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‘Somewhere between science and superstition’: Religious outrage, horrific science, and The Exorcist (1973)

Amy C. Chambers Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Abstract Science and religion pervade the 1973 horror The Exorcist (1973), and the film exists, as the movie’s tagline suggests, ‘somewhere between science and superstition’. Archival materials show the depth of research conducted by writer/director William Friedkin in his commitment to presenting and exploring emerging scientific procedures and accu- rate Catholic ritual. Where clinical and barbaric science fails, faith and ritual save the possessed child Reagan MacNeil (Linda Blair) from her demons. The Exorcist created media frenzy in 1973, with increased reports in the popular press of demon possessions, audience members convulsing and vomiting at screenings, and apparent religious and specifically Catholic moral outrage. However, the official Catholic response to The Exorcist was not as reactionary as the press claimed. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of Film and Broadcasting (USCCB-OFB) officially and publicly condemned the film as being unsuitable for a wide audience, but reviews produced for the office by priests and lay Catholics and correspondence between the Vatican and the USCCB-OFB show that the church at least notionally interpreted it as a positive response to the power of faith. Warner Bros. Studios, however, were keen to promote stories of religious outrage to boost sales and news coverage – a marketing strategy that actively contradicted Friedkin’s respectful and collaborative approach to working with both religious commu- nities and medical professionals. Reports of Catholic outrage were a means of promoting The Exorcist rather than an accurate reflection of the Catholic Church’s nuanced response to the film and its scientific and religious content.

Corresponding author:

Amy C. Chambers, Manchester Metropolitan University, Department of English, 101 Bellhouse, Lower

Ormond Street, Manchester M15 6BX, UK.

Email: [email protected]

History of the Human Sciences

ª The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/09526951211004465 journals.sagepub.com/home/hhs

2021, Vol. 34(5) 32–52

Article

Keywords psychiatry, science and cinema, science and religion, science communication, The Exorcist (1973)

One of the best things that could happen is if the Pope denounces it.

- William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist1

The Exorcist appears to have everything – including Catholic approval.

- Rev. Lester Kinsolving (1974), Episcopalian newspaper columnist

The entanglement of Catholicism with psychiatry, science, and medicine possessed the

popular American imagination in the 1970s. This fascination was crystalised in William

Friedkin’s iconic film The Exorcist, released in the United States in December 1973, in

which an innocent young girl is seemingly demonically possessed and subjected to tests

to decipher where specifically her affliction sits in terms of the realms of science and

superstition. The Exorcist became a long-term cultural touchstone for discussions of the

tension between science and religion, the representation and treatment of mental health,

and the position of religion in contemporary North America.

The Protestant magazine Christian Century ran an article connecting The Exorcist

with the Watergate scandal, referring to the two events as ‘psychodramas of the Amer-

ican soul’.2 Responses like this were frequent and articulated fears of a church seemingly

losing its control over American society and its soul, whilst simultaneously highlighting

the prevalence of the psy-sciences in US popular discourse. Protestant commentator Carl

Raschke claimed that the Devil was having ‘his day’ and that the film reflected ‘the

cynical mood of our age [arising] by default from the wreck of traditional religious as

well as social values’.3 Thus, The Exorcist is positioned at the intersection of a hugely

volatile and disruptive moment in US history. Although The Exorcist was part of a series

of popular culture texts to reflect upon these ideas, it did so with such a level of

compelling scientific and religious fidelity that it should be understood as cultural

moment that engaged with the social and cultural issues of the long 1960s – an era

where Americans were questioning many of their central authorities and institutions.

The Exorcist connects the worlds of science and religion through their individual

responses to the seen and unseen, and the known and unknown. For science, these

apparent binaries are at the centre of research across discovery, observation, and critical

and peer review of findings in attempts to ensure ‘a special kind of reliability’ (Chalmers,

1999: ixx). The Exorcist offers a critique of what might be considered ‘the objectifying

tendency of science’ (Crawford, 1998: 36). The increasing commodification and

mechanisation of medicine delegates decisions about medical treatment and ethics to

modern medical technologies. Yet this is not taking place in ‘some abstract, science

fictional future’ or in horrific cinematic imagination; it is happening in the present

(Wald, 2012: 202). The medical and psychiatric space (the hospital and the clinic) takes

on a different role – that of the space not of logic, cure, and control but of trial and (more

than often) error, as these professionals are unable to diagnose their patient. The most

33Chambers

visibly horrific scenes, as pertaining to the horror film genre, occur in the operating

theatre and not in the realms and representation of the supernatural.

Medico-psy-scientific and religious authority was under public scrutiny during the

period surrounding The Exorcist’s release: ‘Ordinary Americans were overhauling how

they understood cultural authority . . . and how professional experts represented reality

itself’ (Quinlan, 2014: 328). Doctors, scientists, and priests, as traditional authority

figures, ‘appeared potentially self-interested or ineffective, proffering biased knowledge

under the guise of scientific-institutional objectivity’ (ibid.). They seemingly failed to

adequately explain or eradicate the national and international traumas of the 1960s and

1970s, including the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the dismantling of traditions and

intolerances by the counterculture, including civil rights, women’s rights, and the emer-

gence of ‘alternative’ approaches to science and religion. In a blending of ‘the conven-

tional and the countercultural’, young people were not rejecting science and religion

entirely but rather seeking experiences beyond the state-sponsored ‘big science’ that had

defined the US post-1945, and more personal transcendent experiences inspired by

‘Eastern religions and chemically enhanced spirituality’ (Kaiser and McCray, 2016:

2). Films of the era, including A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Exorcist, One Flew

Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Halloween (1978), and When a Stranger Calls (1979),

‘articulated long-standing American fears of tyranny, control, and gendered disorder’

(Rondinone, 2020: 902). These films, as Troy Rondinone (ibid.: 925) argues, can be used

to ‘trace the trip from distrust to institutional annihilation’, specifically of US mental

health facilities, but more broadly of the major US institutions of power, including

government, church, business, and the sciences.

As a reflection of and an engagement with the issues of the era, The Exorcist was

inevitably permeated with discussion and critique of science and religion. The film

exists, as the movie’s tagline suggests, ‘somewhere between science and superstition’,

but it is not simply a battle between the two but rather a ‘critique of strict allegiance to a

set of extremes, whether “good or evil” or “faith or science”’ (Dudenhoeffer, 2010: 76).

The Exorcist was also released in the aftermath of the Second Ecumenical Council of the

Vatican (1962–5), which addressed the relationship between the Catholic Church and the

modern world. Vatican II, as it is commonly known, was announced in 1959 with three

purposes: ‘the spiritual and pastoral renewal of the Catholic Church, the updating of the

Church’s outlook and institutions . . . , and ecumenical reconciliation with non-Catholic

Christians’ (Marshall, 2017: 999). The church wanted to be seen as a modern institution

that was not in conflict with science, shown through a willing acceptance of ‘sociology,

psychology, and psychoanalysis’ over the concept of evil for explaining humanity’s

problems (Jancovich, 1992: 93–4). This more liberal approach to the sciences is imitated

in The Exorcist through the scientist-priest characters, Fathers Karras (Jason Miller) and

Merrin (Max von Sydow).

The Exorcist is adapted from William Blatty’s novel The Exorcist (1971) and follows

the experiences of 12-year-old girl Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) and her actress mother

Chris (Ellen Burstyn) as they take up temporary residence in Georgetown in Washing-

ton, DC for an on-location movie shoot. Regan begins to behave strangely, and then

profanely and violently. Chris seeks medical attention, and several visceral invasive

medical procedures are used to attempt to diagnose somatic causes, but Regan’s apparent

34 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

illness appears to be beyond the expertise and experiences of hospital doctors and

psychiatrists. What Regan needs is an exorcist. Chris meets with Father Karras (Jason

Miller), a Roman Catholic priest and psychiatrist who is losing his faith and dealing with

a terminally ill mother, whose medical care he cannot afford. As it becomes apparent to

Karras that Regan is possessed and an appropriate candidate for the ancient ritual of

exorcism, he requisitions the services of Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), an elderly

priest and archaeologist who has just returned from Iraq with premonitions of coming

evil. The demon, or perhaps the Devil itself, is exorcised from Regan at the cost of both

priests’ lives: Merrin dies from a heart attack and Karras is willingly possessed by the

demon, killing himself in a moment of faith and sacrifice. Where a clinical and at times

seemingly barbaric adherence to science fails, ancient ritual and the power of restored

faith save the possessed child from her demons.

The Exorcist was originally released on 26 December 1973 in the Christmas period

(Thanksgiving to New Year) of the US blockbuster calendar (Neale, 2003: 55). This

release date was considered inappropriate by the Catholic Church but was seen as one

that, as one priest in correspondence with Friedkin explained, ‘ought to get the crowds

[because] weary shoppers are always calling upon the devil and wishing others to reside

in hell at that time’.4 International release dates were spread across 1974 from the March

of that year into early 1975. The film caused controversy wherever it went because of its

salacious and blasphemous religious content, including scenes of the possessed child

masturbating with a crucifix, and this controversy was exacerbated by increasing reports

of requests for exorcisms and strange behaviour at cinema viewings.

The intensity of The Exorcist’s cultural impact ‘stretched far beyond its power to

overwhelm audiences’ (Poole, 2009: 156). As W. Scott Poole argues, in the late 1960s

into the 1970s, there was ‘a moment in American cultural life when the Devil occupied a

place in the public discourse’, serving as a character and a cumulative site for a variety of

cultural narratives of the 1970s, often including mistrust in the institutions of both

science and religion (ibid.). The Exorcist tapped into the fears of the zeitgeist, including

invasion of society by the other (individuals, groups, or ideologies) and the disruption of

the morals, minds, and bodies of America’s future. This corruption is often represented

by possessed children in the Satanic movies of the era, because they are ‘the carriers for

the group’s and species’ genetic future’ (Fry, 2015: 19). The Exorcist became a reference

point for decades to come – with its continued receivership ensured by its controversies

and urban legends – in the discussion of uncontrollable youth, the psy-sciences, and the

positioning of religion in the long 1960s. ‘The reality of history deconstructed the deeply

held belief in American innocence’ that had emerged and been entrenched by the 1950s

but had become increasingly difficult to uphold following the civil rights movements and

anti-war protests of the 1960s (Poole, 2009: 156). As an exemplary film of the era, The

Exorcist communicates an image of a United States in an unstable state of change that

can no longer avoid its real and historical systemic evils.

Recently released archival materials show the depth of research conducted by writer

and director William Friedkin in his commitment to presenting and exploring emerging

scientific procedures alongside accurate Catholic ritual.5 The Exorcist created a media

circus in December 1973 and throughout 1974, with increased reports in the popular press

of demon possessions, audience members convulsing and vomiting at screenings, and

35Chambers

apparent religious and specifically Catholic moral outrage. The official Catholic response

to The Exorcist, however, was not as reactionary as the press claimed. The United States

Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of Film and Broadcasting (USCCB-OFB) offi-

cially condemned the film as being unsuitable for a wide audience.6 But reviews produced

privately for the office by priests and lay Catholics, and correspondence between the

Vatican and the USCCB-OFB, show that the church at least notionally interpreted it as

a positive response to the power of faith. Warner Bros. Studios, however, were keen to

promote stories of religious outrage to boost sales and news coverage – a marketing

strategy that actively contradicted Friedkin’s respectful and collaborative approach to

working with both religious communities and medical professionals. Reports of Catholic

outrage were a means of promoting The Exorcist rather than an accurate reflection of the

Catholic Church’s nuanced response to the film and its scientific and religious content.

Science, religion, and post-classical Hollywood

From around 1930 to 1968, most films released by Hollywood studios were censored in

some way. This was an era of censorship that was in part the result of Christian cam-

paigns as well as of industry fears of direct government intervention. At the end of 1960s,

the US Catholic Church was emerging from the cessation of a long period of notable

cultural control as movie censors after over 30 years of direct influence. The authority

that the US Catholic Church felt it had over US society and its values as expressed in the

Hollywood movie was diminished from censor to commentator.

During the late 1920s and into the 1930s, several Christian denominations were

involved in the popularisation and ultimate acceptance by Hollywood studios of a moral

code of production that aligned with Christian values (Black, 2013; Leff and Simmons,

1990). The Motion Picture Production Code (1930–68) allowed censors and religious

groups – the Production Code Administration (PCA) and the National Legion of

Decency – to request changes to film content in pre- and post-production. Studios were

required to submit treatments and screenplays for approval and make changes to shoot-

ing scripts in accordance with the advice given, and then submit the final cut of the film

for consideration, which would often result in edits and reshoots. In order for a film to be

given general release and considered appropriate for all audiences, film-makers had to

work with censors and religious commentators.

Religious groups and predominately mainline Christians have ‘often attempted to

influence the way stories about science have appeared on cinema screens’, crediting the

movies with the power to influence and even corrupt their viewers (Kirby and Chambers,

2018: 279). Between the 1930s and the 1960s, religious censors had the power to request

changes to Hollywood movie science that they found incompatible with their faith, such

as Christian notions of the human mind, body, and soul. They could control to an extent

which stories were being told about science and how audiences would receive them. The

Production Code lost much of its power by the 1960s due to broader cultural changes,

including the rise of television, an increasingly permissive social stance towards sexual

matters, and a more socially progressive attitude in the Catholic Church. The end of this

era of censorship saw a shift in the intersection of science, religion, and cinema, as

Christians lost their direct control over movie content.

36 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

Despite the relaxation of the US Catholic Church’s official attitudes to on-screen

depictions of science, concerns amongst religious groups about scientific content in films

remained after the end of official censorship. Without the power to censor movies, how-

ever, these groups had to find other ways to influence the way audiences interpreted

cinematic stories about science. They were engaging with science narratives rather than

altering or preventing them, and began producing and disseminating ratings, reviews, and

educational viewing guides and organising boycotts and picket lines. These interceptions

at the point of reception were not the only way that the Catholic Church gained influence;

the popularity and wide dissemination of the Catholic Film Newsletter and its extensive

reviewing of films on general release did lead to some film-makers choosing to consult

with the church and voluntarily offering changes in their content in order to gain a

favourable rating that would affect audience numbers in religious communities (Kirby

and Chambers, 2018).

The introduction of a ratings system and the resultant shift to the Catholic Church

acting as a critic rather than a censor signalled an apparent loosening of control and

public morals – a moral decline that coincided with the release of ‘a Catholic horror film

[and] more specifically . . . a Jesuit horror film’ called The Exorcist (McDannell, 2008:

199). The Exorcist quickly became a cultural touchstone that would thereafter be asso-

ciated with the church. The film acted as a bellwether for the New Hollywood that would

arise, as ratings replaced censored and essentially Catholic-approved and mediated

content. ‘Boycotts, picketing, and “C” ratings had not staunched the flow of ever more

daring Hollywood films’ throughout the 1960s (Skinner, 1993: 153). In 1965, the

National Legion of Decency’s name was changed to the National Catholic Office for

Motion Pictures (NCOMP), and the dreaded C rating was replaced with the more ambig-

uous A-IV rating.7 These changes were a ‘concession to shifting mores’ and indicated

that the church had accepted that in order to remain relevant, it would need to adapt its

public-facing approach to movies (ibid.: 154).

The new freedom given to film-makers by the industry’s rating system allowed for

movies that ‘positioned controversial science and scientific ideas at the core of their

narratives’ (Kirby and Chambers, 2018). The Exorcist could show bloody and painful

medical procedures and demonstrably negative or satirical images of the Catholic Church

that would have been strictly prohibited by the PCA (Leff and Simmons, 1990). The

Exorcist was also part of a series of post-classical Hollywood films that relied on Catholic

storytelling and themes: the lapsed Catholic faith in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the deprav-

ity in The Devils (1971), the hypocrisy of The Godfather (1972), the urban Catholicism of

Rocky (1976), and the violence of the Devil in The Omen (1976). New rules made New

Hollywood, and the end of restrictions against scientific images and the critique of religion

opened up opportunities for film-makers as well as new challenges for US Catholics and

members of other Christian denominations (including Lutherans and Protestants) who

sought to ‘control’ the interpretation of such cinematic ideas.

The Exorcist: Exploitations, exaggerations, and exorcisms

The 1973 Christmas release of The Exorcist was accompanied by a media frenzy; the

most extreme reports conveyed patrons going into cardiac arrest and spontaneous

37Chambers

abortion (Kermode, 1998: 84). These were accompanied by more frequent stories of

cinemagoers fainting, vomiting, and shouting during screenings, and of increased reports

of breakdowns, suicide, and possession in the weeks after seeing the film. The North

American weekly Newsweek (Figure 1), in its 11 February 1974 edition, ran a cover story

titled ‘The Exorcism Frenzy’ (Woodward, 1974: 60–6). It featured stories about janitors

up to their ankles in vomit in cinemas in Illinois, a Californian moviegoer charging at the

screen to ‘get the demon’, Boston Catholic Centers receiving daily requests for exor-

cisms, and psychiatrists’ opinion pieces mooting the idea that possession was ‘not

inconceivable’. These stories were underpinned with narratives about the moral outrage

of the Catholic Church and highlighted the cautionary classification given to the film by

the Catholic Office of Film and Broadcasting in the Catholic Film Newsletter.

The official review published in the Catholic Film Newsletter on 15 January 1974

gave the film a rating of A-IV, with quite a conservative and negative write-up. This

response was officially built from the responses of the priests and lay Catholics who had

seen and commented on the film, but it also seemed to reflect wider concerns about how

the film would inevitably be aligned with the church.8 The collated review was quick to

highlight the rarity of exorcism in the Catholic Church and the fact that ‘modern knowl-

edge of psychosomatic disorders [explained] why the Church in recent times has rarely

approved the use of the rite of exorcism’ (NCOMP, 1974). The piece also suggested that

Figure 1. Front cover of Newsweek (11 February 1974).

38 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

the film was a reflection of ‘sick faddist trends in contemporary society’ and ‘fascination

with the occult and devil worship’, with the film being at risk of confirming rather than

rejecting such blasphemous approaches – especially since the film ended in a particularly

problematic way for Catholics, as ‘either the devil kills the priest or he, in an act of

heroism, commits suicide’ (ibid.). Other Christian publications and commentators used

the film to critique the Catholic Church, the USCCB-OFB, and the A-IV rating (which

was often incorrectly reported as a C rating in the popular press), and the USCCB’s

cooperation with the film-makers.

Drawing upon the rhetoric surrounding The Exorcist in the popular and religious

press, the ecumenical (Protestant) Christian weekly The Courier ran the headline ‘Satan

Goes to the Movies’ alongside their coverage of the film and its controversies (Carter,

1974: 5). Interviews appeared with key figures, which seemingly gave them the oppor-

tunity to defend their inclusion. Father John J. Nicola, SJ, who served as a credited

advisor for the movie, was frequently quoted and profiled, but he often alerted journalists

to the fact that he had ‘staged his own small protest’ by resigning from the project as an

actor; he was originally cast as the president of Georgetown University, a role later

played by Father Thomas Bermingham, SJ (Gildea, 1974). Father Nicola’s refusal to

literally play a part in The Exorcist followed disagreements with William Friedkin over

the inclusion of the simulated desecration of the Madonna at Holy Trinity Catholic

Church (Georgetown) and the infamous crucifix masturbation scene (ibid.).9 Even those

who were directly involved in the project and suggested positive responses to the film

were still eager to keep their distance.

Protestant revivalist the Rev. Billy Graham, who was a full-time evangelist of the

Youth for Christ organisation, condemned The Exorcist by remarking that watching the

film was akin to exposing oneself ‘to the devil’ (Graham, 1974) and claimed that the film

was ‘a sort of spiritual pornography, pandering to man’s innate superstition’ (Cox, 1974:

10). His opinions on the film aligned with his own history of undermining the Roman

Catholic Church and the exorcism ritual, claiming that it was ineffective against the

Devil. Here, The Exorcist became a neat touchstone in the discussion of the evils of

society across several institutions, but most often the Catholic Church and the politics

and procedures of medical facilities. In his widely syndicated weekly ‘Inside Religion’

column, Episcopalian priest the Rev. Lester Kinsolving (1974) argued that ‘The Exorcist

appears to have everything – including Catholic approval’ and incorrectly reported that

the film had been classified as A-III (suitable for adults).10 In an ‘editorial departure

from its usual ecumenical stance’ (Woodward, 1974: 61), The Christian Century

denounced The Exorcist as a ‘hard-core pornography’, opining that ‘by our protestant

standards [The Exorcist offers] a completely impossible solution’ to the real possibility

of evil. Newsweek reported that in Washington, DC there were ‘waiting teams of Metho-

dist evangels passing out leaflets inviting standees to decide whether “you will be

controlled by the spirit of darkness or by the spirit of God”’ (ibid.: 61–3). Numerous

local and national predominately Protestant groups organised boycotts and campaigns

outside cinemas to warn people about the evil of the film, and in some cases, groups

offered support to audience members after seeing the film, providing local parishioners’

phone numbers and details of support meetings. Although the Catholic Church was said

to have contributed to a film that was tantamount to a ‘recruiting poster’ (Kael, 1974: 60),

39Chambers

the Protestant denominations utilised The Exorcist to criticise the Catholic Church, high-

light their own piety and ‘correct’ understanding of the Christian faith, and promote

Protestant publications and pews.

Newspapers were fascinated with how the audience was physically and mentally

affected by ‘vicariously experiencing super-natural events’ (Fiske, 1974; Heisler,

1975). There were reports in local, national, and syndicated press about apparent resul-

tant increases in church numbers (Ho and Wermiel, 1974; Keegan, 1974), requests for

exorcisms (Page, 1974), and visits to medical professionals (Greenson, 1974). The furore

surrounding The Exorcist essentially marketed the film for the studio and distributors

(both domestic and international), and as Pauline Kael (1974: 60) adroitly noted in her

New Yorker review, ‘complainers became accessories’ to the film’s success.11 The more

religious groups, whether Catholic or not, increasingly pushed back against the film and

its content the higher the box office figures rose, which also led to greater coverage in the

press at home and abroad in advance of the international release in March 1974. Warner

Bros. were delighted by the stories of religious outrage, as they correlated the news

coverage with boosted sales – with internal memos remarking that the best thing that

could happen would be a public condemnation from the Pope. However, this was a

marketing strategy that did not align with Friedkin’s attitude to working with both the

Catholic Church and medical professionals.

Systems of science: Diagnosis/cure

The purpose of interpolating fresh scientific material into The Exorcist was, as director

William Friedkin explained, to ‘root the picture in time, recent time’ and as far as

possible to enable modern audiences to have realistic and rational perceptions of what

was happening to the seemingly innocent Regan.12 In an internal Warner Bros. memo,

Friedkin explained that he and Blatty wanted to include what was ‘most up to date’ in

the film:

If we were making the picture a year from now, there’d be even greater advances in

diagnosis and treatment to the brain. The more you diagnose and are able to treat the brain,

the less one relies on exorcism.13

As researcher P. B. Ross remarked in the same memo, they actively explored ‘provo-

cative branches of medicine, psychsurgey [sic], arteriography, [and] pneumo-encepha-

lography’.14 Friedkin and Blatty’s approach to science and religion suggested that

Regan’s unexplained behaviour was unfixed, and that The Exorcist reflected the scien-

tific knowledge of the time. If new technologies and treatments had been available,

which they claim they would have included, perhaps the movie’s outcome and possible

interpretations might have been different.

Science, and specifically medicine, is presented as being unstable and inconclusive

but evolving, with the underlying suggestion that it was only a matter of time before

these unexplained phenomena would receive a reasonable scientific explanation. The

Exorcist shows the processes of science: the frustration of failure and the reality of using

new and old mechanical medical technologies. It demonstrates the objective reality of

40 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

the practice whilst also raising more subjective social and ethical issues surrounding

medical research and testing. Regan is framed as an experimental subject to be con-

trolled, probed, dissected, and resolved. Regan is extensively cannulated and scanned in

attempts to uncover hidden intracranial lesion or blood clotting. She undergoes a cerebral

angiography by direct carotid arterial puncture, wherein dye is injected in order to make

the structure of the brain easier to view on an X-ray, and then the more extreme but older

procedure of pneumoencephalography (PEG), which was phased out soon after the film

was released (Figure 2). The Exorcist offers the ‘most notable depiction’ of PEG and

‘provides us [neurosurgeons] with the most readily accessible historical documentation

of the procedure’ (Ishaque, Wallace, and Grandhi, 2017: 6). The processes are shown to

be painful, and then uncomfortable, clinical, noisy, and ultimately inconclusive.

A review in the British-based New Scientist magazine by comedian and trained

physician Graeme Garden argued that the medical scenes were ‘irresponsible’:

The really irresponsible feature of this film is its presentation of the medical sequences

. . . with squirting carotid blood, screaming child and mother, and badly oiled x-ray

equipment which screeches and crashes with a sound of a trip hammer exterminating old

trams. A genuinely disturbing scene, hardly likely to be welcomed by neurologists.

(Garden, 1974: 38)15

The medical scenes were the cause of much of the distress in the cinemas, rather than the

images of the occult. In 1988, William Blatty gave an interview to film journalist Nat

Segaloff where he irately rejected claims of such physical responses to the film, saying,

‘All this stuff about people vomiting – it’s nonsense’ and that it was always the scene

Figure 2. Regan’s (Linda Blair) pneumoencephalogram in The Exorcist. On location at Bellevue Hospital (New York) with doctors and radiologists working at the hospital in August 1972.

41Chambers

with the lumbar needle and not the exorcism that led to walk-outs.16 As he explained,

‘That’s the point at which everybody got ill and which I always have to hang my head’.17

Although it was religious content and ‘frenzy’ that got the majority of the press attention,

it was the medical sequences that affected audiences the most. Friedkin’s attention to

medical accuracy is where many of the horror components of the film are founded; the

exorcism was intense but the medical sequences actually scared people out of their seats.

The medical space is made spectacular and horrific in The Exorcist not through the

presentation of Regan’s behaviour or the demon, but through the clinical nature of her

treatment and how this is communicated through shots and sound.18 As Ilkka Mäyrä

(1999: 159) notes, ‘The violent movements and noises of arteriographic machinery reach

diabolical dimensions’ and the Latin medical terms for possible medication ‘gain occult

resonances: Ritalin, Librium’. Behind-the-scenes photography and footage for The Exor-

cist show William Friedkin playfully entertaining Linda Blair (Regan) as she is dressed

in hospital robes with a milkshake in hand; the scenes that appear in the movie place

Regan under a clinically medical and cinematic gaze. Scenes with doctors and nurses

taking blood and conducting non-invasive tests are softened with questions about how

Regan is doing. In contrast, technical and medical detail take centre stage over the patient

in the angiography and PEG sequence (Figure 2): intimate close-ups and medium close-

ups stress Regan’s discomfort, with establishing shots highlighting Regan’s smallness in

comparison to the large, loud machinery.

Once the possible physical somatic causes of Regan’s affliction are exhausted, the

medics turn to the psy-sciences. Regan is sent to the Barringer Clinic, which Troy

Rondinone (2020: 905) identifies as ‘an apparent riff on the famed psychiatric facility

the Menninger Clinic’. The scene in the clinic further visualises Regan’s dislocation and

distance from a diagnosis, let alone a treatment or cure. Regan is projected into the

Barringer Clinic scene as a spectre on a grainy closed-circuit television screen as her

mother Chris faces a wall of white-coated doctors. Chris is analysed by the director and

his staff as her religious beliefs are interrogated. Chris’ response that she is atheist and

that her daughter has not been raised in a faith further highlights her frustration. Regan is

then presented as a possible case of clinical cacodemonomania, where the patient

believes they are possessed – a delusion that might be ‘treated’ through the ‘stylized

ritual’ of exorcism.

Research conducted in pre-production included meetings with medical practitioners

and visits to hospitals and labs. Friedkin created extensive diagrams and notes about the

internal workings of the body and how advances in medical technology (particularly

neuroimaging19) would increase the likelihood of diagnosing brain tumours and other

diseases of the central nervous system.20 Friedkin consulted with doctors working at the

New York University Medical Center, Colombia Presbyterian Hospital, and Georgetown

Medical Center – the ‘three of the best hospitals for X-ray of the brain and psychosur-

gery . . . [with] the leading men in the field’ – and used the facilities of Goldwater

Memorial Hospital and Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for on-location shoots.21 He

discussed emergent technologies as well as those currently available in most hospitals

with the doctors he consulted. Extensive notes were made on draft scripts, including

three sides of handwritten notes in Blatty’s editor’s script from April 1972 concerning

filming and editing in clinical techniques and instruments. Science advisors included

42 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, hospital clinicians, and interventional radi-

ologists, who provided step-by-step instructions for depicting the procedures. Friedkin

creates a ‘striking medical realism’ by including graphic shots of medical practices that

had not been shown on screen before and detailed images of the brain following exten-

sive X-rays (Quinlan, 2014: 323). Friedkin (2012) later claimed that The Exorcist’s

carotid arteriogram and X-ray imaging footage was used for training radiologists due

to his attention to accuracy in these scenes.

The history of cinema is ‘bound up with medical cinematography’ and the processes

of recording new ways of knowing and visualising a world that is both seen and unseen,

known and unknown (Crawford, 1998: 24). The Exorcist was the first time that such

graphic medical scenes and detailed clinical images were made easily available to the

general public in mainstream cinema. The audience are not simply being told about

medical and psychiatric treatments and then being asked to believe the conclusion.

Instead, they are asked to believe their own eyes, as evidence is sifted and presented

with a visual accuracy that reflects the director’s attention to technical detail and the film

industry’s changing responses to on-screen representations of science and religion.

The Exorcist shows ‘science in action’, where the instruments and medical technol-

ogies become ‘crucial elements’ to the understanding of the science and the story rather

than mere theatrical settings and props (Latour, 1987: 69). As the rules and expectations

surrounding Hollywood changed in 1970s, graphic medical imagery became more fre-

quent as a site of both knowledge and body horror. Graeme Garden’s New Scientist

review claimed that the medical scenes were irresponsible and unnecessarily graphic, but

they provided a scientific realism that film-makers had rarely presented, or had been

censured from presenting to audiences, prior to this moment in cinematic history. The

doctors fail to diagnose Regan, but this is achieved through clinical and methodical

experiments – The Exorcist does not so much question science as present it as an

incomplete and evolving process. The Exorcist shows medical technology in use with

the reality of the discomfort and noise, rather than presenting it with depersonalised

resultant images and conclusive diagnoses; the processes of science are shown rather

than just being assumed, and the research into the medical is as vital as the collaboration

with the US Catholic Church.

Between science and superstition

William Friedkin was committed to exploring emerging scientific procedures alongside

presenting accurate Catholic ritual. Both sides of the story were researched to a similar

degree, ensuring that representations of both scientific method and religious ritual were

correct at the time of the film’s release. Whilst contemporary audiences might not even

flinch at the visceral arteriogram, the original audience were seeing one on screen for the

first time. The inclusion of these images of medical technology was intended to give the

medical scenes a futuristic edge to heighten the contrast with the ancient ritual.

Friedkin was considerate of the Catholic Church with the USCCB-OFB, who acted as

a point of contact with the Catholic Church in the United States and the Vatican. Friedkin

remained in contact with key figures at the USCCB-OFB throughout the process of

adapting and shooting William Blatty’s novel; he liaised with bishops and priests in

43Chambers

Georgetown, where The Exorcist is set, and more broadly with the Roman Catholic

Archdiocese of Washington.22 There were detailed discussions of the use of church

locations and whether scenes should be recreated on studio lots rather than on hallowed

church grounds. Friedkin, in his commitment to authenticity and accuracy, wanted to

shoot the film entirely on location but was denied access especially for the scene with the

mutilated ‘Statue of Our Lady’ at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

The balance and indeed ‘tension’ at the centre of The Exorcist’s film adaptation is

between ‘the religious or mythical’ and a demand for realism, authenticity, and scientific

believability (Mäyrä, 1999: 144). When Blatty’s novel was optioned for adaptation, he

asserted that the film should have the ‘look of documentary realism’ (Travers and Reiff,

1974: 28), which aligned with the narrative he spun around the novel, in which he

claimed that he did not ‘consciously [formulate] the plot for The Exorcist’ and that his

main contribution was ‘researching the symptomology of possession and the medical

information’ (Blatty, quoted in ibid.: 16). Sara Williams (2011) argues that the ‘com-

plexity’ of the novel is often overlooked and perhaps overshadowed by the film, which

offers a far more conservative view due in part to the ‘abandonment of the [novel’s]

psychological realism’ concerning Regan’s diagnosis (see also Kinder and Houston,

1987). As Williams (2011: 218–19) contends:

The original text presents a psychological diagnosis of hysteria that precedes and challenges

the metaphysical explanation of Regan’s behavior which has been accepted culturally due to

the enduring popularity and notoriety of the film.

Friedkin’s adaptation does not offer the viable choice presented by the novel. Despite the

meticulous attention to scientific accuracy, the possible medico- or psy-scientific expla-

nation for Regan’s behaviour is dismissed, and the film conservatively ‘re-establishes

and asserts the patriarchal Christian moral order’ as Regan and indeed 1970s America’s

saviour (ibid.: 221).

Science advisors are now common practice in contemporary Hollywood (Kirby,

2008), but it was still relatively unusual for film-makers to consult with a whole team

of scientists and medical professionals in the preparation, shooting, and dissemination of

their films. The director also worked with a number of technical consultants (both

religious and scientific), who were listed together in the film’s end credits and in

the press packs: Rev. John Nicola, SJ; Rev. Thomas Bermingham, SJ; Rev. William

O’Malley, SJ; Prof. Norman E. Chase, MD; Herbert E. Walker, MD; and Arthur I.

Snyder, MD. In personal correspondence with hospitals, research centres, and specific

churches, further members of both the scientific and religious communities were recog-

nised for their advice, support, and in some cases on-screen involvement.23 The majority

of the nurses and doctors seen in the medical sequences were employees of the Gold-

water Memorial Hospital, where the scenes were shot.24 Again, Friedkin sought preci-

sion, this time scientific, to give balance and to underpin the validity of the science in

order to allow for faith to be logically positioned as the last hope for salvation.

William Friedkin had built a relationship with the USCCB-OFB, and correspondence

between him and the officials at the office were cordial and supportive. As Brother

Thomas Allen, a central figure at NCOMP, remarked in his personal review of The

44 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

Exorcist (dated 26 December 1973), ‘The film is strong propaganda for Christ, the

Jesuits, and the Catholic Church’, and Allen openly endorsed Blatty and Friedkin’s

‘risky venture’. This review was not released publicly but was included in clergy and

lay Catholic reviews amalgamated into a collective Catholic response to the film later

published in the Catholic Film Newsletter. Internal discussions reflected this attitude and

the grudging approval of a film that offered ‘salutary reflections on religious belief and

the limits of science’ in spite of its foul language, inappropriate images of child sexu-

ality, and violence (NCOMP, 1974).

Science, the body, and the Devil

The Exorcist signified and solidified the emergence of ‘A-movie’ horror, stretching the

limits of a newly liberal Hollywood. Alongside its place within a turn of Catholic-

themed narratives, the film also formed part of a subgenre of horror film focussing on

medical procedures and the horrors that could be enacted upon the human body in the

name of science, including Rabid (1977) and Coma (1978). In the medical horrors of

the 1970s, ‘medical technocracy replaced the Gothic villain and the hospital became the

castle’ (Badley, 1995: 24). Increasing trust and reliance on medical technology emerged

as a core locus of fear in this nascent subgenre that extrapolated advances in the bios-

ciences in the wake of the 1960s biotech revolution, where ‘fascination mingled with

fear’ (Wald, 2012: 188). Scientific innovation and the business of science and medicine

became part of the genre and reflected broader considerations of how the male-

dominated medical profession viewed and commodified the patient body. The Exorcist

revelled in ‘body horror and its powers of revulsion’ (Cruz, 2012: 161), and advances in

medicine were ‘recast’ as the ‘unknown’ in the place of supernatural spectres or mon-

strous humans (Boss, 1986: 19).

The on-screen battle between science, God, and the Devil is fought in The Exorcist

with unprecedented clinical detachment on and in a child’s body. As Octavia J. Cade

(2016: 67) argues, the archaeologists digging the historical Iraqi site in the film’s pro-

logue are doubled in the later hospital scenes, where ‘Regan’s body is excavated’ by

medics sifting through possible somatic causes. Like archaeologists methodically

exhuming evidence of past civilisations, medical professionals dig deeper into Regan

physically in increasingly invasive and painful procedures. However, it is only once a

psychiatrist is able to breach Regan’s subconscious through hypnosis and speak to the

‘demon’ buried inside her that those attempting to diagnose begin to consider possible

causes and supernatural solutions. Although it should be noted that the clinical opinion

expressed by the hospital doctors – that Regan’s mother should contact an exorcist – is

based upon the notion that Regan’s illness is psychological and that the exorcism would

be ‘a form of shock treatment’ to relieve the patient of her delusion of demonic posses-

sion (ibid.: 68). Doctors must invade and harm the child’s body in their attempts to

diagnose her affliction; Regan’s body is not her own as she becomes an object for

scientific experimentation.

The demonic bodily invasion means that priests must also harm Regan in order to

save her in mind and body. Whereas in the medical sequences Regan loses her bodily

autonomy to machines and scientists, in the scenes where demonic possession is

45Chambers

identified as the cause, she has lost her body, mind, and morals to the Devil. The

incongruence of the obscene tirades and vile actions enacted by an innocent child further

underscores the difficulty the scientist-priests have with concluding that an exorcism is

required.25 There is no concrete medical explanation, and Karras, framed as the religious

sceptic, eventually and begrudgingly accepts that the Catholic Church and the ancient

rite of exorcism is their only option. His ultimate sacrifice, which results in his death,

saves the child from further physical and psychological harm, although Regan, once

relieved of her affliction/possession, does not remember the period when the demon

emerged as the dominant personality, nor its eventual exorcism. Only the memories of

medical testing and bodily experimentation linger.

Conclusion

In The Exorcist, Regan is not the only subject to be probed and morally usurped; the

inherent trust in science and its apparent capacity for logic, realism, and healing is also

questioned. Where clinical and at times seemingly barbaric science fails, faith and ritual

save the possessed child. Medical science neither diagnoses nor cures Regan, but that is

not to say that it could not in the future; in the film, figures from both the religious and

the scientific community are open to being wrong and hope that science could provide an

answer. They both search for alternatives and evidence rather than immediately resorting

to worst-case-scenario actions: exorcism and invasive procedures.

Reports of Catholic outrage were a means of promoting The Exorcist rather than an

accurate reflection of the Catholic Church’s nuanced response to the film and its scien-

tific and religious content. Warner Bros.’ marketing team was, however, eager to exploit

reports of fainting fits, demonic possession, and religious outrage to boost sales and news

coverage – a strategy that actively contradicted Friedkin’s respectful and collaborative

approach.26 Yet the Catholic Church did not reject the film and its message – in internal

correspondence, letters, and even some centrally released film reviews, the church

acknowledged the film’s positive portrayal of the power of faith and the Catholic

Church. This encouraging response was not undermined by their rejection of the way

this message was framed with obscene language and disturbing sexual imagery.

By 1973, mainline Christian groups had lost their direct influence over the Hollywood

film industry but had managed to develop alternative ways of communicating their

responses to individual films and responding to the changing societal attitudes those

films reflected. Instead of vilifying the industry, the Catholic Church in particular chose

to engage with the films being released and hoped to shape the discussions taking place

both in and outside their congregation. They placed the onus on and their trust with the

audience, who could make their own decisions about what they would see and how they

would respond. Many of the science-based films released in the immediate post-

censorship era were thought to deify science, with scientists providing salvation through

their own sacrifices, most notably in the Omega Man (1971), where a scientist’s blood

sacrifice saves humanity (Chambers, 2019). The Exorcist, however, presents scientists as

fallible in a situation where their best efforts cannot explain away the mystery.

Over the decades since the release of The Exorcist, the Catholic Church’s reception of

the film has transformed, just as attitudes to what is acceptable on screen have also

46 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

continued to change. The Catholic Church now more openly embraces films that might

be seen to contradict or disturb Catholic rites and values, seeing them as an opportunity

for discussing faith. For example, early viewing guides produced in the mid 1970s began

this trend and included pamphlets on The Exorcist alongside a broad range of movies

intended as a tool for discussion. The Exorcist viewing guides showed an understanding

that viewers would interpret the film as fiction and not documentary. For the original

audience, The Exorcist was shocking in its portrayal of realistic science, sex, and vio-

lence (physical and verbal), but it was the beginning rather than the peak of horror

imagery. The Exorcist became an iconic film not only in cinema history but also in

US cultural history and its responses to the psy-sciences and religion. This discussion has

closely focussed on The Exorcist because it became a metonym for broader discussions

of science and religion and the unknown and seemingly uncontrollable evils that

emerged in 1970s America. This was a moment in US history when science and religion

were critiqued together as fallible institutions despite their apparent incompatibilities –

and The Exorcist offered a contained cultural space for these valuable discussions to take

place. Even as the The Exorcist nears its 50th anniversary, it continues to create fear and

discomfort for both the viewers and its characters due to what is seen and unseen and

known and unknown in both religion and science.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/

or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or

publication of this article: Wellcome Trust 100618.

ORCID iD

Amy C. Chambers https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3801-3582

Notes

1. Nat Segaloff, telephone interview with William Friedkin, January 1974, Margaret Herrick

Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles (hereafter ‘Margaret

Herrick Library’), Nat Segaloff Research Papers, The Exorcist Box 1, no. 8.

2. Raschke, C. (1974, 18 December) ‘Exorcising the Devils of Watergate: Why the Prince of

Darkness Is Having His Day’, The Christian Century: 1196–8 (1196), microform, Library of

Congress, vol. 91, reel 44, Christian Century (1900–) collection, BR1.C45.

3. Raschke, ‘Exorcising the Devils of Watergate’, 1198.

4. Letter from Rev. John S. Banahan to William Friedkin, 10 September 1973, Margaret Herrick

Library, William Friedkin Papers, 1959-1997, The Exorcist correspondence files, file 27. Rev.

John S. Banahan was the director of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Radio and

Television (1957–78).

5. Released for researcher consultation in 2015: Margaret Herrick Library, William Friedkin

Papers, 1959-1997.

47Chambers

6. The film was given an A-IV classification, which was applied to films that were ‘morally

unobjectionable for adults, with reservations’, and ‘while not morally offensive themselves,

require caution and some analysis and explanation as a protection to the uninformed against

wrong interpretations and false conclusions’ (Skinner, 1993: 153).

7. Prior to 1965, the Legion’s film classification system, intended as a guide for Catholics in

deciding whether a movie was appropriate for family viewing, was split into three categories:

A (morally acceptable), B (morally objectionable in part), and C (condemned). B and C

classifications could seriously affect the box office receipts for a movie, so film-makers were

eager to avoid them (Black, 1998). The A classification was then subsequently divided into A-I

(suitable for all audiences), A-II (suitable for adults and adolescents), and A-III (suitable for

adults only). In 1965, A-IV was added to replace the C rating and was approved for adults only

with reservations. In 1978, a new O rating was incorporated to condemn ‘morally offensive’

films.

8. All information in this article on NCOMP’s activities comes from the individual film files in

the NCOMP review files: American Catholic History Research Center, Catholic University of

America, Washington, DC, Series 1, Review Files, ca.1931-2010, Records of the United

States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Communications Department/Office of Film

and Broadcasting (hereafter ‘USCCB Records’).

9. Further evidence of the pre- and mid-production discussion concerning Friedkin’s use of

actual Catholic consecrated venues and liturgy can be found in the USCCB Records. For

example, in the Exorcist files held in this collection, a letter (8 May 1972) from Rev. Mon-

signor E. Robert Arthur (chairman, Liturgy Commission, Chancery Office, Archdiocese of

Washington, DC) to Rev. Patrick J. Sullivan, SJ (Department of Film and Broadcasting,

USCCB NY) noted that they would not allow for ‘a scene of desecration in the church itself’

even though the church ‘appreciates [that] the total impact of the film would seem to be

commendable’.

10. The weekly ‘Inside Religion’ column was syndicated across newspapers in Pennsylvania,

Maine, and New York state, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Press, the

Palm Beach Post, the Sumter Daily Item, the Erie Daily Times, and the Plain Dealer. See

Library of Congress Microfilm Collection, Washington, DC.

11. A phone call recorded between Warner Bros. publicists and the manager of Town and Country

Cinema (Columbus, OH), Gary Foulkes, showed the impact that boycotts and flyering had,

with Foulkes remarking that ‘we’re getting prodded by local churches, they’re passing out

anti-Exorcist material, which is really helping more than anything else . . . They’re using the

scare factor as a deterrent . . . it’s the thing that’s drawing them the most’ (ellipses in original).

Telephone call with Gary Foulkes, 27 February 1974, Margaret Herrick Library, William

Friedkin Papers, 1959-1997, The Exorcist Exhibition, Folder 36.

12. P. B. Ross, ‘Memo: Friedkin’, 1973. Collection of documents that follow a Warner Bros.

memo: ‘“Exorcist” – Material for Bill Friedkin’s Book’, Margaret Herrick Library, William

Friedkin Papers, 1959-1997, ‘Background Material on “The Exorcist”’, The Exorcist Publicity

Files – Stories, File 65.

13. Ibid.: 7–8.

14. Ibid.: 7–8.

15. Although based in London, New Scientist was and continues to be widely distributed in the

United States and Australia.

48 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

16. Nat Segaloff, interview with William Peter Blatty (annotated transcript – Blatty notes), 10 April

1988, Margaret Herrick Library, Nat Segaloff Research Papers, The Exorcist Box 1, no. 8.

17. Ibid.: 10 (emphasis in original).

18. The hospital sequences with Karras’ dying mother also highlight the horrific nature of a

medical system that punishes the poor – even when, like Father Karras, their ‘vow of poverty’

is grounded in devotion to God and His congregation, it has ‘brutal’ consequences on the

treatment and later death of his ailing parent (Phillips, 2005: 115–16).

19. The first static magnetic resonance (nuclear MR) images appeared in Nature in March 1973

(Lauterbur, 1973), as the film was in production. Computed tomographic (CT) scans, which

replaced the procedures shown and suggested in the film, were not installed into hospitals until

1973, after film production had wrapped (Hoeffner et al., 2012).

20. These notes and hand-drawn and annotated diagrams are not available for reproduction but

can be seen in Margaret Herrick Library, William Friedkin Papers, 1959-1997.

21. Friedkin, quoted in Ross, ‘Memo: Friedkin’, p. 7. See also Margaret Herrick Library, William

Friedkin Papers, 1959-1997, The Exorcist Correspondence File, Folder 27.

22. As with Blatty’s novel, the film focussed specifically on the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus), the

largest male religious order within the Roman Catholic Church, devoted to education, the

mission, and charitable works.

23. Correspondence between Friedkin and actor Max von Sydow made reference to set visits from

Fr Nicola to check that everything was ‘technically correct’ – he praised checking on Catholic

detail in the same way as he did medical terms and imagery. Letter from William Friedkin to

Max von Sydow, 23 January 1973, Margaret Herrick Library, William Friedkin Papers, 1959-

1997, The Exorcist Script-Exorcism, Folder 74.

24. One of the radiology technicians, Paul Bateson, was convicted for the murder of Variety

theatre critic Addison Verrill, and was known to the New York City tabloid press as ‘the

Trashbag Killer’. He confessed to multiple murders (although he was not charged) and

partially inspired Friedkin’s 1980 film Cruising, about a serial killer targeting gay men;

Bateson was an uncredited consultant for the film (see Friedkin, 2013: 358–61).

25. Merrin is an archaeologist and Karras is a psychiatrist; one physically digs for the evidence

and the other attempts to resolve problems that are psychologically buried beneath the surface.

26. See the inter-office memo between Warner Bros. publicists attached to an article clipping

from the Los Angeles Times article about extreme responses to The Exorcist (the article in

question is Goodman, 1974). The note said: ‘Be advised that this type of story and coverage is

possible and all possible efforts should be expended to get this type of coverage in each city’.

Inter-office Warner Bros. memo from Leo Wilder to Marty Weiser, subject: The Exorcist, 8

January 1974, Margaret Herrick Library, Marty Weiser Papers, The Exorcist, Folder 184.

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Woodward, K. L. (1974, 11 February) ‘The Exorcism Frenzy’, Newsweek, pp. 60–6.

51Chambers

Author biography

Amy C. Chambers is a science communication and screen studies scholar at Manchester

Metropolitan University. Her research examines the intersection of entertainment media and the

public understanding of science. Recent publications explore the science fiction films of religious

icon Charlton Heston; the mediation of women’s scientific expertise in mass media; sociology,

technoscience, and science fiction literature; and women-directed horror and science fiction

cinema.

52 History of the Human Sciences 34(5)

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