Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

5. Mothering a Demon:Rosemary’s BabyPleased to meet you,Hope you guess my name.But what’s puzzling you,Is the nature of my game…– The Rolling Stones,“Sympathy for the Devil”THE ANCIENT EVIL ENTERS POP CULTUREJames Twitchell and Anne Williams, among others, have claimed that thetwentieth-century Gothic has introduced us to at least one new motif: the“demonic child.” 1 The popularity of The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty(analysed in chapter six), and its offspring in movies (such as The Omen series)gave the phenomenon wider attention, and different explanations wereoffered. Stephen King comments on this discussion, and argues that the newhorror was rooted in social change. The end of the 1960s and the beginningof the 1970s (King highlights the seven years from 1966 to 1972) were aturbulent period in the United States. Youth culture was developing newdiscourses and ways of living; rock music, sexual morals, values and attitudesin many ways collided violently with the “social and cultural conscience,commitment, and definitions of civilized behaviour,” as understood by theolder generations. The Vietnam war developed this issue into a dramatic politicalconfrontation. The new horror was born in this atmosphere of conflictbetween the young and the old, and King argues that “every adult” inAmerica understood the subtext behind a horror film such as The Exorcist. 2 Iwould argue that these works of new horror have a much wider grasp, evenon audiences outside this particular social context. Their use of demonicelements does employ different forms of social unrest as well as individualpsychological anxieties, but the “external” and the “internal” are mixed; thedemonic reveals elements of the other in the structures of the self.1Twitchell, 1985, 300; Williams 1995, 18. – It is perhaps more accurate to characterisethis as reinterpretation, rather than invention; the straightforward treatment of sexualityand aggression by modern horror powerfully modifies the more subtle associations ofchildren with the demonic in earlier literature (see, e.g., Henry James’s Turn of the Screw[1898]).2King 1981/1987, 195-97.