Watched "Emily Rose" tonight, and accidentally cut to an episode of the The Simpsons on TV, which I watched for a while out of morbid fascination: looks like the networks are in full-on propaganda mode. Among many other anti-conservative slams, a Rush Limbaugh-like radio talk show host defends Sideshow Bob (the closest character to a villain in the series) as "just another persecuted conservative." Homer listens to and dumbly agrees with everything the 'conservative' talk show host says.

Oddly, I suspect that's exactly what a good portion of the audience was doing while watching The Simpsons. Are people this easily led? The television tells us how to think about a certain group — don't we see what's going on? Do we vapidly baaaah right along, on cue? (Sadly, from what I pick up in daily conversations, that does seem to be the case.)

Anyway, back to the movie: Like so many other films, "Emily Rose" should remove the "based on a true story" bit at the beginning. Perhaps "inspired by", in the minimal sense that a true story happened somewhere, and then later, this movie was made. Not a bad film, if one takes it as a work of fiction, but rather stunningly different than the real life events which transpired in Germany several decades ago.

Most the accounts of Anneliese Michel, the German girl who served as the distant inspiration for "Emily Rose", begin with something like: "Anneliese had a seemingly normal childhood and as she grew older Anneliese became deeply religious..." But the more telling details don't emerge until ones does some research.

To the contrary, Anneliese's youth was highly unusual, and undoubtedly troubled. Before her birth, her mother had conceived her older sister illegitimately. "As a result, her mother suffered great shame and was forced to wear a black veil on her wedding day." [source] "When Anneliese was a child, her mother encouraged her to atone for the sins of illegitimacy." (Err, wouldn't that have been her mother's sin, not hers?)

Her later behavior (sleeping on a stone floor, eating gruesome things) is likewise depicted as a remarkable change, but, in fact, before the "possession" started she had already been sleeping "on a bare stone floor to atone for the sins of wayward priests and drug addicts." In the movie, a demonic influence is depicted as prevented her from eating, in real life Anneliese (underline added) "forced herself to fast because she believed that it would rid her of Satan's influence. At the time of her death, she weighed only 68 lbs." The real life story took years to unfold, not months, and Anneliese only began speaking in "demonic" voices after the release of "The Exorcist" in 1974, which had depicted the same phenomenon. I found no reports (none) of any "supernatural" activity associated with this case, and even her own (Catholic) church authorities ultimately decided she wasn't, in any way, possessed.

Anneliese's theology was also quite deviant from orthodox Christianity. She claimed to have been possessed by "demons", but she seemingly confused the idea of a "demon" with a dead person — Hitler, Nero, and "a disgraced Frankish Priest from the 16th century" [source] are all people, not "demons." Where the Christian religion teaches each is responsible for their own sins (and that Christ paid the penalty for our sins, if we accept it) Anneliese seemed to spend her life "atoning" for the sins of others, rather than her own, or rather than believing Christ atoned for them. "[E]ven close to her death she spoke of dying to atone for the sins of the wayward youth and renegade priests." Such a conviction would indicate she didn't even believe in Jesus, as depicted in the bible.

So what do I think?

As a fictional story, the first two-thirds of the "Emily Rose" are a taught, tense courtroom drama with some spooky supernatural undertones. Sadly, for reasons I don't want to divulge, the ending doesn't quite live up to the promise set up earlier in the in film. Worth a rental, if you like courtroom drama and a bit of fairly well-done supernatural ambiance.

Regarding the real-life "Emily Rose", it's clear that this girl was brought up with some very strange beliefs, was probably anorexic, and probably also thrived on the ensuing attention. As a Christian, I'm sad that, contrary to the martyr she's portrayed as in the movie, she apparently never encountered the God of the Christian faith: who loved her and died to assure her that sins could be forgiven — but also makes it clear that she is (and we are) not "holy" enough to atone even for our own sins, much less those of others ("drug addicts" and whoever we might imagine superiority to). Alas, such beliefs were (are?) frighteningly common to a variant of Catholicism I encountered often in my youth. (For the record, this seems to be changing, thankfully.)

I don't think her parents were especially negligent for preventing her from being forced-fed, any more than one could charge Karen Carpenter's friends and loved ones with negligence. Other than the attention it gave her (though a similar kind of attention is associated with medical treatment), it doesn't seem the attempts at "exorcism" contributed in any meaningful way to her death — it should be clear from own statement above, that she herself wanted to die to fulfill a narcissistic fantasy of being a "martyr" who saves nameless, faceless others.

I also don't believe this was particularly a 'religious' tragedy: one can find numerous of people engaged in the same sorts of seemingly self-denying behaviors not far from where I live (near Boulder, Colorado) — only they're atoning for the environmental sins for other, less holy humans; and I've had friends who have, sadly, engaged in self-mutilating and self-destructive behavior because they craved the attention it brought. But since Anneliese was raised in a "religious" context, her variant of these behaviors played themselves out using the religious vocabulary accepted by her family.