Applying the course to the scariest movie I have ever seen.

Before taking film communication I was oblivious to almost everything that goes into making a film, particularly how writers and directors can harness the most important social, cultural, and political opinions which grip the nation during the era in which the film came out. During the course of the semester I learned so many things about a host of films which I knew so well but apparently did not really know at all. I never even took it into consideration how those elements are apparent in these films and that is what interested me most in the class. Now that I have the opportunity I would like to apply how the social, cultural, and political implications play into the scariest movie I have ever seen.

I went to see a midnight showing of the re-mastered version of a film which debuted in 1974 when I was in 4^th grade and I will admit I had trouble sleeping for the night. William Blatty’s The Exorcist which had a shocked the nation in 1974 had been rereleased and my mother who saw the film as a young girl was eager to take me. I watched the film and left the theatre in terror and ever since it has been the scariest movie I have ever seen. From that time until I researched the film for this project I only knew the movie as a film of demonic possession which made it seem so possible and completely terrifying and that is why I liked the film so much. Now having read into the film and all of its implications my love for this film has been revived.

The movie is actually based on a novel by William Blatty which is based on an actual exorcism. The exorcism took place in Maryland in 1949 and involved a boy who was speaking languages he never studied and had strange symbols and words appear on his body. Blatty used it as the background of his work and then altered the story to play on the happenings of that time.

The films story at its most basic sense shows a movie star mother whose child has become possessed and must hire a pair of priests in order to heal her child. How Blatty created the demon was particularly interesting. A goal of his book and movie to relate to the American Public that there is real evil present in our world so took the most evil occurrences in our world and put them together. “ Blatty sought to draw these disparate manifestations of evil – crime, communism, genocide, war and assassination- together into a cohesive presence. The demon of The Exorcist was the result.” (Cull 47) I know realize how he created something evil.

As the film also refers to the American youth of those times it is making a connection to social opinion of the decade. Kids of the ‘70’s were considered rebellious and that is why the subject of the possession is a teenager. “In reworking the Mount Rainier case for 1970s America, Blatty altered the gender of the possessed child. In doing so he moved his story into the typical territory of the horror genre: the female body.” (Cull49) I thought it was interesting how he molded those aspects of the story to pertain to the opinions about youths while keeping his film in a typical horror film. Horror as a genre has its beginnings in plotting science verse religion. There is a portion of the film when a possessed Regan is put through a number of medical tests all which fail so religion must save the day.   

There are also political references within the film. A large one has to do with the President Nixon. “Father Merrin’s warning to beware of the demon’s voice as it mixes lies with truth is exactly the sort of thing President Nixon had begun to say about the American Media as it probed the breaking story of Watergate.” (Cull 49) I think Blatty was taking a stab at Nixon for being a dishonest president and making a fool of the white house and letting him know how people felt.        

Personally applying these concepts to The Exorcist helped take this movie to a new level for me. As a film student I am interested in how films such as this one can be a voice for the nation. It is amazing that films played with such heated issues right under my nose and I had no idea until now. Now I can read films at a deeper level and I am enjoying that.