Blatty and the Otherizing of Man

In 1971, William Peter Blatty wrote ‘The Exorcist.’ Till date, the novel is considered one of the scariest horror stories ever written. The movie adaptation traumatized many people in cinema theatres across the world. Roger Ebert called it a ‘frontal assualt’ and for good reason because it certainly is.

In the novel, we witness a young girl possessed by a demonic spirit. The demon recreates the innocent girl into a hideous gargoyle-like creature that screams obscenities, self-mutilates, and assaults everyone near her. The possessed girl even murders a friend of her mother and then proceeds to taunt her mother about what her beloved child did. Towards the end of the story, two Catholic priests are called in as a desperate attempt by the mother to cure her daughter of this strange supernatural illness. But the priests, relentless as they are in their attempts, are left in despair while the demon simply refuses to leave the girl.

During their momentary break from the exorcism rite, the younger priest, Damien, asks in frustration, ‘I don’t understand. Why her? Why this girl?’

The older priest, Merrin, replies, ‘I think the point is to make us despair, to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps; in unworthiness.’

This otherizing of a human being—the twisting of God’s likeness into a hideous beast—is an anthropological phenomenon rarely touched upon by modern-day intellectuals. We see this phenomenon play itself out in culture, politics, and every other sphere in human history, including individual human lives. How often do we tend to conceptualize our opponents into half-animal, half-satanic hybrid entities hell-bent on destroying us through mischief? The Nazis propagated the Jews as devilish, not only in character but also in appearance. The Soviets did the same with the kulaks and any other state-designated ‘enemies of the people.’

Blatty touched upon this phenomenon with the deconstructing brush of the gospel. The demonic accusatory spirit twists and destroys the beautiful image of God within his creation in a way as to make it so that a human being must be handled with force and caged like a wild animal. This is an anthropological truth, regardless of one’s belief in demonic possession.

We see the hypnotic possession of a nation in all its hideous glory when the news media point us to a scapegoat to further political agendas of lobbyists and the like. As a result, the masses are polarized, and conflict, whether physical or psychological, is perpetuated; a mechanism that regards the human being like a wild animal is put into place so that society’s illnesses is solved through coercion and violence.

The satanic spirit of accusation and otherizing is an ever-present reality that stands whether or not one believes in the supernatural. It brings out the worst in people, and with it a strange contradiction of becoming the very thing one detests. In our mission to hunt down the animal, we become animals ourselves. We try to fight evil with evil.

The older priest, Merrin, says to Damien, “... I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves... for ourselves.”

Father Merrin continues, “... At last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion. No. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do in unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.”

During the writing of this article, it became legal to carry out late-term abortions in the state of New York. It is now legal to inject poison into a child. How can such things come to pass in a self-proclaimed civilized society? The answer is very simple: when we deny the likeness of God in each and every individual, we set a precedent for mass murder. That is the trick of the demon in ‘Exorcist,’ to make everyone think that an innocent child is vile and disgusting. It is also the trick of this secular religion we call ‘the state,’ to engineer society as if we are all mere spokes in a wheel.

The antidote to this degeneracy of man cannot be anything other than the imitation of Christ. Blatty illustrated this wonderfully at the end of his novel. Damien, devastated by the death of Father Merrin, rages at the possessed girl. He pounces on her and starts beating her, but he immediately changes his mind and channels his fury into something else other than hate. ‘Come into me!’ he shouts at the demon inside the girl. The demon fulfills Damien’s wish and invades him, leaving the sobbing, traumatized girl once and for all. Damien then, overcoming the demon’s will within himself, hurls himself through the window and falls to his death; he sacrifices himself for the girl.

When we see the divine within each and every individual, we don’t look for scapegoats. We don’t sacrifice human beings on our altars of hate and desperation. No, instead we seek their well-being. If we face an ‘enemy’ we seek reconciliation and the rehabilitation of those we deem to be ‘other.’ We die for them. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,’ that was what Jesus said before dying on the cross at Calvary.

To imitate Jesus is to find the divine spark within each and every individual. And when we fathom this truth, we seek to preserve the gift of that spark that was bestowed upon us all. It doesn’t matter if we are not able to feel this truth. Sure enough, we will come across individuals who are pathological to the core; we will come across those who are truly possessed. But God has the final say, and if he says that all are created in his image and that Christ is the only way, then that’s all there is.

Creating Beauty out of Sorrow

"Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon."

--Akira Kurosawa

Films in India are largely known for their overly melodramatic content coupled with song and dance routines, but one filmmaker stood out from the usual Bollywood circus of noise and saturation. Satyajit Ray remains, to this day, one of the finest directors to have ever graced the world of motion pictures. His films speak of suffering, sadness, social issues, and the beauty of nature. Probably his best-known work among western audiences is the ‘Apu’ trilogy. The name ‘Apu’ may strike a chord of familiarity with Simpsons fans; after all the creators of that animated show borrowed the name from the film character.

The trilogy consists of ‘Song of the Little Road,’ ‘The Unvanquished,’ and ‘The World of Apu.’ All three movies depict the daily struggles of a poverty-stricken Brahmin family. In ‘Song of the Little Road’ we see Apu for the first time as an adolescent. We see Apu within the confines of childhood, where the harsh realities of adulthood are simply out of reach. Apu’s father is a priest who barely earns a living, and his mother is a simple housewife who takes care of the children. The two of them shield their children from a world that is bitter and cruel; they allow their son and daughter to blossom in their innocence.

Apu wanders and plays through the countryside with his sister, who takes care of him in an almost maternal way. They gaze at the world around them in wide-eyed wonder. They laugh, giggle, and play endlessly. And then one day, Apu’s sister suddenly dies from a fever. The family is overwhelmingly grief-stricken at the death, and the young Apu’s journey into the world has just begun.

After the death of his father, Apu desires to study in a school as he wants to gain more knowledge about the world around him. The mother wants him to stay, but she soon gives in and joins in his excitement; she sacrifices almost all of her savings so that Apu can go to the city to study and work. The distance between the mother and the son during this time makes the mother yearn more for her son. She treasures each and every one of his visits, though the visits are few; but she is thankful. Roger Ebert described this relationship in an essay:

“The relationship between Apu and his mother observes truths that must exist in all cultures: how the parent makes sacrifices for years, only to see the child turn aside and move thoughtlessly away into adulthood. The mother has gone to live with a relative, as little better than a servant ("they like my cooking"), and when Apu comes to visit during a school vacation, he sleeps or loses himself in his books, answering her with monosyllables. He seems in a hurry to leave, but has second thoughts at the train station, and returns for one more day. The way the film records his stay, his departure and his return says whatever can be said about lonely parents and heedless children.”

One day, Apu returns home only to find that his mother has passed away. He is heartbroken, but he decides to move on whilst cherishing the memories of his beloved mother.

In the third film ‘The World of Apu,’ a bizarre turn of events sees a much older Apu getting married. The message of the movie is particularly interesting when we consider that Satyajit Ray was a member of the Communist Party in India. Despite social ills being prevalent around the characters of the movie, Ray’s message seems to be of self-giving and the acceptance of responsibility rather than any sort of radicalism. Apu marries a supposedly ‘jinxed’ girl, not because he wants to settle down and start a family, and not even because he loves the girl, but rather because he thinks it is an only way to save the girl from social ostracism. Perhaps the absence of revolutionary zeal in Apu’s ‘solution’ was why many of Ray’s socialist comrades were so irked by the great auteur’s films.

Though initially sad and nervous, the girl, Aparna, grows quite fond of Apu once she gets to know him. A loving relationship begins to grow between them. But alas! Tragedy strikes again. It happens when Aparna gives birth to a son. She dies during childbirth, and for Apu it is the final nail in the coffin of what he once knew as life. He blames the death of his wife on his newborn son and runs away from the responsibility of fatherhood.

The further our souls stray from beauty, the more emptiness we are in. Life, from one perspective, is a series of endless tragedies. To make up for the emptiness, we develop a mindset of consumption and entitlement; ‘the more you consume and the more rights you enjoy, the happier you are.’ Such things, however, do not redeem the endless sorrows we encounter almost daily in our lives. In Ray’s films, we find the things that indeed redeem the suffering we go through. The love of Apu’s mother, for example, vividly illustrates a self-giving nature that is reminiscent of the Trinitarian dance. Later, we see this same self-giving when Apu sees Aparna on the brink of being excluded from society and decides to marry her.

The poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote:
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”

This way of self-giving not only redeems our suffering, but it connects our souls to the divine dance of heaven. It gives us a gateway to a state of existence that is above the natural. Isn’t that what beauty is supposed to be about? Beauty is that which connects us to the divine, and whenever we are confronted with that which is truly beautiful we are at a loss for words and find ourselves in awe. This is exactly what Apu experiences when, after running away from fatherhood, he witnesses the sun rising in the horizon and painting everything with a brilliant layer of light.

Having witnessed the power of creation, Apu returns to see his son. The son, now an adolescent, cannot recognize his father, but he is willing to accept Apu as a friend. Apu cheerfully picks up the boy and carries him on his shoulder, embracing fatherhood and its inevitable struggles, and continuing the journey of his own self-giving mother.