Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist: 21st Century Essays
Autor Marlena Williamsen Limba Engleză Paperback – 20 oct 2023
Never watch The Exorcist, Marlena Williams’s mother told her, just as she’d been told by her own mother as a Catholic teen in rural Oregon when the horror classic premiered. And like her mother, Mary, Williams watched it anyway. An inheritance passed from mother to daughter, The Exorcist looms large—in popular culture and in Williams’s own life, years after Mary’s illness and death. In Night Mother, Williams investigates the film not only as a projection of Americans’ worst fears in the tumultuous 1970s and a source of enduring tropes around girlhood, faith, and transgression but also as a key to understanding her mother and the world she came from. The essays in Night Mother delve beneath the surface of The Exorcist to reveal the deeper stories the film tells about faith, family, illness, anger, guilt, desire, and death. Whether tracing the career of its young star, Linda Blair, unpacking its most infamous scenes, exploring its problematic depictions of gender and race, or reflecting on the horror of growing up female in America, Williams deftly blends bold personal narrative with shrewd cultural criticism. Night Mother offers fresh insights for both fans of the film and newcomers alike.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258767
ISBN-10: 081425876X
Pagini: 240
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
Seria 21st Century Essays
ISBN-10: 081425876X
Pagini: 240
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
Seria 21st Century Essays
Recenzii
“Masterful and thoroughly researched … An incredible work of film analysis, examining cultural context and interspersing personal history, that makes a great read for movie, horror, and pop-culture fans. Highly recommended for libraries with media analysis collections.” —Meghan Bouffard, Library Journal (starred review)
“The sharp analysis offers novel and convincing perspectives on the horror classic, and Williams’s personal meditations are affecting. This is scary good.” —Publishers Weekly
“A mesmerizing mix of cinematic, cultural, and personal history … Night Mother—an unorthodox love letter in which Williams attempts to exorcise her own demons—is a powerful reckoning.” —Peggy Kurkowski, Shelf Awareness
“I devoured this book—its intense cultural analysis, its candid personal history, and its philosophical inquiry—like a woman possessed. Gutsy and deeply researched, Night Mother is a keen investigation of American cinema, American girlhood, and American fear.” —Elena Passarello, author of Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses
Williams’s multigenerational personal narrative of viewer responses to The Exorcist takes her analysis beyond anything readily paraphrased. Read it for yourself.” —Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed
Notă biografică
Marlena Williams is a writer from Portland, Oregon. Her work has been published in the Yale Review, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Catapult, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Extras
A woman is startled awake by a loud sound. The first thing to flash through her mind as she jolts upright in in bed is My daughter. She pulls on a robe and rushes down the hall to the room where her daughter rests. She finds her there, sleeping peacefully, but all is not as she left it. The window is open, blowing in frigid fall air. Light from the streetlamp below streams into the room. The drapes flap in the cool dawn breeze. The sheets on the bed have been yanked down, leaving her daughter's prone body exposed to the morning cold. Strange, the mother thinks, but nothing more. She closes the window and rewraps the covers tightly around her sleeping child. She kisses her forehead, tells her she loves her, and tiptoes out of the room.
My mother rarely told me stories about her life. I think she considered talking about herself an indulgence, a selfish hogging of the air. The things she did tell me were closer to off-hand comments than fully fleshed recollections, opaque statements made in passing never to be elaborated upon again. A college boyfriend who died in a car crash. Her days spent inserting catheters in the ICU. The time she flipped off a stranger for swerving into a parking spot that was clearly hers. How he followed her through the shadowy parking garage, thrust his own middle finger into her face, and growled, "I'll poke your god damn eye out."
As a child, I clung to whatever stories she offered, hazy snapshots plucked from her memory that have only become hazier when filtered through the cluttered corridors of my own. Over a decade since her death, I still find myself sifting through the scattered shards of narrative she left behind, hoping that eventually I will assemble enough broken pieces to build something whole.
One of these stories, however, has remained as clear to me as it was the first time I heard it, and that is the story of my mother and The Exorcist.
Before watching The Exorcist was even a vaguely plausible option for my childhood self, my mother banned me from ever seeing it. It was just one of the rules of life. Don't talk to strangers. Don't cross the street without first looking both ways. Don't eat the raw cookie dough off the spatula. And don't watch The Exorcist.
The movie had scarred her when she snuck off to see it at age fourteen against her own mother's wishes, and she felt certain it would scar me too. Not just scare. Scar. The distinction is important. Scare implies momentary fright. Scar leaves a mark. Though I had no conception that a movie could bring anything but magic and joy, had only ever found delight on the other side of TriStar's winged horse and 20th Century Studio's spotlight and drums, I heeded my mother's warning. It was something about the way she said those words. "Don't ever watch The Exorcist." There was a desperation beneath them.
A plea.
My mother rarely told me stories about her life. I think she considered talking about herself an indulgence, a selfish hogging of the air. The things she did tell me were closer to off-hand comments than fully fleshed recollections, opaque statements made in passing never to be elaborated upon again. A college boyfriend who died in a car crash. Her days spent inserting catheters in the ICU. The time she flipped off a stranger for swerving into a parking spot that was clearly hers. How he followed her through the shadowy parking garage, thrust his own middle finger into her face, and growled, "I'll poke your god damn eye out."
As a child, I clung to whatever stories she offered, hazy snapshots plucked from her memory that have only become hazier when filtered through the cluttered corridors of my own. Over a decade since her death, I still find myself sifting through the scattered shards of narrative she left behind, hoping that eventually I will assemble enough broken pieces to build something whole.
One of these stories, however, has remained as clear to me as it was the first time I heard it, and that is the story of my mother and The Exorcist.
Before watching The Exorcist was even a vaguely plausible option for my childhood self, my mother banned me from ever seeing it. It was just one of the rules of life. Don't talk to strangers. Don't cross the street without first looking both ways. Don't eat the raw cookie dough off the spatula. And don't watch The Exorcist.
The movie had scarred her when she snuck off to see it at age fourteen against her own mother's wishes, and she felt certain it would scar me too. Not just scare. Scar. The distinction is important. Scare implies momentary fright. Scar leaves a mark. Though I had no conception that a movie could bring anything but magic and joy, had only ever found delight on the other side of TriStar's winged horse and 20th Century Studio's spotlight and drums, I heeded my mother's warning. It was something about the way she said those words. "Don't ever watch The Exorcist." There was a desperation beneath them.
A plea.
Cuprins
Part 1 • Invocations Mercedes McCambridge Eats a Raw Egg My Mother and The Exorcist Excavation The Loud Silence Part 2 • Summoning the Evil Spirit Six Visions of the Devil and His Demons Magical Mirrors Something Sharp James Baldwin Sees The Exorcist in 1973 Part 3 • Profession of Faith The Priests of My Youth Part 4 • Laying Hands on the Possessed The Operating Theater Father Karras Dreams of His Mother Part 5 • Concluding Prayer of Thanks
Descriere
A personal and cultural excavation of The Exorcist’s messages about faith, girlhood, illness, guilt, desire, and death as well as its lasting impact on the author’s life.