exorcising fear

So I saw The Exorcist on the weekend.

Perhaps it was the sheer amount of food - mostly meat - that I consumed before watching; or perhaps the company while watching; or maybe I'm just mature enough to handle it - but it wasn't very scary. Perhaps it would have been more frightening if I had been expecting something less terrifying than more - or something completely different (as when I watched Dogville, expecting a rather silly gangster flick...). Okay, some of the images are disturbing - mostly cause Linda Blair is just so angelic looking in the opening scenes. Maybe its the fairly horrendous 70s fashion Ellen Burnstyn sports - or the questionable 'attractiveness' of the men - or just the truly surreal opening scenes set in Iraq.

It's just that the extreme campiness and over-determined sequences are a bit hard to take - at least from the perspective of this weary and desensitised viewer and critic of Gothic horrors. I only stayed awake and jumping at shadows for ONE night. Ha! Se7en kept me up for weeks. Is it just the sheer novelty of the film for its time that made it so terrifying? It is, after all, one of the most popular and highly-grossing horror movies of all time - its earnings, according to Wikipedia (take as you will), $400 million worldwide. It was up for 10 Academy Awards (take that as you will as well) and won 2 (Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay) and lost the Best Picture award to The Sting. Apparently, Jon Landau of Rolling Stone called it 'nothing more than a religious porn film'.

It does rather feel empty of plot - just a voyeuristic journey into the weirdness of Catholic rituals and rites (which even the learned Father Karras distances from the modern operation of the Catholic Church) - there is no reason why Regan MacNeil is possessed and the devil doesn't really seem to have a plan. The horrific medical tests are more disturbing than the exorcism - though the priests do rather casually burn Regan-as-the-devil with holy water and the like. It's kinda like the final lines of Judas's show-stopping number in Jesus Christ Superstar: 'If you'd [Jesus] have come today, you would have reached a whole nation/Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication'. If it is the DEVIL - why appear in the body of a 12-year old girl? Shock value alone? Darryl Jones suggests that The Exorcist be understood as part of a trilogy of 'Satan' films, appearing between Rosemary's Baby and The Omen. As a question of adaptability, Satan clearly comes to grips quickly with the details of privilege in 1970s America: by The Omen, Damien (the Antichrist) ends up as no less than the president's (surrogate) son. I suppose I'd also agree with his reading of the film as a discussion of the corruption of the flesh discourse in Catholicism - the devil really goes to town for that one soul, threatening to stay until Regan's body rots (which it clearly begins to do throughout her possession) in the ground. And little wonder that the body contested is a young woman. I like the (albeit) overdetermined scene in which Regan writes 'help me' on her own body from the inside. It's tortured but certainly evocative of life in a teenaged body.

Maybe I'm dismissing the things that are actually quite important if I twist them around and look at them awry.

So Regan is 12-going-on-13 - from Chris's (her mother's) perspective, she is a potentially terrifying little bundle of possibility. The picture Regan is looking at in bed is herself with her mother - which her mother dismisses as not a very good picture, saying that Regan looks 'so mature'. The lack of plot? Well, it is the DEVIL - maybe he doesn't really go by this self-justification rationale for showing up. Maybe a 12 year old girl is a really good place to be - perhaps, given the potentials unleashed by the popular uprisings of 1968, a young girl (particularly, notice, without a father) raised by a stong single woman was something to be feared: she might grow up to be a feminist. (gasp!) The ending, with the self-sacrifice of Father Karras, is interesting - Angelheart makes it more explicit, with the flash of green energy in the beautiful baby's eyes - but Regan's innocent unknowing is more interesting. Has she really forgotten? And how then, exactly, did mommydearest explain the abrasions and lacerations on her body (bruises still visible in the last shot as they drive away).

I also do have to wonder how Burnstyn's character managed to stay in the house with Regan-as-the-devil... I mean, wow, ovaries of steel, that one has!

The long and short of it, it isn't scary - its actually pretty funny. But I can see how it is such an iconic film. And I'm glad I saw it.

Next, The Car. With steaks. Really rare steaks.