Catholic Horror on Television

Ralph Beliveau is professor and head of Creative Media Production and Professional Writing in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Laura Bolf-Beliveau is professor and coordinator of English education in the English department at the University of Central Oklahoma. Ruth DeFoster is assistant professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Erika Engstrom is professor and director of the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Kentucky.

“The Catholic Church has found itself increasingly under the microscope because of fallout from the plethora of creepy clergy sexual abuse cases made public in the last twenty-five years. So, no one should be surprised that contemporary depictions of the Church continue a tradition dating back to Gothic horror novels such as Lewis’s The Monk (1775) that depict the presence of a bond between the Roman Church and the minions of Satan. The authors of Catholic Horror on Television, however, provide a more nuanced approach to Church depravity, arguing that every problematic institution wrestles with complicated definitions of “truth” (characterized in the series Evil) even as individual priests (in The Exorcist television series) are depicted standing in defiance of a corrupt Church hierarchy. Catholic Horror on Television offers a mixed and complicated response to both the status of the Catholic Church as well as the genre of horror itself.”

• Chapter One: The Monstrous-Feminine in The Exorcist Television SeriesLaura Bolf-BeliveauChapter Two: Midnight Mass as Horror VeritéRuth DeFosterChapter Three: The Duality of EvilErika EngstromChapter Four: The Weird, The Eerie, and Folk Horror in 30 Coins (30 monedas)Ralph Beliveau