Shortly after watching The Omen on network TV one night sometime in the late ‘70s, I stood in front of a bathroom mirror with my hair pulled back to reveal as much of my scalp as possible, peering intently for a sign that would prove me to be the greatest force of evil in this universe.
I still remember feeling a tinge of disappointment that Satan hadn’t chosen me as his heir apparent. Not that I particularly liked the Prince of Darkness, but it sure would have set me apart from the maddening crowd.
For the next few days, I combed through classmate’s hair, stopping only when I discovered something more disturbing than the dreaded number 666: a colony of weird bugs nesting in one poor kid’s tangled curls.
I was in junior high, but unlike other kids I knew who had seen the truncated TV version of the Richard Donner-directed 1976 film, I didn’t find The Omen creepy or thrilling, although it was certainly both. Jerry Goldsmith’s ominous Academy Award-winning score, the constant procession of leering gargoyles and other frightening Catholic symbols, the gravitas of lead actor Gregory Peck’s voice, the androgynous, Clockwork Orange-like face of the spooky kid who played Damien, screenwriter David Seltzer’s taut plot pulled from that seminal conspiracy theory, the Book of Revelation—all if it jelled into a wholly contemporary gothic tale, a cross between Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Manson.
But The Omen wasn’t just a horror flick to me. It was a factual, horrifying account of what I believed would soon happen: the rise to power of the Antichrist as predicted some 1,900 years in the mother of all conspiracy theory tomes.
The Omen was a blueprint for something that my prepubescent brain was captivated by: fundamentalist Christian interpretation of Biblical prophecy. I’d studied the major eschatological books of the Bible, Revelation and Daniel, with a pastor of a Seventh Day Adventist church in Riverside, California. Like many of his ilk (Adventists may be wholly progressive in terms of dietary guidelines and medicine but, 30 years ago at least, they were positively medieval in their paranoid, literal interpretation of Biblical prophecy) he yearned to save my soul by scaring the living shit out of me. He detailed the prophecies that had already come true, like Daniel’s vision of four terrible beasts, all representing major world empires, rising from tumultuous water. And he enumerated all those that were in imminent proximity, including the most harrowing part of the entire Bible, Revelation 13, in which the rise to power of what is traditionally known as the Antichrist is spelled out.
The Adventists, as least the ones I studied with, were pretty clear about one thing: the Papacy would serve as main instrument of Satan’s evil machinations. Some figure within the Catholic church, or with the church’s blessing, would mercilessly run the earth for a time, including persecuting all those who didn’t allow the mark of the beast on their forehead or right hand.
It was my other favorite epic story as a kid: Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, in breathlessly impending real time, a great malevolent evil ultimately topped by goodness and justice, but only after a period of excruciating torment and sacrifice. It was clear-cut, exciting, thrilling, and harrowing. A battle to end all battles, a chance to participate in the heroic climax of all human destiny.
And, of course, it was all bullshit. I eventually came to realize that this paranoid, Catholic-bashing, literal interpretation of Biblical prophecy is merely one in an inexhaustible number of spins on two allegorical, fantastic books that serve as Rorschach tests for whatever one fancies. Look long enough and hard enough and whatever you want to see in them you will see: the Roman Emperor Nero was the Anti-Christ; the number 666 represents the last names of Hitler or Kissinger; the ten horns of the great beast are the barbarians who conquered Rome; Russia is the nation of Gog; the Great Whore of Babylon is Hillary Clinton; ATM cards are the mark of the beast.
Article comments
1 - Josh
That was interesting to read. I thought it was particularly hilarious to call Hillary the "Great Whore of Babylon". I wish I'd thought of that one first!