Jennifer Carpenter in The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Better living through melodrama

To everyone's apparent surprise, The Exorcism of Emily Rose may yet prove to be this year's most transcendent American film--that is to say, it may be the film that most efficiently transcends its outright shittiness to become some sort of cultural phenomenon. Previous examples of this type of phenomenal celluloid poo include Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, two films that--like Emily Rose, not so coincidentally--make some claim on pop spirituality as its own style of unshakeable faith.

Following last week's Wall Street Journal piece breaking down how churchgoers love a good white-girl-got-the-devil-in-her movie (minus the vomit, spinning heads and clitoral stimulation by crucifix, of course), Sunday's Times features A.O. Scott taking a near-sighted swing at Emily Rose and Just Like Heaven?two films which evidently boast the potential to represent a true sea change in Hollywood ideology:

Should movies like Emily Rose, released by Sony, and Just Like Heaven, from DreamWorks, be interpreted as peace offerings in the culture wars, or as canny attempts to open a new front in the endless battle for the soul of the American public? Will liberals now have a chance to complain, as conservatives have for so long, that Hollywood is ideologically biased and out of touch with its audience? Will we ever be able to sit back and say, "It's only a movie"? I hope not. The arguments we are having among ourselves are too loud and insistent to be drowned out or silenced in the false comfort of the movie theater.

Memo to Tony: The only "loud and insistent" argument at hand is the one that says these films (Emily Rose, in particular) possess any value beyond commodified pandering to self-loathing Christian audiences. While I know the reality is incompatible with the deeper critical question, the ideology we are dealing with is capitalism--basic supply and demand: In a country where 80 percent of the population digs the Baby Jesus, movies dealing with Him or His Dad's Ex-Friend in some hyped-up dramatic fashion are going to rope people in. And gettin' right with the Lord at the movies is just so much easier than actually hauling your saved ass out of bed on Sunday morning and going to church.

That said, Scott's "endless battle" has less to do with souls than it does with standards; bad movies know no ideology, and Emily Rose--with its inconceivable waste of Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson and Campbell Scott in the service of a script that a Law & Order producer would avoid even if it was the only reading material in his bathroom--is such a bad movie that it demands a far more secular reckoning than anything The New York Times can offer. After all, besides sporting events, the multiplex is the last place liberals and conservatives can come together for a shared cultural experience, and they do so by the millions for an elite handful of ideas plunged into the marketplace by corporations.

So is God in the details? Of course He is--in the eye on the back of a dollar bill. On the other hand, things like this don't just happen by accident.

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