In the Age of Trump, Americans Don’t Need a Halloween Hell House to Experience Horror
Halloween Hell Houses, or Judgement Houses, are basically a relic from the fire-and-brimstone days of the Moral Majority and other Christian evangelical enterprises. These days, however, Americans do not need a church-sponsored haunted house to experience horror and damnation. The gates of hell—orchestrated by the Trump administration—are swinging open, and operating in big city neighborhoods across the country.
In the Age of Trump, the moral panic that once played out under strobe lights and fake smoke has burst through the church basement and into the streets. The stagecraft of terror that Hell Houses once perfected—fear as spectacle, morality as theater—has become the daily news.
Who needs actors pretending to be demons when ICE raids are tearing families apart in real time, rounding up thousands of immigrants in the name of “law and order”? Who needs a preacher’s voice booming about eternal punishment when democratic institutions are being gutted, civil rights rolled back, and truth itself turned into a sideshow?
Hell Houses were used to warn visitors about a world gone morally rotten, about the wages of sin, the dangers of sex, the perils of difference. But now the country itself has become a kind of judgment house: a place where cruelty is policy, empathy is weakness, and fear is the main attraction.
The horror isn’t theatrical anymore. It’s televised. It’s live-streamed. It’s legislated. And Trump’s armed and masked militia are hell bent on carrying out the administration’s orders.
Background: Alongside the time-honored Halloween traditions of pumpkin carving, neighborhoods swirling with trick-or-treaters, slasher films, sugar highs, and plastic skeletons, another October ritual once permeated the country: the religious right’s Halloween Hell House.
Back when the Reverend Jerry Falwell was still thundering from the pulpit, he hit upon a hellishly effective mix of ministry and marketing. Why, he asked, should Halloween belong to the heathens and candy scavengers? Why not claim it for Christ? In 1972, Falwell — the Baptist televangelist and founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia — hosted what’s considered the first “Hell House.” He called it Scaremare.
The idea caught on. Soon churches across the country were staging their own versions, setting up interactive haunted houses where young people could come and get the fear of God (literally) scared into them.
Some of these “Hell Houses,” also known as “Judgment Houses,” quickly drew controversy for their graphic, moralistic content. Scenes of abortions, extramarital sex, drug overdoses, and fatal car crashes played out before stunned audiences, each culminating in a descent into hellfire for the sinners involved.
By the turn of the twenty-first century, themes had expanded to include domestic abuse, teen suicide, abortion, drunk driving, and, increasingly, gay marriage — turning the Christian Right’s version of Halloween into a live-action sermon on sin and salvation.
America as Hell House
Donald Trump didn’t invent this script; he is univeralizing and perfecting its staging. His rallies are Hell Houses without the altar call. Today’s demons are branded “enemies of the people.” Every speech is an apocalyptic pageant: the world is ending, the nation is under attack, only Trump can save it. Every action is designed to instill fear and anguish.
The evangelical aesthetic of damnation-as-entertainment has gone national. Fear is the stage, outrage the soundtrack, and salvation is always just one election away.
In this new America, you don’t buy a ticket to the Hell House. You just wake up and check the news.
No comments:
Post a Comment