[Daf]

Chiming in more for posterity and not because I think anyone from ten years ago is still listening: the supposed molestation of Regan by Dennings would not be subtext, a theme, or background info, but a crucial and directly relevant plot point that takes place within the timeframe of the story. A movie presents to us its plot points, and The Exorcist would have no reason to hide this event from the audience: it’s not too dark, heavy, or explicit for a film as famously dark, heavy, and explicit as The Exorcist; and it’s certainly not unimportant to the story – in fact, if there indeed was such a molestation in the story and The Exorcist didn’t present it on the grounds of it unimportant, that would be pretty darn unflattering to the film, to say the least.

If there are indeed themes of sexual abuse in the film (I’ve never detected anything like that myself, but sure, let’s go with it), that actually speaks against the notion that there is an unshown molestation plot point in the film. There’s no reason for the movie to code sexual abuse when there’s a big fat literal molestation in the story that it could just show us. It’s the story that informs the subtext, not the other way around. If a story has subtext that exists primarily to lead us to a hidden plot point, that’s at best distracting and at worst utterly pointless.

I’ve seen this kind of thing elsewhere (see: The Shining, and I’ve even heard an extremely similar “hidden molestation” angle with it, too!) and I think it speaks to a distressingly common misunderstanding of media literacy.

[Author]

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