[PANIC FEST 2023]: INTERROGATE SOCIAL PANIC WITH ‘SATAN WANTS YOU’

 

Human history is no stranger to moral panic. In fact, it seems to flow through us in cycles. Witchcraft and the hunts that followed it are likely our largest touchstone for societal hysterics—you can’t make it through a school year without at least some cursory study of THE CRUCIBLE or THE SCARLET LETTER (written by a descendent of one of the lead judges of the Salem Witch Trials)—it’s one bloody moment of our collective past we cannot seem to shake. Instead, it continues to stretch and twist its shadow in new and ever-more disturbing forms.

Panic Fest 2023 reminds us that some moments of history are never really over with SATAN WANTS YOU, a documentary exploring the previously untold story of the book that ignited the Satanic Panic. Written and directed by Steve J. Adams and Sean Horler, SATAN WANTS YOU digs into the background and creation of MICHELLE REMEMBERS, the memoir jointly created by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist Larry Pazder that recounts her journey through recovered memories that set off a controversy like no other.

Writing a book with your patient is bad enough, ethically speaking, but the documentary makes it clear that there are no real winners or blameless players in this game. Boundaries of all kinds are blurred and dissolved the deeper into the sessions Michelle and her psychiatrist go. Featuring interviews with such people as Pazder’s ex wife, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, journalist Debbie Nathan, and more, the film sets out to uncover the previously untold truths about a relationship fraught with amorphous power dynamics and a time in society where we seemed to be looking for something to latch onto, no matter what it was. And nothing creates a bigger or more alluring target than the potential lurking behind perceived difference and weakness.

MICHELLE REMEMBERS is, on its own, quite the troubling piece of work. Written in the third person and fraught with mention of dead animals and babies and constant sacrifice and abandonment, it’s almost a wonder it still has its believers. That is, there are still some out there who interpret it less as a novel or even as a metaphor and more as a literal happening. I believe, however, when the circumstances of Michelle’s life at the time of her picking up therapy sessions with Dr. Pazder again are examined, that if anything it is best approached as a look into the psychological state of a woman coping with loss. The trigger for her resuming sessions she had previously abandoned was a particularly rough miscarriage—perhaps it is no wonder her thoughts were rife with traumatic bloodshed. The picture presented of Michelle through SATAN WANTS YOU complicates that sympathy a bit.

The film spans an examination of the creation of the book from the therapy sessions upon which it was based to the press tours to promote it and the crumblingly chaotic response it ignited in the hearts and minds of audiences at least spanning the United States. Where most of us might call to mind the McMartin Trial as the origins of the Panic, SATAN WANTS YOU presents the story before The Story We Know. In structure and scope it reminds me a great deal of Unmasking Alice, Rick Emerson’s deep dive into the controversial books credited to “Anonymous” teens—but really written by Beatrice Sparks in several moves designed to garner herself fame no matter the exploitation cost—GO ASK ALICE and JAY’S JOURNAL. The latter novel, which covers the ideas of cult worship and is truly based on one teenager’s diary whose parents turned it over under false beliefs, had such feverish sales it’s credited with aiding the spread of Satanic Panic outside of its home state.

Anyone interested in what makes the wheels of major social panic and hysteria turn will find much to learn from SATAN WANTS YOU. Terrifying in its implications and its truths, it even manages to tie in to more current moments, and those who studied the phenomenon as it happened begin to wonder if history is repeating itself despite our efforts. And if so, with what frequency?

 

 

 

Katelyn Nelson
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