ABSTRACT
At various moments in the first half of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973, 2000), a ghoulish, demonic cloaked figure randomly flashes between scenes, almost unnoticed, provoking the viewer to question its presence in the film. Moreover, the viewer is left pondering the filmmaker’s larger purpose of inserting these flashlit shots in a movie that centers upon the demonic possession and exorcism of a young girl in 1970s America. The answer, of course, is that William Friedkin’s jump-cuts of the cloaked demon have nothing and everything to do with his film about the problem of evil. The apparent incoherence and opaqueness of these scenes illustrate why these flashlit shots remain controversial among some viewers who argue that the film sends demonic subliminal messages.1 Nevertheless, the flashing demonic figure is a critical narrative device that illuminates the movie’s central religious themes. Although not conventionally connected to the film’s plot, the flashing ghoul nonetheless embodies the symbolic horror of the movie: the randomness of evil. Viewers often comment upon the ways The Exorcist’s shocking pornographic imagery and vulgarity horrifies them, not to mention the ways the movie blasphemes sacred Christian symbols and rituals. But considering this film blasphemous would be nothing further from the truth. In a profound way, The Exorcist is a provocative, and some would say conservative, religious film that philosophizes upon the nature of evil in the modern world.2 Indeed, the film’s major premise pivots upon Chris MacNeil’s (Ellen Burstyn) initial turn to medical and psychiatric science to resolve her daughter’s afflictions, only to reject rational science and empiricism because they fail to “cure” her daughter Regan (Linda Blair). With modern science unable to “treat” Regan, Chris appeals to Father Damien Karras (ironically a trained psychiatrist who doubts his own faith) and the Catholic Church to perform an exorcism in order to cast out the demon possessing her daughter. Arguably, Chris’s appeal is a validation of the power of Christianity and
Catholicism to confront and defeat evil. This was evidently one way a Catholic newspaper interpreted the film.3 However, the apparent victory of the demon over Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), and Father Karras’s (Jason Miller) invocation to the demon to possess him actually reveal a much more ambivalent and terrifying conclusion that doubts the power of Christian faith and Catholic rituals to triumph over evil.4 To suggest that evil remains impervious to modern science and traditional religious rituals is perhaps even more blasphemous than the film’s graphic imagery and gore could ever be.
