Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century

8. The Allegory of The Ninth Gate

reporter’s voice is signaled by his last name, “Wooden,” and that of LaVey used from Satanis as a voice-over is denoted with “LaVey”: SHOT AUDIO 1. From Satanis: LaVey takes a ceremonial sword in one hand and a book in another. He is in a devil out¤t and lit by a green light. Wooden: The Church of Satan and other organized devilworship groups represent our second category . . . Zoom out to a framing of the stock footage by a blue background. The words “Religious Satanist” appear above the framed footage. . . . religious Satanists. 2. Cut to different part of Satanis ritual. A devil mask is handed to a participant by a hooded ¤gure. The participant puts on the devil mask. Although LaVey would not talk to us, we can get a glimpse of his theories and rituals in this 1970 documentary on his church. 3. Cut to organist wearing a skull mask. He or she is bathed in red light. LaVey: “We feel a person should be free to indulge all the so-called fetishes that they would . . . 4. Overhead shot of ritual group in a circle, LaVey in the middle holding out a ceremonial sword. . . . desire, as long as they don’t hurt anyone that doesn’t deserve or wish to be hurt.” 5. Head shot of an older, male participant in dark, formal clothing. 6. Head shot of LaVey. Primary Satanis sound track: “Hail Satan! 7. Head shot of another participant wearing a hood. He repeats the words of LaVey in chorus. “Hail Satan!” prime-time satanism / 197 8. Medium shot of LaVey with Sword LaVey: “We perform human sacri¤ces by proxy, you might say. The LaVey turns toward camera with sword. The sword is put down. destruction of human beings who would, let’s say, create an LaVey takes his cape and slowly, arms grasping it on each side, pulls it over his head. antagonistic situation towards us in the form of curses and hexes. Not in actual blood ritual, because, certainly, the destruction of a human being physically is illegal. 9. Cut to a different part of the ritual. A Cof¤n is opened, and a nude woman is revealed to be inside. “666” is written in black paint across her chest. A black bar obscures her breasts for television censors. Wooden: Police we spoke to say they have never made a link between this Satanic church and the Satanic crimes being committed. However, some incidents described to us by witnesses . . . 10. Head shot of LaVey in green light. . . . around the country are . . . 11. Medium shot of cof¤n. A man in a light colored robe climbs into the cof¤n with the nude woman, and other participants lower the lid. . . . strikingly similar to these ritualistic scenes. The segment continues by describing the cof¤n ritual as an “embrace of death” and then moves to a discussion of voodoo dolls. Although footage of Satanis is used in other parts of the program, the eleven shots described above are suf¤cient to illustrate how easily the ¤lm is used as a visual abbreviation of practices that they do not depict. The sound track of an interview of LaVey which appears much later in the¤lm is used as a voice-over to contextualize the opening ritual as fetishistic (in the sexual sense) and as human sacri¤ce “by proxy.” Although careful to avoid libel by noting that there is no evidence that the Church of Satan has committed crime, Wooden clearly implies there is a link by suggesting that “some incidents described to us by 198 / chapter 7 witnesses [of Satanic crime] around the country are strikingly similar to these ritualistic scenes.” The necessary ambiguity of these images divorced from their original context is used to create the impression of an empirically veri¤able Satanic ritual in which people are killed. The mobility of these Satanic images is re®ected in the ease with which they are moved around in order to provide codes of interpretation that are different from their original codes. Their recontextualization in a program concerned with human atrocity and Satanic crime supplies new codes of interpretation that use the basic reality effect of the image to suggest the reality of Satanic murder. In other words, that these images depict a Satanic ritual at all helps to create kind of illusionism whereby an empirical crime that occurs outside the frame...