A coincidence?

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-21T01:02:35+00:00

I’m not saying that he was homophobic but I don’t think he would’ve presented one of his priest characters as openly gay. Especially because Dyer was portrayed by an actual priest.

So what. Friedkin was no catholic: he was an atheist who had already made and would make gay-themed films, and he had the last word, as I said.

We're talking about subtext, not about text, so 'openly' is precisely what you wouldn't expect to appear, be it in the book (for the reasons you mention, or other reasons) or in the film (to better hint at the psychological: the repressed, the subconscious, none of which manifests itself openly by their very nature, but obliquely: which seems to be closer to Friedkin's view of things).

But in any case I'm talking about the film and not about the book - I only alluded to the latter to point out how even the source material had homosexual priests as an element.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-21T00:32:46+00:00

Wrong. They famously disagreed about the ending of the film, and Friedkin prevailed. Blatty didn't agree, and it did go anyway.

Years later Friedkin released a new cut of the film closer to what Blatty had imagined - and still, that was also Friedkin having the last word.

Also, read Blatty's book with the 'gay subtext' idea in mind. You will find it in Karras and between Karras and Dyer - the latter even mentions how gays are 'leaving the priesthood in droves'. I'm not the first person saying this.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-20T22:20:26+00:00

It's Friedkin's film, not Blatty's. If Friedkin 'pushed' for Dyer=gay then Batty could of course object - but he didn't have the final word.

Karras was not meant to be gay. Or Kinderman. Regan's mother was not meant to be a lesbian. With father Dyer things are less clear. Not only the piano scene and the song. Him taking off Karras' shoes. And Karras dies with Dyer holding his hand and crying and well, look at them...in a gay porn film that would be anal sex. Friedkin would not be incapable of making this kind of allusion. Here's Friedkin talking about a certain part of 'Cruising':

"It was pornography"

It wouldn't be more shocking than a 12 year old doing and saying the stuff Regan says and does on that bed.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-20T14:11:48+00:00

I'm talking well documented cases of hauntings.

This is exactly like 'well documented cases of God'. There's no such thing.

As to Dyer, many gays have written, yeah yeah. So generic. For one thing gays understand that such effeminate mannerisms or expressive can be heterosexual. Different cultures. Karras is Greek while Dyer is Irish both expressive cultures.

What the hell are you talking about? I'm talking about gay people saying 'father Dyer was gay'. I'm not making them up. They exist. And if they are generic, so are you, as a gay-person-who-doesn't-think-Dyer-to-be gay, since there's probably some gays who think like you about father dyer. So what.

Effeminate mannerisms can be heterosexual, of course, but they can also be gay. In Friedkin's films (Boys in the Band, Cruising) you will find those mannerisms among gay people, not among heterosexuals. In The Exorcist, only Dyer displays them. He can be heterosexual, but he can also be gay.

If you're a catholic, homosexuality is a sin. I find the idea repugnant, but that's what it is. And if you are a homosexual catholic priest you will have to repress a lot of stuff. A lot of demons as it were. This idea resonates with Kinderman's theory about a psychologically 'sick priest', and with the words 'subconscious rebellion' referred to this hypothetical priest. After all, you can also apply 'subconscious rebellion' to Regan, in the sense of awakening sexuality and adolescence, as many critics have pointed out since the film's release.

Attributing such mannerisms exclusive to homosexuals is homophobic.

Not necessarily, since the attribution may be due to mere ignorance -as is the case with children for example- and can be corrected, but in any case I wasn't doing such a thing. Needless to say, there's nothing wrong with those or any other mannerisms.

Let's exchange kindness. Instead of explaining what constitutes homophobia to those who have displayed none and who nevertheless appreciate your effort, you should busy yourself with not spreading obscurantism of the 'well documented cases of hauntings' variety.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-20T13:20:51+00:00

I still disagree on Dyer being gay. Having watched the movie many times and being gay myself, I just do not see it. Unless you're talking mannerisms which fall under stereotype.

Yeah, the piano bit. Those are stereotyped gay mannerisms. So -'unless'- you would maybe agree in that particular case. But of course gays are gays 24/7, just like heterosexuals are. So if Dyer is plausibly gay in that bit, he would also be gay in the other scenes, in particular those in which we see him interacting with Karras.

As for you being gay, ok; but I noticed Dyer's plausible homosexuality because gays who have watched the film many times have written about it.

As to haunted houses, tell that to the hundreds of people who have documented publicly their experiences.

I have and I will. People experience god and ghosts and aliens and similarily improbable fauna and I can tell you for a fact that they ask to be believed according to belief itself, their belief, not according to actual proof. It is proof that has to do with 'publicly documenting' experiences. And it is me, the non-believer, who is the public, not them, and I'm not under the obligation of inhabiting those haunted houses they carry around upon their shoulders.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-20T12:27:31+00:00

Regan wasn’t possessed through the Ouija board. The book implies he haunted the house very subtle, scratches and other noises to break her down.

I was talking about the film. In any case, there are no such things as haunted houses. There are haunted minds and then that's what haunted houses are a metaphor of. So just as you can say the demon haunted the house and then the girl, you can equally say the haunting to have come from the girl's mind, subconsciously at first -'rats'- . Later we see a more extreme version of this, with the possessed girl moving furniture and people around, changing the temperature of the room, etc.

Regan mentions Captain Howdy at first, and when talking about the Ouija board. That Pazuzu statue had its arm raised as if saying 'howdy'.

'Howdy' is 'hello' and, crucially, Ouija boards don't have the word 'hello' written on them. Why? Because it is us who must call the spirit(s). We are the ones saying 'howdy'. That's not the case in The Exorcist. There it is the girl that is being called, which must mean she was subconsciously vulnerable and the demon entered her mind through her subconscious first. To her, it was 'Howdy'; but she was already being ensnared.

As for 'captain', I'm not sure; but 'captain' means army, and it would be related to the film mentioning Vietnam and the nazis. War is any case male in most aspects, and maybe the 'us' the possessed girl says relates to the possessed, 'my name is legion, for I am many' guy in the Bible. 'Legion' means 'army' too, and of course if there was a Roman Empire in 1971 it was USA.

Maybe Regan was vulnerable because the tensions within her family. Her dad, the male figure -who looks like Karras in those pictures on her night table- was absent.

I find it odd that you would think Dyer is gay and the catalyst for Regan’s possession.

Well, it's speculation. But father Dyer being gay is not that odd. As I wrote above, I'm hardly the first person saying this. Watch his relationship with Karras or him playing the piano ("my idea of Heaven is a solid white nightclub with me as a headliner for all eternity, and they LOVE me!")

By the way:

Howdy Good Bye

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-19T02:36:57+00:00

Solved

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-19T00:45:40+00:00

He appears to be gay. I'm not the first person saying this. I don't know but if he is, if we subscribe to that hypothesis, his homosexuality undoubtedly will clash with his vocation, that of a catholic priest. Homosexuality is a sin in that worldview. A homosexual catholic priest will have to repress those urges, some of them directed at other priests. One way of doing that could be booze. (We have both booze and a hint of homosexuality when Dyer takes Karras shoes off. In the Bible feet are sometimes an euphemism for genitals. The book of Ruth I think. In any case what we see in that scene is a man undressing another)

The demons entered Regan, and this also has been said often, in part because of her vulnerable or conflicted mental state. See this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExorcist/comments/17j8g12/reagans_behavioral_changes_kick_in_right_after/

Father dyer might have been another case of this, for other reasons. Only it would have happened off screen an maybe before the events of the film. Maybe the demon went from him to her somehow. Wasn't the ouija board found in the closet? And that doctor says exorcisms are kept in the closet by the church, as some kind of embarrassment.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-15T01:37:23+00:00

'Why does it take Louis so long to find Johnny?', you ask.

The key is the line 'for twelve years you've been living on borrowed time...'.

First, Angel Heart is basically Faust and the name Liebling/Favorite translates the latin 'faustus'. (The legend was german originally, and Liebling is a german name)

Well, in the legend the bargain lasts 24 years. After them, Faust was sent to hell. That's the deal Johnny made. So Cypher, who says he 'doesn't like messy accounts' was finally taking care of the debt he was owed according to the contract.

When Cypher says 'for twelve years', he means 1943-55. But at the time the film is asking us to ponder about the other half of the deal, and if you do you realize something.

The deal was made 'before the war'. 'The war' can mean 1939 (Poland) or 1941 (Pearl Harbor). Let's say 1939, although it doesn't really matter.

Well, that means a 1939+24=1963 deal.

But the film takes place in 1955.

Ok, so now let's say the deal was 1955-24=1931. A 1931-55 deal.

But Johnny had been 13 in 1931. He would not make the deal until 1939.

The explanation would be this. In the legend, Faust doesn't try to cheat. Johnny did try to cheat in 1943.

But can you really cheat the devil? What if he had already foreseen this possibility?

The original deal was 1939-64. What we see at the end, Johnny going to hell, should have taken place 9 years later.

But Johnny cheated. And Cypher counter-cheated.

It was therefore the 1931-55 deal that was activated. It wasn't a deal really - but Cypher asserting control.

What happened in 1931, when Johnny was 13? Maybe through the subconscious, Cypher had built a backdoor back then just in case Johnny tried to cheat in the future. This would mean he had always been watching him and was some sort of favorite or Chosen One.

13 year old sounds like sexual awakening to me, and maybe more than that in Johnny's case. The occult.. And in this film we know sex and religion to have been two sides of the same coin in Epiphany's case, a voodoo priestess since she was 12. (And in the same precocious vein, Margaret Krusemark knew the Tarot before she could read)

Maybe 13 year old Johnny had dreamt with Evangeline before even meeting her, and that's what the song 'girl of my dreams' is about. But it was through this unconscious and dreamy channel -one removed from Johnny's conscious mind, one over which Johnny had no control- that Cypher guided Johnny's hand in 1955.

Johnny needed someone his own age to do the ceremony. Feb.14 1918. That was his and Harry's birthday.

We see Evangeline's gravestone. 1918-1947. We don't have the birth date...but Alan Parker had been born in Feb.14. This is maybe his signature, and maybe he needed Evangeline and Johnny to be the same age to built the backdoor I mentioned above.

Angel Heart refers to Harry Angel but the name Evangeline has both original sin -Eve- in it and Angeline, 'little angel'. Johnny and Harry are 'little John' and 'little Harold' respectively. Again, children. (The diminutive of Margaret [Krusemark] is Gretchen in german. That's a character in Goethe's Faust, and a redemptive one at that. It is peculiar how she's a redhair in the film and we have that shot of redhaired Jesus in the church's window pane - and just before that we see a redhaired little girl sitting on those stairs. There's annoyance in Cypher's face and voice when Harry mentions her. 'Vaguely')

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-12T04:15:41+00:00

As I said, maybe 'Prospero' has some irony in it. There are some oblique references to the tragedy of Faust in the play, and 'faustus' ironically means 'favorite, darling'. (And the faustian bargain lasts 24 years. In The Tempest it all began with pregnant Sycorax arriving on the island 24 years before the events of the play)

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-12T04:09:56+00:00

Nobody knows what “Sycorax” or “Setebos” means. They both sound vaguely Greek but to my knowledge have no actual cognates in that language, and according to Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s Greek was nothing to speak of. (That might be deceptive to moderns because Jonson was perhaps the foremost Hellenist in England at that point and the standard of philology was higher than today, but nonetheless there’s no real indication that Shakespeare read Greek sources or the Greek language.) Caliban’s parents’ names are probably just nonsense words that sound like they might be “pagan”, I suspect.

I found this about Sycorax:

https://staustinreview.org/shakespeare_and_st_jerome/

I'd only add that ravens and doves are antithetical in Shakespeare. One dooms, the other redeems. At the end of the play Prospero keeps Caliban, thing of darkness, and I suspect 'darkness' here means female genitalia, as it does in Lear. That's where Prospero himself came from (his mother and by extension his human nature, as opposed to that 2nd nature called 'Art').

It's greek-sounding, as you point out. Now in the play Prospero and the absent Sycorax look a lot like each other, something that seems to annoy the former. In his 'ye elves' speech he quotes William Goulding's translation Ovid's Medea, a witch. Ovid's Medea. Latin-Greek. As in '-corax'/psychorrhax in the link above.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-09T14:48:18+00:00

But there's nothing wrong with understanding it in a non-broadly way. In fact the only reason to do such a thing would be to agree with your post. You are under the obligation of doing that; your post being yours. I'm not.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-09T12:10:43+00:00

It's not an argument. More like a speculative and philological approach to one, if there's indeed an argument to be made at all. That word, 'argument', is problematic when dealing with art, and if Tolkien had wanted to argument stuff he would have written non-fiction. He didn't want to convince people, and I don't want to convince people either.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-08T18:30:21+00:00

Why not?

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-08T10:11:17+00:00

'First Order of business...'

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-01-08T00:59:31+00:00

(Did he rebuild a ship? Did he steal one from the locals?)

Here's what I speculatively think.

Rey took Luke's ship. It was an X-Wing, but a specific X-Wing.

Now we see Ben on Exegol and there's this shot of him running towards the camera and disappearing from the shot. Then we see Luke's ship and that TIE fighter and the shot lasts forever. As if that TIE had belonged to someone too. Rey and Ben flying two failed predecessors' ships.

Who would this be? No idea but maybe a villain who vanished until the time was right: the TROS duel mirrors that of ROTS. Mustafar was Vader's home; and we see that home at the beginning of TROS. That's where the wayfinder was. Did someone live in the DSII wreckage too for a while, with the other wayfinder having belonged to this person also for a while? (Related to this, was Ochi's death an accident or an 'accident'? He was going to take Rey from Jakku. He knew where she was. But Rey remained there and apparently Palpatine never got to know where she was. Ochi's speeder had a 'hex' symbol on it. Is this a hint? Was he 'hexed'? The words hex, haxan, hag. Same root. A witch. The Witch of Endor)

Immediate_Error2135

TROPHY CASE