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The Exorcist
Feb. 22nd, 2014 11:42 pmBefore I start, a disclaimer: I have never read the book. In the course of this discourse I will touch on points that, for all I know, are handled much better in the book than either the film or the recent radio adaptation. I'm sorry! Maybe I'll read it someday, but it'll have to go at the end of a very long queue.
The film adaptation of The Exorcist is one of those cinematic touchstones that I didn't catch until relatively late, for someone in the business. I finally got around to it one summer when I was unemployed, putting it on the kitchen TV while I did the washing up on a fresh sunny morning. I acknowledge watching it in such circumstances is not exactly giving it the best chance, but I was still a little disappointed that the supreme scariness of The Scariest Movie Ever didn't transcend the context. ( And thus began Thinking Too Much About The Exorcist. )
While putting together notes for this, though, something floated up which I was not expecting. Perhaps the genuinely shocking thing about this new adaptation of The Exorcist is that all the priests are presented as basically good, if flawed, human beings trying to do their best. None of them turns out to be a paedophile or involved in Church corruption or a raging bigot or anything. How deeply subversive! How on earth did this make it on the air? Maybe all the caterwauling was a smokescreen to slip the truly shocking content past the censors ...
The film adaptation of The Exorcist is one of those cinematic touchstones that I didn't catch until relatively late, for someone in the business. I finally got around to it one summer when I was unemployed, putting it on the kitchen TV while I did the washing up on a fresh sunny morning. I acknowledge watching it in such circumstances is not exactly giving it the best chance, but I was still a little disappointed that the supreme scariness of The Scariest Movie Ever didn't transcend the context. ( And thus began Thinking Too Much About The Exorcist. )
While putting together notes for this, though, something floated up which I was not expecting. Perhaps the genuinely shocking thing about this new adaptation of The Exorcist is that all the priests are presented as basically good, if flawed, human beings trying to do their best. None of them turns out to be a paedophile or involved in Church corruption or a raging bigot or anything. How deeply subversive! How on earth did this make it on the air? Maybe all the caterwauling was a smokescreen to slip the truly shocking content past the censors ...
