Analysis of The Exorcist

I should start off by saying that I am actually not a fan of horror movies at all and normally I try and avoid them at all costs. For this assignment I decided that if I had to watch one I might as well make a classic that I had been meaning to see for a while, I chose The Exorcist. I found the film to have an eerily slow start that left my entire body stiff waiting for something to happen at about thirty minutes in. It was interesting to watch a film that had less blood and gore to keep my attention and more plot. I couldn’t help but think about the idea of signs when seeing the barking dogs, artifacts, and other religious imagery in the beginning scene in Iraq, which helped me focus on the idea of representation throughout the film.

In terms of the Hall reading, one of the “myths” that stood out to me most in the film was the idea of “children are demons”. I believe that the idea of children being demons came about to me because while watching the film I was thinking about one of the only other horror movies I have seen, Rosemary’s Baby. Rosemary’s Baby came out around the same time and it is about a woman who is unknowingly pregnant with the devil’s child.  Rosemary’s Baby came out around the same time, 1968. After finishing watching The Exorcist I looked around online and another film that came out with the same myth was The Omen, which I have not seen. I feel like this was the beginning of those in powerful media positions teaching us to fear our children. It is possible that I am off on this, however, it seems to match.

After finishing The Exorcist I found myself unbothered by most of what I had seen in the film, which is very uncommon to my typical feelings after watching a horror film. I started thinking about why this might by and I think that it is possible that it has to do with Foucault’s ideas about historical context being the key to the production of knowledge through discourse. I think that I was relatively un-scathed by the material I had seen not because I believe or do not believe in exorcism but because the technology used in 1973 and the special effects are nothing compared to what I am used to and thus I am much less afraid of what I am seeing because it looks so much less real than what I am used to seeing in horror films. The historical context is not only important in aspects of technology but also in changed laws and social norms such as the doctors smoking in the hospital or Father Karras having a few beers to blow off some steam at the bar. Because I know that these laws/social norms I am less likely to believe the other things happening in the film are real.