By first showing us Pazuzu not in his "real," demonic form, but in a representational, monumental form, Friedkin offers us a hint as to the true threat that the demon represents. Pazuzu is a holdover from an outmoded, ancient belief system, an embodiment of an evil for which the modern, complacent, atheistic America into which it has been introduced (in this very sequence) cannot account. Fr. Merrin seems to understand this threat simply by gazing upon its graven image in the ruins.

Pazuzu itself appears to understand the power of the monumental horror-image to concretize evil in a supremely disturbing fashion; in fact, the next true monumental horror-image we see - a desecration of a statue of the Virgin Mary - is its doing. A series of leisurely cranes, pans, and tracks follow a bespectacled priest as he enters Georgetown University's chapel to place flowers by the statues of the Holy Family. As he crosses the altar after placing the first batch in front of St. Joseph, he stops short, and the camera swoops in on his face as he looks up. We cut to a still shot of the Virgin, centered and illuminated by the light from the chapel's windows. Crude red and black breasts and an enormous, conical penis have been affixed to the statue, whose hands have also been painted blood red. The priest reacts with a horrified whisper of "Oh God."

This horror-image, once again literally "monumental," comes a solid half hour into the film. We have yet to see anything explicitly supernatural or violent; nevertheless, the fact that something profoundly wrong is happening has been undeniably confirmed by this indisputable, literally concrete depiction of evil. The defiance of contemporary Judeo-Christian conceptual schemes implicit in the ancient Pazuzu statue is made explicit in this direct violation of a Christian icon. Furthermore, it is worthy of note that by this point in the film, Regan has been shown to be an amateur sculptor. As the gaudy coloring and childish workmanship of this desecration indicate, Regan was the vessel in which the demon committed its crime; her talents neatly lend themselves to its mission to boldly proclaim the presence of irrational, diabolical forces in the world. Pazuzu, it would seem, picks its victims well.

The use of the monumental horror-image reaches a feverish peak in the film's climactic exorcism sequence. In this sequence, Pazuzu's possession of Regan (which often displays inanimate, "statuesque" characteristics: catatonia, somnambulism, immobility, and of course the infamous "head-spinning" special effect, made possible by the use of an actual mannequin) becomes explicitly monumental in nature. After a series of seismic tremors that nearly destroy her bedroom and a vicious verbal assault against Fr. Karras in which she blames him for his mother's death, Regan bursts her bonds, her eyes going white. She slowly levitates off her bed, arms outstretched in a blasphemous, satanic parody of Christ's crucifixion. After further earthquake-like shocks to the room, we cut to a shot from above, in which the Regan-thing, bathed in cold blue-white light, is placed dead-center. This "vulgar display of power" stuns both Merrin and Karras; they respond to it by repeatedly invoking a rival power, that of Christ. After she finally sinks back down onto the bed, she assaults Karras as he attempts to re-fasten her restraints. Another tremor sends Karras and Merrin crashing against the wall, where they look up to see the supposedly bound Regan, arms outstretched, silhouetted against a strange blue light. The clear graphic similarity of this shot to the introductory shot of Pazuzu's monument is made unmistakable by the inexplicable appearance of that very statue behind Regan's bed, accompanied by the same buzzing, droning, and screaming heard during the original sequence.