The Exorcist – Death in the Digital Age

March 2, 2017March 2, 2017

Be Careful What You Ask For

A common trope in the genre of horror is that the monster or the object of possession and perversion is often female. For example, the 1973 post-modern horror film, The Exorcist, centers a prepubescent young girl being possessed by a demon. The audience witnesses her turn from innocent and loving, to tortured and pained, to evil and destructive. An additional and more recent example of an overcome female is in a recent horror podcast series The Bright Sessions. This fictional series consists of episodes that are a therapist’s secret recordings of her “strange and unusual” patient sessions. The patient of the first episode is a 25-year-old woman who gradually reveals during her first session that she can time travel. These two works both portray a girl or woman as a crazed and these characters embody a cultural imaginary of people no longer being bound by what is normal or human. It is through comparing these two works that I argue that The Exorcist and episode one of The Bright Sessions tap into a deeper cultural anxiety—that if an individual were granted with capabilities that exceeded human limits, then he or she would live a life of pain, destruction, and loneliness.

The Exorcist

The film The Exorcist was an extremely popular horror film during its time. It led to major box office success followed by multiple imitation films throughout the decades (The Devil Within Her, Abby, Cathy’s Curse, Lisa and The Devil, To the Devil—A Daughter, Audrey Rose, and The Sexorcist). Creed graphically summarizes in her psychoanalysis of The Exorcist the horrid actions of the main character. “Regan, the young female protagonist… is a truly monstrous figure. She spews green bile, utters foul obscenities, tries to fuck her mother, causes inanimate objects to fly, rotates her head full circle on her neck, knocks men to the floor with one punch, tries to castrate a priest, murders two men, and in her spare time masturbates with a crucifix” (Creed 31). One common trope in horror films and a central one to this plot is the perversion of what is good an innocent. The film initially introduces the audience to a prepubescent “pure” girl who has a loving relationship with her mother. However, as the demonic possession progresses both Regan’s purity and warm maternal relationship dilapidate. She begins to levitate, make furniture fly across the room, and her skin corrodes and mutates to look undead. Possessed Regan looks and has obtained abilities that are beyond human. To extend what Creed argues, the possession not only contorts Regan to be socially improper, sexually impure, and unstoppably violent, but this perversion also excuses her actions and is “perversely appealing” (31). Particularly within post-modern thought, society questions and blurs the lines of authority, religion, and truth. When Regan becomes possessed, she simultaneously challenges religion, parental control, and sexual repression. The obeying of authority and the policing of sexuality are two major social norms on which the demon pushes back. In this vein, the film serves as an outlet through which the audience can liberated from societal repressions. It is important to note, however, that this liberation comes at the cost of the well-being Regan and she harms those that love and want to help her along the way.

The Bright Sessions

The Bright Sessions, is a relatively new podcast (episode 1 was released in 2015) which has received popularity and high acclaim within the horror podcast genre. To summarize the premise of the series, the therapist Dr. Bright has placed an ad in the paper offering “therapy for the strange and unusual.” Dr. Bright secretly records her sessions for research and each episode in the series is the recording of one patient’s session. As a disclaimer, I will be analyzing and comparing The Exorcist to only the first episode of this podcast series for this is a scope I can appropriately and responsibly cover. Episode 1 walks its listeners through the first session of a patient named Samantha Barnes (or Sam). Sam came to see Dr. Bright after seeing the ad in the paper and Sam discloses that she came with the understanding that she sees herself as “strange and unusual.” Throughout the episode, the listener learns that Sam can time travel. The unexpected part of the session is not her superhuman ability though. The surprise is that she does not reveal her secret with fascination or wonder, but more accurately, Sam—similar to how one would confess to a Catholic priest—confesses her time-traveling ability to Dr. Bright with guilt and pain. Sam up until this point has pent up her frustration and paranoia of her secret ability over which she has no control. The mere act of time traveling is out of Sam’s control and it brings her much bodily pain. Throughout Sam’s session she vents about how time traveling “sucks” and how she was “scared” when it first happened to her. She describes her experience time traveling in the following lines:

Sam: They can never see me, I’m just there. It’s like being stuck inside someone’s memory or something. I can move around but I can’t talk. I’m basically a ghost. Or a reverse ghost. Not dead or visible. Or not even born yet, I guess. Ugh, I don’t know.

Dr. Bright: That… that must be difficult.

Sam: It’s horrible.

In Sam’s line “it’s horrible,” listeners can hear the pain in Sam’s voice. This moment in the podcasts merits more analysis into the podcast as a medium and how it effectively contributes to the empathy listeners feel. Understanding podcasts as a medium is particularly important to understanding how listeners feel Sam’s pain. Merely looking at these few transcribed lines and reading Sam’s pain and frustration on a page is one thing, but podcasts offer more intimacy and relatability than other digital media. Podcasts are absorbed only through hearing. Various scholars analyze the intimacy of radio and podcasts: Crisell notes that much like radio channels, podcasts are a “blind medium” through which listeners “cannot see its messages, they consist only of noise and silence” and they must imagine the scenery in their own minds (15); “voice is an intimate key to audiences’ hearts…” and “podcasts with headphones further emphasizes the individual’s experience of listening to a conversation with a friend” (Lindgren 27). Throughout this episode, listeners do not just passively listen to Sam’s story, but in a way, listeners recreate it in their imaginations and empathize with it. Sam’s deep exhale after confessing her strange and unusual ability, or the tightness in her throat when she talks about her bodily pain, or the acceleration in her speech as she laments her loneliness and frustrations—all of these extra-textual components cue listeners to internalize and feel Sam’s resentment and despair instead of merely read it on a page or see it on a television screen. Though Sam has a super capability that, in most fictional worlds, would seem “cool” and heroic, listeners realize that Sam’s reality could not be more opposite. Sam has been living in hiding with no family or friends and her secret is more of a curse than it is a blessing. The ability has brought Sam physical pain, emotional turmoil, and deprived human connections.

The Bigger Picture

Now what do these two works, published on completely different digital mediums, have to do with each other? As I have laid out, there are many thematic similarities between the two: the possession of a young girl/woman, the confessing and seeking of help from a higher authority (whether that be a pastor or a professional therapist), and uncontrollable extraterrestrial capabilities being assaulted onto a human being. However, these texts relate in a way that is a microcosm of a deeper cultural anxiety. Humankind evolves and adapts to survive and progress in a world where its existence—no matter the advancement of technology—will ultimately come to an end. Regan’s being possessed by a demon and Sam’s having the uncontrollable ability to time travel tap into the human fantasy of obtaining unimaginable and unlimited abilities. The heartbreak of these two works lie in man’s wish to be infinite. Regan and Sam embody the tragic, and arguably more realistic, repercussions of coming across a remedy to finite and insignificant existence. These two character show its audiences that obtaining these abilities would hurt them and hurt their loved ones rather than offer an abundant and beautiful life. Ultimately both Regan and Sam lead a life of heartbreak and loneliness.

In The Exorcist, Regan originally symbolizes innocence, love, and youth and then becomes the very opposite of what the audience treasures: destructive, perverse, and squeamishly abject. The Bright Sessions observes a girl who experiences immense pain from a supernatural ability for which she never asked. These two works speak to the collective horror story of what it could potentially be like for man to obtain a remedy to the universal fear of death and insignificance. Instead of superhuman power offering a life of catharsis and relief, it would only bring about pain, loneliness, and destruction.

Works Cited

Creed, Barbara. The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. Psychology Press, 1993.

Crisell, Andrew. Understanding radio. Routledge, 2006.

Lindgren, Mia. “Personal narrative journalism and podcasting.” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14.1 (2016): 23-41.

February 7, 2017February 20, 2017

Creeping Vines: The True Monster in Paul Tremblay’s “A Head Full of Ghost”

Creeping Vines on Brick Wall. Source: https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/creeping-vines-brick-wall.html

Marjorie warns Merry throughout the book that the person who is actually possessed is their father, John. In Marjorie’s “growing-things” story, John slowly poisoned their mother to death and was in the process of killing Marjorie. His last victim would be the young, innocent Merry. Marjorie insisted that the “growing-things” story was true stating, “That one’s mine. That one is – real. You still can’t ever forget that story, little Merry,” (Tremblay 125).

When the new night routine is set up, Marjorie spends the entire night watching John through the open door. Marjorie reveals, “I think he might be the one who’s possessed… Hasn’t he been acting so strange? So over-the-top religious now, and always so angry? I’m scared. I think he thinks about doing bad things, really bad things, like in the growing-things story I told you,” (184).

Like the creeping vines in Marjorie’s “growing things” story, John chokes the life out of every person in the house. He becomes possessed with such religious fervour, that he exploits his daughter’s illness and tears the family apart.

“The Shining” (Here’s Johnny Scene). Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ABIIZV3vA

John is depicted as irrational, violent, and on the verge of mental collapse. “He grew scarier by the day,” Merry recollected, as John turned to religious zeal to deal with his oldest daughter’s illness (192). Was he exploiting Marjorie to make money to support his family? Did he truly believe that his daughter was possessed by a demon?

When the family members were offered the chance to give individual commentary on camera, John “didn’t talk to the camera. He orated. He gave pep talks about how our family would overcome. He proselytised, working in Bible references,” whenever he could (188). John became deranged and was living somewhere between fiction and reality. He had no control over what was happening to his daughter, yet he tried everything he could to control it. There is no real explanation for Marjorie’s illness, but John is convinced that he can save her. His zeal fills him with energy and power, often erupting into violent outbursts and even resulting in an untimely arrest.

On the other hand, the mother, Sarah, slowly deteriorates. “She looked older with her puffy, bloodshot eyes. She gave me an unsure, sad smile. I thought about telling her that her teeth looked really yellow, that she was smoking way too much,” (140). Sarah collapses into a heap of guilt and becomes less emotionally stable, because she didn’t stand her ground against her husband’s wish of performing an exorcism and broadcasting it. As a result, she is alienated from her husband, Merry is bullied at school, protestors are lining the sidewalk, and Marjorie is disappearing altogether. The once put-together and sane mother continues to break down with each passing page, as if she were being slowly poisoned to death and buried alive beneath the weight of it all.

The cameras broadcasting Marjorie’s illness act as a public execution. Marjorie’s social life is completely dead and she is cut off from the outside world. Girls from her school start up an Instagram page and post images of Marjorie with disgustingly sexual captions and screenshots. Marjorie is unable to function even remotely as a normal teenager, and she is held prisoner in the hospital wards and church sermons. I have not finished the book, but I predict that the worse is yet to come.

Marjorie never asked for any of this. John is the one who offered up possession and exorcism as feasible diagnosis and treatment. John is the force behind it all, the one who pushes the family to the edge of destruction.

Marjorie as the Monstrous-Feminine

In addition to understanding the vines, this post intends to explore the relationship between Marjorie and Regan from The Exorcist. There are a number of notable similarities between the two characters. A few tie back to Barbara Creed’s “The Monstrous-Feminine.”

“While the theme of spiritual decline is central to The Exorcist, it is secondary to the film’s exploration of female monstrousness and the inability of the male order to control the woman whose perversity is expressed through her rebellious body,” (Creed 34). Throughout the novel, John unsuccessfully attempts to control Marjorie’s illness. Unfortunately, he has zero control over her illness and even less control over her body as a whole. For example, when the family and crew bring Merry upstairs to confront her sister for the first time, Marjorie is topless. John wants Marjorie to cover up in front of the cameras, but he is unable to do so without the risk of interfering with Father Wanderly’s work. An almost incestual act has been involuntarily committed by John. The idea of control is central to Tremblay’s work, because there is a total lack of control. The father, the male figure, is trying to control the daughter’s body to no avail. John is unable to come to terms with this fact, and destroys his family in the process.
There is a graphic association of the monstrous with the feminine body (37). Marjorie’s body transformation mimics that of Regan. This includes the red marks on her stomach, the green vomit, the dingy hair and deranged eyes, and the multiple voices that are somehow still her own. She possesses a “body in revolt” (40). The source of this revolt, however, is unclear.
While Marjorie represents Regan, Merry represents Regan’s mother. Merry is the only one who could pacify Marjorie as well as bring out her demons. Merry is the closest person to Marjorie, and Marjorie often confides her deepest secrets to her.

“DON’T PROFIT OFF THE DEVIL’S WORK”

www.blumhouse.com/2015/12/02/is-the-exorcist-movie-cursed/

Works Cited

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine : Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis.London: Routledge, 1993. Print.

Tremblay, Paul. A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel. New York, NY: William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2015. Print.

January 31, 2017February 2, 2017

Possession in The Exorcist and “Be Right Back”

While reading Barbara Creed’s “Woman as Possessed Monster” from The Monstrous Feminine I could not help but draw parallels between Creed’s examples from The Exorcist and the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back.” Creed actually drew me to make this comparison when she pointed out that part of the horror of The Exorcist stems from Regan’s possession creating an other out of an otherwise known character. Though The Exorcist deals with the possession of a young girl by a demonic entity, “Be Right Back” showcases a different kind of “possession” through Ash’s online persona inhabiting the body of a robot modeled to look exactly like him.

To Creed, “the possessed or invaded being is a figure of abjection in that the boundary between self and other has been transgressed” (32). In The Exorcist, the abjection is seen through a female body, as Creed claims it is most often (32). However, in “Be Right Back,” the abjection is seen through the workings of the male body. This can be seen simply in Regan and Ash’s “bodily excretions,” something Creed claims, “must be treated as abject” (38). In The Exorcist, Regan’s possession leads her to urinate publicly and projectile vomit, something that places a distinction between the self—the true Regan, who would not commit these actions—and the other—the demon controlling Regan. In “Be Right Back,” the creators take the opposite approach. Ash’s robotic form need not ever have bodily excretions, and this lack of bodily excretions illustrates the possession and thus abjection. By manipulating the bodily excretions of Regan and Ash, the viewer is forced to recognize the fact that these characters have become an other, and thus something to fear.

Seen here in The Exorcist, Regan’s excretion of bodily fluid marks her as an other.

Regan and Ash’s “otherness” can also be seen in the sexuality brought on by their possession. While Regan’s possession plays on an incestuous mother-daughter relationship, all of Regan’s sexuality is brought to the viewer’s attention by the fact that she is possessed by a demon, which causes her to shout obscenities and her desire to act on her sexual impulses. Regan’s otherness is created by her manifestation of sexual desire, but Ash was a sexual being before his possession. His possession, gives increased autonomy and skill with regards to sex, something real Ash lacked, thus classifying him as an other or possessed being.

Works Cited

Creed, Barbara. “Woman as Possessed Monster: The Exorcist” The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1993. 31-42. Print.

Image Citation

horrordigest.blogspot.com/2010/01/pukeapalooza-best-vomit-in-horror.html