Growing up in a religious home and attending Catholic schooling from elementary through high school, the ideas of the devil and the spirit world have never been completely foreign. While I have always believed (and was taught) the devil was an existent entity, the idea of the spirit world has been more of a touchy subject. […]
It’s easy to see in modern horror and slasher flicks how monster identity tends to operate as a cultural warning. It’s slyly insinuated that if you don’t follow a certain moral conduct that a certain vigilante justice will be waiting to punish you. The current archetypes are so overtly called upon and overplayed in cinema […]
The fact that Chris is an actress in The Exorcist is particularly interesting to me, as William Peter Blatty could have chosen any old profession for the mother of Regan to have. Imagine if Chris had been a stay-at-home mom (which would have warranted the inclusion of a father figure), or a lawyer, or a […]
“And yet I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think—I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile, and putrescent; without dignity; […]
In our discussions in class, we all seemed to come to the obvious conclusion that monsters are evil. However, there was some disagreement as to what evil actually is. Specifically, whether or not an action was extreme enough to be considered evil. I found it interesting that there seems to be a distinction […]
When I started reading ‘The Exorcist’ I was in the middle of watching an episode of the hit Showtime television show ‘Homeland’. In that show the main character, played by the incredible Claire Danes, suffers from Bipolar disorder. My understanding of the disease is that it causes severe mood swings in the people who have […]
“The Black Hole” is a science fiction Disney movie from 1979. My parents rented the VHS for us to watch when I was little because it’s Disney sci-fi, so it can’t be scary, am I right? Having re-watched it recently, I now realize that, while you can clearly tell that it was made […]
In The Exorcist, I found that pinning down Reagan’s age to be very difficult. I know that her age is mentioned as being twelve, but she does not seem to act to like it. She seems to be very anti-social, preferring to play alone, by herself, in the basement. She does not seem to have […]
While reading The Exorcist, I could not help but feel that William Peter Blatty was trying his best to not only make a haunting tale, but also showing that even with the times changing, that women still needed to be saved by a man. The demon within Rags is like the dragon, and Reagan herself, […]
I noticed that my interpretation of The Exorcist as having some misogynistic connotations ruffled a few feathers so I figured I would dedicate my second blog post to delving further into these issues. Literature would be boring if feathers weren’t ruffled! Now that we’ve read the conclusion of the novel; it is easier to examine […]
Symbolism runs rampant in the everyday world, permeating every inch of our lives. The hidden arrow in the FedEx logo, the signs that tell us how the road ahead of us is positioned, even the color of clothing made for infants (try buying baby girl clothes in a shade other than Pepto Bismal pink). Symbols […]
The Exorcist is a novel filled with many different reactions to our society that in the 1970’s was changing rapidly with the presence of the evolving feminist movement. I found a wonderful article that easily sums up the second wave feminist movement here. It is helpful to know the issues women were advocating for at […]