John Whitehead's Commentary
The Exorcist and the Love of God
The turbulent era of the 1960s was about more than generational and political conflicts. It was also a time of great spiritual questioning.
Time magazine captured the tenor of times with its April 10, 1966, sepulchral red-on-black cover, which asked "Is God Dead?"
The lead article's ending sentence seemed a fitting epitaph for the modern age: "Perhaps today, the Christian can do no better than echo the prayer of the worried father who pleaded with Christ to heal his spirit-possessed son -- 'I believe, help my unbelief.' "
The same cover appeared several years later in the 1968 film Rosemary's Baby. The popularity of the film eventually led to a cycle of events that reached their apex with The Exorcist.
Rosemary's Baby is a fable about a couple, Guy and Rosemary, who moves to New York City. Guy, a struggling actor, is trying to make his mark in the world. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, Guy starts landing good acting parts mysteriously vacated by other actors stricken by strange ailments. We learn that Guy has made a pact with a cult of Satan worshipers. As part of his deal with the evildoers, Guy helps drug Rosemary, whereupon she is sexually assaulted by Satan.
Initially, Rosemary believes it is all a nightmare, but she soon grows suspicious and tries to escape the cult's nefarious web -- to no avail.
The baby is finally born, but Rosemary believes the child died at birth. Eventually, however, she finds the baby in the next-door apartment. Though initially repulsed by the baby's reptilian appearance, her maternal instincts soon kick in, and in one of the few moments of humanity in the film, Rosemary accepts the child, who is hailed by the cultists as the Antichrist. "Hail, Satan. His power is stronger and stronger," the worshipers proclaim. "God is dead."
Beyond the theological debate surrounding the God-is-dead movement, among ordinary people it might have seemed in 1968 that God was dead. Social, racial and generational conflicts were rampant. The Vietnam War was splitting the country, and four key American leaders had been assassinated in a space of five years. The world to many seemed like a demonic nightmare.
It was against that backdrop that The Exorcist opened 30 years ago in the United States, strangely enough on the day after Christmas. At the center of the story is a young girl, Regan MacNeil, who becomes possessed by a powerful demon. The child, who is bedridden in her mother's Georgetown home, spits, curses and mutilates her body.
The film, directed by William Friedkin, was universally attacked and therefore initially opened in only two theaters. Word of mouth became the film's strongest promoter, however, and lines began to grow in front of theaters and wind around city blocks. The film eventually grossed more than $165 million in ticket sales in the United States alone -- well over $400 million by today's inflation-adjusted standard.
The hysteria surprised the critics as well as those who worked on the film. Within weeks of the first public screenings, stories of fainting, vomiting, heart attacks and miscarriages began to circulate. In Berkeley, Calif., a man threw himself at the screen in a misguided attempt to "get the demon." Others were committed to psychiatric care after seeing the film.
Friedkin attributed the intense reaction to people's need to believe in God and the devil. But it was something more than that. The Exorcist was fear in its most horrible sense -- the inevitability of personified spiritual evil that can manifest itself in and through people.
The Exorcist is an attempt to depict and dramatize transcendent elements of reality in a modern framework. That possibility is what brought William Peter Blatty to write his 1971 novel. "I set out to write a novel that would not only excite and entertain (sermons that put me to sleep are useless), but would also make a positive statement about God, the human condition, and the relationship between the two."
Blatty's vision is successfully portrayed in the film. When traditional medicine and science fail to cure Regan, her avowedly atheist mother turns to young Father Damien Karras in a desperate attempt to save her daughter. He reluctantly agrees to perform an exorcism on Regan and is joined by an aging exorcist, Father Lankester Merrin.
The theological message of the film appears in several lines in Blatty's revised screenplay. The scene occurs during a lull in the exorcism and consists of a dialogue between the two priests:
KARRAS: Father, what's going on in there? What is it? If that's the devil, why this girl? It makes no sense.
MERRIN: I think the point is to make us despair, Damien -- to see ourselves as animal, and ugly -- to reject our own humanity -- to reject the possibility that God could ever love us.
Although that scene was edited from the originally released film, the essence of that dialogue is the final message of The Exorcist. In fact, both priests, in Christ-like gestures, give their lives to save one little girl.
The Exorcist brings us full-circle from the pessimism of Rosemary's Baby. With the triumph of the spirit, The Exorcist asserted the existence of the living God.
The strength of The Exorcist was in its portrayal of the demonic nature of much of modern life, which seems to reduce much of humanity -- you and me -- to the animal and the ugly and have us question that God could love us in any way.
The beauty of The Exorcist, however, is its optimistic message -- that people can transcend this world and reach a spiritual level dominated by good. Evil doesn't always have to win in the end.
Time magazine captured the tenor of times with its April 10, 1966, sepulchral red-on-black cover, which asked "Is God Dead?"
The lead article's ending sentence seemed a fitting epitaph for the modern age: "Perhaps today, the Christian can do no better than echo the prayer of the worried father who pleaded with Christ to heal his spirit-possessed son -- 'I believe, help my unbelief.' "
The same cover appeared several years later in the 1968 film Rosemary's Baby. The popularity of the film eventually led to a cycle of events that reached their apex with The Exorcist.
Rosemary's Baby is a fable about a couple, Guy and Rosemary, who moves to New York City. Guy, a struggling actor, is trying to make his mark in the world. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, Guy starts landing good acting parts mysteriously vacated by other actors stricken by strange ailments. We learn that Guy has made a pact with a cult of Satan worshipers. As part of his deal with the evildoers, Guy helps drug Rosemary, whereupon she is sexually assaulted by Satan.
Initially, Rosemary believes it is all a nightmare, but she soon grows suspicious and tries to escape the cult's nefarious web -- to no avail.
The baby is finally born, but Rosemary believes the child died at birth. Eventually, however, she finds the baby in the next-door apartment. Though initially repulsed by the baby's reptilian appearance, her maternal instincts soon kick in, and in one of the few moments of humanity in the film, Rosemary accepts the child, who is hailed by the cultists as the Antichrist. "Hail, Satan. His power is stronger and stronger," the worshipers proclaim. "God is dead."
Beyond the theological debate surrounding the God-is-dead movement, among ordinary people it might have seemed in 1968 that God was dead. Social, racial and generational conflicts were rampant. The Vietnam War was splitting the country, and four key American leaders had been assassinated in a space of five years. The world to many seemed like a demonic nightmare.
It was against that backdrop that The Exorcist opened 30 years ago in the United States, strangely enough on the day after Christmas. At the center of the story is a young girl, Regan MacNeil, who becomes possessed by a powerful demon. The child, who is bedridden in her mother's Georgetown home, spits, curses and mutilates her body.
The film, directed by William Friedkin, was universally attacked and therefore initially opened in only two theaters. Word of mouth became the film's strongest promoter, however, and lines began to grow in front of theaters and wind around city blocks. The film eventually grossed more than $165 million in ticket sales in the United States alone -- well over $400 million by today's inflation-adjusted standard.
The hysteria surprised the critics as well as those who worked on the film. Within weeks of the first public screenings, stories of fainting, vomiting, heart attacks and miscarriages began to circulate. In Berkeley, Calif., a man threw himself at the screen in a misguided attempt to "get the demon." Others were committed to psychiatric care after seeing the film.
Friedkin attributed the intense reaction to people's need to believe in God and the devil. But it was something more than that. The Exorcist was fear in its most horrible sense -- the inevitability of personified spiritual evil that can manifest itself in and through people.
The Exorcist is an attempt to depict and dramatize transcendent elements of reality in a modern framework. That possibility is what brought William Peter Blatty to write his 1971 novel. "I set out to write a novel that would not only excite and entertain (sermons that put me to sleep are useless), but would also make a positive statement about God, the human condition, and the relationship between the two."
Blatty's vision is successfully portrayed in the film. When traditional medicine and science fail to cure Regan, her avowedly atheist mother turns to young Father Damien Karras in a desperate attempt to save her daughter. He reluctantly agrees to perform an exorcism on Regan and is joined by an aging exorcist, Father Lankester Merrin.
The theological message of the film appears in several lines in Blatty's revised screenplay. The scene occurs during a lull in the exorcism and consists of a dialogue between the two priests:
KARRAS: Father, what's going on in there? What is it? If that's the devil, why this girl? It makes no sense.
MERRIN: I think the point is to make us despair, Damien -- to see ourselves as animal, and ugly -- to reject our own humanity -- to reject the possibility that God could ever love us.
Although that scene was edited from the originally released film, the essence of that dialogue is the final message of The Exorcist. In fact, both priests, in Christ-like gestures, give their lives to save one little girl.
The Exorcist brings us full-circle from the pessimism of Rosemary's Baby. With the triumph of the spirit, The Exorcist asserted the existence of the living God.
The strength of The Exorcist was in its portrayal of the demonic nature of much of modern life, which seems to reduce much of humanity -- you and me -- to the animal and the ugly and have us question that God could love us in any way.
The beauty of The Exorcist, however, is its optimistic message -- that people can transcend this world and reach a spiritual level dominated by good. Evil doesn't always have to win in the end.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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