Last night, we got to see the original The Exorcist on the big screen for its 50 anniversary in preparation for viewing the latest on in a couple of weeks out at the drive-in. I hadn't seen the original probably since I was in high school, so there were things I noticed now that I would never have noticed then, including that the first approach, even before counseling and psychiatry was to put the poor girl on ritalin as a way to address behavior problems, which then spiraled through spinal taps and medical interventions toward its inevitable conclusion. What to do with a misbehaving child, demons or no..a point emphasized by Father Damien's mention that exorcisms were no longer the norm given all we know about the human body and mind coming out of a much darker age when psychological and physical disorders like bipolar and epilepsy were labeled demon interference.
Exorcism and possession movies are much less my jam than other types of horror, perhaps because I am not really religious enough to fear things like demons and the devil. While any number of ghosts and monsters can still set my heart racing, I have little patience for many of the demonic possession movies and all the Catholic mechanization that usually accompanies them. But they are an intriguing genre as a whole.
I also couldn't help noticing the idea of single motherhood that sometimes accompanies horror. I would have pegged certain kinds of movies that cast it in unfavorable light as 80s things, but in The Exorcist, you have not only a single mother, but a single wealthy mother in the entertainment industry. One whose child is mostly looked after by assistants and butlers and for which things go horribly awry. That feminist age trope or idea that while you are bringing home the bread and in the workplace, your children are getting up to all sorts of horrifying activity (hello, Satanic Panic.)
