
Editor’s Note: This is part II in a series of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. For part I of the series, scroll down or click here. As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.
Regan MacNeil’s bodyin The Exorcist and Rosemary Woodhouse’s body in Rosemary’s Baby are commandeered by male entities who exploit these female bodies for their own self-benefit. (If nothing else, these films prove that the devil is indeed a Republican. As if this were in question.) Regan and her mother find themselves abandoned by the male-dominated team of doctors who further abuse Regan’s body through a serious of invasive testing. Chris MacNeil must then turn to the Catholic Church, which although having a history and a present of oppressing women, sends priests to their home: men who are removed from the traditional male-as-sexual-predator-toward-women role. These men are supposed to exist asexually, and therefore are perhaps the only ones who can save Regan from her plight. Yes, I understand that Catholic priests have a habit of sexually preying upon young non-women, but we’ll leave that aside for now.
In Rosemary’s Baby, young, early-20s Rosemary Woodhouse realizes that her husband and the neighbors around her are conspiring to exploit her fertile body and maternal drives for their own ends. When she begins to piece together the puzzle, she runs to her original obstetrician, Dr. Hill, for safety. She does this at the behest of her girlfriends, who console her in the kitchen during a party. Rosemary’s doctor, Dr. Sapirstein, who comes recommended by her nosy and invasive elderly neighbors, has advised Rosemary to ignore the intense abdominal pain that she has been experiencing for weeks. When one of her girlfriends pleads with Rosemary to see a new doctor, another friend chimes in: “Yeah, some doctor besides that… that… nut!”
This kitchen scene comes as a welcome reprieve to the creepiness that completely saturates most of the film. Rosemary’s girlfriends are concerned for their friend’s well-being, are not dismissive of Rosemary’s complaints and ultimately are among the few benevolent figures in Rosemary’s life. But alas, the kitchen scene is a set-up. After this scene, Rosemary begins to exert some agency within her situation, and runs away from her husband, the neighbors and Dr. Sapirstein. She makes it to Dr. Hill, and in maybe the most harrowing scene in the film, Dr. Hill reveals himself to be more aligned with the male-dominated power structure than with the needs and concerns of his female patient. Once again, the creepiness of this film comes from the focus upon already existent aspects of our day-to-day lives.
Rosemary’s husband’s name is Guy, a name which points to the fact that this man is not an anomalous and horrible person. He is just your average “guy”, an unthinking man who, if given the chance, would sign away his wife’s body for his own selfish gains. At the end of the film, Guy offers these words in the form of an apology after it has been revealed that Guy allowed his Satan-worshipping neighbors access to Rosemary’s body so that Satan could impregnate Rosemary with the anti-Christ fetus (you know, your average marriage snafus): “They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt and you haven’t been…really. I mean, supposing you had the baby and you lost it? Wouldn’t that be the same? And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.” Guy’s flippancy toward his wife is truly terrifying and the viewer, at this point, has seen many signs of it. Even before we begin to piece-together the scenario along with Rosemary, we see Guy give his wife dismissive pats on the ass, pooh-pooh her suspicions as resulting from the “pre-partum crazies”, and most scarily, admit to fornicating with Rosemary’s unconscious body — an admission that we discover is a cover-up for what really happened. After the otherwise lovely night when Rosemary is raped by the devil (something Rosemary doesn’t realize until much later in the film), Rosemary wakes up and this back-and-forth with her husband ensues:
Rosemary: I dreamed someone was raping me, I think it was someone inhuman.
Guy: Thanks a lot. Whatsa matter?
Rosemary: Nothing.
Guy: I didn’t want to miss the night.
Rosemary: We could have done it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn’t the only split-second.
Guy: I was a little bit loaded myself, you know.
Rosemary: You… you had me while I was out?
Guy: It was kinda fun in a necrophile sort of way.
Rosemary shrugs off Guy’s excuse for allegedly having sex with her lifeless body, which is a very scary thought in itself — even without the devil business. This is to me is the scariest aspect of Rosemary’s Baby — the utter helplessness that Rosemary experiences in relation to the whims of men.
When Dr. Hill opens the door and lets in Guy and Dr. Sapirstein, Dr. Sapirstein has this to say, with Guy standing sheepishly at his side: “Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don’t argue or make a scene. Because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft, we’re gonna be forced to take you to a mental hospital. You don’t want that, do you?” In many modern works of fiction, the mental hospital becomes the last viable option for men in dealing with women who are for whatever reason not fitting into their system. In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood is given shock treatment and forced to spend much of her time in mental facilities because of her inability to behave “appropriately” for a young woman in her time and place. Lisbeth Salander in the Steig Larsson’s Millenium series is institutionalized because of the threat she poses to the patriarchal powers that be (indeed, the Swedish title of Larsson’s first book translates as Men Who Hate Women).
In The Exorcist as well, the team of doctors strongly encourage Chris MacNeil to have their daughter institulationalized because of her strange disorder and their inability to properly label and deal with her problem. While The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby utilize demonic possession in their films as a means of eliciting terror, it is through showcasing the status of women in society outside of the movie theatre that really makes these chills hit home.
Stay tuned for more on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby! In the meantime, don’t forget to say your prayers.

A young woman goes through puberty: an unfamiliar body develops, a strange voice emerges and a new personality is born. Her desires, thoughts and behavior become very different than those of her prepubescent self.
The better modern horror films will put as much craft into the non-scary aspects of their film as the payoff fright scenes. You have to work just as hard weaving the rug as you do pulling it out from underneath our feet.



Joan Didion’s notion of California as the last bastion for the American Dream must have been true for the German Expressionists who fled Germany in the 1920s as it was for the Americans from places like Iowa and Ohio who migrated West in order to find their place amongst the stars, sunshine and palm trees. California is seen as a community of immigrants and transplants, all trying to become a part of the most pervasive and, as we have discovered, deadly American narrative: the American Dream. In Double Indemnity, Walter Neff states cheekily, “I thought all native Californians came from Iowa”, a thought that has an interesting parallel in Sunset Boulevard, for the protagonist and narrator Joe Gillis is an Ohioan transplant trying to make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter.


Grace will not tolerate Anne and Nicolas’ unorthodox, albeit logical, interpretation of the Justus and Pastor story, for it signifies that the children are not completely on board with a Catholic belief system. For the children to deny Christ, even if only to save their lives from hypothetical Roman persecutors, would be to deny Grace the foundation from which she is reinforcing her repression. Anne in particular, due to her position as a contact with the living, and her faith in her own interpretation of events, rebels against her mother’s Biblical teachings.
Once in her new position as a member of the living-dead, Grace tries her best to again maintain control over unwanted influence. The home must be protected from outside infiltration, just as her children’s minds, and her own mind, must be protected from outside and potentially destructive evidence and ideas. The movie ends with Anne asking her mother: “If we’re dead, then where’s Limbo?” To which Grace replies: “I don’t know if there even is a Limbo. I’m no wiser than you are”. This realization coincides with the lifting of the fog from around the house, as well as the end of the children’s photosensitivity, or as I suggested above, perhaps their realization that they were never photosensitive to begin with.