions of faith since we are physical creatures and truly need such things.” It may be better to say “incarnational.” I haven’t worked that out yet.
There is, of course, also the kneejerk assumption that spookiness and occultism are one and the same thing. They are not. There is a spooky aesthetic which is built into the Creation. Nighttime is mysterious. Goofy, strange night creatures like bats and frogs and cats have a very different vibe than collies and bunnies and flamingos. I can’t imagine that vibe is only a result of the fall of mankind. Night existed prior to the fall. Are we going to say that bats, frogs and black cats had a flamingo vibe going prior to our fall from grace?
I understand a terrible transformation took place throughout the entire chain of being; the natural world became a mixture of thorns and thistles, tooth and claw. Death entered the picture and became associated with the night. However, before I agree that the spooky aesthetic has something to do with death and spirits separated from their bodies by death, I think it is necessary to insist that mystery existed before all this. Night was connected to mystery before it was connected with death. The night sky full of stars and a glowing moon was not, even prior to the fall, the same thing as a blue sky full of clouds and sunshine. The strange romantic appeal of nighttime is eternal. As they say, “Black is always in style.”
That said, death did enter the picture — along with ghoulies and goblins and long-legged beasties. Skulls seemed to grin. Graveyards became evocative in ways quite different from a plowed field or the gate to the city. But not all of this was negative. Death was horrific, but, at the same time, it could be noble, even beautiful. It’s an odd concept, but we see it every single year when Autumn comes round. This is arguably the most beautiful season and yet its beauty spreads across the land precisely because winter is coming and nature, in a sense, is dying. Anyone who fails to see the poetry in Autumn has taken the inhuman route and will have no problem telling some little kid that he shouldn’t dress up as Frankenstein because Frankenstein is made up of corpse parts all sewn together. If the kid says, “What about Frankenberry and Count Chocula?,” it won’t make any difference.
Now, occultism is also plainly tied into mystery. And so occultists also have an affinity for that spooky aesthetic. But it does not follow, therefore, that occultism is the origin and driving factor of the spooky aesthetic. If that were true, then little pink pigs would appear spooky if only they were included in some sort of occult practice. Anything associated with occultism would naturally become spooky, right? And so, eventually, our Halloween decorations would include the black cat, the furry spider, and the spectral pink pig. The fact is, the spooky aesthetic predates occultism and has to do with mystery. The occultist, therefore, rather enjoys black cats, crows, and purple drapery. But he probably also enjoys the atmosphere in the big cathedral downtown — with its great silences, its candles, its Gothic proportions — even if he has no intention of staying for mass.
TF: Last year’s Imaginarium at the Cornerstone Festival generated a lot of controversy on the blogosphere and Internet due to the engagement with cultures and their festivals associated with death. Were you surprised by this negative reaction?
Lint Hatcher: Yes.
TF: What did you learn as a result of the controversy? Have you had a chance to do any further reflecting and writing on this?
Lint Hatcher: Well, what I mentioned above about gnosticism and symbol and ritual has been on my mind.
I have also been reading Michael Polanyi and his theories about tacit knowledge. He was a renowned German chemist who fled to England when the Nazis came into power. What he witnessed prior to his escape, however, was many of his colleagues signing up with the Nazi agenda. These were people who had always displayed great professionalism and a strong sense of ethical responsibility. So he was thunderstruck and found himself in the difficult position of verbalizing his shock in order to argue with them.
In effect, he switched from chemistry to philosophy in an effort to understand how such things can happen. He came to very Schaefferian conclusions — basically, that ideas are very powerful and none are more powerful than presuppositions.
The great “given” of his time (and our own, I suppose) was scientism or rationalism: the belief that knowledge gathered through scientific methods is the only valid, trustworthy form of knowledge. Anything that did not fit this criterion belonged to the world of superstition, religion, intuition, and so on, and was not worth the time of day. Polanyi became convinced this was a fatal error. Knowledge depends also on the tacit dimension, that is, the information which comes to us in ways that cannot be codified.
He points to the example of a man driving a nail with a hammer. The tacit cooperation of many different factors is necessary to accomplish the goal — from various muscles to eye contact to measurement of force to the setting aside of extraneous sounds and other distractions. All of this must work together in one smooth effort.
If the man focuses on any one of these contributing factors exclusively then the whole thing falls apart. If he focuses on the hammer, or his elbow, or his thumb and forefinger holding the nail, he is liable to whack his thumb. Polanyi calls the integration of these factors “indwelling” — our awareness of individual factors moves into the background and the overall purpose and meaning of what we are doing becomes the focus. Polanyi calls the object of this focus the “comprehensive entity”. The recognition of the comprehensive entity is true knowledge.
This isn’t New Age stuff, but rather commonplace. When we listen to someone talk, we automatically integrate a series of sounds, facial expressions, and hand gestures into a meaningful whole. If you sat there and mapped out each little sound apart from its role as a syllable in a word, the meaning disappears. Polanyi claims that this — the disappearance of meaning — is what happens when we insist scientific method is the only reliable source of knowledge. We focus on one aspect of knowledge gathering and, as a result, the comprehensive entity escapes us.
The comprehensive entity always has to do with meaning, so to miss the comprehensive entity is to see a world without meaning, to see human beings as objects to be studied and manipulated through scientific methodology, and so on. In still other words, it leads to an inhuman perspective.
I am wondering if this can be applied to what I regard as the “inhuman” in fanaticism. My experience is with Christian fundamentalism, but I am not saying fundamentalists are inhuman! God forbid. Rather their gnostic, anti-sacramental convictions send them down a series of logical next steps which seem to my mind increasingly inhuman. The result is a systematic demonizing of natural cultural expressions. The use of symbol and ritual is simply, basically human. Is it pagan? Well, to the extent that pagans are human, I suppose so. But it does not follow that all use of symbol and ritual is pagan.
At any rate, I am wondering whether the Christian fundamentalist has fastened on particular ingredients in religious knowledge to the exclusion of other parts — with the result that the “comprehensive entity” escapes them. They didn’t “get” what we were doing at the Imaginarium in 2006. Instead, they focused on isolated moments of what they perceived as heresy. They took things out of context precisely because they didn’t “get” the context. So you have people freaking out that one speaker mentioned a few Catholic saints are supposed to have flown miraculously. He used the word “levitation” and the Fundies associated this with occultism. But the plain sense of the thing is that he was talking about flying. Feet leaving the ground. I just don’t see the Enemy saying, “Only I can cause that flying miracle thing. So every instance of flying is demonic, regardless of the apparent holiness of the Aloftee.”
Anyhow, is there some aspect of Christian belief or knowledge on which the Fundies have fastened to the exclusion of the other parts of the whole, so that the comprehensive entity is lost while they remain quite sure of the rightness of their cause? It sounds like an invitation for theological liberals to look down on “those poor misguided literalists,” but that is not what I mean. The isolated focal points may be essential. Biblical inerrancy, the divinity of Christ, the reality of original sin, the historicity of the miracles of Christ are all very important. Scientific method is important. But there is a Big Picture we miss when we emphasize one to the exclusion of the others.
I think that’s my next book. Although, it sounds a little too pat the way I expressed it above.
TF: One of my ideas is that Protestantism has a poor track record on average in positive interaction with pop culture, and this resultes in the creation of a void in the healthy balance in bringing the faith into interaction with
imagination. Would you agree with this assessment, and if so, why do you think this is?
Lint Hatcher: The fear of symbol and ritual has left Evangelicalism susceptible to a kind of unreflective, tasteless absorption of secular symbols. And rituals, I suppose. So we see mega-churches exuding a vibe that seems awfully similar to the Target down the street.
I suppose, in a way, it’s unavoidable. If you don’t have your own rich culture of symbols, you have to make do with what’s available. But secular culture is all about the marketplace and a kind of commodified version of reality that presents everything with a slick, shopper friendly gloss. It’s designed to de-emphasize challenging content — anything that might interrupt the shopper’s thrill of discovery and immediate identification with the sort of fulfilled lifestyle the item seems to promise.
Adapting this sort of milieu to Evangelical culture is downright creepy. It’s Christian Consumer Kitsch. And, the thing is, you don’t have to go that direction. Genuine Christian culture exists. It is rich and authentic and beautiful and resonant and, at times, rather spooky and, at times, rather demanding. If we can get past the important role played by “dead white males” and rediscover the glories of Christendom — while at the same time offering a mea culpa with Pope John Paul II for the sins of Christendom — we might see the birth in Protestantism of the sort of natural folk culture that permeates life in predominantly Catholic countries like Mexico.
That, I believe, is the natural flow of cultural life from “the deposit of the faith”. I believe, also, that it would resonate with a natural immediacy in many Protestant hearts — exactly as the Famous Monsters subculture resonated with us. Effortless, fluid, delighted interaction with the symbols. For some of us, though, the opportunity to see the symbols of Christian tradition with new eyes has passed. Often, when I look at the statues, the crucifix, the stained glass windows in our beautiful parish church I know for a fact that as a kid I would immediately have identified with these things and felt that resonant note of “I’m home!” It would have been a delightful, enthusiastic loyalty sort of thing. As a former Evangelical who is in many ways still an Evangelical, however, it is difficult to participate. There is a constant veneer of self-awareness. Except when Halloween and Christmas roll around!
TF: The Sci Fi Channel ran a program that noted the strong influence of aspects of sci fi, horror, and fantasy on the lives of young adolescent boys from the 1950s through the 1970s. I was caught up on this and its influence is still felt today (obviously), and I know you were too. Any thoughts as to why this might be? What did so many find appealing and what might this say to the needs of the present generation for fantasy and wonder?
Lint Hatcher: Like I said, those symbols effortlessly and fluidly came to life in our monster fan hearts and minds. I think the same feeling of delight and participation happens for some people when they see a Gothic cathedral or a cheap little milagro trinket or a Sacred Heart painting. The monster culture of the Sixties and Seventies played that role for us — it filled the gaping hole created by gnostic iconoclasm. Having said that, however, I don’t have to proceed to dump the monster stuff. Or, God forbid, over-intellectualize it. I might as well enjoy the monsteriffic films and books which actually bring the Permanent Things to life for me. And pray for the day when the religious equivalent — the goofy, folksy spookiness of Dia de los Muertos, for example — is a natural part of how Protestants (and Catholic Evangelicals like myself) express their faith. Instead of, say, t-shirts that say “got God?” or “This Blood’s for you.”
TF: Lint, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. I’m looking forward to your presentations this year at Cornerstone, and your writing in the future.
Lint Hatcher was one of the creative forces behind the now defunct (unfortunately) Wonder magazine. He has his own blog, Excuse Me, Ghidorah?, where he writes on topics near and dear to TheoFantastique. He is also the author of a number of great articles, and the book The Magic Eightball Test: A Christian Defense of Haloween and All Things Spooky. I would describe Lint as a lot like me, an adult around the same age but in many ways a wide-eyed adolescent who refused to grow up while holding on to a strong sense of fantasy and wonder about the world. Lint will be sharing some of this wonder, coupled with his insightful analysis related to popular culture at Cornerstone Festival at the Imaginarium this year. Lint has graciously taken some time to share some of his thoughts with us here.
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