The Exorcist is one of the very, very few horror films that actively seeks to limits the scope of interpretation of its meaning by persistently shutting down all avenues of ambiguities which could pave the way for open and extended analysis. Which is hardly to suggest that critics have not tried their best to make the film into something other than what it steadfastly maintains itself to be.
Consider Peter Siskind’s reading of the film in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: “Emergent female sexuality is equated with demonic possession, and the men in the picture – almost all of them celibate priests – unite to abuse and torture Regan in their efforts to return her to a presexual innocence.”
Along the same lines of interpretation is that of Seth Cagin and Philp Dray: “There is catharsis and fascination in Regan’s astonishing variation on teen rebellion…; on the other hand, Regan is cured of her malady. Her insurrectionary spirit is taken from her, leaving her only a bit scarred. She has wreaked havoc upon the adult world, killing three men, but she’s not to blame and, best of all, she has no memory of her ordeal. The victorious establishment could heave a sigh of relief.”
In his book More Dark Dreams: Some Notes on the Recent Horror Film, author Charles Derry also commits to this line of reasoning, writing that “Possession becomes the excuse for legitimizing a display of aberrant feminine behavior which is depicted as depraved, monstrous, abject, and perversely appealing.”
The temptation to read into The Exorcist an interpretative analysis that Regan represents teenage rebellion gone wild, the threat to patriarchal power of feminist self-awareness, sexuality as threat to society and many other wild theories are nothing outside the realm of standard analytic approaches to horror content, but the difference here is the extent to which the film goes to indict any such interpretations even before the film is over and the writing begins. Horror films are notoriously ambiguous—as opposed to monster movies—and it is these unexplained elements that allow for fights of analytical imagination: what is really going on inside the Overlook Hotel, why have the dead suddenly come back to the land of the living as cannibals, does the Governess actually see ghosts or is she mad?
Ghosts are not always ghosts. Houses are not always really haunted. In a standard horror film, the medical treatments to which Regan is subjected would have the point of raising and never answering the question that perhaps her condition is not spiritual, but psychological. But that is not what happens in The Exorcist. Not only is it determined beyond a doubt that Regan’s problems not neither physical nor psychological ailments afflicting her sanity, but the medical establishment itself is the entity which admits this and advises her mother to seek the counsel of the church. As a result of this notable narrative decision on the part of the filmmakers, interpretation which suggests that the film is about anything other demonic possession as the explanation behind Regan’s behavior can only be flimsy at best. The ambiguity of meaning that is necessary to draw alternative conclusions is simply not there. As a result, any interpretation which relies on what something that is not there should be approached with caution.
What is there beyond a shadow of a doubt is that Regan is inhabited—possessed—by a demonic force that is real and tangible and both in control of the little girl, but exiting as an entity completely independent of her. An interpretation that reads Regan’s outrageous acts of violence, profanity and sexuality is thus ignoring a vital element which simply cannot be disregarded: it is NOT Regan doing these things. For instance, let’s consider again Siskind’s assertion that “men…unite to abuse and torture Regan in their efforts to return her to a presexual innocence.” This argument by definition assumes that it is the young girl who is struggling to assert a sexuality at odds with her innocence when, in fact, she is a victim of the demonic force inside her. If a young girl were made to stand up in front of an audience and masturbate with a crucifix under threat of death, would she be accused of asserting a sexuality beyond her state of innocent? Of course not, her actions would be understood as the actions of a girl under duress and coercion. The very same holds true of Regan and the audience knows this because it has been unambiguously explained beyond a doubt. At no point is there any information provided which affords the audience the opportunity to question whether Regan is a victim of the demon, much less that her actions are psychological manifestations of her own psyche. If this opportunity is not present, then any interpretation that relies upon its presence must be immediately rejected. It is analogous to suggesting that everything Norman Bates did he did because he imagined he murdered his mother and mummified her corpse to keep with him in his home. The audience has specifically told that he murdered his mother and specifically shown that he kept her mummified corpse as a constant companion so, quite clearly, any interpretation suggesting otherwise would be discounted no matter how much sense it might make sociologically.
What analyses of The Exorcist prove are that sociologically relevant and contextual sense can definitely be made from any narrative, but become essentially meaningless when such analyses deny the presence of unambiguous elements. Each of the three examples listed above offer absolutely legitimate and even remarkably insightful readings into the text of The Exorcist…if that text did not specifically inform the viewer that Regan’s behavior results from one thing and one thing only: demonic possession. Even as slight a change as Chris MacNeil being the person to flat out reject the medical establishment’s potential for diagnosing her daughter and making the decision all on her own to seek out the counsel of an exorcist would allow for the above readings as well as multiple others to become legitimate. That the movie instead specifically has the medical community itself admitting that Regan’s problem is not really “Regan’s” problem means that any interpretation of the narrative which is constructed on the demonic behavior being attributed to owner of the body rather than possessor of the soul is immediately delegitimized.
The Exorcist proves that there is an inextricable bond between the facility of interpretation of a text and the abundance of ambiguity within that text. Where ambiguity does not exist, there exists also tighter constraints on legitimate interpretation.
