Hey Everyone!
So, this movie is by far the scariest that I've watched in a while and I thought a lot about some of the phrases I read in our readings and how they related to The Babadook. This movie, in particular, made my skin crawl. I think a big part of how this movie affected me has to do with the fact that everything going on in Amelia and Samuel's lives' aside from the Babadook's presence is already going pretty terribly. Amelia is Samuel's mother and she has lost her husband and Samuel's father in a car accident that occurred while her late husband was driving her to give birth to their son. She is constantly dealing with a deep resentment towards her son because of this which seems to bleed heavily into her life. One scene that comes to mind is one where Samuel is showing her a magic trick and he hugs her tight, she holds him for a second until he hugs her tight, when he does this she pulls away quick and rather abrasively tells him not to do that. This is coupled with the fact Samuel appears to be a bit of a problem child because he's constantly obsessed with monsters causing him to have trouble sleeping, it's hard for him to cooperate with other children, and he is overtly honest when speaking. I watched a youtube video that helped give me a theory as to what the Babadook represents and its theory was that it represents Amelia's grief of her husband passing. I really like this theory because I felt like this film was really psychologically involved and everything appeared to have a deeper meaning, not just jump scares. While reading Barbara Creed's "Horror and The Monstrous Feminine" I reflected most with her third theory of how the abject works within horror films. She states, "The mother-child relation as one marked by conflict: The child struggles to break free but the mother is reluctant to release it." This can be seen by how she does reject Samuel in some ways but in others, she lacks the ability to maintain him because she has no discipline for him. This semi-codependent relationship that they share makes them that much more dangerous to each other as the Babadook enters their lives.
Here's the link to the youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7XzkX4e-HY
I also find this movie one of the scarier ones we will watch because of its reliance on psychological terror. I find the kind of terror and abjection that it deals with in relationship to grieving and the mother-child relationship hits a lot closer to home than films about zombies or cannibalism. I find the moment when she yells "Why cant you just be normal?" to be one of the saddest and most horrifying in any movie. It will be interesting to see how we can apply the rest of Barbara Creed's work to this and other films when we read it at the end of the term.
ReplyDeleteI first watched this movie with a bunch of friends when I was younger, and back then I definitely felt the terror in full, I think I've become desensitized however haha. I like the mother-child conflict of control you touch on. Personally, what I find interesting is how in the earlier half of the film Emelia's actions mirror what I've seen in real life. When Sam brings up his dead Dad, Emelia stops him thinking it's rude or something. Although we later find out this could be from her own grief, the action to stop a child from saying something potentially insensitive is something I find common in the everyday life too, and it makes me wonder what goes on through those parents heads.
ReplyDelete-Camille C