Hell House performances have received quite a lot of attention in the past decade due to their rather controversial nature, and thus became even more popularized on TV and in social media through criticism. Described by Fox News as “controversial Halloween practices”, these theatrical experiences of Hell stretch the boundaries of psychological comfort, and often times leave their spectators with a bad taste in their mouths. In her essay, Ann Pellegrini discusses theater in light of the recent proliferation of this type of performance, which uses the medium as a means of evangelization, and she brings in evidence in the shape of various scholarly perspectives in an attempt to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon. In this case, it is also worthwhile to discuss George Ratliff’s 2001 documentary on Hell Houses in parallel with Pellegrini, in order to have a broader view on what a Hell House is, what its purpose is, how it achieves that purpose, and whether or not it is an effective practice.
The concept of Hell House surfaced among the “conservative U.S. Protestants [who] have long worried that Halloween’s associations with paganism and the occult leave young people susceptible to Satan’s seductions” (911). With this in mind, Hell Houses emerged as an alternative to common Halloween practices, providing a safe environment in which “common sins” – such as homosexuality, abortion, suicide, rape, drinking irresponsibly – are portrayed, with a view to scaring the audience to Jesus, to Christianity. In many ways, Hell House performances seem paradoxical, due to the involvement of religious institutions in the creative process of what is, in fact, a theater piece. The Church has often criticized theater, because it acted as a gateway towards unnatural or sinful behavior, in the sense that once a person is allowed to perform certain unlawful actions in a fictive universe, they feel a legitimization of sorts for those actions in real life too, and therefore they sin. Moreover, these so-called Christian haunted houses rely heavily on secular culture in order to convey a distorted Christian message, and so they further reinforce their Machiavellian and contradictory nature. It appears that no importance is given to the process so long as the Church achieves its goals – which, for the purpose of this discussion are: the conversion of disbelievers to Christianity and the reaffirmation of commitment to the divine from believers respectively.
Starting off in 1972 as Scaremares, developing into Judgement Houses in the 1980s and then into Hell Houses, this evangelical phenomenon acts as a tie between the different denominations within Protestantism through the cultivation of feeling. In a Hell House performance, “the appeal is to the heart, not the head” (914), aiming towards a spiritual transformation. There seems to be a clear parallel to the Iranian Ta’ziyeh, both good examples of religious deep play, through their higher-than-just-entertainment purpose. The means they employ to accomplish their own purposes though are situated at opposite ends of the spectrum, meaning that, while Ta’ziyeh exudes honesty and a sense of cultural rightfulness from any given standpoint, Hell Houses are extremely questionable. The main concern in this context is their targeting, seen as both audience and performers, because they all seem to steer themselves to the most vulnerable group of all – teenagers. This practice has received strong critiques from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) and other groups around the world, because it fuels discrimination, hatred, stereotypes, and it perpetuates a narrow-minded way of thinking, which is obsolete in our 21st century society. For example, gay marriage is perceived as a sin (the scene being cut exactly before the kiss) and all gay men supposedly have AIDS and are dying because that is God’s punishment for their sexual orientation. For teenagers who have trouble understanding or coming to terms with their sexuality, the psychological impact of such interpretations is tremendous, and might even push them towards taking rash decisions – such as committing suicide in fear of eternal damnation -, which constitutes the opposite of what Hell Houses are supposed to do. On the other side of the fourth wall, there is also a sense of manipulation based on immaturity. For example, the majority of students at the Trinity Christian School want to audition for various roles in the Hell House (the most popular being “the suicide girl”, “the abortion girl” and the dancers in the rave scene) either as a means of reaffirming their faith or as a means of escaping the constraints of Christianity without risking the salvation of their souls. While Pellegrini sympathizes with the concerns that maybe Hell Houses have a negative effect on youth, she also points out a positive aspect, which is that, perhaps, they provide a window towards aspects that the teenager in the audience might not have even thought about: “[Hell Houses] reveal possibilities they [teenagers, Ed.] were not otherwise supposed to contemplate” (920).
Hell Houses are not theatrical masterpieces, but their success relies in the ability to play the most basic structure of feeling, which we call affect, through melodrama and psychological pressure. Affect is a feeling in its initial phase, when it doesn’t even have a name; instead it courses through our entire body as a type of energy in search for recognition and expression. The audience is vulnerable after having just seen a series of emotionally intense performances, and it is this vulnerability which makes the core of what the Hell House coordinator aims for. Spectators still have to process their experience and discover where they place themselves in relation to it, when they are suddenly asked to demonstrate their loyalty to their Savior by praying or simply leave. Many of the people who choose to pray agreed to this as a result of peer pressure and a sense of guilt, and when the pastor and the other members of the community start speaking in tongues over them, they feel like they have no other choice than to be there. Seen from this perspective, Hell Houses are characterized by some incipient form of oppression, which again contradicts the very principle that lies at the foundation of the Assemblies of God Protestant Church – free will. Following this train of thought, performance studies scholar Debra Levine identifies Hell Houses with Antonin Artaud’s “theater of cruelty”, which “privileges feeling over thought” and “bombards the audience from all sides with new sensations” (926), subsequently breaking the imaginary delimitation between the performers and the audience and allowing them to interact with each other in a silent manner.
Echoing Pellegrini, “Hell House is theater, but it is also something more than theater” (930). I do acknowledge its importance strictly in terms of performance and deep play, however I could never become complacent with such a limited way of thinking, nor could I ever agree with the purpose of a Hell House. As a human rights activist, reading about and watching a Hell House performance left me with an unpleasant feeling that our society regresses in terms of building mutual understanding between people, instead of advancing towards a better place as we all hypocritically advocate for.
Citation:
Pellegrini, Ann. “”Signaling Through the Flames”: Hell House Performance and Structures of Religious Feeling.” American Quarterly 59.3 (2007): 911-35. Project Muse.
Hell House. Dir. George Ratliff. Cantina Pictures, 2001. DVD.
Alexandru Thinks Theater 