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the fake joke, the real joke
Just watched "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." Had the great idea of watching it alone, in the dark.
Whoever played Emily Rose did some really great screams and guttural, meaty gibberish. She also spoke very fast and made-- of all things-- puns! In several languages! I enjoyed the rather musical, playful sound of them. "And what a fine Word it was!"
Will admit that I was a little rattled about 2/3 of the way through, mostly by the visuals. Seeing someone with their body contorted and their face twisted up is enough to rattle most humans.
People freak out just from seeing others hanging upside-down from their seat-belts after car accidents. There might not even be blood, but they cut the belts anyway and haul the person out even though the bumping and dragging might exacerbate a neck/back injury. Why? We don't like unnatural poses. We don't like twisted faces or grimacing smiles.
It was mostly the facial expressions. I loved the actress's deadpan when she's all twisted up on the floor...
...but wish I could have found an image of my most favorite one. Would use it as an avatar, it was that striking. Her eyes are slanted and wide, her mouth is pursed into a sort of closed howl, and her skull looks as though it's about to tear through her skin. I love the strangeness of it.
The demonic aspect of the movie didn't do as much. Maybe because I've ridden that tiger through the jungle and came out smiling. Not the point.
The big joke is that people are so concerned with what "caused" Anneliese Michel's illness that they miss her completely. Oh yes, there was a real girl, not an actress, who went through that hell. Her name was Anneliese Michel, and from age 16 - 23, she suffered the same sort of violent attacks portrayed by the movie. Worse, in some ways. And I don't mean "most people don't know about Anneliese Michel," because everybody and their ant farm knows that "Exorcism" was based on a true story. No, I posit that everyone is so busy trying to figure out what was the cause of Annaliese/Rose's sickness that they overlook her as a person.
I'm not one of those "if only she'd had proper medicine" people, one of those twits who claims to know and explain everything. In real life, Anneliese Michel did have psychiatric help. That was the first thing they tried. It didn't do her much good. In fact, her condition deteriorated so much that she became suicidal. Go psychiatric medicine. I laugh at you with your nose-in-the-air "how-do-you-fare?" like you can know people's brains better than they do by asking about their mothers, then prescribing a silver bullet to exorcise the same big scary boogie-man. He is still the boogie-man, isn't he? You don't like to admit it, but he is. You can't explain him how-some-ever you try.
But. am also not one of those people who claim that all mental illnesses are caused by demons. Those people are really scary. If you see one, stand very still. Their vision is based on movement.
Truthfully, I don't claim to know the "cause" of her actions. Schizophrenia, Lucifer, I don't know.
You can never understand another person fully. We like to think we can try, because we do not like the unfamliar. But to try to explain Anneliese Michel with either one is to reduce her to a set of typicalities and symptoms. Cause, cause, what was the cause? Everyone looks so hard at the supposed cause, trying to match up her behavior to their abstracted notions, that they miss Anneliese herself. Trying to explain someone this way titilates our curiousity, satsifies some kind of voyeuristic streak especially when a young, pretty girl is involved, but it does not do the patient much good.
Exorcism failed. They tried it over and over again and it did not work. Neither did throwing pills at her. I'm not against modern medicine, for the record. It saves lives and does wonderful things. But it didn't fully address whatever went wrong with Annaliese.
So Dreadnaught, eins zwei drei, so high and mighty, vier fünf sechs, what would you have done for her? What could you possibly do, you snippet?
For one thing, I would have stopped trying so hard to define her illness. I also would have stopped trying to attribute her behavior to demons or diagnoses. Instead of trying to see whether it conformed to this or that, I would have observed it as it happened. I would then listen to Anneliese herself. See, most psychiatrists claim that behavior explains the mind. This works out well with the sane, because we have both sides of the equation and can "check the answers." With the mentally ill, one side of the equation is missing. Suddenly, the behaviors don't explain a whole lot. Psychiatry's explanation for this? "Their behavior is just completely inexplicable."
Give 'em a hand, folks.
The behavior of the insane does not make sense to us, but it makes sense to the person in question. In order to help we must try to understand where the person is coming from, what events in their world are causing them to act this way. So I would have sat down with Annaliese and we would have had a little chat. Not about demons. About clothes or the trees outside or what was there for dessert that day-- the kinds of things that girls talk about. The things that we both can relate to, that we both share, so she would not feel completely isolated. Anneliese did not need yet another person gaping at her as if she were an exhibit in a zoo. That'd only make her feel more lonely. Instead, we would discuss good, concrete things such as movies and books and so on. The way she looked at the world would give a therapist a great deal of insight as to her mental state. I'd observe what sort of events seemed to set off her attacks, and relate those with past attacks. Such things do not come out of the clear blue sky. I'm not saying there is a "cause," but I am saying that they make sense to the patient. Is there an emotional state that seems to bring these on? Or being around a certain kind of person? Hearing about tragedies? I don't know, but I can look for clues as to her state of mind when these things happen.
I'd look at how Anneliese related to those around her. What is her relationship with her family? With friends? Is there any kind of pattern to her interpersonal actions, ie, does she inhabit a specific role and try to arrange others in a kind of constellation of roles? Why might this be so?
I'd ask her to tell me about her past. Not so I could look for "causes," but so I could see how her present state colored her account, and what those events meant for her today, and how both the past and present affected her view of the future.
In otherwords I'd try to understand the person, not put a name to the illness. People don't like that. They want something they can name and rattle off a list of symptoms and know completely. Dealing with a person is different. You can never fully explain a person, and the terrible affliction of Anneliese Michel is the perfect example. She bothers people because they cannot put her in a box and be done with her. She might be a saint of God or a saint to the unknowable nature of the human psyche. She might be a schizophrenic or someone who screams out from the vasty dark deep.
Explaining the unknowable. That's the real joke. it didn't work back in the midieval era and it doesn't work now just because we've gotten all puffed up about splitting the atom.
Here she is, the real human being. I keep this picture because it humbles me to look into the eyes of the tragic, eerie inexplicable Other Person and to admit that it is such.
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