'Late Night with the Devil' and the Politics of Purification

Toil and trouble indeed

At this point, it is not possible for American cinema to traffic in demonic or satanic horror without acknowledging that the fundamentals of witchcraft are inseparable from the spectre of the United States.¹ This is especially true right now, given that that spectre has ballooned into something sinisterly tangible under Donald Trump.

Think about it. Burning, sacrifice, purification — all secondary evils purported to stem from a primary evil in satanism. An evil loathed by White Christian America (henceforth, WCA), and yet, WCA can be most aptly comprehended by this very idea of purification. Of purging that which doesn’t serve the image of WCA. Of throwing immigrants and trans people² to the wolves in service of some perverted idea of unity. One God under a nation.

Late Night with the Devil invites these examinations with its premise alone. What better way, after all, to soothe WCA than with the trusty late night talk show, filled with an evening of incisively benign gags, conversations, and dancing so as to distract from the pesky political and social turmoil in the streets and in Congress? All of this, spearheaded by a charming, witty everyman who harbours a smarmy sense of superiority — just enough so that WCA can see itself in him, but not so much that the denizens of WCA themselves feel lesser than him. And it doesn’t stop there.

For those of you not in the know, Late Night with the Devil stars David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, a struggling late night talk show host hoping to boost ratings by inviting an allegedly possessed girl named Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) onto the show. The film is presented in a documentary/found footage format, featuring clips from Jack’s show, footage from the show’s behind-the-scenes breaks, the contextual backdrop of 1970s America, and the public showbiz struggles of Jack.

Late Night with the Devil opens with footage of a nation in strife. Riots are in the streets, the government has all but torpedoed its trust in the public following Vietnam, and satanic panic has gripped the country. As the narrator (Canadian character actor Michael Ironside) remarks on how television beams all of this chaos into our living rooms, he also points out how television is responsible for America’s comforts, too. Enter Jack Delroy, host of the Night Owls late show and one of the nation’s most beloved entertainers (i.e. comforts).

Right away, the television has been identified for what it is — a tool for gerrymandering emotions on a national scale. It wants you to rage against the witches and laugh along with Jack. Fear immigrants and be curious about the new McFlurry. Demonize trans people and second-guess canceling HBO.

It’s considered a virtue to stay up with current events, but the news isn’t interested in keeping you informed with facts — it’s interested in keeping your attention with emotions. The news riles you up, the talk show offers saturated levity. The endgoal is mass emotional plateau — WCA’s simultaneous vindication and entertainment.

The television strikes fear and anger into WCA with updates on “impurities” and the violence they “incite,” and then flashes Jack onto the screen to remind WCA what it’s fighting for — safe, wholesome, inoffensive, docile whiteness.

Whiteness, by the way, is defined not just by skin colour, but by stripping away meaning. Cultures become costumes. The pagan roots/significance of Halloween — such as wearing masks to hide from vengeful spirits, as the character Christou alludes to in the film — give way to “spoopiness.” Walmart stays open during Labour Day to capitalize on the shoppers having nowhere else to go. Apathy becomes a viable core value.

Why, then, does Jack court a live demonic possession in hopes of improving ratings? If WCA seeks comfort from the Night Owls program in its cocktail of emotional plateauing, then surely platforming something as blatantly transgressive as satanic commune goes against the mandate of this program, right?

Well, it’s because, at the end of the day, WCA relies on humans to realize its vision, and humans crave transgression — yearn for indulgent freedom. WCA does not jive with this, but it’s more than willing to make a concession for the illusion of indulgent freedom. That’s what Night Owls — and, by extension, the television — provides here.

To that point, the frame of Late Night with the Devil utilizes an aspect ratio like that of a television screen. This goes far beyond an aesthetic choice. By rendering itself this way, the film evokes the impression of peering into a window, subsequently emulating a voyeuristic thrill that would no doubt be felt by Night Owls viewers across America — viewers who regurgitate pleasantries and go to church by day, but who secretly crave something truly exciting and risky to lap up. Humans are inherently messy, sexual, and curious beings, whereas many societies (chief among them WCA) encourage and enforce repression of these instincts. We cannot and should not, of course, repress them forever.³

And so with the television, our naughty fantasies can be indulged by way of spectacle — physical and social dangers packaged, diluted, and delivered to us in lieu of raw experience — but they remain at a safe enough distance so as not to interfere with the social boundaries of WCA. Look, but don’t touch. Want, but don’t do.⁴

The camera has no interest in being any more adventurous than it would be for a live television program — its purpose here is not to express itself, but to deliver the whims of its subjects to the viewers.

When that subject is Jack and his guests, it broadens to capture a humorous or charged exchange and zooms in on Jack’s face whenever he’s getting emotional on the topic of his late wife. It’s molding itself in accordance with whatever the subject wishes to inflict upon the viewers.

The same is true when the devil seizes control of the program from Jack. The camera begins to tilt and jump and drift uncomfortably. It’s messy, transgressive — everything WCA avoids. The camera is as much an emotional puppet as the viewers are. The television program relies on the camera to not be itself, just as WCA relies on humans to not be themselves.

These viewers would feel emotionally adventurous watching this demonic possession, and that’s partly because WCA limits how emotionally adventurous we’re allowed to be before we’re casted out (purged) from society. And yet, within WCA, the powerful stay powerful precisely because they cross that boundary.

Jack Delroy allows his viewers to peer at demonic possession from a safe distance, but he himself is intimately involved with the occult. He sacrifices his wife for the sake of finding good fortune in show business, and engages in serial moral compromise to keep the spectacle of demonic possession going on his show. Fame is the devil he’s selling his soul to, and the cult he belongs to (The Grove, it’s called) soon becomes indistinguishable from the talking heads of the network television boardrooms, as well as the studio audience that comes to worship Jack.

And Jack knows the studio audience will back his maintenance of this spectacle because we want to believe in ghosts and demons and the supernatural. We want to imagine. We want to wonder. We want to be emotionally adventurous. We want to touch after looking and do after wanting, but we can’t, because that would make us impure. Targets.

That’s why we watch television instead, and that’s why the studio audience boos skeptic guest Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss) whenever he tries to waive away the goings-on with FACTS and LOGIC™.

And there’s that word again: Facts. Facts that the news pretends to offer up when it’s actually presenting you with emotions. Emotions, in pursuit of some combination of manipulation and satiation.

One of the film’s best scenes is when Carmichael hypnotizes Gus (Jack’s sidekick/co-host, played by Rhys Auteri) into believing there are worms inside of him. The live broadcast shows worms literally pouring out of Gus’ body as he rips his stomach open while a giant worm snakes its way out of his eyeball, but then we all see the tape, and it’s just a routine hypnotism act. Importantly, Carmichael shows the viewers the hypnosis spiral along with Gus.

In this way, the emotional truth that Carmichael inflicts upon Gus (the belief that worms are coming out of him) is also inflicted upon us. This is indicative of the emotional manipulation that the television wishes to inflict upon viewers.

Moreover, it reinforces the camera as a spineless messenger/conduit for whoever happens to be in charge.

And who’s the only person who clearly saw the act for what it was right from the get-go? Lilly, who’s possessed by the devil, and therefore epitomizes the antithesis of conformity with WCA. As such, she cannot be so easily manipulated.

Indeed, if we read the devil as a stand-in for carnal human instinct that was not given any space to relieve itself (and therefore comes to an aggressive and explosive front), we understand that Lilly has manifested the emotional independence needed to be an inflicter instead of an inflictee, so to speak.⁵

But our emotional resistance to WCA need not be as extreme as being possessed by the devil and slaughtering innocent people. Christou, the Middle-Eastern medium who’s invited onto the show, does not conform. He aggressively refuses makeup, he requests water instead of the placating glass of bourbon offered to him, and what happens? He dies, but he also moves from his seat to make space for when Carmichael comes onto the show — he’s being pushed to the side (purged, you might say) to make room for an expression of whiteness.

Again, not just because Carmichael is white, but because his skepticism is clearly rooted in that aforementioned WCA-coded fear of having one’s idyll shattered — an idyll defined by a lack of significance and a surplus of ignorance.

Also, Cleo — the musical guest who happens to be a Black woman — is ultimately cut from the show, and it’s revealed earlier that she’s been cut in the past. None of these details are accidental.

Also in the mix is Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), a parapsychologist and the legal guardian of Lilly, whose possession has become a focal point of June’s studies.

She pushes back against both Carmichael’s skepticism and Jack’s pursuit of spectacle, only relenting to a live satanic commune attempt when she’s pressured by the audience.

We aren’t necessarily forced to read this relenting as a conforming to WCA, though. June knows that the success of this show will determine Jack’s livelihood, and given that June and Jack are revealed to be secret lovers, perhaps she relents just to protect him. In doing so, however, she commits a different evil.

How so? Well, consider that Jack assumes that June comes on the show for no other reason than to promote her book, even though she makes clear that her “first responsibility is to Lilly.” And yet, she ultimately disregards this “first responsibility to Lilly” for what’s ostensibly the sake of Jack. She subequently goes on with the demonic possession, and a whole bunch of people — herself included — die.

In this way, the film indicts June on having allowed her desires (Jack) to compromise her morals (Lilly). These desires and this compromise would be opposed by WCA,⁶ but even though the film rightly identifies opposing WCA as a virtue, we can nevertheless understand June’s actions as reprehensible.

June, then, is the means through which the film — while still keeping the finger firmly pointed at WCA and all who conform to it — does not allow its maxim to be read as “you should only ever honour your impulses and nothing but your impulses.” Such a motto would be as emotionally irresponsible as allowing WCA (and television) to dictate your life and what you bring to it.

To touch back on the emotions-masquerading-as-facts point for a moment, Donald Trump has quite grotesquely epitomized this game for the better part of a decade, and his vile rhetoric boasts the exact same foundation as the satanic panic⁷ of yore — “purge the evil before it purges us.”

WCA can’t conceptualize anything other than purging — stripping away meaning, stripping away “impurities” — and therefore assumes that it will be purged if it does not purge everything else. In the film, Michael Ironside narrates that “Jack knows history only remembers kings” when speaking on the topic of Jack’s rivalry with Johnny Carson.

In Late Night with the Devil, Carmichael tries and fails to play a facts game in a world where emotions rule.⁸ Trump is not so naive. Neither is Jack. Both are plagues on humanity, in no small part because this facts-light, emotions-heavy rule does not have to be leveraged for evil, but their actions will leave many believing that evil is the only form such a thing can take, thereby turning many off to a world that can instead be used for genuine emotional evolution.

To that point, I encourage you all to read this post by Cole Haddon on Werner Herzog’s theory of Ecstatic Truth. After that, go watch Late Night with the Devil if you haven’t already. After that, do as you please, rather than what the television pleases.

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1. An observation made not by me, but by one Maggie Thrash in her book Rainbow Black, which she would be rich off of in a wholly just world.

2. It will not stop there.

3. I delve into this a bit deeper in my Longlegs post.

4. Both of these things, on the condition that you confess these sins later.

5. Inflictees, in this case, being those who conform to WCA. Another good example is the MAGA crowd, whose emotions and fears are directly leveraged through the animus of Donald Trump. He gives them a direction to point their fears (immigrants, trans people, etc.), but also gives them something to believe in (Trump himself, who publicly goes to war on minorities to give the illusion that something is being done, all while the actual livelihood of the MAGA crowd — like all Americans — remains as unstable as it has been).

6. It’s true that the studio audience urges her to do the exorcism, but remember that WCA and the humans who conform to it are two different things. WCA demands purity, but the human still desires impure excitement.

7. And Nazi Germany, and Jim Crow, and so on.

8. In no small part because his “facts” are disproved by the devil’s eventually-blatant existence, of course, but I digress.