Contemporary Conversations in Culture, Media and Society – ‘The Devil Rides In: The Development of Satanic Narratives in the Swinging Sixties and Beyond’ with Dr Tom Clark (University of Sheffield)

Contemporary Conversations in Culture, Media and Society

The Devil Rides In: The Development of Satanic Narratives in the Swinging Sixties and Beyond

Featuring Dr Tom Clark (University of Sheffield).

There is now growing scholarly attention directed toward folklore and cinema, particularly in respect to ‘folk horror’ (Hutchings, 1993; Sherman and Koven, 2007; FHR, 2017). Elsewhere, there has been much interest in the Satanic panics of the 1980s and 1990s (Jenkins, 1992; Victor, 1993; and La Fontaine, 1998). However, there remains a paucity of work that has critically explored the development of Satanic narratives in contemporary culture. This talk will examine the relationship between the Satanic cycle of films produced in the UK between 1957 and 1976 and the representation of Satanism in the British print media. Charting the development of the Satanic film and the Satanic news story over time, the paper will demonstrate how Satanic folklore was realised differently across the two mediums. But, reflecting familiar social divisions of the day – sexuality, age, religion, gender, and even ethnicity – and decorated with trappings of unambiguous dualist metaphysics, the paper will argue that when placed side-by-side the films and news stories provided important cultural signals regarding what to fear and where to find it. Exploited by a deeply conservative white patriarchal hegemony of screen-writers, directors, journalists and publishers, Satanism was constructed to be an organised, nascent threat to the whole of society. In turn, this provided part of the cultural bricolage necessary for a social problem to be discovered in the form of the Satanic panics of the 1980s and 1990s.

Dr Tom Clark is a Lecturer in Research Methods at The University of Sheffield, UK. He has published widely across the social sciences and has well established interests in all things evil. He is the co-author of ‘How to do your Social Research Project or Dissertation’ (with Liam Foster and Alan Bryman), and ‘Bryman’s Social Research Methods’ (with Liam Foster, Luke Sloan, and Alan Bryman).

Contemporary Conversations in Culture, Media and Society – The Devil Rides In: The Development of Satanic Narratives in the Swinging Sixties and Beyond with Dr Tom Clark

Thursday 03 March 2022, 1600-1800

Held online – if you’d like to come along please sign up on Eventbrite.

This presentation is part of the Contemporary Conversations in Culture, Media and Society seminars hosted by the Centre for Culture, Media & Society (CCMS). Based in the Culture & Creativity Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University, CCMS delivers critical insights and knowledge on a diversity of cultural, social and media practices. 

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