University of Toronto professor S. Trimble writes that the film tapped into "white American fears of nightmare futures" that could be brought about by the women's liberation, gay liberation and Black Power movements, which all challenged the established social order of the 1970s. As a film about "a revolting girl revolting against the little-girl box in which she was stuck" and army of men trying to put her back, The Exorcist fits into a tradition of horror movies that used gender-bending to create a monster, Trimble notes. As a graduate student, Texas State religious studies professor Joseph Laycock wrote that the popular embrace of The Exorcist also pointed to reactionary popular trends in American religion. "The Exorcist is a depiction not of ecclesiastical Catholicism but of folk piety", which he also describes as extra-ecclesiastical religion, pursued by the lay masses, "incorporat[ing] beliefs about divine or supernatural intervention in the realm of everyday experience", as tolerant of Ouija boards and practices from other spiritual traditions as it was devout in its Catholic faith. In the early 1970s, established organized religion in America, primarily but not exclusively the Roman Catholic Church, had increasingly turned towards the rational as the country became more secular: "The authentic folk piety depicted in The Exorcist likely appealed to audiences [at the time] because it was a welcome alternative to rationalized religion and a cultural myth of universal secularization." Litigation Lawsuits among the creators of The Exorcist began even before the film was released, and have continued into the 21st century. In early November 1973, ​【50 m】THR reported that Blatty had sued the studio and Friedkin, over both the credits and Friedkin banning him from the set. Friedkin said that he had only barred him from post-production. A week later Noel Marshall, the film's executive producer, said Blatty had withdrawn his complaint against the studio but still planned to sue Friedkin; he eventually settled for the "William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist" line in the opening credits. The next round of disputes involved Friedkin and Dietz. In February 1974 she claimed that he had forced her to sign a nondisclosure agreement concerning her work in the film. While Friedkin had, in earlier publicity for the film, denied any use of a double for Blair, by the end of the month Dietz was saying that she had neither claimed to have been Blair's only double for the possession scenes