"The Exorcist" as Contemporary Dialogue Between Christianity and Popular Culture
Written by Gauntgirl, copyright 2003
In 1973, my friend, a long time fan of scary movies, sat amidst a crowded theatre eager to find out what was so horrifying about The Exorcist. After two hours of the most shocking imagery yet to hit the big screen, he recalls the look of paralyzing terror on the face of the woman next to him. As the curtains closed, the cinema lights came up, and the audience began to saunter out, this woman remained in her seat with her wide eyes still intensely focused on the screen. He remembers that her fingers were gripped so tightly on the armrests that her fingernails had dug into the wood. She was completely unresponsive. As my friend left the theatre, he claims to have heard the theatre manager call for an ambulance. Whether or not his memories are accurate is beside the point. Rather this story demonstrates the impact that The Exorcist has had on the contemporary belief that horror films have a disturbing effect on the viewer. Indeed, for many years subsequent to the release of The Exorcist, theatres across Canada requested that audience members under the age of 19 sign release forms before viewing any films depicting graphic horror. However, I would argue that it is neither the gore nor the violence in The Exorcist that led many to call it “the scariest film of all time”. Rather, it’s the film’s ability to pick up on western society’s deepest religious anxieties that have consistently disturbed audiences for 3 decades. Indeed, the Christian anxiety/religious horror film has developed into a genre of it’s own – including countless films depicting demons, Hell, the Anti-Christ, the Apocalypse, and simple human sin. As the definitive text in the religious horror genre, The Exorcist tackles an exhaustive list of contemporary Christian anxieties and in turn has come to redefine a popular understanding of religious terror.
The past century has seen a major decline in Catholic discipline. High profile cases involving child sexual abuse and homosexual activity (for example) on the part of Catholic priests created an incurable air of scandal around the Catholic Church and incited suspicion and distain from the secular community. Church related crimes were compounded in the 1960’s and 70’s with the rise of the sexual revolution and second wave feminism. The Catholic priesthood then came under fire for excluding women while, simultaneously, many priests stepped out of Catholic practice so that they might marry and enjoy the wave of increasing liberalism (1) . In this atmosphere of Catholic downturn, William Peter Blatty, himself a Catholic, set out to write the novel The Exorcist. Blatty was inspired by the apparently true story of a Mount Rainier boy who was supposedly possessed and exorcised in 1949. With the help of a Jesuit priest and friend, Blatty conducted in-depth research into the 1949 possession and the rite of exorcism for his book, which was published in 1971. Blatty’s intentions for writing The Exorcist directly reflect his belief that the apparent supernatural condition affecting the Mount Rainer boy demonstrates Catholicism’s continuing relevance in the contemporary western world (2) . Indeed, in his fictionalization of the 1949 possession story, Blatty constructs his Jesuit priest protagonist as a hero capable of tricking and vanquishing the devil.
Father Damien Karras, the hero protagonist of The Exorcist, is a fitting reflection of the challenges facing Christian faith in the 1970’s. In fact, Karras is a man suffering from a crisis of faith. A Jesuit priest who studied psychiatry, Karras has been moving away from his Catholic calling toward the scientific rational of the secular world. However, Blatty repeatedly reinforces the failure of science to adequately meet human needs and to alleviate suffering. When Karras’s elderly mother falls ill, he visits her in the hospital where she lies in the corner of what appears to be a psychiatric ward (full of confused women who cling to Karras as he walks through them). However, the only characteristic of his mother’s condition to suggest that she is mentally ill is Karras’s own neglect. He laments not spending more time with her, yet in neglecting his mother it would seem that he has ironically driven her into the world of science and psychiatry which has come to consume him. Ultimately, she dies because of his misplaced attention.
The scientific and psychiatric communities also fail the apparently possessed girl, Regan – a point that I will come back to. However, as Karras’s misguided faith failed his mother, Regan’s desperate need for a religious saviour gives Karras the opportunity to redeem himself and rise to the position of Catholic hero. Yet Blatty continues to throw spiritual obstacles to test Karras. Perhaps the most currently relevant of these obstacles is Blatty’s suggestion that Karras has been tempted by homosexual desire. This case is made more evident in the novel than it is in the film through Karras’s own words: “Like, I’d like to put my arm around another guy’s shoulder, but right away I’m scared he’s going to think I’m queer. I mean, you hear all these theories about so many latents attracted to the priesthood. So I just don’t do it… It’s not that I’m afraid of him; I’m just worried about him getting worried about me. (Blatty 1971:88)” Even though the fear of appearing homosexual isn’t explicitly expressed in the film version, it is still suggested through Regan’s taunts, “Homosexual! ” (3) In fact, issues of sexuality become a major component of the horror of The Exorcist.
When the audience is first introduced to Regan, she is a sweet and innocent girl who loves her mother, horses, and making artwork. However, there are two distinct features in Regan’s life that threaten the wholesome nature of her childhood; 1) the absence of a father (patriarch); and 2) her impending puberty and sexual development. These issues point directly to the perceived crises of the home, which have been at the forefront of domestic discourse since 1950’s postwar America (4) . Regan is the product of a failed marriage and her ‘liberated’ mother (androgynously named Chris) clearly transgresses her defined role (within the patriarchal/paternal order) as woman and mother with her use of profane language and the suggested intimate relationship that she shares with her friend and boss, Burke. In her possession, Regan not only emulates her mother’s transgressive behaviour, she comes to explicitly personify the evil of feminist liberation and the threat it poses to the Church and to Christian values in general.
Regan’s possession starts out relatively tame - with a few strange noises and the banging of her bed. The medical community attributes this phenomenon to seizures and Regan is subjected to a battery of tests. The doctors invariably find nothing wrong with her and, in admitting defeat, eventually suggest that Regan undergo exorcism. The impotence of the medical community (which is identified in the film as a masculine realm with the predominance of male specialists) is made literal when Regan attempts to castrate a visiting psychiatrist with her own hands. In effect, Regan is continually attacking the structure of patriarchal institutions. Regan, for all of her monstrousness, is predisposed to the maternal. She feels threatened by the relationship that her mother shares with Burke and this jealousy leads her to eventually murder him by breaking his neck and throwing him from her bedroom window.
Film theorist Barbara Creed suggests that without the presence of a paternal figure “Regan and her mother live together almost like lovers. ” (5) Indeed, at the pinnacle moment of Regan’s filmic possession, she violently masturbates with a crucifix then thrusts her mother’s face into her bloodied vagina shouting, “Lick me! Fuck me!” This image, arguably the most terrifying of the film, makes explicit the monstrousness of female sexuality. By masturbating with the symbol of the Christian Church, Regan is again defying the Christian ideal of female perfection as virginal and subservient (evident in the mythic characteristics of Mary, Mother of God). In turn, the resulting blood is both reminiscent of menstrual blood (a marker of the function of female sexuality) and to the Eucharist. However, I do not mean to suggest that Regan’s blood is reflective of the blood of Christ. Rather, her blood is specifically feminine and, I would argue, a mockery of the nourishing blood that the Virgin Mary gave to Christ in utero – after all, despite this Christian ideal, rational/scientific knowledge tells us that reproduction is a function of female sexuality (not abstinence) and that menstrual blood (not the symbolic blood of Christ) feeds new life. Therefore, the sanguine nature of the Eucharist (of drinking the blood of Christ) as feeding new spiritual life (which is here gendered as masculine) is juxtaposed with the feminine function of blood as feeding new, material, bodily life. Furthermore, the implied lesbianism inherent in this scene reinforces female sexuality as deviating from the function of reproduction and, consequently, threatening to the symbolic order of man as head of household and woman as the bearer of children.
In considering the specifically female nature of Regan’s evil, Barbara Creed argues that the Devil possessing Regan must also be female. Many theorists have argued to the contrary, pointing to the deep, masculinized voice of the possessed Regan as evidence that the Devil is male. However, as Creed points out, it is a woman, Mercedes McCambridge, who acts the voice of Regan’s possessor (6) . Indeed, there are numerous clues to suggest that the Devil is a woman. Regan’s name, for instance, is taken from one of King Lear’s wicked daughters who is described as “sharper than a serpent’s tooth. ” (7) Creed then associates the image of the serpent as a “Christian symbol of woman’s disobedience, unbridled sexual appetite and treachery. ” (8) A further connection can be made to the image of the Babylonian deity Pazuzu, who confronts Father Merrin in the film’s opening and later appears as a backdrop onto which Regan’s twisted body is silhouetted. Creed describes Pazuzu as possessing “a snake-like penis” and consorting with “the serpent-mother, Lamia. ” (9) Following this theme, I would like to further suggest a connection between Regan and a more infamous ‘serpent-mother’, Lilith.
According to Talmudic tradition, Lilith was the first wife of Adam, created as his equal; “male and female created He them, and called their name Adam. (Gen. I. 27) ” (10) However, Lilith wasn’t subservient to Adam and denied him as her master. Lilith then sprouted wings and flew from Adam out of Eden. After refusing to return to Adam, Lilith was cursed never to have a child survive past infancy. Lilith eventually accepted the fallen angel Samael (whom Rudwin suggests may otherwise be known as Satan) as her second husband. Together, Lilith and Samael conspired to punish Adam and his new companion, Eve, by having them expelled from the Garden of Eden (11) :
According to the Revelation of St. John, it was Samael or Satan, who, disguised as a serpent, tempted Eve to disobey the Lord by eating of the forbidden fruit and thus brought upon herself and her husband the wrath of their Creator. A certain Christian tradition identifies the serpent of the Garden of Eden not with Samael or Satan but with Lilith, who thus was the main instigator in the fall of our common ancestors. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in his famous poem “Eden Bower,” follows this later tradition ascribing the temptation in Eden to this serpent-woman Lilith (12).
Whether the evil possessing Regan is Lilith or otherwise, Rudwin argues that women have historically been attributed to the Devil. He states that, “the Church fathers believed that Satan brought about the downfall of men through the allurements of women. ” (13) Such a misogynistic view is obviously no longer tolerated in contemporary western society, yet it remains historically attached to the ideals of fundamentalist Christianity. It then follows that the women’s movement coupled with the sexual revolution of the 1970’s posed a great threat to the patriarchal order of religious traditions. The Exorcist, in turn, represents this threat in Chris’s transgressive behaviour and Regan’s subsequent possession.
For religion and pop culture theorist Robert Short, The Exorcist is only secondarily about the nature of the Devil. Foremost, he argues, The Exorcist is about returning to religion (14) . The true function of the Devil (whether in life or in film) is to prove the existence of God; “If we can just capture ourselves a real live devil, that’ll mean there’s got to be a good Lord around somewhere. ” (15) This sentiment is echoed by Nicholas Cull who states that Blatty “wrote The Exorcist and produced it as a motion picture to scare a new generation of Americans back into church. ” (16) Cull further paraphrases Blatty as saying that the book is “an apostolic work” and that it’s “best selling status was a direct result of divine intervention. ” (17) Indeed, the manifestation of the Devil through the child, Regan, is enough to reinforce the hero protagonist’s, Father Karras, faith in God. In fact, it is only through his renewed faith that Karras can restore order (of patriarchal dominance) and save Regan’s soul. From Short and Cull’s perspective, the viewer/reader is meant to identify with Karras and, through his martyrdom, find the path back to Christ. However, as Michael Cuneo points out, despite the fact that The Exorcist was one of the most controversial and newsworthy film of the past 30 years, it was hardly met with unanimous approval from the Church. Religious and secular critics alike were divided on the relevance of the film in portraying Christian faith. Yet the opinions of the critics may have ultimately proved moot as the American public was overcome by Exorcist fever (18) . In a phenomenon that Cuneo refers to as “The Blatty Factor”, post Exorcist America experienced an epidemic of possession. Father Tom Bermingham and Father William O’Malley, who acted as technical advisors to Blatty, recall an inundation of requests for exorcism from Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and agnostics alike (19) . It would seem that audiences came to see the rite of exorcism as a quick fix for all sort of life problems and medical ailments. It is unclear whether or not The Exorcist managed, in reality, to inspire in its viewers a return to Christian values, but it is ironically evident that it influenced some of its biggest fans to abandon the logic and reason (scientific, psychiatric, or otherwise) that they otherwise required.
EndnotesClover, Carol. Men Women and Chainsaws. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992
Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1993
Cull, Nicholas. “The Exorcist.” In The Movies as History. ed. David Ellwood, 196-205. UK: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 2000
Cuneo, Michael. American Exorcism. New York: Doubleday, 2001
Rudwin, Maximilian. The Devil in Legend and Literature. New York: AMS Press Inc., 1970
Short, Robert. Something to Believe in. San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1978
