One of the most iconic films of
the horror-film genre, The Exorcist (1973) focuses on the duality of
good and evil that the film’s director, William Friedkin, maintained is in a
constant struggle in all of us. The dialogue between the two priests performing
the exorcism on the one side and the Devil possessing Regan on the other not
only reveal the duality, but also the essence of evil itself. Once this essence
is grasped, interesting questions can be asked that are distinctly theological,
as distinct from modernity’s trope of evil portrayed in terms of, and even
reduced to, supernatural movements of physical objects. The decadent
materialist version of the theological domain stems from modernity’s bias in
favor of materialism and empiricism. In other words, highlighting supernatural physics
as being foremost in representing the religious realm is how secularity sidelines
religion, rather than how religion itself is. The bias of modern society is very
clear in the film as the “professionals” go through alternative explanations first
from the field of medicine, privileging the somatic (physical) and then the
psychological domains of medicine. In other words, the narrative establishes
(or reflects) a hierarchy of three qualitatively different levels of descending
validity: the somatic is primary, and only then the psychological, and, if the
first two do not furnish an explanation, then, and only then, are we to turn to
the theological as metaphysically (i.e., supernaturally) real primarily shown
by physical objects defying the laws of physics. Science, rather than religion,
is thus still in the driver’s seat. The bias in favor of materialism is in the
assumption that only after feasible hypotheses from modern medicine are nullified
can theological explanations be considered (as credible). In this way, the film
reflects the hegemony of materialism that has taken hold since the
Enlightenment, and the relegation of the theological as “magical”
supernaturalism, as in a bed levitating of objects flying around Regan’s bedroom.
The essence of evil is instead interior. If religion is a matter of the
heart, then how could evil be otherwise?
The full essay is at "The Exorcist."
