However the notion that The Exorcist is a blasphemous, and therefore an anti-religious film, although not unfounded, is considered by many, including its creators to be ill informed. The Exorcist has very strong links to religion, and specifically to Catholicism. The film is pro-religion, by presenting the Devil possessing a little girl; it then confirms the existence of God within the narrative. The priests are the only ones who can stop the Devil as the soldiers of God in essence. The plotline of The Exorcist is based on an alleged true story about a young boy in the late 1940’s who was said to have been possessed. The author of the original novel, William Peter Blatty heard the story as he himself had been going through a crisis of faith and it helped to restore some of that faith within him. “Surely it was proof that God existed. If the Devil (or his minion) had indeed been proven to have been within that boy, then surely the existence of such evil must lead to an acceptance of the reality of God.” From this self-realisation, Blatty decided to show his faith-affirming story to the rest of the world. The Exorcist is not the only film or novel to use the theory that if the Devil exists then God must exist also. This has long been a staple argument of religious zealots whilst justifying the arguably hellish current state of the world. To use the existence of evil as proof of the existence of God; an example is the Robert Rodriguez film From Dusk till Dawn (1996) which presents a similar argument when a central character, Jacob Fuller (played Harvey Keitel), a former priest who has lost his faith in God, has that faith reaffirmed by the sudden presence of hundreds of vampires. The theory links in with the notions of morality tales simply though the pro religious stance it takes, and by promoting the concept that when life is bad it will eventually become good. Not to loose faith in God because of the evil surrounding us, but to take that evil and find faith within it. Everywhere in life there are reasons to believe in God. The central character of The Exorcist, Chris MacNeil (played by Ellen Burstyn) is an atheist, she does not believe in God or religion let alone demons and possessions. To cure her ill child Reagan (played by Linda Blair) she takes her to the best doctors that she can hire and none of them make any progress, in fact throughout their testing the illness gets worse. Next Chris attempts psychology and uses a hypnotist to try and cure Reagan; once again this fails, leaving her only one alternative, The Church. The Catholic Church is chosen because it is one of the only religions that believe in the concepts of possession and exorcism, although various sects of Christianity also believe in the concepts, for example the Pentecostals. But Catholicism is the most overtly open to the possibility. Through the process of the exorcism Chris begins to believe in what is happening, not only Chris but the character of Father Karras (played by Jason Miller) also reaffirms his faith in God, which he lost after the death of his mother. God would not allow him to save his mother, but through saving Reagan he can regain his faith in God. The questions of faith and religion are at the core of the original novel, and the filmmaker’s goals were in line with that core as the films director William Friedkin stated about the book: “It’s not trying to scare you, it’s trying to move you. And it succeeds in moving its reader while holding them totally.” The translation to the screen had to be faithful to this, which Blatty’s first adaptation apparently was not as Friedkin again states: “‘He didn’t do the novel. He left out the Iraq prologue; he had a whole bunch of horror film effects written in-zooms and weird angles...’ Making the film first and foremost as study of faith seems to have been the general consensus within the production of The Exorcist, using the horror aspect to disguise the film as something else. This is similar to a common trick within morality tales, to disguise themselves as something that they are not. Stories of fantastical creatures and talking animals, in fictional lands are a supernatural veil for a narrative message which is applicable to the real world, but not too thick a veil for the message not to be seen at all. However this particular morality tale is not intended for children, it is for adults, and so such extravagant covers are not needed in this film. The issues of faith are clearly discussed throughout the film in literal terms; it is a realistic film in many ways. Morality tales are usually indirectly commenting on their subject matter, rather than as explicitly as The Exorcist examines it. As a result, the tale of faith and science and regaining belief in God is difficult to view as a morality tale because it is too direct. This is more a morality message than a tale, it does not conform to the narrative aspect, it is not punishing sinners for the deviations, it is presenting a philosophical and a theological argument for the existence of God. If the questions of faith are not strong enough material to class The Exorcist as a modern day morality tale, then another interpretation places it more accurately within that category. The Exorcist as a family values warning; Chris is a successful single mother. Even though her husband has left, she still believes that she can take care of her family. The Exorcist can be read as a warning towards a presumed arrogance of women who think that they can take care of their children without a man. Chris is punished for her arrogance. The possession and the odd changes within her daughter represent rebellion and the beginning of adolescent change as Ryan and Kellner explain in their 1988 book, The Political Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film: “[Chris] becomes increasingly incapable of coping with the crisis and eventually collapses. One of the film’s implicit messages, then, is the need for a father to protect and discipline women and children.” Once the family unit is restored with the presence of a Father, even if it is a priest and not the child’s biological father, normality returns. This narrative metaphor is very accurate to the nature of era it was made in. The rise of feminism in most western nations in the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s created a patriarchal backlash within the film industry. Ryan and Kellner again state: “In The Exorcist, demonic possession is a metaphor for fears about independent women and female sexuality; the resolution offered reassures a threatened patriarchy that male paternalism will restore discipline and authority to an unruly post-sixties society.”
“At the conclusion of the exorcism, [Reagan] sits on the bed in the pose of a temptress, and Karras beats her until she submits to his power by crying out and becoming a good little girl again… returned to a state of innocence. She smiles at a priest, looks at his clerical collar, impulsively kisses him and runs off, a perfect example of devoted submission to patriarchal authority.” The Exorcist, as stated earlier has strong religious links, and the film can be interpreted as an attempt to quash a rise of feminism. It is then appropriate that the two together leaves feminism and independent women to be attributed to the Church’s most prolific agent of evil, Satan. Jancovich explains in the 2002 book, Rational Fears: “This is particularly evident in The Exorcist, where the world of the symbolic, represented by a priest-as-father, and the world of the pre-symbolic, represented by woman aligned with the devil, clashes head-on in scenes where the foulness of woman is signified by her putrid, filthy body covered in blood, urine, excrement, and bile.” Religious groups have been doing this for hundreds of years with other perceived social abnormalities like the disabled, or people with a different ethnicity, or homosexuals, declaring them evil, or Satan’s minions. The Exorcist carries on this tradition of the church that represents a conservative moral majority. In a way the bible is the biggest morality tale of them all with its fantastical elements and moral messages spread throughout. As well as feminist uprising, there is also a case for The Exorcist being a warning about the possible dangers of teenage rebellion, Mark Kermode expands in the 1997 BFI companion to The Exorcist: “It is not hard to read The Exorcist… as, on one level, a paedophobic tract, reflecting deep-seated parental anxieties about the changing nature of ‘childhood’… by the early 70’s the schism between adult and adolescent culture had reached critical mass… Indeed one of the doctors investigating Regan’s illness asks Chris, ‘You keep any drugs in the house?’ this seeming a plausible explanation of her daughters violent behavioral disorders.” Similar arguments can be presented for this theory, given the era that the film was made, and the perceived underlying social problems in the United States, teenage rebellion was still a cause for concern for most of the adult population. The film times accurately with this theory, Reagan is entering adolescence. She starts swearing at her mother, and in front of strangers, she is masturbating, and by the end of the final act her room has become a hideous mess from, what can represent, the teenage tantrums she has had throughout the film. P. Wells makes the connection in the 2000 book The Horror Genre: “…Arguably, [The Exorcist] is merely a parental fantasy in which a deeply troubled adolescent is coerced through a period of rebellion into maturity, reinforcing patriarchal authority along the way.” Beyond all of the theories, it can be argued that The Exorcist is simply a tale about a priest who looses his faith and regains it through the tough trial of an exorcism. The original source material was a 1949 case of a young boy, not a girl, and the family was apparently stable and whole. It also took place over two decades previous to the time the novel and film were set. The reason for updating and changing these details can easily be seen as Blatty’s intention when writing the novel, to write a novel influenced by the times he was living in, making a morality tale, rather than a dramatisation. However Blatty had desired a stronger emphasis on the narrative, wanting to make the murder mystery aspect of the film stronger. Blatty’s intention when writing the script may well have been to create an accessible, dramatically tense adaptation of the events he had heard about, not to write a comment on the dysfunction of the modern family unit. This analysis continues next week with an examination of the horror thrillers Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs and David Fincher’s Se7en. M. Dawson |
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One of the most important horror movies made, and occasionally voted the greatest film of the 20th Century is The Exorcist. When it was first released, it was a controversial film, featuring explicit images, such as a young girl masturbating with a crucifix, projectile vomiting, and the same little girls head doing a complete three hundred and sixty degree rotation. Because of this and, more importantly, its perceived blasphemous content, it joined the likes of A Clockwork Orange (1971), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), being banned for over twenty years on video in the United Kingdom because of the various reactions to it.
This is once again a very conservative attitude underlying the film; an attitude that enforces traditional family values and structure. It is not just a male figure that is needed in the home, it is a wholesome, family orientated, and what 1970’s America considers as a decent male figure that is needed. A friend of Chris, Burke Dennings (played by Jack MacGowran), offers the possibility of a father figure, but he is a foreign, violent, drunkard, and so does not meet the appropriate criteria, Reagan kills him and waits until an appropriate father is presented and proven worthy. Father Karras is the appropriate father, and suppresses the independent and feminine impulses of Reagan through the most masculine means Ryan and Kellner again clarify:
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