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The Inarticulate Body: Demonic Conflicts in The Exorcist 153her genitals. “Fuck me! Fuck me!” she screamed at the doctors, and withboth her hands began masturbating frantically.Moments later, Chris ran from the room with a stifled sob when Reganput her fingers to her mouth and licked them. 34Regan also meows like a cat, barks like a dog, neighs like a horse, and –to complete the demonic association with the “lower” animal kingdom – shewalks “spiderlike,” body arched backwards with her head almost touchingher feet, “her tongue flicking quickly in and out of her mouth while shehissed sibilantly like a serpent.” 35 The initially sketched family with its signsof “normalcy” (the divorced mother and a perhaps pampered daughter) actsas the background, which is contrasted with the shocking figure that reversesthe normal configuration. A child, as culturally taboo in connectionwith sexuality, is sexualised; the innocent is thereby presented as somehow“corrupted,” and evil. The structure of accumulating shocks exploits thesame principle of inversion elsewhere, too. The second part introduces thetraditional detective plot with the murder of director Dennings and the entranceof aforementioned detective Kinderman. Burke Dennings is founddead at the feet of steep stairs under Regan’s window, his head turned completelyaround, facing backward. 36 Detective Kinderman connects the peculiardeath with the recent desecrations of churches; this hypothesis is furthercertified as the expert (Father Karras) and an excerpt from a “scholarly workon witchcraft,” inserted in the text, recount as historical truths some of themost sexually striking witchcraft fantasies connected with Satanism andBlack Mass. 37 The manner of Dennings’s death is linked to the way the “de-34E, 107-8.35 E, 118-19.36 E, 146.37E, 144-45, 157. As discussed in chapter one, such critically acclaimed scholars asNorman Cohn approach most witchcraft fantasies as culturally powerful myths aboutfrightening “others” among us; the descriptions of the sexually perverse orgies are formulaic,not verified by reliable evidence, and preserved and reproduced in literature(Cohn 1975/1993, 73-5). The popularity of such works as Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcistcan be also connected with the combination of American forms of paranoia and fundamentalistreligiosity; since the 1960s stories of Satanism in the USA began gainingmore and more weight, until in the 1980s it surfaced in the form of accusations and trials.Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker describe in their book the widespread belief in theclaim that there exists “a massive conspiracy of secret satanist cults that have infiltratedeverywhere in the society, from the CIA to police stations to judges’ chambers andchurches. The devil worshippers have even secreted themselves in day-care centers andpreschools, the story goes, where they pose as teachers.” During the ensuing legal proceedingschildren’s testimonies “typically included accounts of being raped and sodomizedwith weapons and other sharp objects […], of participating in the slaughter of animalsand human infants, of being kidnapped in vans, boats, and airplanes, of hearingthreats that their parents would be killed if the abuse were disclosed, and of sufferingthese tortures while the perpetrators engaged in devil-worshipping rituals.” (Nathan -Snedeker 1995, 1-2.) Gerald Messadié states that “what the American Satanist myths revealmost clearly is a collective mental crisis.” The sort of media interest bestowed onthese cases suggest that “the myth of Satan serves only as the pretext for pornography,
154Demonic Texts and Textual Demonsmons broke the necks of witches,” to the “demonic assassins,” the desecrations,and the idea of a “sick priest.” 38 The inversion of Christianity is givenliteral embodiment in the inversion of the head – the physical violence andsexual perversity are connected with evil. Implicitly, the opposite of evil isdefined as non-physical (the spiritual) and as definitely non-sexual. Thereare no positive sexual relations described in The Exorcist. 39RAPING A CHILDThe second part is climaxed by the novel’s most striking shock, the scenewhich has become the hallmark of The Exorcist in its abject sexuality andviolence. The original personality of Regan makes its last verbal attempt toresist the power of possessing evil; the penetration of a religious elementinto Regan’s body has been given a painful expression in the following keysection:[…] Regan, her legs propped up and spread wide on a bed that was violentlybouncing and shaking, clutched the bone-white crucifix in rawknuckledhands, the bone-white crucifix poised at her vagina, the bonewhitecrucifix she stared at with terror, eyes bulging in a face that wasbloodied from the nose, the nasogastic tubing ripped out.“Oh, please! Oh, no, please!” she was shrieking as her hands broughtthe crucifix closer; as she seemed to be straining to push it away.“You’ll do as I tell you, filth! You’ll do it!”The threatening bellow, the words, came from Regan, the voice coarseand guttural […].[…]Then abruptly the demonic face once more possessed her, now filledher, the room choking suddenly with a stench in the nostrils, with an icycold that seeped from the walls as the rappings ended and Regan’s piercingcry of terror turned to a guttural, yelping laugh of malevolent spite andrage triumphant while she thrust down the crucifix into her vagina and beganto masturbate ferociously, roaring in that deep, coarse, deafeningvoice, “Now you’re mine, now you’re mine, you stinking cow! You bitch!Let Jesus fuck you, fuck you!”Chris stood rooted on the ground in horror, frozen, her hands pressingtight against her cheeks as again the demonic laugh cackled joyously, asRegan’s vagina gushed blood onto sheets with her hymen, the tissuesripped.sadism, and […] mythomaniacal fantasies” (Messadié 1993/1996, 317). The particularmixture of anger, loathing and prurient fascination suggest social and moral anxieties aswell as circuitous means for satisfying suppressed desires. (For some social explanations,see Nathan - Snedeker 1995, 29-50.)38E, 152-3.39 The only possible exception, Sharon’s (Chris’s “blonde secretary”) relationship toher lawyer-boyfriend (the “horseman”) is explicitly removed from family life into the(morally questionable) domain of something paid for and temporary; “Sharon needed aplace to be alone, Chris then decided, and had moved her to a suite in an expensive hoteland insisted on paying the bill.” (E, 24.)
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Note on this editi
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TAMPERE STUDIES INLITERATURE AND TE
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Tampere Studies in Literature and T
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ments, and also such further lines
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IllustrationsCover: “Possessed Re
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The BeginningsAnd Jesus asked him,
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The Beginnings 3mons form an import
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The Beginnings 5negative, demonic a
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The Beginnings 7chapter four), but
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The Beginnings 9scious conflict, fo
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The Beginnings 11that is produced o
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The Beginnings 13The History of the
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The Beginnings 15emphasised that su
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The Beginnings 17turalism,” but i
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The Beginnings 19the materials I ha
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1. The Ancestry of the DemonicÑH.
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 25ness
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 27scrib
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 29tic o
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 31It sh
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 33of th
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 35able
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 37The f
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 39and t
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 41- in
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 43Chris
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 45[…]
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 47of th
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 49serpe
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 51tween
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2. The Demonic in the SelfBut ancie
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The Demonic in the Self 55Individua
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The Demonic in the Self 57should be
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The Demonic in the Self 61A number
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The Demonic in the Self 63tion. 36
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The Demonic in the Self 65the nethe
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The Demonic in the Self 67sciousnes
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The Demonic in the Self 69influence
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The Demonic in the Self 71LEADER:Yo
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The Demonic in the Self 73Particula
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The Demonic in the Self 75NIETZSCHE
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The Demonic in the Self 77ing into
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The Demonic in the Self 79Nietzsche
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3. Unravelling the Demonic TextThe
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 83in o
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Unravelling the Demonic Text 85othe
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The EpilogueIf there are answers to
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BibliographyA note on this bibliogr
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Index2001: A Space Odyssey; 207abje
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