CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
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Maybe by the time The Exorcist was shot, Sal Mineo’s youthful looks had slid into middle-aged male bloat? Also his career had waned since the 1950s. That’s all I can suggest.
“Evil against evil” I think was the museum curator’s comment – presumably as a Moslem – that the ancients fought evil (sickness, etc.) with evil, i.e., demonic help as represented in the Pazuzu amulet. Also, and this is a stretch, I wonder if Friedkin was hinting that the Jesuits are less than holy. He managed to film Merrin and Karras in rather spooky light and camera angles. Maybe he was winking at the audience – it takes evil Jesuits to fight evil demons. As I said, it’s a stretch.
I can only suggest premonition. Supposedly the unconscious is open to subtle influences, and we are “in” the unconscious when we are dreaming. So Karras may have been having a premonitory vision of the evil he will face in the near future.
(Also, come to think of it, Pazuzu does appear during the exorcism in the shared vision of Karras, Merrin, and Regan – when the Iraq Pazuzu statue momentarily appears in the bedroom after Karras and Merrin have been knocked to the floor.)
I suppose that if Captain Howdy is only a local manifestation of Pazuzu – one tailored to spiritually seduce a 12-year-old who is lonely for her Dad – then it doesn’t matter much whether it’s Pazuzu or Howdy who appears in Karras’s dream. So I’d grant your point that in a sense it _is_ Pazuzu who appears in Karras’s dream – albeit in his “Howdy” guise. Perhaps Karras’s unconscious is somehow connecting to Regan’s mind and Pazuzu/Howdy is being channeled to Karras via the unconscious…? I wouldn’t want to take it too literally though – maybe it’s meant as a literary device of shading – to be merely suggestive rather than concrete…
Different strokes for different folks, I guess… for me, the ambiguity in the novel works as a driving force of suspense, conflict, and dread – in the first three-quarters of the story. However, Blatty himself does all he can – again, in the novel, not in the Friedkin-influenced film – to resolve this issue at the _climax_ of the story.
Since he’s on record that he doesn’t want people to think the demon won, I think we can only interpret Karras’s last words – “No, I won’t let you hurt them – you’re coming with me!” – plus the glint of triumph Dyer sees in his eyes as he’s dying – as _vindicating_ the supernatural, genuine-possession view.
Otherwise, Karras’s self-sacrifice was for nothing – and remember, this is the opposite of Blatty’s intention – basically, Karras would have not committed “demonicide”, but suicide – worse, suicide based on a delusional belief in Regan’s possession.
Also, if the possession was not genuine and supernatural, there is no _unforced_ explanation as to why Regan’s possession ended with Karras’s inviting the demon to “come into me” and leaping out the window putatively carrying the demon with him.
Succinctly, the loss of the genuinely supernatural explanation:
1) vitiates Blatty’s authorial intention and so should be avoided, unless one is claiming that Blatty’s writing is so inept that it can’t carry thru his stated essential message;
2) vitiates Karras’s sacrifice, turning it into a sad, sick, unnecessary and meaningless suicide;
3) fails to explain Regan’s sudden recovery, immediate upon the seemingly genuine self-sacrifice by Karras;
4) fails to explain Chris’s summation of Karras: “I’ve never seen such faith”; fails to explain Kinderman’s nagging doubt that something strange still remains about the case, beyond mere mental illness and the rational conclusions of police forensics.
Therefore I believe, based on Blatty’s own statements and evidence internal to the novel’s structure, that the “genuine possession”/supernaturalist view is the correct one.
That’s an original idea, MIKE, that a “trial” possession was going on. Works well for the movie. Of course, the book has Karras dreaming without Howdy or Pazuzu appearing… in fact, the demon is startled that Karras shows up, saying words to the effect, “You! They sent you?!” Karras and his faith crisis are known to the demon, but the demon was expecting to battle Merrin, not Karras…
Yeah, part of Blatty’s art is to allow a modicum of multiple choice without forcing a conclusion on the reader. The book would have suffered if the author’s meaning had been chiseled in stone…
Not to mention that Dominion presages Legions’ theme of mass possession – by the end of Dominion, countless people are possessed, including the main characters associated with the missionary compound – including, briefly, the Clara Bellar character…
Taking WPB’s side for a moment, it was a shame that all too many viewers thought that the demon won. This is even after showing them that Karras 1) invited the demon to “come into me”; 2) the demon did just that (viz. Karras’s demon makeup); 3) Karras takes the demon out the window with him; and 4) Karras is back to his old self when he dies – he is conscious and makes a last confession to Dyer via hand clasping.
Maybe it would have been helped by a line of dialogue from the novel, where Karras says, “I won’t let you hurt them [her] – you’re coming with me!” Then audiences would almost _have_ to understand that Karras tempts, grapples with, and finally defeats the demon.
If that understanding had been made explicit and unavoidable, then there would have been no need to consider those tack-on endings of the posthumous Karras walking up the steps or jogging, etc.
Except that it foiled the author’s intent, namely Blatty’s insistence that audiences definitely understand that Karras, not the demon, won. This bothered WPB at the time of the film’s release, and for years afterward.
Nor do I think that adding the line “I won’t let you hurt them [her]” or “You’re coming with me!” supplies a “sudden perfect picture” – for the simple reason that these lines are present in the novel, and represent WPB’s authorial intention.
Ambivalence vis a vis the exorcism’s final outcome is valid as part of the first part of telling the story – the suspense builds to climax and denoument.
But at the climax and denoument, to maintain ambivalence is a cheat to both the book reader and the film viewer. Friedkin championed the ambivalence-to-the-end view. Blatty championed the “Karras definitely won, the demon definitely lost” view. As the creator and sole proprietor of his own material, Blatty’s view should enjoy the prime position.
Karras was using his psychiatric – plus his possession research – knowledge, which told him that it is usually psychotics who claim to be the Devil himself. He relates Regan’s claim to be THE Devil with the megalomaniac symptomology of psychotics who claim identity with great figures, e.g., Napoleon Bonaparte (or, say, one of the Pharaohs, or Jesus Christ).
Apparently, in Karras’s mind, the case for “genuine” possession increases by some degree if the patient claims to be a relatively unimportant, anonymous, obscure demon, because there is not the huge ego-investment that is involved in claiming identity with the colossally important figure of THE Devil, Satan, the Prince of This World, the Most Evil One, etc.
In the novel, however, the demon changes its claim – it claims not to be THE Devil, but just one of a “legion” of many little demons. Even in the movie, the demon says that there is more than one personality – whether or not the Devil – in Regan: the reference is to “us”, not “me” (an exorcism would bring Karras together not with Regan, but with “us”).
This doesn’t prove that the possession is genuine, but it indicates that the “invading personality” is a liar – one of the attributes of both Satan and his smaller minions…
http://www.deliriumsrealm.com/
Lots of stuff on demons – especially middle eastern demons – Gnosticism, etc., if anyone would care to check it out.
