The Exorcist

The classic 1973 film, The Exorcist, has been known to be an incredibly terrifying horror movie. With its vivid images of the supernatural world of terror, it portrays how awful the human female can be. It also introduces a “…third way in which the horror film illustrates the work of abjection refers to the construction of the maternal figure as abject.” (Creed 43). Just like Carrie, the female character is displayed as monstrous and terrifying in these classic horror films.

Just like the film Carrie, the “feminine horror” is shown throughout the film and in both cases, some outside “force” caused by both Carrie and Regan is portrayed through the journey toward another terrifying experience. However, unlike Regan, Carrie has powers that are developed during the shower scene where her classmates (that were girls) were teasing her for getting her period for the first time. The result had been catastrophic, she used her telekinetic powers by shattering a light bulb which had not been that bad, but in the end of the movie her powers became a weapon. In Regan’s case, it had been when shew as playing with a Ouija board and contacting a spirit named “Captain Howdy”. From then on, Regan had been possessed and this so called Captain Howdy had actually turned out to be a demon named Pazuzu, which is based on the Assyrian and Babylonian mythology. Pazuzu is the king of the demons of the wind, and had taken over Regan’s body and mind. As the demon’s strength becomes more inevitable and stronger, her condition (as a human being) had begun to get worse and worse as the film goes on. For example, she descends down the stairs in Chris’s party and tells the astronaut (one of the guests) that he will die in space and begins to urinate on the floor. Regan then continues to show her massive strength, which goes to show how terrifying girls can be. This also relates to what Barbara Creed had written in her article, “Images of blood, vomit, pus, shit, and so forth, are central to our culturally/socially construction notions of the horrific. They signify a split between two orders: the maternal authority and the law of the father. On the one hand, these images of bodily wastes threaten a subject that is already constituted, in relation to the symbolic, as ‘whole and proper.’ Consequently, they fill the subject – both the protagonist in the text and the spectator in the cinema- with disgust and loathing.” (Creed 45)

As the film goes on, Regan begins to deteriorate as Pazuzu begins to grow stronger and stronger. Pazuzu seemingly, draws the life out of Regan and takes over her entire body. She becomes physically and mentally demonic, as her skin begins to turn a ghostly white and covered in lesions and cuts while her eyes turn yellow and throws up a bright green liquid. Not only that, her voice becomes the demon itself, with its deep and terrifying tone which is unfamiliar to Regan’s mother.

A common factor between both Carrie and The Exorcist, is the sexual visualizations that are portrayed throughout the films. For instance, in Carrie, they show the girls naked in the showers and in The Exorcist, the possessed Regan starts to curse out many profanities, and in one scene she is seen ramming a crucifix into her vagina violently to which she begins to bleed. A truly horrific scene, especially to the audience it would be disgusting to watch this. This shows how woman are displayed as sexual and horrible.