the groundhog day project

For some reason, every time I watch The Exorcist , I forget that it starts with that sequence at the excavation in Iraq. Of course, the movie is not called The Possessed (though I am pretty sure that I have seen more than one movie with that title); it is not about Regan (Linda Blair) but about Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) and, even moreso, Father Karras (Jason Miller). Something Clover (1992) tries to explain "this gendered division of narrative labor--to understand what it is about the male crisis that needs harnessing to a narrative of female hysteria or indeed psychosis" (p. 70). While Regan's story drives the narrative, the narrative belongs to those two men (and primarily Karras). Man versus the devil. The girl is just their battleground. But, what kind of battleground is she? Kinder and Houston (1987) write about the "psychological interpretation" presented in the film to explain Regan's initial extraordinary behaviour--her parents' divorce ...

Honestly, though I'm a vegetarian or whatever, I don't much care, as PETA did, that the cast ate wolf stew to get into the mood for the film. Now, I don't know the status of wolves in Alaska currently, endangered or what have you. There was a bit of a controversy at the time, though. Liam Neeson, unlike his fellow cast members, went back for seconds. PETA complained: "Neeson's stance on kindness to animals is sorely out of step with the rest of the world." Out of step with PETA maybe. The rest of the world? Not so much. The rest of the world seems to be just fine with torturing animals to get some meat to eat. A couple notes: the film was shot in Smithers, British Columbia. It is legal to trap and kill wolves in British Columbia (or was at the time; maybe that's changed. I don't know). Wolf stew (or the use of wolf carcasses in the film) was not illegal. I was going to point out that Liam Neeson also is not an American citizen (while PETA is an Ameri...