Summary of The Devils Advocate

Overview of The Devils Advocate by Red Scare

This episode is a sprawling, highly digressive conversation centered on Ken Russell’s The Devils—its re-release, censorship history, religious politics, and visual style—with a lot of side commentary on internet personalities, lighting preferences, Catholicism, and modern culture. The hosts treat the film as both a piece of transgressive art and a politically charged story about power, humiliation, and scapegoating.

Main Topic: Ken Russell’s The Devils

Why the film matters to them

• The hosts are enthusiastic about the re-release of The Devils with restored deleted scenes, especially because it has brought real discussion back to theaters and online discourse.
• They praise the film as:
  • Intellectually stimulating
  • Visually daring
  • Structurally tight despite being extreme and grotesque
  • A rare example of a movie that feels both historically grounded and conceptually rich

Plot and historical backdrop

• Set in 17th-century Loudun, France, during:
  • Religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants
  • Political centralization under the crown
  • A plague outbreak and general social instability
• Father Urban Grandier is portrayed as:
  • Charismatic, sensual, vain, and flawed
  • A defender of coexistence and local independence
  • A target for church and state authorities who want to remove him
• The film frames his downfall as a political show trial disguised as a moral and religious prosecution.

What they think the film is “really” about

• The hosts repeatedly argue that the movie is less about literal possession than about:
  • State power
  • Brainwashing
  • Collective hysteria
  • Public humiliation as a tool of control
  • The conflict between individual truth and institutional corruption
• They see Grandier as a kind of martyr:
  • Not innocent, but fundamentally sincere
  • Destroyed by a coalition of jealous, repressed, and power-hungry people
• They interpret the film as deeply concerned with the dark side of human nature and the way institutions weaponize morality.

Visual Style, Production Design, and Censorship

The film’s look

• They strongly praise the set design by Derek Jarman and the deliberately modernist, sterile visual environment.
• The convent and city are described as:
  • White, clinical, enclosed, and oppressive
  • More like a modern psychological space than a traditional period drama
• They like that the film avoids a costume-drama “Renfaire” look and instead creates a world that feels timeless and claustrophobic.

The controversial scenes

• They discuss the two most infamous sequences:
  • The “rape of Christ” church orgy scene
  • The charred femur / masturbation sequence
• Their view:
  • These scenes are not gratuitous in isolation; they are integral to the film’s architecture
  • Censorship removed essential parts of the movie’s meaning and rhythm
• They also discuss how different censors reacted:
  • British censors focused on the length of the torture scenes
  • American censors were more concerned with sex and blasphemy

Ken Russell’s intent

• They quote and paraphrase Russell as someone who:
  • Wanted to cut through audience complacency
  • Saw shock as a tool for truth-telling
  • Believed the film was faithful to the brutality of the historical record
• They note that Russell was politically hard to pin down, but that his artistic vision felt morally and psychologically conservative in the sense that it exposed human cruelty and hypocrisy.

Character Discussions and Performances

Oliver Reed as Father Grandier

• They are very taken with Oliver Reed’s performance:
  • Charismatic
  • Strongly sexualized on screen
  • Physically imposing and memorable
• They admire how Reed plays Grandier as both:
  • A real libertine
  • A man with enough pride to refuse total spiritual submission
• They also compare Reed’s screen presence to other iconic roles and note how enduringly sexy and magnetic he is in this film and elsewhere.

Vanessa Redgrave as Sister Jeanne

• They think Redgrave is extraordinary as the mother superior:
  • Intelligent
  • Hysterical
  • Sexually fixated
  • Deeply unstable
• They highlight how the performance makes her both villainous and pitiable.
• Her character embodies their recurring theme of repressed desire turning into cruelty and delusion.

Other supporting characters

• They praise:
  • Father Mignon as a sinister, beautifully cast figure
  • The Baron as a memorable, dead-eyed bureaucratic presence
  • Father Barre as a compelling exorcist figure with unexpected sex appeal
• The ensemble is read as a gallery of corrupted or compromised figures rather than fully sympathetic individuals.

Key Themes They Return To

Power and humiliation

• One of the episode’s central ideas is that power works by humiliating people publicly.
• They argue that the show trial, torture, and execution are not accidental excesses but the point of the system itself.
• The film’s brutal scenes reinforce the idea that social order is maintained through ritualized degradation.

Female desire, hysteria, and accusation

• They repeatedly discuss the film’s portrayal of:
  • Repressed women
  • Sexual frustration
  • Collective accusation
  • Manipulation by authorities
• They frame the nuns’ behavior as part of a broader dynamic where desire and resentment are redirected into violence.
• Their commentary is intentionally provocative and often sharply unsentimental.

Faith vs. institution

• A major takeaway is that the film distinguishes between:
  • Personal faith
  • Corrupt religious institutions
• Grandier’s faith is presented as inward and authentic, while the church and state are shown as opportunistic and brutal.
• They interpret this as one reason the film is still spiritually powerful.

Tangents and Side Topics

Internet creators and “psyop” fatigue

• The episode opens with mock confusion over internet personalities like H3H3 and the social-media ecosystem around them.
• The hosts complain about being forced to notice internet content creators they find cringey or unpleasant.
• This leads into a broader rant about how modern online culture produces disgust and attention fatigue.

Lighting, Asians, and anecdotal “observations”

• They spend a long tangent discussing a claim that East Asians may be more tolerant of bright blue light.
• This becomes a back-and-forth about:
  • Fluorescent lighting
  • Chinatown restaurants
  • Dimmer preferences
  • How different people experience indoor lighting
• It’s part joke, part pseudo-anthropological speculation.

Sean Hannity’s marriage and Catholic gossip

• They briefly mention Sean Hannity’s marriage, then pivot into Catholic Twitter discourse about annulments and marital legitimacy.
• This is treated mostly as internet gossip with a religious twist.

Airbnb and hospitality

• Near the end, they move into a longer discussion of Airbnb’s policy changes:
  • Guests no longer need to do as many cleanup tasks
  • Airbnb is moving closer to a hotel model
• Their take:
  • This is probably good
  • But hotels themselves have declined in quality
  • Hospitality has generally worsened in the U.S.
• They contrast this with the moral ideal of hospitality in older literature and religious tradition.

Closing Takeaways

• The episode’s centerpiece is a defense of The Devils as a major, enduring, and provocative film.
• The hosts see it as:
  • A film about corruption, power, repression, and institutional violence
  • A work that rewards serious attention rather than ironic distance
• More broadly, the conversation reflects Red Scare’s usual blend of:
  • Cultural criticism
  • Religious and political interpretation
  • Bad-faith humor
  • Genuinely sharp observations about art and social decay

Notable Bottom Line

• Their strongest claim is that good art should challenge complacency, and that The Devils does exactly that—by making power, faith, sexuality, and humiliation impossible to sanitize.