Exorcise the Body

Let’s not play pattycake, friend. I’ve seen The Exorcist twice. It’s the most effective film ever made. Effective, in that it effects: disquiets the psyche. I’m not particularly highstrung, yet my dreaming was unsettled by it, for three nights in succession. Certain fears, part of the standard human allotment, had their cutting edges stropped. It didn’t make me believe in Satan; I have believed in Satan all my life. Anyway, The Exorcist has nothing whatever to do with Satan, or with designated-hitter subdemons. It’s a machine: the product of brilliant special-effects technology, the same technology that gave you electroshock treatment. William Peter Bl atty (and his director William Friedkin) didn’t create: they engineered. In simple fact, The Exorcist is new. That’s trauma enough for our blase, sophisticated age. Novelty should be rated X, Adults Only. Not R.

Fright is surprise. The unexpected in familiar circumstances. Even cheerful surprises dismay: Miss America will always cry. Fright affords tremendous kinetic energy. In The Exorcist 12-yearold Regan appears at a cocktail party. Abruptly, uncontrollably, she urinates on the floor. A natural act, but done in abnormal circumstances. Majorminor terms of the fright equation have been inverted. Audiences are stunned, for two reasons. First, because the event is novel; conventions of cinematic taste have been abrogated. Frankenstein is grotesque, yet rather priggish. Dracula bares his fangs, not his genitals (vampirism is sensual, but the sensuality functions at a remove). Second, because the energy of disgust has been annexed to the energy of fright. Step on a snake and you recoil. Step on

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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Let’s not play pattycake, friend. I’ve seen The Exorcist twice. It’s the most effective film ever made. Effective, in that it effects: disquiets the psyche. I’m not particularly highstrung, yet my dreaming was unsettled by it, for three nights in succession. Certain fears, part of the standard human allotment, had their cutting edges stropped. It didn’t make me believe in Satan; I have believed in Satan all my life. Anyway, The Exorcist has nothing whatever to do with Satan, or with designated-hitter subdemons. It’s a machine: the product of brilliant special-effects technology, the same technology that gave you electroshock treatment. William Peter Bl atty (and his director William Friedkin) didn’t create: they engineered. In simple fact, The Exorcist is new. That’s trauma enough for our blase, sophisticated age. Novelty should be rated X, Adults Only. Not R.

Fright is surprise. The unexpected in familiar circumstances. Even cheerful surprises dismay: Miss America will always cry. Fright affords tremendous kinetic energy. In The Exorcist 12-yearold Regan appears at a cocktail party. Abruptly, uncontrollably, she urinates on the floor. A natural act, but done in abnormal circumstances. Majorminor terms of the fright equation have been inverted. Audiences are stunned, for two reasons. First, because the event is novel; conventions of cinematic taste have been abrogated. Frankenstein is grotesque, yet rather priggish. Dracula bares his fangs, not his genitals (vampirism is sensual, but the sensuality functions at a remove). Second, because the energy of disgust has been annexed to the energy of fright. Step on a snake and you recoil. Step on

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.