Reading Analysis:
Barbara Creed’s short yet informative article describes of the horror and the monstrous-feminine. Creed goes to the origins of modern horror, Greek mythology, where the majority of monsters with gender were depicted as female or female presenting, with the most common beast of them all being Medusa.
Creed illustrates the idea of the petrification of Medusa’s male victims is an allegory for the male erection, reinforcing that all media is rooted in the masculine pleasure or phallic. Creed connects the monstrosity of Medusa’s head is metaphor for the women’s vagina as the female genitalia is something monstrous in a patriarchal society.
However, Creed’s main focus is the abject or abjection of the female form and “others” in horror media as well as the abjection of the mother as the child chooses the father to maintain a systematic subconscious patriarchal standard to uphold in bourgeois society. Creed both agrees with this; however, she debunks this slightly, talking about that it was never disclosed what gender the child is, when this transition happens, and what type of family background the child is included or excluded from.
Creed mentions the portrayal of abjection in horror film, which is similar to the analysis provided by Robin Wood. People shun or exclude what is abnormal to societal structures, such as supernatural beings like vampires, zombies, or ghost, none of which fit the bill of being classified as a living, breathing person.
Creed says the ultimate abjection is the corpse The living body excretes loathsome or vile anything that plagues or festers in the body, such as piss and shit. Abjections revolves around the idea of the keeping a societal order with pristine-like conditions. It is rooted in everyday life and starts with the body. The human body is wired to remove anything disgusting in itself or attacking anything foreign to the human anatomy, such as a virus or sickness.
Film Analysis:
With The Exorcist, abjection is turned on its head. The film follows the strange and supernatural occurrences that plague Reagan and the MacNeil household. It is revealed Reagan is possessed by an ancient demonic spirit, Pazuzu, who claims to be the devil.
Abjection centers around the idea of rejection of anything foreign or obscure to any standing and formulated societal structure. “The body protects itself from bodily wastes such as shit, blood, urine, and pus by ejecting these substances just as it expels food that, for whatever reason, the subject finds loathsome” (Creed 70). Throughout the film, Reagan’s soul and the spirit of Pazuzu fight for custody of the tween’s body. It is ambiguous with who is doing the expelling of the green vile, but it returns to the idea of the rejecting anything that isn’t natural to oneself. Reagan could be trying to regain consciousness of her body and expel the demon, or it could be interpreted that Pazuzu is trying to expel any human notions of the Reagan in order to be the loan being in the body. “The body extricates itself from them and from the place where they fall, so that it might continue to live” (Creed 70). Pazuzu is trying to make the foreignness of the human body more habitual for his demonic spirit, and Reagan is trying to fight for control of her own body.
The Exorcist depicts a lot of Catholic and Christian motifs, themes, and concepts in itself due to the fact that exorcisms are deeply rooted in religious practice. “Within the biblical context, the corpse is also utterly abject. It signifies one of the most basic forms of pollution – the body without a soul. As a form of waste it represents the opposite of the spiritual, the religious symbolic” (Creed 70). The goal of hosting an exorcism is to remove and expel an unwanted spirit from the body of the one who habits it.
Pazuzu is not the original host of the body. Reagan is, so it is the priests’ job (Father Lankester Merrin and Father/Dr. Damien Karras) to remove this blasphemous spirit from the pure and pristine body of the young girl. The priests use weapons such as holy water, prayer, and crucifixes to ward the demon out of Reagan’s body. These are all items and objects that represent holiness and purity, something that is absent from the vicious and malevolent spirit of Pazuzu. Items like such would be frightening to something who is not under the submission or aligned with a higher “benevolent” power, such as God, and in turn, they, meaning those aligned with societal structure, would be able to weaken or expel the abject from the societal order.
In the picture above, notice the shape Pazuzu holds Reagan in. It’s the shape of the cross, the pinnacle of holiness. Often times filmmakers use this symbolism to establish a hierarchy of power in the world of the film. Here, it wouldn’t be far off to say that even though Pazuzu is an all powerful being, he is still trumped by the abilities of a higher power, such as God.
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