I found the original Exorcist to be totally not scary. I never watched horror movies until I was a teaching assistant for a class on horror movies, and then I learned to like them (through the concept of "jouissance" as theorized by Julia Kristeva; it's a long story).

Anyway, I started watching lots of horror films, and I think the reason the Exorcist didn't get me is that the film gave no REASON as to why that particular girl was possessed. Perhaps the lack of reason enhanced the horror for some, but it left me cold. "Oh, she vomits. Oh, her head turns around. Whatever."

Maybe I wasn't interested because I don't believe in the devil? Because I think Rosemary's Baby is also pretty lame. But I don't believe in vampires, either, and reading Dracula for the first time in college gave my nightmares.

So, would I still like Exorcist III? And don't you think that it would be really great if my friends and I dressed up for Halloween next year as "Jazzorcist" instructors? "Get thee behind me Satan. Woo! Get thee behind me Satan. Woo! And lift, and step, and lift and step."

Jazzorcism; it's the new black.

I don't know if I would go so far as to say that Exorcist III will lead to orgasmic rapture, but it certainly has it's moments. I like to suspend rationality when watching horror movies and will forgive a host of sins as long as the movie isn't confusing.

The first Exorcist relied on the fact that these horrible things happened to ordinary people. I think Exorcist was actually horrific and not scary in the traditional sense. Exorcist III is actually full of scares, creepy moments, and a sort of mystery to be solved. And then there are the scissors.

If I understand jouissance (How could I not? I read the wikipedia article on it. Ahem.) then the horror movie you want to watch is Takashi Miike's Imprint. He made it for Showtime's Masters of Horror series. The extended graphic torture is rivaled only by Irréversible, which isn't a horror movie. Irréversible haunted me for about a week - while I was sleeping *and* while I was awake.

As far as things in a movie having a reason, I'm not too picky about that. I certainly want things to make sense in so far as there can't be conflicting pieces of information, but I like unknowns, unknowables, and fuzzy logic in my movies. The bulk of contemporary French cinema (said with a French accent) falls into that category.

Oh! How did I forget the Jazzorcists?! Hell, yes. That is an awesome idea. I imagine you guys in shiny metallic tights, pastel belted leotards, white leg warmers, wide terry cloth headbands, full makeup, wearing huge rosaries, and carrying around the purple exorcism sashes and bibles.

I thought orphans were the new black.

No, no, no. According to the Bible (by which I mean Dateline NBC) al-Qaeda members who meet conjoined twins on MySpace and then kidnap them is the new black. At least that's what I can tell from the fact that EVERY SINGLE ITEM on Dateline deals with either al-Qaeda, conjoined twins, MySpace predators, or child abduction.

Back to the Exorcist: I don't usually need my movies to make complete sense or be somehow knowable through normal logic*; I just can't think of any other reason why I found the Exorcist (which is well-liked by many) to be so utterly dull and not horrifying.

The wikipedia article on jouissance only gives half of the story. While the term is used to describe female orgasm (which is differentiated from the plaisir of male orgasm. Yeah. Okay.), it is also used in a more complex fashion to describe the reaction to the set of feelings and physiological responses associated with both fear and pleasure (rapid heartbeat, sweating, etc.). So, if you go on a roller coaster, or watch a horror film, you will have a set of physiological responses that you then, RETROACTIVELY, categorize as either pain (fear) or pleasure. This retroactive decision can take place nearly instantaneously. Anyway, the point is that once the professor of the class talked about this idea, I realized that, as with a roller coaster, I could decide to ENJOY the feeling of being scared, and, pouf! voila! I suddenly liked horror films. Fancy French theory made it so I can really dig Night of the Living Dead. See? All that schoolin' is good for sumpin.

*I went with a friend of mine, a fellow literature graduate student, to see Memento, and at the end I thought, "Huh. That was interesting. The film didn't give us enough information to know whether the main dude was right or wrong. Ambiguous." My friend proceeded to spend the next TWO HOURS trying to figure out what was, I thought, a deliberate ambiguity. The only way he could make the film make sense was by adding information from outside, things that the film didn't actually tell us. I was kind of shocked, then just really irritated, by his inability to just shrug and say, "Huh. That was interesting."

First, I just want to say that I'm totally pissed off that people get so upset about online predators. Only 4% of children are sexually abused by strangers (and what tiny percentage of that 4% are online preditors?). 96% are sexually abused by people they know. I want a fucking in depth investigative journalism piece about that juicy little fact.

The reason it makes me so mad is that they use the hysteria to try and limit my freedoms as an adult. That is total and utter bullshit.

Grrrrrrr!

Although Wikipedia did fail me in this one instance (*snort*) I definitely got the truthiness of jouissance . Imprint and Irreversible are both movies that will cause conflicting feelings, and one will definitely have to choose whether it was a pleasure to watch them. I'll add another enjoyably brutal movie, The Isle.

I'm not a psychopath or anything, but I love watching movies that seem to take mental toughness to watch, be it scary, brutal, or incomprehensible. I think it's just my super-confrontational personality; "You think your movie is hard to watch? Well, I'll show you."

You hit the nail on the head with the Memento thing. I think it's very difficult for American audiences to accept ambiguity. You can see the evidence when you watch a foreign film and then it's American remake. They always seem to add in explanations, whether it's voice overs, extra characters, or motivation-explaining soliloquies.

I'm not saying American's are dummies, but someone thinks they are.

As much as we wish it did, life does not conform to easy explanations or neat little boxes. Neither do people. And I believe that all humans want to categorize and compartmentalize people and experience. My resistance to that is also a part of my fuck you attitude.

Hey. Maybe that's why The Exorcist didn't get you ... because it was supposed to.