The Medium and Its Messages:

Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist

Laurie A. Rodrigues

Chris MacNeil is one of the first protagonists to be portrayed in all of

mass-market American horror fiction; yet, although she is the main char-
acter in William Peter Blatty’s bestseller The Exorcist (1971), a close
study of her character has yet to be formulated.1 In much scholarship on
The Exorcist, her daughter Regan’s possession or Father Damien Karras’
parallel subplot take analytical priority. In contrast, I claim that a close ex-
amination of Chris MacNeil’s depiction in The Exorcist can reveal for
readers important information about how women were depicted in mass
media of the early 1970s. With the support of primary sources beyond the
novel, feminist scholarship on women’s media portrayals, and Marshall
McLuhan’s work on mass media from the late 1960s, this study will prob-
lematize and explore important, internal contradictions and inconsisten-
cies in Chris’s character. Reading Chris in concert with real and fictional
depictions of women elsewhere in American media can help readers to
probe the norms, values, and organizing principles that assembled accept-
able (if deeply contradictory) portrayals of womanhood at this historical
moment. This may not only lend new insights accounting for the novel’s
wide appeal but may also lend increased cultural credibility to a text dis-
missed by major, contemporary critics for its superficiality. I will show
that this superficiality is not only a key generic convention of this new
medium—mass-market horror fiction—but also an important aspect of the
novel’s broad appeal and therefore worthy of critical consideration.

JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, vol 53, no. 3, 2023, pp. 377–406.
378 J N T

Since 1951, with the publication of The Mechanical Bride, media

scholar Marshall McLuhan explored the consequences of electrical tech-
nologies and mass media innovations on late 20th-century cultures. In
1964, in Understanding Media, McLuhan asserted that the “medium is the
message,” by which he meant that media are constituted by that which
they spread (i.e., cultural clichés) (7). Just a few years later, in 1967, he
would publish a brief, visual text in collaboration with Quentin Fiore, The
Medium Is the Massage; on an episode of NBC Experiment in Television
that aired on March 19 of the same year (“This Is Marshall McLuhan”),
McLuhan explained that his new title referred to the ways mass media
“bump into” audiences, alternately roughing them up and massaging them.
Carrying, at once, an impact (psychic and physical) and any number of vi-
sual and rhetorical homages to other cultural media (as media’s content is
always other media, according to McLuhan), mass media are capable of
changing the course and function of human relations, perceptions, and be-
haviors.
Particularly as the 1970s dawned in America, mass media and its tech-
nologies had become interlocked in most people’s homes; at the same
time, various media were transforming themselves in order to appeal to
both the country’s “lowest common denominator” and its more resistant,
youth audiences (Douglas 15). As a result, as Susan J. Douglas notes in
Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (1995),
women in America were offered culturally ‘schizophrenic’ ideas about
their lives and were shown, across mass media, conflicting ideas about
who they were, who they could become, and what they were supposed to
want for themselves as women (15, 8–20).2 According to Douglas, these
ideas about and images of women were schizophrenic insofar as they were
contradictory and constructed corporate attempts to straddle “the widening
gap between traditional womanhood and young, hip, modern ‘chick’”
(15).
The more-present-than-ever mass media of the late 1960s and early
1970s was made possible by altering older modalities (e.g., the film indus-
try, journalism, the publishing industry) so as to accommodate Americans’
broad buy-in to new mass media technologies (e.g., television, horror
films, mass market horror fiction). Public interest programming regula-
tions for television, combined with new media’s popularity, uniquely
poised American mass media of the 1970s to inform audiences. However,
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 379

as McLuhan knew, these media were also (often by design) poorly suited
to offering informed discourse on complex events and issues. By contrast,
a media form like the novel, for example, is better suited to such commu-
nication; unlike television media, literary media has its basis in printed
language, and for McLuhan, printed language “became the organizing
[i.e., linear] principle of life”—a basis for “the presentation of connected
and sequential facts or concepts” (McLuhan and Fiore 44–45). However,
with the advent of new electronic technologies, the novel may also contain
gestures and tropes (cultural clichés) from television or other cultural
media—particularly if a novel is mass marketed and published for a gen-
eral audience, as with Blatty’s The Exorcist. This detracts from a novel’s
ability to sustain linear, sequential communication, according to
McLuhan’s formulation. Nevertheless, Blatty’s novel was a genre-shaping
success in mainstream American horror fiction; also, he has been noted for
establishing (alongside Ira Levin and Thomas Tryon) a design for “the
contemporary best-selling horror novel” to be emulated by writers such as
Stephen King for decades to come (Hoppenstand 35–36). Since horror fic-
tion ascended to the ranks of mainstream publishing and bestseller status
in the early 1970s, McLuhan’s Understanding Media and The Medium Is
the Massage are useful tools for shedding new light on this genre’s popu-
larity, the female protagonists it depicts, and critics’ disdain for this newer
form of mass media (Hoppenstand 35).3
In the same historical moment that Mary Tyler Moore came on the
scene, broadcast journalists extolled the Vietnam War, and feminism be-
came a bad word, horror fiction also came into its own as a new form of
mass-market paperback. Perhaps as one might expect, this ascendancy, as
Gary Hoppenstand has noted, was not regarded kindly by literary and cul-
tural critics of the early 1970s. Long-form horror fiction at this time was
targeting mass audiences and as such was viewed as lacking the depth and
formal intricacies typically celebrated by literary scholars and critics. The
newer horror fiction was judged inferior to more properly gothic horror
that was crafted to raise questions about national, familial, and individual
pathologies through its characterizations and themes; designed presum-
ably only to “scare people,” The Exorcist (novel and film) in particular
was derided by critics for lacking depth (Kael 59–60). For example, in her
negative review of William Friedkin’s film adaptation of Blatty’s novel,
Pauline Kael seems to intentionally elide both the novel’s previous com-
380 J N T

mercial success and the impact of its film release. Evaluating The Exorcist
film as essentially a shoddy, if faithful, depiction of Blatty’s (also shoddy)
horror novel, Kael’s review implies (like many others at the time) that this
literary genre should remain marginalized as pulp fiction.4 However, as I
will show, the lack of content in The Exorcist perceived by critics like
Kael, in particular, is the genre’s point and a feature that is instrumental to
its broad appeal at this moment in America.
As Noël Carroll points out in The Philosophy of Horror (1990), horror
is a genre that endlessly plays upon the reinforcement and rejection of
norms through narratives that often focus on some monstrous figure or
force (200, 202–05). As a form of mass media, which mainstream horror
fiction of the 1970s became, it aligns its norms (and the patterns by which
they are narratively subverted or affirmed) with patterns it accumulates
from various other forms of media; however, the genre’s norms, values,
and ordering principles are continuously inflected and molded by the spe-
cific context in which it emerges. From the perspective of McLuhan’s The
Medium Is the Massage, horror is one fiction genre particularly suited to
mass media. Understood this way, horror fiction is the message it presents:
that is, a series of simultaneous and overlapping clichés (e.g., homages
and gestures to television, film, and print ephemera) that allude to ac-
cepted, if contradictory, norms and values in a culture. As mass media,
horror fiction presents these norms and values to massage readers, or to
create psychic and physical impacts on them. When used to horrifying
ends (e.g., by including in the presentation a monstrous figure or force),
these impacts can be rather arresting (Carroll 199). This McLuhanian for-
mulation holds a timely potential to reveal much about a society’s sensi-
tivities, fears, and desires—despite (or because of) its formal differences
from conventional gothic fiction. Horror fiction of the early 1970s was
poised to reflect back to consumers the very waters in which they prover-
bially swam; and, as a woman “of her time,” Chris MacNeil plays a more
significant and historically informative role in the world of Blatty’s novel
than has been previously explored (Cull 49).
Particularly in the year 1970, women’s causes became primary topics
on nightly news broadcasts, as women’s strikes, legal actions, and public
protests became common occurrences. However, many journalists and
news anchors dismissed these events, adopting dog whistles (such as “bra
burning”) as shorthand for their angle on the women’s movement. On the
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 381

other hand, in the name of public interest, networks like CBS and NBC
aired special broadcasts on women’s issues, including economic discrimi-
nation and degrading media stereotypes (Douglas 139, 175–77). This un-
folded across news media while Mary Tyler Moore—apologetic and in-
cessantly perky—seemed to make a living as a financially independent
young woman look all too easy. Inconsistencies abounded in American
mass media concerning not only the coverage of women’s causes but also
the portrayal of women in their twenties and thirties so as to appeal to as
many American women as possible. This is a fact on which, I argue, the
new mainstream horror fiction of the early 1970s, and The Exorcist in par-
ticular, capitalized. The Exorcist’s protagonist, Hollywood superstar Chris
MacNeil, is an example of Douglas’s ‘schizophrenic’ idea of womanhood,
and this contributed to the novel’s success. As a culturally schizophrenic
protagonist, Chris is a character who gives the surface-level impression to
readers of average, American womanhood (as a financially-independent,
single mother), while her character is actually (due to profession, privi-
lege, and wealth) anything but average. Further, her crisis (Regan’s pos-
session) is actually not as relatable to period audiences’ potential fears as
readers may think.
Since at least the 1950s, media portrayals of American women have
been assemblages of McLuhanian cultural clichés: that is, collected
homages (however eclectic) to fashion and/or status, temperament, and a
presumed sociological role (whether actual or imagined). These assembled
depictions are presented and reinforced in advertising, film, television,
magazines, and other mass media.5 I am using the term cliché as it appears
in McLuhan’s work—as a mode of awareness or building block of cultural
environment, potentially manifesting as setting, a character or model’s
wardrobe, and/or the role she (consciously or not) perceivably adopts. In
line with Douglas’s argument that women receive culturally schizophrenic
concepts of themselves from media, I claim that the cultural clichés which
assemble the mid to late 20th-century ideas of womanhood are also schiz-
ophrenic; thus, the clichés that build mass media images, ideas, and char-
acters are, in themselves, schizophrenic—constructed, internally contra-
dictory, and superficial. Within a single character, readers will find
contradictions and blind spots. As both a subject and a product of mass
media (like readers), Chris MacNeil’s aspirational characterization accom-
modates inconsistencies and blind spots. In these silences and blank
382 J N T

spaces, readers may improvise their relation to the character; thus, areas of
ambiguity in her character leave enough room for readers’ inferences and
interpretations of Chris to reflect their own interests and values.
For all its insights and usefulness in helping me to adapt McLuhan’s
work to reading mass media women characters, Douglas’s theory misses
something that McLuhan’s work most closely approaches, that is, the po-
tential consequences of these culturally schizophrenic ideas and depictions
on audiences’ (past and present) interpretations of them. When media is its
own message and clichéd contentlessness is commensurate with mass
media’s appeal, how are readers of The Exorcist to interpret Chris Mac-
Neil’s role in the novel’s success? Although divorced, Chris is neverthe-
less depicted as financially independent and happy to spend time with her
daughter. As an actor aspiring to direct, she does not complain specifically
about her professional circumstances as a woman and thus cuts an appeal-
ing image of a “woman of her time” with whom readers identified (or, at
least wanted to identify) in 1971 (Cull 49). Chris’s broad appeal as a char-
acter comes from her relatability to both women and men, which resides in
the aspects of her character that reflect timely images of success—for ex-
ample, her being an adored Hollywood actor who tools about Washington,
DC, in a red Jaguar XKE or the fact that her household features live-in
servants, a personal assistant, and a financial advisor. Beyond her affirma-
tive stance on atheism, Chris’s values, politics, and emotional life are oth-
erwise kept ambiguous in the novel (Blatty, The Exorcist 47). In this read-
ing, the fiscally and socially (rather than morally) exceptional aspects of
Chris’s character, squared with her seemingly average aspects (divorced,
single working mother), create space for readers’ interest in her situation
and sympathy for her crises.
The new mass-marketed horror fiction of the early 1970s became a
way for readers to escape into representations of the social issues of their
time, appealing to general readers through the seeming identifiability of its
characters, their depicted contexts, and the genre’s apparently intimate
connection to contemporary social evils (Hoppenstand 36). Fictional hor-
ror featured characters—children and adults alike—who were just as
flawed, disoriented, and/or disillusioned as a broad population of readers
at the time. Chris MacNeil was no exception; when readers meet her at
The Exorcist’s outset, she is temporarily living in the Georgetown district
of Washington (where she is filming a movie) with her daughter, assistant
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 383

Sharon, and household servants, Karl and Willie. She is a popular Holly-
wood film star who receives seemingly countless letters from adoring
fans; she also aspires to direct well-known films like the legendary (fic-
tional) director Burke Dennings, with whom she is working at the novel’s
opening (Blatty 22). Yet, Chris is un-amicably divorced from Regan’s fa-
ther, Howard MacNeil, and their troubled relationship preoccupies her for
almost half of the novel. Nevertheless, with Sharon’s help, Chris tries her
best to assume the role of a conscientious single mother to her twelve-
year-old daughter; and while The Exorcist does hint at Chris’s dysfunc-
tional relationship with Howard, much more apparent (prior to Regan’s
possession) is her dysfunctional relationship with her career, or as Hop-
penstand would have it, her “identity” (37–38).
In her review of the 1973 film version of The Exorcist for The New
Yorker, Kael remarked that neither Blatty nor Friedkin seemed to depict
much “feeling” toward the “suffering” endured by both Chris and Regan
in the course of the story (61, 62). Perhaps an arguably odd critique,
Kael’s indictment is nevertheless crucial to understanding how the novel’s
descriptions of Chris and her circumstances supported The Exorcist’s ap-
peal to general audiences. If The Exorcist were imbued with a more evoca-
tive narrative and dialogic focus on its women characters’ “suffering,” it
would not be a strong exemplar of popular, narrative horror in its time—
this would constitute a different genre altogether, aimed at different audi-
ences in 1971 and 1973.6 Women and men characters’ feelings, indeed
their interior lives, are eclipsed in The Exorcist (as in much horror fiction
at this time) by a sojourn into horrifying circumstances beyond their con-
trol. These circumstances, as Carroll asserts, are initiated by a monstrous
presence (in The Exorcist, a demon) that threatens to destroy the protago-
nist’s identity through its fusion with some category opposed to that iden-
tity (43–44). In The Exorcist, the “monstrous figure or force” fuses with
Chris’s daughter, making Regan categorically “opposed” to Chris’s identi-
ties as a mother and public figure (Carroll 200, 202–05). She opposes
Chris as a mother because, as Chris tells Father Karras, “that thing upstairs
is not my daughter”; in other words, Chris can no longer identify as
Regan’s mother because her daughter becomes an entirely new collection
of (vicious and guilt-inducing) personalities (240). Regan’s condition un-
dermines Chris’s identity as a public figure because it requires such an
abundance of Chris’s time and resources that she has little energy left for
384 J N T

public relations related to her acting or her directorial aspirations. Due to

exigencies of generic convention, the maintenance and defense of identity,
Chris’s as much as Regan’s, is narratively prioritized over descriptions of
their suffering (43–44).
Yet Kael’s critique was perhaps warranted, for, generic demands aside,
The Exorcist novel and film arrived on the American cultural scene at a
particularly intense and emotional historical moment, which undoubtedly
contributed to the culturally schizophrenic portrayals of women offered by
mass media. During 1971, when The Exorcist was published, student in-
surrections still unfolded on campuses across America with some regular-
ity, and Women’s Liberation struggled against mainstream portrayals of
activists as “braless bubbleheads” (Hodgson 137; Zeisler 61–62). Perhaps
as a result, print and televised news reporting on Women’s Liberation de-
scribed feminists with “terminology that alternated between condescend-
ing (‘libbers’) and fearmongering (women described as ‘militant,’ the
movement itself called ‘a contagion’)” (Zeisler 600). Beyond the often
schizophrenic reporting, entertainment media of the early 1970s portrayed
women in ways that clashed with anchors’ attitudes and the Movement’s
resolve. Television premiered new leading women characters like Gidget
(in 1965; she was perky, assertive, and calculating) and Mary Tyler Moore
(in 1970; she was single, employed, and financially independent), who
echoed the “irresistible, androgynous, and nonconformist female charac-
ter” Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) (Douglas 104).
Though neither as perky as Gidget nor as encircled by women friends as
Mary Tyler Moore (until 1974), like these important women characters,
Chris MacNeil nevertheless also cut an important contrast with contempo-
raneous media portrayals of women involved with Women’s Liberation.
According to Blatty, he sought to create a protagonist with “a flipness
of manner (masking vulnerability) and an earthiness of tongue that would
help keep the [novel’s] situation rooted in reality” (Blatty, William Peter
Blatty 26). Unlike Holly, Gidget, and Mary, Chris uses the occasional
curse word and has a tendency for cynicism. However, she nevertheless
resembles these characters, the narrator indicates, in in her often ironic
self-reflexivity and appearance:

She glanced in a mirror and solemnly stared at her short red

hair, which looked perpetually tousled; at the burst of
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 385

freckles on the small, scrubbed face; then crossed her eyes

and grinned idiotically. Hi, little wonderful girl next door!
Can I speak to your husband? Your lover? Your pimp? Oh,
your pimp’s in the poorhouse? Avon calling! (The Exorcist
17–18, original emphasis)

The above not only gestures to Chris’s physical resemblance to television

characters like Mary Tyler Moore or real-world movie stars like Shirley
MacLaine; Blatty’s narrator also informs readers that Chris is, on some
level, aware of her own contrivance. By self-reflexively referring to her-
self as a “little wonderful girl next door” Chris highlights the initial effect
of her appearance’s artful composition (in the world of the novel—shorn,
befreckled, scrubbed), while Blatty signals to readers his protagonist’s
otherwise familiar look and temperament. Yet, beyond being merely aware
of the youthful or “irresistible, androgynous” aspects of her look, Chris
also refers to her own potential “husband,” “lover,” and “pimp.” Chris’s
comment draws attention to both the flexibility of her look and her own
awareness of this, adding another layer to her character’s self-reflexivity.
Chris shares some traits with characters known to readers, yet, as a mother
and the protagonist in a mainstream horror novel, her remark foreshadows
the actual flexibility and resilience that she will be unable to demonstrate
later in the novel.
Chris’s ironic self-reflexivity reads as a maturity she wields over com-
parable characters like Holly, Gidget, and Mary. As a woman looking like
a “girl next door” in 1971, Chris knows (and lets readers know) that she
could be a woman with a husband, lover, or a pimp; and, as an actor, she
could portray any of these. Yet, by ironically asking to speak to her own
potential “husband,” “lover,” or “pimp,” Chris subtly—and without nega-
tive inflection—indicates the central, overseeing role presumably played
by men in her life. Importantly, she does not wryly ask to speak to her own
march organizer, for example, because Chris knows (and, again, lets read-
ers know) that she does not look like a woman associated with the 1970
Women’s Strike for Freedom or the 1968 protest against the Miss America
pageant in Atlantic City. That is, unlike presumed feminists and activists,
Chris’s early description tells readers that she does not denounce “the im-
portance of the male gaze” but, rather, recognizes her possible role(s) in it
(Douglas 156). Contrasting with news journalists’ descriptions of activists
386 J N T

as attention hungry, Chris informs readers that she is only willing to make
a “spectacle” of herself insofar as her vocation as an actor requires—and
even then, not always (Douglas 156). Her remark comes as she takes her
wig box to go to the set for the “charade” (as the narrator calls it) that con-
stitutes her career; Chris is a self-conscious character who is aware at sev-
eral key points of how she is perceived by the male characters who sur-
round her in the novel (Blatty 18).
This aspect of Chris’s character distinguishes her from the media’s
denigrating images of “libbers” because, unlike these demonstrators, she
takes no ostensible issue with her designated roles; granted, since she is an
actor, Chris’s roles (including the allusions contained in her mirror perfor-
mance) may be assumed to be paying jobs rather than unpaid social and
emotional labor. Nevertheless, rather than decrying gendered roles, Chris
is depicted as consciously playing at her public persona, particularly in
how she alters her temperament at certain moments in the presence of men
characters. For example, upon her arrival at the set, Chris approaches her
director in order to start “an argument over the script,” hoping Dennings
might cut a scene she is meant to film that day (18). In the scene in ques-
tion, Chris is scripted to “tear [a] bullhorn away from the dean” and shout
to a gathered crowd of students, “Let’s tear it down!”—referring to the ad-
ministrative building before which she stands. “It just doesn’t make
sense,” Chris complains to Dennings, “Why the heck would they tear
down the building, Burke?”, to which her director distractedly responds,
“Because it’s there, love!” (19, original emphasis). Unsatisfied with this
rationale, Chris requests a telephone call to the film’s writer, who is indis-
posed in Paris, France; uttering obscenities at her request, Dennings nev-
ertheless soothes the agitated actor by agreeing that the scene is “stupid”
but must be shot. When Chris realizes their altercation has drawn the eye
of a passing Jesuit priest (Damien Karras), rather than be seen as arguing
with her boss in public, she abandons their argument to begin filming her
scene (20–21, 22).
In this scene, The Exorcist presents readers with a collection of collid-
ing cultural clichés: Chris’s embarrassment at a priest hearing Dennings’
cursing aligns her with a seemingly “girl next door” persona. Once Chris
realizes Karras is looking in her and Dennings’ direction, she is no longer
willing to play at being the off-camera ‘star’ who argues with her director
over a scene she wants cut from their film. This compelling, if minor, mo-
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 387

ment of self-conscious image maintenance reveals that Chris likely wishes

to be seen by her public as the “little wonderful girl next door” that she is
aware her appearance suggests. Although she seemed to ironically mock
this impression in the earlier mirror scene, the on-set scene with Dennings
demonstrates that on some level Chris seeks to show up for people as the
girl next door—friendly, approachable, cooperative. It is only behind the
scenes, and under very specific circumstances, that she is willing to
merely play at anything else, such as voicing her interest and vision (if to
no avail) to professional counterparts. The protagonist’s tie to identity,
which requires maintenance before any threats by a “monstrous” force,
thus becomes the core of Blatty’s horror story (Carroll 200, 202–05).
However, because Chris’s identity is also a product of mass media, it
may be considered, in Douglas’s terms, schizophrenic, or gestural and
often deeply contradictory. Chris’s culturally schizophrenic identity begins
to take shape as only the thinnest of details concerning her professional
and personal background are offered to readers; in effect, little may be in-
ferred or assumed by readers from her dialogue, mannerisms, or behaviors
across the novel. What readers do learn, through Blatty’s limited third-
person narrator, is that Chris began her career as “an unknown chorus girl”
at a “very young” age—though readers do not know how young (16).
Nevertheless, as a thirty-two-year-old mother in 1971, Chris would have
been a child during the Second World War, reached her teenage years dur-
ing the 1950s (potentially when she became a “chorus girl”), and come of
age just before that decade’s close. Chris’s work in acting involves her in
the putting-on of “personas” and roles, much as McLuhan notes teenagers
and young adults enjoy doing with their clothing and fashion (The Me-
chanical Bride, 99–100).7 This is also a penchant that, Midge Decter
claims, writing for Commentary magazine in 1970, her caricature of the
“Liberated Woman” shares. Interestingly, and much like the portrait drawn
in Decter’s neoconservative article, Blatty’s Chris MacNeil could be al-
most any American woman who is conscious “of the possibility for adopt-
ing new personae and playing with each of them to a quickly reached
point of boredom” (Decter). And much like the “teenagers” described by
McLuhan on NBC, Chris’s character is nearly devoid of “personal” or “in-
dividual” detail.8 Instead, she assumes “roles” such as the “Liberated
Woman’s” “sympathizer [and] occasional demonstrator” (Decter)—in
fact, this aptly describes the role she plays in her film with Dennings.
388 J N T

However, Decter’s largely satirical piece describes the “Liberated

Woman” as someone incapable of taking personal responsibility, raising
children, and for all intents and purposes, being an adult in society.
Decter’s “heroine” is frequently surrounded by friends and acquaintances
who are the privileged attendees of the East’s best universities; yet, her re-
cently discovered “political style” negatively affects her family and inti-
mate relationships, along with her still developing career. By contrast,
readers cannot verify many of these characteristics in Chris’s depiction;
there is no mention in the novel of her having a network of other women
or friends from college (whether she attended or not) or elsewhere. Fur-
ther, beyond a couple of film industry connections readers may glean
(Dennings and Sir Stephen Moore, a fellow actor), Chris is depicted as
being without any kind of support network made up of women (The Exor-
cist 28). Yet, this is something of which Chris does not seem aware, as it is
not mentioned over the course of the novel; similarly (but unlike Decter’s
“Liberated Woman”), Chris’s role as a mother and/or as a woman in her
profession is not raised or defended by her in dialogue. Rather, if any-
thing, Chris’s professional position recalls Mary Richards’ depiction in
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, when she experiences isolation after friends,
Phyllis and Rhoda, vacate their shared apartment building (Douglas 208).
The disappearance of female friendship in her personal life hurls Mary’s
work life (in television) into the show’s foreground; and here, other
women characters are only Mary’s competitors or rivals. While The Exor-
cist’s few other women characters are not cast as Chris’s rivals, her posi-
tion nevertheless prefigures Mary’s isolation in 1974 and 1975, as she
finds herself without women’s friendship and reliant upon men for all pro-
fessional support and future opportunities.
This dearth of women companionship reflects an important way in
which Chris’s (albeit thinly developed) professional life contrasts with
Decter’s parodic “Liberated Woman”: in Chris’s profession, female col-
leagues or friends do not seem to exist. This fact affects Chris’s comport-
ment in the presence of industry fellows when she seeks something from
them. For instance, Blatty’s narrator briefly relates an episode when, on a
film set in Africa, Chris expressed her directorial ambitions to fellow actor
Sir Stephen Moore, complaining of the industry’s dismissal of her goals:
“I’ve tried; they won’t buy it. [. . .] Oh, come on, you know why: they don’t
think I can cut it” (The Exorcist 28, original emphasis). For her own part,
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 389

Chris refers to “the [mainstream film] business” as “bunk,” as well as

“crap,” “[f]or the actor”; meanwhile, Moore cannot relate to this dissatis-
faction: “Oh, I like it,” he responds (28, original emphases). In spite of
Chris’s success, broad fan base, and the obvious perks of her profession,
the novel nevertheless suggests that she is unsatisfied with the limits of
her professional identity as an actor. She desires the “immortality” that she
believes may come from a successful directorial career; yet, for reasons
that the narrative does not elaborate, she does not seem to believe this can
happen for her (22).
Shortly after this recollection, Sharon tells Chris that she has received
a script in the mail for a film she has been invited to direct; Chris grate-
fully responds—as Moore presumably helped connect her to this opportu-
nity—“Oh Steve, you angel, you remembered!” (28). Chris’s immediate
response signals that this offer has not come to her at random but because
of Moore’s advocacy behind the scenes. In fact, as Chris reads the script’s
accompanying letter aloud, she states, “studio wants Sir Stephen Moore . . .
accepting role provided—” and suddenly cuts off in the middle of the sen-
tence; then, she begins a new paragraph, exclaiming, “I direct his seg-
ment!” (28). Later, when Chris reports to her agent that she will need to
forestall her preproduction preparations for the film because Regan is
“pretty sick” (or, possessed), Ed tells her doing so will “blow” her chance
at this directorial debut: “Look, they don’t want you anyway, that’s not
news. They’re just doing this for Moore” (115). Ed’s remark recalls the
letter sent with the film’s script and hints that, where Chris seems to cut
off her reading, the letter spells out that Moore will only accept his star-
ring role “provided” Chris is asked to direct (28). Moore’s support is af-
firming in his implied faith in Chris’s abilities; nevertheless, the offer only
stands if and because the studio “wants” Moore for their film. Moreover,
this support is a transaction for Chris, contingent upon her availability to
get immediately to work.
If she reports being unsure about the offer, the studio will simply take
it away from her (115–16). Whether Chris was aware of the potential con-
tingencies of Moore’s support when she initially receives the script, read-
ers are not informed. Yet it is significant that, moments after reacting
gratefully to Sharon’s news, without explanation and before reading the
script, Chris dismisses the opportunity to Sharon as “probably crap” (28).
Whether Chris’s dismissal speaks to her harboring negative feelings about
390 J N T

the opportunity only coming to her because of Moore, or a belief that (as
she confesses to Moore) others in the industry don’t take her seriously and
so would not offer her a strong directorial debut, or whether her statement
is merely an offhand expression of her characteristic flippancy, readers are
also not told. This is an intentional aspect of Chris’s characterization and
identity in the world of the novel as a culturally schizophrenic, clichéd
character. How deeply she actually suffers from career frustration,
whether or not her cynicism is warranted, are points left purposely unclear
and unlinked to her womanhood or identity as Regan’s mother. Through
her irreverent moments of complaint against the film industry, readers are
offered glimpses of the contrivance not only of Chris as a literary charac-
ter but of the public image Chris maintains in the world of the novel.
This self-aware inconsistency of character, often amplified in the pres-
ence of male characters, is magnified in other instances in the text as well.
While aware (according to the narrator) that seemingly everyone, from
“cab drivers” to “kings,” “courted her company,” the narrator suggests that
Chris is nonetheless unsure about what it is they all like about her or her
life (25). Registering disillusionment with how her life has turned out, the
novel offers little else toward enlightening readers about Chris’s emotional
life. In The Exorcist’s cast, only men work alongside Chris in the film in-
dustry; as previously noted, the director with whom she’s working (Den-
nings) is also a man. The film industry of the novel’s world has apparently
not produced many (if any) women directors who could mentor Chris, or
at least set a professional example for her. This may account for Chris’s
self-deprecating tone toward Dennings in early scenes in the novel. For in-
stance, Chris seeks advice from a heavily intoxicated Dennings concern-
ing her insecurities about directing, especially the “technical stuff,” as she
puts it (37). Chris does not mention her opinion that the film segment
she’s been asked to direct is “probably crap,” as she had expressed to
Sharon. Rather, she approaches Dennings with concerns related to her
supposed lack of technical ability in directing (i.e., whether she can actu-
ally “cut it,” as she had mentioned to Moore), as opposed to whether or
not she should take the job. All of a sudden (mere pages after debasing the
script to Sharon), Chris is not concerned about whether or not the script is
“probably crap” or whether the studio even “wants” her for the job.
Rather, confronted with the “legendary” director Dennings, her concern
becomes her own ability. Yet, perhaps counterintuitively, Chris does not
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 391

directly approach Dennings for this advice; rather, she only makes her re-
quest known after the two have exchanged verbal jabs over the course of
several pages (34–37).
Chris opens their conversation by provocatively referring to an embar-
rassing encounter she and Dennings had one evening (his drunkenly pro-
claiming to be “on the prowl” for “hookers”) while shooting a film near
Lake Geneva (34–35). By initiating her petition in this way, Chris finds a
means to lift herself to Dennings’ presumed status (i.e., by ‘negging’ him)
and dissemble a peer-to-peer relationship (over a master-to-apprentice
one). She notices that Dennings’ “eyes had grown mean” at her remarks,
and she contemplates whether she had “touched a nerve” (36). Chris tries
to turn their conversation toward more serious, personal concerns, includ-
ing a fear of death that she has recently developed (35–36). Yet readers
(like Dennings) cannot know whether Chris’s sudden mention of her re-
cent fear of death is sincere (i.e., she actually wants to discuss a real fear)
or a conversational inroad by which she might explain that she believes di-
recting will bring her immortal fame (as she had thought to herself of Den-
nings, following their argument) (22). Dennings nevertheless cuts Chris
off, glibly retorting, “Well, you live through your children” (35, 36). With
this remark, Dennings points to Chris’s status as a single mother as pre-
venting her from fulfilling her “public relations” responsibilities for the
film they are shooting (a musical comedy remake of the 1939 hit Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington) (35). Thus, he likens Chris’s absence from
“public relations” to a kind of death, implying that any stories generated
by her motherhood are presumably no less embarrassing or career threat-
ening than those involving his drinking. Whether or not Chris’s approach
succeeds in garnering any advice on directing from Dennings, readers are
not told; similarly, there is no mention of Dennings offering any of the
“technical” advice Chris claims to require.
Chris’s oddly hostile tone toward Dennings echoes the ambivalent,
often contradictory tone taken by American mainstream television and
print news toward feminism in the early 1970s. As Andi Zeisler recounts
in Feminism and Pop Culture (2008), in the days before and after the
Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970, television news networks took often
hostile, blatantly subjective approaches to reporting on it: the event itself
was alternately written or spoken around and participating activists them-
selves were never engaged in these broadcasts and articles. Male news-
392 J N T

casters generally glossed the wider feminist movement as an “anti-Ameri-

can” means by which women sought to make a mockery of the military by
protesting the Vietnam War (Zeisler 62). In The New York Times article
published on the same day as the Women’s Strike, titled “Traditional
Groups Prefer to Ignore Women’s Lib,” women representatives of organi-
zations like the League of Women Voters and the Young Women’s Christ-
ian Association weighed in on the Women’s Liberation Movement. Ac-
cording to the article author Lacey Fosburgh, traditional women’s groups
believed that liberal feminist groups, like the National Organization for
Women (NOW), simply had the wrong idea about American women’s cir-
cumstances: “I mean, do they really think the American woman is op-
pressed? And chained to the home? The idea frankly embarrasses me”
(44). In the article, the executive secretary and president of the National
Council of Women further expressed disbelief that American women ex-
perienced the limitations and oppression claimed by Women’s Liberation;
rather, she asserted, “[w]omen themselves are just self limiting. It’s in
their nature and they shouldn’t blame it on society or men” (44).
Early 1970s mainstream news media defined feminism and the
Women’s Liberation Movement much in the same way that Chris defines
her directorial concerns to Dennings: as reflecting her own ‘natural,’ self-
limiting tendencies. Many Americans simply did not believe that women
(especially middle- to upper-middle-class, white American women) were
oppressed—including, presumably, Chris MacNeil. She seems to support
the popular idea that white women in America do as they please, do not
register experiences of sexism, and “don’t have a problem with the way
things are” (Fosburgh 44). In her conversation with Dennings, Chris im-
plies that she is happy to supplement her motherhood (and existing acting
career) with an opportunity to direct—if only she had the technical savvy.
Importantly, Chris never explicitly claims—whether in dialogue or via
narrator relation—that her presumably “bunk” circumstances in the film
industry have anything to do with her being a woman. Readers are not
given, for instance, a deeper insight into the mainstream Hollywood film
industry that employs Chris; and similarly, readers learn relatively little
about the mass media of the novel’s world. Further, no explicit connection
between the industry of Chris’s fictional world and that of American actu-
ality is ever drawn. And the novel (like its film version) does not elaborate
its main character’s emotional states, nor explicitly critique the norms and
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 393

organizing principles it seems to depict. Thus, casting Chris MacNeil as a

career woman facing vague, if pressing, professional difficulties (that are
not linked to gender) becomes a conveniently ‘realistic’ tack to take, circa
1971, in characterizing a female horror fiction protagonist.
The full onset of Regan’s possession occurs after Chris receives the
offer to direct a presumably “crap” film and after Chris’s calculated con-
versation with Dennings. As she slips further toward dissatisfaction with
her career, anger at Howard’s absence in Regan’s life, and worry concern-
ing her own abilities to protect her daughter’s wellbeing (as physicians
and psychologists offer no answers about Regan’s increasingly aberrant
condition), Regan’s full, direct demonic possession encroaches on the nar-
rative. Yet, this demonic possession has for years been read as a punish-
ment to her mother, as Nick Cull has put it, “for being a woman of her
time” (49). However, according to this McLuhanian reading (punctuated
by Douglas), that which makes Chris MacNeil “a woman of her time” is
the fact that her character is a collection of contradictory cultural
clichés—culturally schizophrenic homages in wardrobe, narration, and di-
alogue. She is, furthermore, a “woman of her time” as a mainstream hor-
ror fiction protagonist who faces supernatural circumstances that threaten
her identity(ies). To interpret Regan’s demon possession as a punishment
not for Regan but for her mother Chris is to interpret Chris MacNeil ac-
cording to a specific set of coordinates within a complex characterization
that, otherwise, is focused on the maintenance (if not improvement) of her
own identity. Similar to Cull, Hoppenstand has claimed that Regan’s pos-
session “functions as a type of moral symbol warning of the dire conse-
quences of an evolving family structure that places more emphasis on
parental identity—such things as career success and personal fulfill-
ment—than on the child’s emotional stability” (38). Hoppenstand claims
that Blatty’s depiction of Regan’s possession highlights for reader the
growing, presumed dysfunction of the American family, as it structurally
moved away from traditional ideas of the cohesive, nuclear unit (38). This
interpretation takes into account the presumed role, at the time of the
novel’s release, of “parental identity” in a “child’s emotional stability”;
however, what it does not consider is the influence of mass media and
other electronic technologies upon children and teenagers, over and above
any influence parents may hope to have.
394 J N T

Cull’s and Hoppenstand’s readings do not consider Regan MacNeil as

a product of mass media; therefore, they do not consider that, according to
McLuhan, influences on Regan’s “emotional stability” (supernatural or
otherwise) would have to originate with other forces, including mass
media, that bear upon her, specifically, as a twelve-year-old girl—not with
those that necessarily bear upon her mother. That is, like Chris’s, Regan’s
character is constructed along a continuum of McLuhanian cultural
clichés; however, as she is younger than Chris, the media elements that
would contour Regan’s character—her appearance, temperament, and so-
cial role—vary from those that would influence Chris. As McLuhan was
aware, media cannot be expected to be identically consumed (viewed,
read) by all people, just as various forms of mass media cannot be ex-
pected to constitute a unified voice. As McLuhan elaborates, in a newly
media-saturated world, teens and pre-teens find various outlets for emo-
tions and concepts of stability beyond their parents: “Today’s television
child is attuned to up-to-the-minute ‘adult’ news—inflation, rioting, taxes,
crime, bathing beauties” (McLuhan and Fiore 18). As a result, according
to McLuhan’s NBC episode encapsulating The Medium is the Massage,
younger generations had become increasingly “inward-directed,” seeking
“completely-involving” roles and “meaningful identification with some
great process” (Fraumeni).9 If anything, Regan has a slightly greater po-
tential than her mother to become a latter-day version of Decter’s “Liber-
ated Woman,” given her year of birth (as “a creature of the 60’s rather than
the 50’s” [Decter]).
Yet, in the novel’s plot leading up to her possession, readers are given
little information of this sort about Regan by Regan herself. Early on in
the novel, Regan tells Chris that she has met an invisible friend named
Captain Howdy whilst playing with a Ouija board she found in the house;
for some readers, this may signal Regan’s vulnerability to dark, supernat-
ural forces, if little else (39–40). Regan tells readers nothing about herself
beyond this. Later in the novel, from Chris’s exchange with Karras, read-
ers learn that Regan reads Nancy Drew, comic books, and possibly has an
“above average” IQ (241). However, readers do not learn which maga-
zines, music, films, or television shows Regan enjoys or is exposed to
through Chris. From what little is offered of her character, readers cannot
surmise, for instance, the potential media “tribe” to which Regan aspires
to belong or with which “great process” she might seek to identify herself,
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 395

to use McLuhan’s terminology (McLuhan and Zingrone 121–22). Beyond

indications that she enjoys painting, sculpting, and has some interest in
math, there is little evidence of a media “tribe,” particularly as she seems
drawn to older, esoteric technologies (The Exorcist 24–25, 39). As the
novel contains no references to specific comic books, films, music, or tele-
vision shows in relation to Regan’s character, readers might speculate that
Chris shelters her daughter from mass media. However, this is a difficult
speculation, as Chris does not testify to sheltering, or wanting to shield,
Regan from mainstream media; by contrast, Chris is vocal at other points,
concerning Regan being shielded from other forces, such as religion. Feel-
ing that “it would be dishonest,” the narrator relates that Chris “never
taught [Regan] religion”; and Chris becomes uncomfortable, even defen-
sive (“Who’s been telling you about God?”) when Regan asks her mother
why “God” lets people die (47).
By and large, readers only get to know Regan through Chris’s eyes.
This fact about her character places Regan at a remove from readers; but
more importantly, as a pre-teen of the early 1970s (according to McLuhan)
Regan should also be recognized as being at a remove from her mother.
Yet, Regan’s remove from Chris—her theoretical, subjective separate-
ness—is something of which Chris seems unaware. This becomes appar-
ent when Chris aligns her daughter (nicknamed “Rags”) with the “whole
‘Chris MacNeil’ thing” around which, she claims, her divorce revolved;
being a “star” made her marriage to Howard unsustainable, and she counts
Regan as part of that identity (116, 44). As Chris tells Sharon, “Rags was
part of it. She was in and he was out. Always me and Rags together on the
magazine covers; me and Rags in the layouts; mother and daughter, pixie
twins” (116). Regan of course is Chris’s daughter, not her twin; however,
Chris tells readers, in mass media images that include her daughter, Regan
is photographed to give the impression that she is Chris’s miniature dou-
ble. Rather than being cast as a source of humor, love, or even chaos in her
mother’s life, for the public of the novel’s world, Regan is cast as her
mother’s duplicate. She appears, perhaps, to play up Chris’s features
and/or as a prop, depicting Chris as an average woman—as a working
mom. Particularly in the midst of Regan’s possession, when Chris makes
the above remarks to Sharon, her daughter’s media appearances are things
Chris seems to reflect upon fondly and with pride; her remarks may even
suggest that this is also how Chris perceives Regan’s role in her actual life
396 J N T

before the possession. In this identity-focused, mainstream horror narra-

tive of the early 1970s, Chris’s characterization (however inconsistent or
contradictory) leaves no space for her daughter to possess a fully-actual-
ized, separate identity.
Regan also appears rather infrequently in the novel, prior to the brief
scene in which she urinates on the living room carpet during Chris’s din-
ner party (83). As Chris’s dinner party serves as “public relations” work
she promises to Dennings earlier in the novel (37), Regan urinating in
front of her mother’s guests may be read as a threat (by the demon infest-
ing Regan) to her alignment with Chris’s Hollywood “star” identity (44,
36). At this early point in the novel, Regan herself seems to threaten to
strip Chris of her “pixie twin,” public image counterpart (116). However,
by threatening her “pixie twin” double, the demonically-influenced Regan
threatens more than just her mother’s ability to influence others’ initial im-
pressions of her; damaging Chris’s public image stands to harm her
mother’s ability to procure the roles (e.g., “pixie”-like, “girl next door,”
Avon lady) that presumably made her a star in the first place. Thus, Regan
urinating on the rug not only mimics the behavior of a disobedient house
pet, it challenges the pleasant person Chris projects herself to be to the
world, perhaps attempting to coax a less pleasant personality to come
forth. Not only is Chris’s identity endangered, it is endangered by Regan
herself, whose behavior, and soon voice and appearance, she does not rec-
ognize. As the novel progresses, and Regan fully becomes someone Chris
does not know, Chris begins to unravel. With this, Blatty creates in The
Exorcist a new kind of ‘gap’ that widens between mother and daughter;
rather than being separated by a difference in age, Chris and Regan are
separated by a gap between the acceptable and the unacceptable, and this
horrifies Chris.
The term ‘gap’ is operative here, calling to mind the popular 1970s
bugbear, the “generation gap.” This term was customarily used, often in
media, to describe an inability to account for younger generations’—high
school and college-aged people’s—perceived aggression toward, and dis-
respect for, established figures of authority and traditional values. As de-
picted in the film The Strawberry Statement (1970), for instance, the label
“generation gap” was used to diminish and dismiss college students’
causes on the basis of their lack of focus and organization. This is an op-
erative term that, early on, Chris articulates as familiar to her; in the film
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 397

she is shooting with Dennings, there is a scene featuring a large student

demonstration (13). Vaguely defined political and social causes were a
regular trope in American films depicting youth cultures in the late 1960s
and early 1970s; these films would pay intermittent lip service to the anti-
war movement, Black Power, and women’s causes, but their tenuous sto-
rylines generally displayed “shifting and confused allegiances” (White
29). In the world of the novel, Chris’s version of Mr. Smith is apparently
no different; the narrator relates her perspective on the project:

Her mind, although untutored, never mistook a slogan for

the truth, and like a curious bluejay she would peck relent-
lessly through verbiage to find the glistening, hidden fact.
And so [the film’s] rebel cause, to her, was dumb. It didn’t
make sense. How come? She now wondered. Generation
gap? That’s a crock; I’m thirty-two. It’s just plain dumb,
that’s all, it’s . . . ! (14, original emphases)

Through her expression of distaste for the film’s “rebel cause,” Chris hints
that the project’s executives are likely only adopting a student insurrection
subplot for Mr. Smith to cash in on a youth culture trend, adopting its aes-
thetic cues (or, McLuhanian clichés) but ignoring the actual grounds for a
student demonstration. This becomes evident as she refers to a “generation
gap” as a “crock” basis for a “rebel cause.”
However, the gap that widens between Chris and Regan with her uri-
nating on the rug differs from what was depicted in film in that it is not
based on their respective ages but on the two characters’ suddenly varying
interests and investments in Chris’s public image and identity as a “star.”
This is one example of how mainstream horror fiction twists the norms,
not only of the novel’s world but of readers’ as well. Thus, with Chris, a
culturally clichéd and schizophrenic figure in the novel’s foreground,
Regan falls into the background where she cannot be explored or devel-
oped beyond the scope of Chris’s acknowledgement. This reading may
make Regan seem lost to her mother from the start, her demon possession
only dramatizing her existing condition. And indeed, readers have long
pointed out the ways Blatty’s novel seems to capitalize on 1970s readers’
presumed fears of generational conflict and the loss of one’s child (to rad-
icalism, drugs, etc.), as Hoppenstand has noted (48). Social issues like a
398 J N T

“generation gap” (real or imagined) or the loss of a child (literal or figura-

tive) become an audience’s presumed, collective fears only insofar as they
are continuously privately and publicly narrativized, in media and society,
factually and fictionally, as threats. That is to say, between newscasters’
offhand remarks about feminists abandoning their children for careers out-
side the home and Mary Tyler Moore navigating a generation gap with her
boss by being perky, it becomes difficult, barring extensive and special-
ized research, to verify American readers’ diverse fears and then track
them throughout The Exorcist. Rather, it may be more helpful to read the
novel’s themes of losing a child and the concept of a “generation gap” as
Chris’s fears, particularly as both jeopardize the “pixie”-like, “girl next
door” public image she has contrived and maintains.
Two of the novel’s thematic fears, then, crystallize around the novel’s
protagonist; once under the demon influence, Regan serves as a McLuhan-
ian medium for Chris’s (and/or the audience’s) fears. As a medium, Regan
functions as a probe by which readers may explore the norms and clichés
(however contradictory) that assemble Chris’s character; thus, Regan’s
condition probes the culturally schizophrenic way in which Chris adapts
her temperament, at specific times, around characters like Dennings and
Karras (McLuhan and Zingrone 247). Note, for instance, how Chris re-
veals her vulnerability and demonstrates her desperation to Karras for his
help:

“I’ve taken her to every goddam, fucking doctor psychia-

trist in the world and they sent me to you; now you send
me to them! [. . .] “Jesus Christ, won’t somebody help me?”
The heart-stopping shriek bolted raw above the river. Star-
tled birds shot up screeching from its banks. “Oh, my God,
someone help me!” Chris moaned as she crumpled to Kar-
ras’ chest with convulsive sobs. “Please help me! Help me!
Please! Please, help!” (226)

At this point in the novel, when Chris and Karras finally meet, Regan has
been resisting treatment and assaulting doctors (as well as Chris) presum-
ably for some time; therefore, when Karras glibly responds to her request
for an exorcism, Chris snaps. Although Father Karras’ parallel subplot
nearly alternates chapters with Chris’s narrative over the first half of the
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 399

novel, his character does not move into a prominent role until after Chris
tells her agent “that she wouldn’t be directing the segment” and after doc-
tors seem to have failed Regan (183). Thus, she is likely also, on some
level, embarrassed or insecure at this point in the narrative (particularly, as
she also alludes in this scene to the dinner party, which Karras did not at-
tend, where Regan urinated on the floor); here, her behavior toward Kar-
ras is a far cry from the impression she sought to project earlier in the
novel, while on set with a cursing, “gin-stoked” Dennings (21).
At Chris’s mention of exorcism and her possessed daughter, Karras’
behavior toward Chris also changes as she begins to break down. To her
question about getting an exorcism, he initially responds, “you’d have to
put him in a time machine and get him back to the sixteenth century. [. . .]
[I]t just doesn’t happen [. . .] [s]ince we learned about mental illness”
(224). However, as soon as Chris clarifies that her daughter is the one
needing the exorcism, the pace and tone of their meeting shifts. Almost as
quickly as Karras tries to explain that the Church rarely authorizes priests
to conduct this ritual, Chris starts shrieking and breaking down. “It is she
who needs psychiatric help,” the narrator wryly relates Karras’ thoughts,
as he attempts to “calm her; to humor; to stem hysteria”; “It’s all right, I’ll
go see her,” he agrees, after Chris’s shrieking and sobbing (226, original
emphasis). Regan’s condition functions as a medium because it opens
things up, reorganizing characters’ (and the broader narrative’s) norms and
ordering principles: Regan’s condition demands all of her mother’s atten-
tion, so she can no longer focus on her career (however frustrated she may
be with it), and Chris betrays insecurity about her image and identity
rather than the calculated virtuosity with which she seamlessly inhabited
them earlier. In a mainstream horror novel like The Exorcist, this reorga-
nizing occurs around the protagonist’s deepest fears (according to Chris,
this is death, while, in a McLuhanian reading, the loss of her child or a
“generation gap”), becoming the only things in Chris’s life that cannot be
brushed off with her customary cynicism or self-deprecation. As a
medium for her mother’s fears, Regan’s condition carries the ability to
alter characters’ (particularly Chris’s) behaviors, perceptions, and the ways
they/she relate to each other and themselves.
In the very next scene, following his concession, Father Karras arrives
at Chris’s home to meet Regan. With this scene change, the novel begins
to gradually bring Karras’ parallel narrative into sharper focus, in contrast
400 J N T

with previous sections overall focus on Chris. Yet, as The Exorcist shifts to
Karras, the narrator does not elaborate on details from this character’s ear-
lier subplot. Instead, Karras enters the main action in order to drive the
novel to its conclusion in two important ways: ostensibly, by intercepting
the possessing demon’s insurgency in the protagonist’s otherwise charmed
life, and more subtly, by conserving the cultural clichés that assemble
Chris MacNeil prior to her daughter’s possession. For instance, following
his first, disturbing visit with a possessed Regan MacNeil, Karras and
Chris retire to her study to discuss his assessment of the condition. This
conversational respite allows Chris to fall back into one of her public
roles, the self-deprecating “girl next door.” Ambivalent on a prognosis for
possession, Karras, who is also a trained therapist, discusses the possibil-
ity of a “split personality.” Unfamiliar with the psychological terminology
Karras uses, Chris responds with “Well, maybe I’m dumb” and soon there-
after, with a more exaggerated, “What is it? Am I really that stupid? Will
you tell me what it is in a way I can finally get through my head?” (239,
original emphasis). Karras follows with a long, professorial explanation of
the condition to which Chris dutifully listens. Yet, as if to suggest that her
public “girl next door” image is unraveling, as she seems to begin under-
standing the term “split personality,” she ironically retorts: “Father, that’s
so far out of sight that I think it’s almost easier to believe in the devil!”
(240, original emphasis). Unfortunately, this reprieve from Regan’s bed-
side only partially alleviates the threat that Chris registers, as she cannot
accept that “nothing is wrong with my daughter except in her head” (240).
As a result (playing devil’s advocate, so to speak), she challenges Kar-
ras’ theory by insisting he tell her that he knows “for a fact that [Regan]
doesn’t need an exorcism; that you know it wouldn’t do her any good”
(240, original emphasis). Ultimately, Karras assents to investigate Regan’s
symptoms before performing an exorcism; but before he leaves, as if sens-
ing his pronounced role in Chris’s life after this first visit, he tells her:
“[T]ry to keep away from your daughter. The more you’re exposed to her
present behavior, the greater the chance of some permanent damage being
done to your feelings about her. Stay clear. And slow down. You’ll be no
help to Regan, you know, with a nervous breakdown” (244–45). Despite
only just meeting Chris and being in Regan’s presence for but a short
while, Karras seems to intuit how Regan’s condition is affecting Chris’s
behavior, perception, and relation to others. Of course, particularly given
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 401

the mysterious circumstances surrounding Dennings’ death earlier in the

novel—having presumably fallen from Regan’s bedroom window when
Chris was not at home—readers could interpret Karras’ late narrative
prominence as a way for Blatty to bypass further narrative acknowledge-
ment of either Chris’s career difficulties or the changes accumulating
around her relationships, behavior, and (particularly self-) perception amid
Regan’s possession. In this way, Karras could be read as drawing narrative
attention away from Chris, seeming to cut short her character’s develop-
ment. For better or worse, however, as a mainstream horror fiction protag-
onist, a McLuhanian product of mass media, Chris cannot develop further
within Blatty’s novel. Particularly as the “monstrous” Regan threatens the
norms and clichés that assemble her identity, after a certain point in The
Exorcist, all Chris’s paradoxically-constructed character can do is come
unhinged. This is precisely why Karras’ character is needed to the extent
that he is late in the novel.
Whether or not Karras somehow discerns Regan’s impact on the com-
ponents of her mother’s identity, readers cannot be sure. Nevertheless,
Karras telling Chris to “stay clear” of Regan at this late point in the novel
should resonate with a particularly chilling irony for readers, as Chris’s
“feelings” for her daughter have likely already been affected by her condi-
tion. For instance, just as he is unaware of Regan urinating on the rug,
Karras does not know that, in a scene just before his first meeting with
Chris, Regan violated herself with a crucifix; in this horrifying scene,
Regan refers to Chris as “little pig mother” right before sexually assault-
ing her (and likely also traumatizing her) (214–16). The possessed, blood-
ied Regan then refers to herself as “sow,” “piglet,” and “my sweet honey
piglet,” darkly twisting Chris’s earlier image of “pixie twins” (215, 116).
Unlike readers, Karras does not know that the demon affecting Regan has
sought to horrify Chris by flouting expectations associated with her iden-
tity as Regan’s mother, as well as her role as a public figure.10 Here,
Regan’s potential as a McLuhanian probe is maximized to horrifying ends,
as she perverts the coordinates and organizing principles assembling a
twelve-year-old girl’s behavior, her mother’s relation to her, and her
mother’s relation to herself.11 Chris, as readers have known her, cannot re-
turn from this event, cannot develop past it; this is precisely why, very
shortly thereafter, she attempts to enlist Karras’ help with Regan’s condi-
tion—which she has, during some unknown interim, decided requires an
402 J N T

exorcism.12 Perhaps more importantly, Chris enlists Karras’ help rather

than simply institutionalizing Regan because she wants her identity (at
least, as Regan’s mother) back; Chris understandably tries to resist the
way possessed Regan probes and reorganizes the boundaries and norms of
her own self.
Yet, readers have little more than circumstantial evidence to conclude
that, in either her once married or professional life, Chris conceives of
Regan as anything more than her “pixie twin.” This becomes even more
obvious as Chris is not depicted with non-industry adult friends through
which readers might glimpse her personal life. Early on in the novel, read-
ers learn that Chris had a son (Jamie) who died as a young child before
Regan was born; following this event, Chris vowed to never to “give her-
self” to anyone like she did to Jamie—and Howard—again (16). Although
neither Chris nor the narrator state as much, Chris’s “vow” places Regan
in a very particular, different relation to Chris as compared to either
Howard or Jamie. And indeed, from what readers may gather, Chris does
not “give herself” so much to Regan as she seems to assimilate Regan to
her own image of herself—in relation to her divorce, to the directing op-
portunity, and finally, to how she is able to relate to Father Karras. Thus,
in a McLuhanian reading, Chris fears losing Regan insofar as losing her
child would mean losing a key component of her identity, which Chris
does not seem to wish to fundamentally change; this loss would constitute
a kind of “death” (a fear Chris herself articulates) for Chris herself (15,
36). Rather than Chris fearing, as readers presumably did, a “generation
gap,” as depicted in her own film and films like The Strawberry State-
ment, it is more likely she fears the widening gap between herself and
Regan. Otherwise, there is little evidence in the novel to suggest that Chris
fears a generation gap.
Gaps and inconsistencies in Chris’s character, such as what she does
immediately following Regan’s abject assault, become places where read-
ers may be horrified along with Chris and imagine her trauma, while re-
taining their focus on Regan’s encroaching possession. Yet, Chris cannot
easily be written off by mainstream readers as a feminist character (as was
common by 1971) and is able to maintain a generally appealing character-
ization. This is precisely why, at the novel’s conclusion, Chris’s previously
expressed dissatisfaction with her career disappears from the dialogue; the
demon’s palliation triggers the novel’s sudden conclusion, seeming to dull
 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 403

earlier considerations of the stresses that affect Chris, such as her divorce
and the film industry, once her identity as Regan’s mother is restored.
Since that identity is closely tied to her public image, even with Dennings
deceased and a directing opportunity lost, at the close of The Exorcist,
Chris is depicted as ostensibly having lost very little. By contrast, in pos-
session, Regan becomes an incomparable force of disorder in Chris’s life,
disrupting her ability to inhabit her customary roles—which Chris resists.
Through alternating scenes of abjection and horror, Reagan’s Eastertide
possession thus holds potential, for better or worse, to trigger Chris’s own
resurrection or reinvention, but importantly, this does not occur.
After Father Karras dies near the novel’s end, little is foreshadowed
concerning either Chris’s or Regan’s future; following a conversation with
Father Dyer (a colleague of Father Karras), she and Regan are simply de-
picted packing up the Georgetown house to return home to Los Angeles.
Although this ultimately suggests a return to a particular status quo,
Chris’s characterization in the novel nevertheless appealed to media mar-
kets that were “not unified, but divided—especially, but not solely by age”
because she is composed of contradictory, individually unaccounted for
details and attributes (Douglas 15). As a mass-market horror protagonist,
Chris is a component of the media that “work us over” as readers
(McLuhan and Fiore 26); complex, but not profound, her uncannily famil-
iar characterization is an incomplete circuit to be finished by readers. In
this way (and not entirely unlike an actor in a mainstream Hollywood
film) Chris in the novel is an intentionally incomplete portrait that readers
interpretively finish through the lens of their own values, norms and orga-
nizing coordinates; she is thus written to be variously interpreted, appeal-
ing to the country’s “lowest common denominator,” more resistant audi-
ences, and everyone in between (Douglas 14–15). Nevertheless, because
Chris’s crisis in The Exorcist may be read as revolving around threats to
her identity (and not her family, for instance), her character also holds po-
tential to afford readers new insights into early 1970s mass media portray-
als of and expectations for presumably average Americans as well.

Notes
1. Blatty’s novel was first published in 1971 and the edition used for this article was pub-
lished in 1994 by Harper Paperbacks. I have deliberately chosen to use the 1994 edi-
404 J N T

tion as I was unable to procure one from the 1970s. Following 2010 (and The Exor-
cist’s 40th anniversary), Blatty decided to slightly change the text of the novel, funda-
mentally altering the 1971 version; this renders newer prints of The Exorcist unusable
for my analytical approach. The 1994 text of the novel used for this essay is the same
as the one originally released by Blatty in 1971 (though some pagination variances
may exist).

2. Like Douglas, I adopt the specific term ‘schizophrenic’ here not as a reference to a
particular psychological diagnosis, but rather to indicate an idea or image that con-
tains, or is presented in direct juxtaposition with, its contradiction—something that, in
effect, cancels it out. For Douglas’s use of this Deleuzian term in Where the Girls Are,
see pp. 15, 100, 137, 143, 171, 263, 271, and 274.

3. Re-engagements with McLuhan’s work have also been occurring in feminist media
studies. See, for instance, Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh’s Re-Understanding Media:
Feminist Extensions of Marshall McLuhan.

4. The novel’s and film’s success with general American audiences would not be ac-
knowledged by The New Yorker until March 1974, when, in a humorous editorial titled
“Come Down to Queue,” Peter DeVries riffs on the vast passage of time that ensues
whilst one waits—with seemingly purgatorial interminability—in line to see Fried-
kin’s The Exorcist. This aspect of Kael’s review reflects a peculiar preoccupation
among American film reviewers and cultural critics of the early 1970s with questions
of artistry and commercial success—whether a writer should attain commercial suc-
cess via mass popularity rather than artistic merit.

5. See also my work in “The ‘Right-Looking Girl’ in the Raccoon Coat” as well as in The
American Novel After Ideology, 1961–2000.

6. I refer to Kael’s remark as odd here because film plots that were driven by a woman’s
perspective and experiences were not the general fare of mainstream American film,
which she surely knew when reviewing The Exorcist. Woman character-driven plots
were generally relegated to low-budget and independent film ventures that would not
be widely distributed to American audiences.

7. Also see 30:00 in Guy Fraumeni, “This is Marshall McLuhan.”

8. Also see, 30:00–53:00 in Fraumeni.

9. Also, 33:28–34:07 in Fraumeni.

 Chris MacNeil’s Characterization in The Exorcist 405

10. And, by extension, this is also likely why the demon within Regan mimics Karras’
mother during their early meetings.

11. I cite Regan’s specific assault of Chris (wherein she blasphemously tears her own
hymen and smears her mother’s face in the resultant blood) and not her assault of Dr.
Klein (which Chris witnesses on page 122) because—horrifying as the scene may be
to readers—neither Blatty’s narrator nor Chris herself register any reaction to the as-
sault of Dr. Klein.

12. Regan attacks Chris again, verbally this time, much later in the novel. Her attack is
more of a performance now that she and Chris have an audience—Father Karras.
Again, Regan calls Chris “sow mother,” attacking the emphasis she places on her ca-
reer: “‘It is you who have done it! Yes, you with your career before anything, your ca-
reer before your husband, before her’ [. . .]. ‘Go to priests, will you? Priests will not
help!’ Chris’s hand began to shake. ‘She is mad! She is mad! The piglet is mad! You
have driven her to madness and to murder’” (349–50, original emphases). Possessed
Regan’s manipulation in the above quote goes still deeper, seeming to expose certain
aspects of Chris’s life/character that Karras (and readers) might not otherwise have
known or fully recognized; in short, Chris’s guilt is also sought in this scene. However,
as possessed Regan’s statement to Chris here reads, for me, as more directed at Karras
(and perhaps also readers) than at Chris, I elected to cordon it off from the main article
text.

Works Cited
Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. Harper Paperbacks, 1994.

——— . William Peter Blatty on The Exorcist: From Novel to Screen. Bantam Books,
2015.

Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge, 1990.

Cull, Nick. “The Exorcist.” History Today, vol. 50, no. 5, 2000, pp. 46–51.

Decter, Midge. “The Liberated Woman.” Commentary, Oct. 1970, https://www.commen-

tary.org/articles/midge-decter-3/the-liberated-woman/

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. Times
Books, 1995.
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Fosburgh, Lacey. “Traditional Groups Prefer to Ignore Women’s Lib.” The New York
Times, 26 Aug. 1970, p. 44.

Fraumeni, Guy, director. “This is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage.” NBC
Experiment in Television, season 1, episode 4, 19 Mar. 1967, https://youtu.be/
cFwVCHkL-JU.

Hodgson, Godfrey. The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of Conservative Ascen-
dancy in America. Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Hoppenstand, Gary. “Exorcising the Devil Babies: Images of Children and Adolescents in
the Best-Selling Horror Novel.” Images of the Child, edited by Harry Eiss, Bowling
Green State UP, 1994, pp. 35–58.

Kael, Pauline. “The Current Cinema: Back to the Ouija Board.” The New Yorker, 7 Jan.
1974, pp. 59–62.

McLuhan, Eric, and Frank Zingrone, editors. The Essential McLuhan. Basic Books, 1995.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Mechanical Bride. Gingko Press, 1951.

——— . Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. McGraw Hill, 1964.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Ef-
fects. Gingko Press, 1967.

Rodrigues, Laurie. The American Novel after Ideology, 1961–2000. Bloomsbury, 2020.

Sharma, Sarah, and Rianka Singh, editors. Re-Understanding Media: Feminist Extensions
of Marshall McLuhan. Duke UP, 2022.

White, Mimi. “1970: Movies and the Movement.” American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes
and Variations, edited by Lester D. Friedman, Rutgers UP, 2007, pp. 24–47.

Zeisler, Andi. Feminism and Pop Culture. Seal Press, 2008.

440 J N T

Brandon Sanderson, and Ursula Le Guin, on themes ranging from repre-

sentations of indigenous Americans in fantasy and the non-anglophone
fantastic, to trans and non-binary identities in contemporary fantasy.
Greene has presented his work at conferences throughout the UK, includ-
ing GIFCon 2020 and the Once and Future Fantasies conference in 2022.

Laurie A. Rodrigues is a scholar and teacher of American literatures and

multiethnic American literatures and cultures of the nineteenth through
twenty-first centuries; she is also a scholar and writer of critical theory.
Her first monograph, The American Novel after Ideology, 1961–2000, was
recently released in paperback by Bloomsbury Academic (2022). In this
study, Rodrigues explores the ways American novels have reflected ideol-
ogy’s qualitative changes following the Second World War. She has also
published articles on the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simp-
son, and on the American news media, in addition to literary articles on
novels by authors such as J. D. Salinger and Carlene Hatcher Polite. She is
currently at work on her second monograph.
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