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This article discusses the use of different supernatural effects in film and the evolutionary dispositions that support viewer fascinations with audio-visual enchanting supernaturalism. It argues that the interest in supernatural phenomena is supported by several distinct mental mecha- nisms, none of which can be described as religious instincts as such. The central elements of enchantment are curiosity related to the viola- tion of basic norms; feelings of empowerment by magical activities; activation of a series of fear-and-disgust mechanisms (from fear of invisible predators to fears of contamination of the body); emotions related to the feeling of guilt and shame; emotions related to social sub- mission; and coping mechanisms related to social exchange. Mental models of social exchanges projects mental models that work in social life, like ‘I give you something and you give me something in return’, into a general supernatural model in which humans make exchanges with supernatural agents, like: I provide sacrifices, humble prayers and so on, in the hope that some supernatural agency will provide some goods or services in return, like health, eternal life or reparation of feel- ings of guilt. Science may compete with supernatural procedures by providing means of empowerment or procedures to deal with illness, just as a secular society may try to induce submission to social systems and promise goods and services in return. The fascination with superior healing powers has the same emotional background – whether felt by a credulous person in relation to so-called alternative medicine and miracle- healers or an incredulous person in relation to powerful scientific medicine – just as the fear of contaminating monsters may feed on the same fear mechanisms as the fear of cancer. The difference is one of insight and trust versus mistrust in the scientific project. Modern magic often mimics aspects of science (magnetic fields or balance in the body). Many people may try to have it both ways, like going to doctors as well as covering their options by visiting healers, or beginning to pray to supernatural beings when the odds for a solution of problems backed up by science are low.
In this way, many people may be very pragmatic in their attitude to superstition and science because they are driven by an interest in empowerment and by fear – and not by any clear ideas of how the world works. The problem with discussing the disenchantment thesis, as well as its negation (the idea of a spiritual or religious revival) is that the realm of the supernatural is a large one that covers fantasies and all kinds of magic and rituals, as well as religions that claim to have an all- encompassing theory of the universe. Furthermore, established religions are not only vehicles for supernatural ideas but also social institutions that fulfil social functions. One might argue that, for example, the rise of Muslim fundamentalism is driven by its social functions – that is, to back up traditional gender roles and family values in a period of cultural and economic transition or being a rallying organization for nationalistic or imperial ideas.
Evolution and the supernatural
Models of enchantment or disenchantment presuppose that, somehow, the historical point of departure for the natural–supernatural dichotomy
was a state in which people were fundamentally living in a world that was fully enchanted, and that science then evolved to become the antag- onist of supernatural ideas. However, from an evolutionary point of view, naturalist mental functions are older than those that support supernaturalism. The force behind the millions of years of evolution of animal and human intelligence has been to the advantage of increased fitness – by developing instrumental reason and sophisticated mental models of the world and its inhabitants, these mechanisms enhanced survival and reproduction. Supernatural ideas are – in an evolutionary perspective – a relatively recent phenomena (having perhaps only evolved in tandem with the ability to make symbolic representations 50,000–100,000 years ago). Central aspects of a naturalistic world-view are products of evolution and are based on a series of innate disposi- tions, some of which we share with higher animals (for an overview of evolutionary psychology, see Buss 2005 and Barrett, Dunbar and Lycett 2002). Fundamental physical properties such as causality (the stone moved because it was pushed), the distinction between animate and inanimate objects and so on, are not based on late scientific knowledge but innate dispositions that have evolved because such naturalistic knowledge enhances survival.
Pascal Boyer (2001) has furthermore shown that the idea that people living in pre-industrial societies (for instance, in hunter-gatherer soci- eties) have no clear boundaries between the supernatural and the natural is wrong. In remote hunter-gatherer societies that have had little contact with the industrial world, there is a very clear understanding of many basic physical facts among the inhabitants. Their fascination with the supernatural exists in the very fact that it is counterintuitive and violates everyday experiences: for example, trees that are able to hear and remem- ber, mountains that move, spirits whose acts are counterintuitive and fan- tastic. Their appeal is partly due to this counterintuitive quality, because brain mechanisms based on calculating rule-following events are highly triggered by events that violate such rules. The development of the human mind is not only one of boosting a general and abstract intelli- gence. Cognitive psychologists have argued (cf. Cosmides and Tooby 1997) that we have developed a series of specific adaptations of a modu- lar kind: for example, modules to detect cheaters, modules to perform fundamental categorizations into plants, animals and so on (cf. Atran 1994). Such modules boost the learning that is necessary to survive. So, when fantasy films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Lord of the Rings (2001–03), or the Harry Potter series (2001–) make composites of plant and animal worlds – for example, trees that intend and use their branches as arms – they create arousal by violating fundamental mental dispositions. The mental fascination with processes that violate the result of such cognitive representations seems to be a side-effect of those same mechanisms that enhance naturalist representa- tions. Supernatural features need not necessarily express some deep reli- gious urge.
The fantastical and supernatural were most likely enhanced when humans developed language and pictorial representations some 50,000–100,000 years ago, because whereas our senses are constrained
by the natural exterior world, symbolic forms allowed for fantastic com- binations, such as making composite creatures like sphinxes, or making violations of categories like plants that see and hear like animals, or humans that fly. Language supports naturalistic communication but it also supports fantasy and lies; stories may be true or fantastic, while pic- tures remove naturalistic constraints on representations. Thus, in gen- eral, scientific progress continues the evolutionary processes that began with the development of instrumental reasoning in animals and early humans, while fantasy and enchanted representation are consequences of the same development of enhancing cognitive control – because of the advantages of making representations in some symbolic media that allow a certain independence vis-à-vis the immediate world of sensory impressions.
Pascal Boyer (2001) and Scott Atran (2002) have convincingly argued that there is no single psychological mechanism that disposes humans to have supernatural and religious beliefs; rather, religious beliefs and other supernatural imaginations are supported by a heterogeneous body of dis- positions. Boyer points in particular to five functional fields that are important in supernaturalism: agency, predation, death, morality and social exchange. Supernaturalism is intimately linked to ideas about pow- erful agents who may often prey on humans – the origins of this are pre- cautionary systems that helped our ancestors to be on the lookout for dangerous animals and other humans. Death poses a series of problems including how the spirit may not die with the body but haunt the living; how corpses are a source of contamination and disgust; and wishful ideas about eternal life. Supernatural agents may often be implicated in the sur- veillance of morality and the punishment of sinners; and humans often try to model how they may bargain with agents, by means of social exchanges like sacrifices, prayers and so on.
Another way to describe the various dimensions in the supernatural is to say that one dimension concerns the violations of basic natural laws and natural properties (like humans that fly or walk on water), a second dimension concerns supernatural agencies (from fairies to gods), and a third dimension concerns the relations between society and the supernat- ural. Central functions of the supernatural are sheer mental salience, but also magic empowerment, fear and control of fear, including the existen- tial fear of dying, and moral regulation via the supervisory and/or punish- ing interference of supernatural agents.
Communicating the supernatural
The mental dispositions for supernatural ideas interact with cultural inven- tiveness and the reproduction of and transmission of supernatural ideas. Once invented, mind-grabbing fairy tales or religious, supernatural ideas may spread from mind to mind. A person or group of persons will have all kinds of mind-grabbing dispositions that have no clear internal order and no clear delimitation between the fantastic and the supernatural. Angels, devils, fairies and so on may be part of fantastic storytelling but may also be elements in some religions, depending on the degree of beliefs that the individuals or groups may allocate to such ideas, and the possible links to rituals and social institutions.
However, social organizations may also, for different reasons, try to block the diffusion of certain supernatural ideas. Organized religions that relate to distinct social groups (eventually in distinct physical locations) will often pick a subset of the available supernatural ideas as being true, and try to suppress other, competing ideas and denouncing them to be heretical and false. This can often lead to punishing or even killing the heretics. The conflict between different competing religions and other organized forms of supernatural beliefs has been just as important as the possible conflict between naturalism and supernaturalism, with all kinds of possible alliances. In the nineteenth century, the technological superior- ity of Britain functioned as an argument for the superiority of the British versions of Christianity compared with the beliefs of people living in areas with a lower technology. So science and a certain version of monotheism might be allied in the opposition to the beliefs in local spirits, labelling these with the pejorative ‘heathenism’. Different strands of Christianity had different degrees of inclusiveness of enchanted elements such as mir- acles, exorcisms and so on. Islam, Judaism, Christianity and other monotheistic religions may in some dimensions enhance an enchanted world-view by trying to advocate an integrated, supernaturally based world-view emanating from one powerful source. But they may also by that very effort be in conflict with other types of enchantment, like the belief in ghosts and fairies, and the belief in healers and witches, or the beliefs in local powers (like those haunting specific houses). Such monotheistic religions depend on social institutions that repeat some core supernatural elements and that suppress competing superstitions, or, phrased differently: an important function of religion is to create social and tribal cohesion.
The Enlightenment weakened the power of organized Christian supremacy, and in the following Romantic period, in the late eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, all kinds of folklore resur- faced, in gothic tales and in fairy tales, just as pre-Christian mythology gained strength within the culture. The growth of high culture and mass entertainment in the nineteenth century did not only consist of developing disenchanted, ‘scientific’ realism but also in fabricating marvellous or romantic-mythic stories. Wagner’s operas are examples of the way in which non-Christian enchanted mythology derived from all kind of sources competed with the organized religion to create ad hoc mytholo- gies. The film industry followed the same paths as the previous culture industry and transformed gothic horror or folk tales and all kinds of fan- tastic stories into film in parallel with biblical stories. The film industry, and especially Hollywood, sold their products globally with the purpose of earning money by making mind-grabbing films, and even the local mar- ket for Hollywood, USA, was made up of many different religious groups. A successful strategy in this market has been to make films that activate the whole spectrum of innate dispositions for enchantment and marvel, even if this means making films that are clearly outside the mainstream versions of Christianity. Horror stories started out as a minor genre in the 1920s, and this genre has grown continuously, just as fairy tales and other types of enchanted worlds have grown in importance. The youth culture in the 1960s made Asian and indigenous religious forms popular, and films like
The Exorcist (1973) or Rosemary’s Baby (1968) defied a monotheistic Christian framework by making Satan an alternative to God. Science fic- tion films were other venues for miraculous agents and happenings, some- times with the miraculous seen as the prolongation of science, sometimes with an opposition between the natural and the supernatural. The effect of the film industry, in many ways, has been to let loose the total global inventory of supernatural mind-grabbing agents and events, and thus to loosen the link between the supernatural and a locally organized set of rit- uals for a community, undermining the dominance of monotheistic sys- tems that interpret the world as ruled by only one supernatural agent. I am thus arguing that the increasing role of supernatural themes in media does not necessarily indicate an increasing interest in the supernatural, but that the traditional Christian hegemony in the realm of the supernatural has been weakened in the last fifty years and, therefore, that media and view- ers have been more free to exploit alternative ‘heretical’ forms of the supernatural. Of course, due to digitalization, the price of making certain kinds of marvel has also decreased.
In the following paragraphs, I will discuss in more detail three impor- tant types of the supernatural on film: the fantastic-marvellous, the horri- fying and the awe- and submission-inspiring types (for a more detailed discussion of the different types of supernaturalism in film, see Grodal (2007) and Grodal (forthcoming)). These types are not genres as the types of supernatural phenomena described exist in several genres.
Enchantment by marvel and empowerment
The simplest form of the supernatural might be the fantastic and marvel- lous that we find in many fairy tale films. In such films, there are viola- tions of basic categorical distinctions, such as animals that talk, empowering tools like magic wands or brooms, unnatural colours (blue apples) or supernaturally enhanced natural phenomena (visible, powerful sunrays; all-encompassing northern lights). Such marvellous phenomena are salient; they catch the eyes, ears, imagination and memory. Ara Norenzayan et al. (2006) has investigated the success of fairy tales. They found that those stories that had a few salient counterintuitive features (like the talking wolf and the unharmed return of the grandmother from the wolf’s belly in Little Red Riding Hood) were better remembered than those with none or too many (too many counterintuitive elements burden memory function and are therefore difficult to process and remember). Thus, because the marvellous may deviate from the normal, it becomes salient by the same mechanisms that other phenomena are salient by deviation. The main character in the animated film Finding Nemo (2003) is salient for a natural and a supernatural reason: Nemo is a clown fish with red and white stripes, thus clown fish are perceptually salient for natural reasons, but Nemo is also salient because of counterintuitive, supernatural features: Nemo can talk and he possesses a lot of the other characteristics of human agency. Just as visual salience is intriguing, so are violations of innate, intuitive knowledge about the world.
The reasons for the fascination with magical agency as a means of empowerment are self-evident. Chinese Wuxia films show sword fighters that are able to fly through the air due to a magical empowerment. The
way in which wishes for naturalistic and supernatural empowerment bleed into each other is often obvious in science fiction films, which provide pseudo-science as explanations for magical empowerment. Science fiction films, to a certain extent, have also functioned as mental laboratories and motivators for ideas for technical achievements. The six Star Wars science fiction films were strongly inspired by fairy tales, but also by the fascina- tion of technical empowerment, and the first film in the series had a direct feedback on military thinking as it inspired Ronald Reagan to launch a defence programme, nicknamed Star Wars. Science fiction has become a major genre vehicle for fantasy films.
In fantasy stories, which rely on the marvellous and on empowerment, there are no really strong conflicts between fantasy power and naturalistic power. The world of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) is domi- nantly marvellous, the trees are animated, the animals talk and the evil stepmother has magical powers. Such fairy tale stories are primarily tar- geted at children, for whom playing with categorization and dreaming about empowerment is highly salient. Such stories often have good, super- natural helpers and bad, supernatural villains, and this similarly reflects the way in which children rely on and relate to agents outside their active control. The Harry Potter series (2001–) has had a fantastic success by upgrading the interest in magic empowerment by mixing the marvellous elements into stories for older children, so that they too can enjoy the plea- sures that have previously been more typical in films for younger children. Enchantment by activation of predator fear
A more complex form of the supernatural consists in the portrayal of worlds in which there are often traumatic conflicts between natural and supernatural types of power and control as we find in horror stories, such as the different versions of the Dracula story, or films like The Evil Dead series (1981–92). The primary target audience for such films is teenagers and young adults. Here the worlds are divided in two: on the one hand, there is a naturalist world inhabited by the characters that the viewers are supposed to have allegiance to; and on the other hand, there are some dan- gerous supernatural agencies that have evil intentions vis-à-vis the human beings that live in a naturalistic world. Such stories are predominantly pre- dation stories, where there are extremely dangerous predatory monsters or spirits waiting to prey on the innocent (or guilty) humans. Boyer (2001) and Barrett (2004) have argued that supernatural stories about monstrous predators activate mechanisms that have evolved for a different reason in a different environment. For millions of years, our ancestors have been on a constant lookout for dangerous animals and therefore developed mental mechanisms and dispositions to enact such vigilance, because even if these mechanisms very often triggered a false alert, there was an enor-