The “Monstrous-Feminine” and Mental Illness in Possession Film:
Unspeakability, Othering, and Abjection
in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook
University of Amsterdam Sadio Maria Traoré
Master Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis 11095202
Supervisor: Mireille Rosello Second Reader: Niall Martin June 2016
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Chapter 1. Unspeakability of Otherness 9
Chapter 2. Gender and Mental Illness in the Possession and Slasher Film 24 Chapter 3. The Possessed Woman as Abject and Monstrous 37
Conclusion 46
List of Illustrations 51
Films Cited 52
Introduction
Watching The Babadook for the first of many times was a frightening experience, that
haunted me in the following days. Even so, it was just as exciting as it soon became apparent that the film was refreshingly unfamiliar within its genre. The psychological fantasy-horror possession film The Babadook, written and directed by Jennifer Kent, and set in the suburbs of South Australian town Adelaide, tells the story of a widowed single mother, Amelia, who struggles to provide for her son Sam and herself working at a retirement home (Kermode). The events of the film take place over a span of two weeks leading up to Amelia’s son Sam's seventh birthday. The female protagonist of the story displays symptoms of mental instability which climax at the end of these two weeks in which her behaviour becomes increasingly violent. The character of a children’s pop-up book, the Babadook, becomes the embodiment of Amelia’s struggles with her mental condition. The creature takes possession of Amelia who in the end manages to free herself from it. The film portrays mental illness through a horror lens and puts Amelia’s inner psychology to the surface by using fantasy elements that escape rational explanation.
As a possession film The Babadook tells a story of a woman who becomes possessed by an evil entity and is reminiscent of classics such as The Exorcist (1973), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Repulsion (1965). It is Jennifer Kent’s debut feature film and gives reason to await with pleasure her future projects. In the last decade the Australian film industry has produced a number of remarkable and mostly critically acclaimed films within different genres that have collectively been called the “Lost Wave”, in reference to the New Wave of the 1970s and 1980s (Buckmaster). Among these are films about Australia’s Aboriginal community, two of which are Samson and Delilah (2009) and Charlie’s Country (2014), crime drama Animal Kingdom (2010), the Western The Proposition (2005); neo-noir The
Square (2008), and suburban thriller Snowtown (2010) (Buckmaster). Occupying the horror
realm of this “Lost Wave”, The Babadook “plays in the boundary between supernatural and psychological horror”, and in regard to its detailed portrayal of the protagonist’s
confrontation with mental distress has been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (Buckmaster; MacInnes; Oler).
Besides guaranteeing “jumps and scares” in its audience, the film also dives deep into the female protagonist’s psyche using fantasy elements and a wide range of metaphors
(MacInnes). Amelia’s episode of severe psychological distress is caused or at least triggered by the death of her husband, however with a delay of seven years in which it had time to build up, and her inner conflict appears to be inextricably linked with her relationship to her son Sam. With regard to the focus on the mother-child relationship the film also reminds of the classic Carrie (1976) and its recent sequel (2013) of which Tammy Oler compares in “The Mommy Trap” the role of Carrie’s mother:
De Palma’s Margaret is a wild-eyed nightmare, played just this side of high camp by Piper Laurie. By contrast, the Margaret of Peirce’s Carrie . . . is far more complex and sympathetic. . . Pierce reimagines Margaret as a damaged, self-harming woman who feels genuine affection for her daughter even as she abuses her . . . Peirce invites us to feel compassion for Margaret, and
insinuates that her behavior comes from her own very deep wounds.
It appears that, apart from some exceptions and very recent films such as the Carrie remake, contemporary film and other art forms do rather convey a purely negative image of people who are mentally unstable. The “[collective] representation of mental illness in art, medical images, and popular media is repeatedly negative, inaccurate, and stereotype-laden” and
constitutes what Eisenhauer has called a “visual culture of stigma” that denotes people with mental illness as the Other (13-14, 18). There appears to be a consistent pattern in the use of certain imagery and narrative elements in the portrayal of mental illness in both historical and contemporary representations that might be comparable to concepts such as Orientalism that describes the typical features of Western representations of “the East” as the Other (Said 1,3). This pattern appears to have developed over a long course of time looking at an observation Michel Foucault made in Madness and Civilization. He asserted that with the introduction of institutional confinement in the late 15th century, “madness had become a thing to look at: no longer a monster inside oneself, but an animal with strange mechanisms, a bestiality from which man had long since been suppressed" (Eisenhauer 14-15; Foucault 70).
Problematic “representations of class, gender, race” in popular media, such as in the large number of Disney films have been extensively critiqued (Brode 5-8; Byrne & McQuillan 144; Giroux 164-180; Tavin & Anderson 22, 34). However, issues regarding the
representation of mental illness have not received a comparable amount of attention
(Eisenhauer 17, 18). What has been established is that “negative and inaccurate portrayals [in popular media] influence the public’s perceptions of mental illness” (Granello, Pauley, & Carmichael 108; Granello & Pauley 162; Eisenhauer 16).
In the history of horror film and its representations of mental illness, one of the first slasher films, Psycho, plays a crucial role. 1 According to Otto Wahl, the 1960 horror classic is the
1 Slasher genre: A subgenre within the horror genre comprising films in which the “killer is the psychotic product of a sick family, but still recognizably human; the victim is a
beautiful, sexually active woman; the location is not-home, at a Terrible Place; the weapon is something other than a gun; the attack is registered from the victim’s point of view and comes with shocking suddenness.” (Bullins 1, Clover 23-24).
origin of the conventional portrayal of “psychotic killers who are not merely scientists gone mad, who kill repeatedly, and whose murders are accounted for almost solely by their insanity” (Wahl 56). More than 90 percent of films featuring characters exhibiting psychotic behaviour, as defined by the respective films, were released after 1960, Psycho's release year (Tudor 20). In “Evil or Misunderstood: Depictions of Mental Illness in Horror Films”, Bullins notes that Psycho also marks a shift in the genre “from external, fantastic antagonism to internal threats”, that is from supernatural creatures such as “vampires, mummies and wolfmen” of the 1930s to - human – psycho killers (Bullins 2).
In the three following chapters, The Babadook’s approach to the portrayal of mental illness will be examined with regard to most broadly, the cinematic techniques employed, the film’s position within the horror subgenre of the possession film, and the role of – the protagonist’s – gender in the narrative. Chapter 1 introduces and departs from the premise that the
experience of mental illness is something that cannot be simply described for its
“unspeakable nature”, and can possibly never fully accounted for by a rational explanation (Stone 16, 17). According to Brendan Stone in “Towards a Writing without Power: Notes on the Narration of Madness”, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, in their debate about the question whether narration could represent madness “did agree that the essence of madness is its radical ‘unsayability’ ” (Stone 19). Stone raises the question whether the attempt to
represent madness by narration “would represent a kind of violence inflicted on the life narrated” (Stone 19). This seems to beg the question whether narration or film can ever fully account for any inner psychological processes or abstract ideas such as love or happiness. And further, if it would not be negligent to refrain from narrative on mental illness altogether as a greater harm may be done if it were banned from literature and film and not represented as a part of the human experience and of society.
and Brendan Stone’s proposition to use said concept in the approach to narrate the experiences of mental illness, the film’s strategy in conveying the experience of psychological distress will be examined.
Chapter 2 will take a closer look at the traditional structure of the possession narrative which will bring the role of gender more into the focus of the analysis. In Men, Women and Chain
Saws, Carol Clover identified a “dual focus” narrative, linked to the theme of openness
inherent in possession films, in films such as The Exorcist and Witchboard (1986), which parallels the story of the possessed female and the troubled male protagonist (70). Fathoming the deviations from this narrative structure in The Babadook and its common characteristics with another horror subgenre, that of the slasher, will give more insight into the female protagonist; and reveal a nuanced portrayal of the single mother struggling with her
destabilising mental state, that holds the opportunity for the audience to sympathise with an admittedly morally problematic protagonist.
Finally, Chapter 3 will further relate the compiled implications with the female protagonist’s troubled relationship to her son and the societal pressures she has to cope with. The last chapter further incorporates psychoanalytic theory and additionally theoretical work on the role of abjection in horror film, linking it to the impact the death of Amelia’s husband Oskar had on her and her son as a family. The concept of abjection put forward by Julia Kristeva is grounded on psychoanalytic conceptions by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, and provides the theoretical framework for Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine; which I will use in the exploration of the female protagonist, as woman and mother, and her relationship to her son (Creed 8, 25).2 Creed has identified different versions of “the monstrous-feminine” in
2 For more detail on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, concerning the former see “Three essays on the theory of sexuality”, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
horror films, among which are “the amoral primeval mother (Aliens, 1986); vampire (The
Hunger, 1983); witch (Carrie, 1976); woman as monstrous womb (The Brood, 1979); . . .
woman as possessed body [, the object of this paper] (The Exorcist, 1973) . . . the castrating mother (Psycho, 1960); . . . and woman as the deadly femme castratrice (I Spit On Your
Grave, 1978)” (Creed 1). In Political Animals, Sophie Mayer explores The New Feminist Cinema and notes about the genres of horror and science fiction that they
have long exploited the alien anxieties of pregnancy, motherhood and the family home, an association identified by Sigmund Freud when he defined the uncanny in relation to the womb and female genitals. Bodies and buildings are overrun with supernatural or interstellar beings, generally as a comment on the fearful Otherness with which patriarchy regards ciswomen and their (in)ability to conceive (and choice to do so or not). (157-58)
Bullins notes that “[similar to Linda Williams’] theories regarding exploitative films, as long as opinions and representations of mental illness continue to be misguided, it follows that films will exploit them to meet their ends: horror to frighten, comedy to amuse, melodrama to emote.” (8). Considering that the viewer’s reaction to a film is always subjective to some extent, The Babadook, while on the surface solely a horror film, also appears to hold the potential to emote. The portrayal of a widowed single mother struggling with mental illness, as The Babadook's protagonist, may point to a new take on the possession film.
“Female Sexuality”, “Fetishism” , and “The Uncanny”; with regard to the latter see The
Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, Ecrits: A Selection and
Chapter 1 - Unspeakability of Otherness
The Babadook uses a possession narrative to convey the experience of a widow and single
mother struggling with severe psychological distress. Central in the narrative is the figure of the Babadook who represents a fantasy element. The figure is first introduced in a children’s book, Mister Babadook, and functions as the demon or evil spirit that comes to possess the female protagonist, Amelia (Clover 67). In Men, Women and Chain Saws, Carol Clover observes that narratives about possession and exorcism ultimately concern themselves with psychological distress:
The possession or exorcism plot, assimilated directly or indirectly and in varying degrees to a psychoanalytic model, is one of the most generative ones of our time. (In its fully secularized form, the exorcism story is not a horror drama at all but a psychological one in which . . . the afflicted person is not possessed but emotionally distressed, the exorcist not a priest but a
psychiatrist, and the treatment not incantations but some version of the ‘talking cure.’) (67).
In the light of this notion, the question arises, why possession narratives are even employed, and why the stories are not told in their “fully secularized” version. In “Towards a Writing without Power: Notes on the Narration of Madness”, Brendan Stone examines the approach to mental illness in autobiographical literature (Stone 16).3 The use of fantasy elements in
3 Stone chooses to use the term “madness” in his essay instead of “mental illness” as for the latter’s close association with the medical model. I will use the term “mental illness” which
The Babadook resonates with Stone’s observation that “[traditional] narrative form, in which
raw events are recodified into a coherent plot, and also language’s inherent quality of producing meaning via order and sequence, may be inimical to the expression” of mental illness (Stone 16, his emphasis). Stone focuses on autobiographies, however some of his findings also appear to be useful when looking at the portrayal of mental illness in
contemporary film. Amelia as the protagonist of the narrative functions like the narrator as, although there is no voice-over narration from her perspective, cinematically the viewer experiences the events mostly from her perspective, as she appears in almost all scenes, and point-of-view shots, and dream sequences are used to strengthen that effect.
Stone points out the similarity between autobiographical narrative on the experience of mental illness and writings from the field of trauma theory, namely the “supposedly
unspeakable nature of trauma” (Stone 16,17). Autobiographers writing about the experience of mental distress “frequently point to the mystery and unknowability inherent in madness . . . [its] extremity, its antinomic relation with reason and linearity, [and] its generation of both insight and utter despair” (Stone 24). Stone suggests that the concept of a “writing without power” (“écrire sans pouvoir”) may lend itself to expressing the experience of mental illness (Stone 16, 23). I concur with the notion, because as Stone asserts, the concept lacks the need to control the narrative which does appear compatible to expressing the experience of mental illness while taking into account its unsayability (23).
Philosopher Sarah Kofman developed the concept with regard to the representation of trauma in her book Smothered words “on the effects of the Holocaust on discourse” (Stone 23). A “writing without power” presents itself as an alternative to “traditional forms of narrative
may also be a problematic term, however, arguably less so than “madness” which appears to have a more negative connotation (Stone 16, 31).
[that] in their dependence on retrospective closure, linearity, unity and coherence repress the possibility of multiplicity and otherness” (Stone 23). By way of contrast, Stone notes that autobiographical narratives “using literary techniques so that the text might point beyond itself to that which cannot be easily said” and the concept of a “writing without power” “[allow] space for otherness, or that which cannot be fully understood and assimilated” (Stone 26, 27).
Exploring the approach to the representation of mental illness in The Babadook may give insight into whether the fantasy-horror genre may or may not facilitate a portrayal of mental illness that takes into account its inherent unspeakability. This translates into the questions how elements of the film create a lack of rationality and linearity in the plot, how the
audience is made complicit in the uncertainty about the presented events and hence, whether parallels to the concept of a “writing without power” can be identified.
Stone recognises certain efforts by autopathographers, such as Jennifer Slater and Elizabeth Wurtzel, to counteract “conventional narrative’s” rational nature (Stone 16). These efforts include for instance “apparent plot repetitions to the point of tedium; continual displacements of the autobiographical self into other fictional selves; the fragility of both tentative narrative schemas and of the narrator’s detachment from the events recalled; . . . the lack of a sense of plot or character development . . . [and] ambiguous and confusing chronotopes” (Stone 20, 21). Similar attempts to counteract the logic of the plot can be identified in The Babadook in the sequence and explicability of the events, the dialogue and in the reliability of the
protagonist.
By and large, the sequence of the events in the film are chronological, however it is disrupted by dream sequences. The very first scene, a dream about the car accident in which the female protagonist’s husband died, opens the narrative with an event that, yet unknown to the viewer, has happened seven years ago. Cinematically, the scene is clearly different from the
following scene when the character is awake, due to a slow motion effect and the distant sound of Sam's voice calling his mother. In a later dream sequence, Amelia sees Sam, lying on the couch, covered in blood and apparently dead. When Amelia is suddenly awakened by Sam's screaming she realises she has been somnambulating and is standing in front of her son holding a kitchen knife. For the audience, initially there is no reason to question whether the scene depicts reality, as no slow motion effect is used and the scene is cinematically
indistinguishable from other non-dream scenes.
Another dream sequence focuses on the same theme, Amelia's fear of killing or repressed desire to kill her son. She seems to be so heavily overwhelmed by the loss of her husband Oskar and the demands of her role as a single mother, without a father, without a paternal figure, that murdering her son and herself seems to, maybe not the only solution for the situation, yet a dark but luring path that presents itself to her as an escape out of her despair. As the previous scene, this dream sequence cannot readily be identified as such by the audience. The protagonist watches a TV newscast reporting on a woman murdering her seven-year-old son with a kitchen knife. A short deep focus shot followed by a medium shot and a close-up show the perpetrator's house with Amelia looking out of its window. The sequence of the shots creates a zoom on Amelia's disturbing facial expression (see figure1); followed by a medium close-up of Amelia looking completely distraught. The face Amelia sees on the TV seems like a different person. Yet, in relation to the recurring theme involving the death of her son, it can be seen as an echo of something inside the female protagonist that she does not understand or is repressing. The suspense increases when, in Amelia’s house, an electrical hum sound can be heard and the light bulbs explode. Amelia again hears Sam's distant voice, telling her to wake up, indicating that she may in fact be dreaming.
Figure 1
The dream sequences in the later stages of the film create an uncertainty for the viewer as it is no longer possible to easily identify which scenes depict reality, a dream or else. In another scene, blurry point-of-view shots, a mysterious fog surrounding Amelia, and an unidentifiable noise, that appears to stem from a dream she is having, further add to the blending of dream and reality and the general and increasing uncertainty about the events.
Apart from the recurrent theme of Amelia’s fear of killing her son another “apparent plot [repetition]” involves the death of her husband (Stone 20). He appears three times in the film, in a dream or in hallucinations, in which he always repeats the last words he apparently spoke before he died: “I think it’s going to rain.”, an otherwise banal sentence, which appears to be painful for Amelia to hear. His repeated appearance and the repetition of the phrase show how Amelia's mind and emotions still, apparently regardless of the amount of time passed, keep circling back to the death of her husband, the root of her distress and grief. The phrase recurs in one the final scenes of the film involving the Babadook, which will be examined in more
detail later in the text.
Other events simply cannot be explained or allow for different possible explanations,
however are left unanswered, such as the protagonist finding glass in her soup and the book,
Mister Babadook, having been ripped apart and thrown away, yet reappearing at the front
door. These unexplained events further unsettle the audience and make for a “narrative [that] remains unfinalized and open ended” as besides the actual ending of the film small parts of the narrative are not completed (Stone 26).
As the plot begins to unfold, the audience may still expect that by the end of the film there will be a rational explanation for all of the events. When Amelia thinks she might be being stalked, she, apparently thinking clearly and making the reasonable and safe decision of informing the police, leads the viewer to believe that she as the protagonist can be trusted; only to then have to question her reliability when she believes to see the Babadook's coat and top hat at the police station. Although it is not clear yet whether Amelia is hallucinating, her reliability as narrator/protagonist is starting to be weakened.
Besides these techniques to disrupt the rationality and linearity of the plot, the film employs a metaphorical language in the expression of the protagonist’s psychological distress. Different components of the set and of the narrative, aside from adding to the bleak and dark
atmosphere, combine into a symbolism whose central element is the Babadook.
Autobiographers such as Daniel Schreber and Andrew Solomon have stated that they could only express the experience of their mental illness in “images and similes” and “metaphor and allegory”, respectively (Schreber 41, Solomon 16). The film’s use of verbal and visual metaphors expressing the experience of mental illness appears to be in line with this notion. Several references are made to other children's books, alongside Mister Babadook, such as
The Three Little Pigs and Gingerbread Man. In one of the first scenes Amelia reads the
And that was the end of the Big Bad Wolf” (The Babadook). Another scene shows Amelia watching the Disney cartoon version of the story on TV; close-up shots show the “Big Bad Wolf” disguising himself as a sheep to be let into one of the pigs’ houses. The similarities between the Babadook and the Wolf are quite obvious: both are large, dark, scary, creatures that seem evil and dangerous and are trying to forcefully enter the house of their prey. Here, a central theme in the film becomes more apparent, the theme of openness:
The language and imagery of the occult film . . . [involves] bodily orifices and insides (or a once-removed but transparently related language of doors, gates portals, channels, inner rooms) . . . it tells of being opened up by and to something, letting something in. (Clover 101).
The theme of openness is inherent in the possession film and also is apparent throughout The
Babadook.
Several other scenes show Amelia apathetically sitting in front of the TV. In most of those scenes, Amelia frequently changes the channel, and the result is a string of disturbing images including scenes from old horror films, a car crash, a close-up of a crocodile eating its prey, crawling insects, and ants eating another larger insect. When Amelia sees the Babadook for the first time, looking out of the window into her neighbour's living room, in the background one can hear from the TV, lines from presumably an old horror film: “What was that noise I heard . . . Wind howling, doors slamming . . . I think this house is haunted” (Subzin Movie Quotes; The Babadook).
The exposition scenes include several close-ups of the set decoration of the characters’ home, including insects that are encapsulated in blocks of synthetic resin, such as a stag beetle, a grasshopper and a mantis, and a poster of “Thurston The Great Magician” on which he is
holding a human skull and is surrounded by ghost-like beings (The Babadook). At the bottom of the poster it says: “Do the Spirits come back?” (The Babadook). The effect is an eerie and sinister atmosphere and the poster symbolises one of the ever-present themes of the film which is death and the pain of losing a loved one. The colours dominating the sets inside the house, and outside for that matter, are blues, browns, greys and whites, all in a greyish tint. This creates a rather dark and bleak atmosphere that can be seen as reflective of Amelia's mental state.
Insects reappear in two other scenes as the protagonist’s hallucinations after she has let the Babadook into the house by opening the front door having heard the “3 sharp knocks” as predicted in the book Mister Babadook (The Babadook). First, insects come crawling onto the kitchen floor out of a hole in the wall. Amelia does not seem to be particularly scared of them, but they clearly cause her discomfort. She believes the house to be infested with them and starts to clean obsessively until she realises she has been hallucinating. In the second scene, while in the car, insects are crawling on her dress, followed by the Babadook
approaching and attacking the moving car, trying to get in, which ultimately causes Amelia to crash into another car. The loud banging noise stemming from the Babadook attacking the car, while saying his name in a uncanny, monstrous voice, Samuel screaming, and the rapid change of camera angles and shots conveys the horror of the experience.
The recurrence of insects, references to other children’s books and old horror films, and disturbing imagery make up a metaphorical language that approaches the experience of mental illness and takes into account its unspeakability, or otherness. The metaphors seem to hint at something that cannot be said and fully understood which corresponds to the idea of a “writing without power”. Stone writes that
predicated not on a desire for total understanding, but allows for an excess - the unknown and the foreign - which is outside of comprehension, and approachable only via art, via the elliptical, the sidelong, the metaphorical. (30)
The film's narrative's goal does not appear to be to fully explain – the female protagonist's - mental illness. Instead it aims for ambiguity and confusion to leave space for an otherness that cannot be simply explained.
The metaphorical language of the film revolves around the central element in the portrayal of mental illness in the film: the figure the Babadook. The Babadook is a fantasy element and metaphorical in itself which emphasises the fact that nothing can be taken literal and the film as a whole must be understood as a metaphor for something that is “other” which cannot simply be “shown” and explained, the experience of psychological distress.
After the first reading of Mister Babadook, first Sam and soon Amelia begin to see the Babadook. The book is dark-red with black letters and strongly contrasts with its
surroundings making the audience perceive it as an invasive and foreign object. The way the book is presented, by frequent close-ups of the book's pictures and text accompanied by suspenseful and eerie music, lets the viewer surmise that the book and its character will play a central role in the film. The music can be heard whenever the book is present in a scene and stops abruptly when for instance Amelia hides the book on a wardrobe which closely
connects the music and the atmosphere that comes with it to the book.
The Babadook resembles a large tall man, wears a long dark coat and a top hat. His appearance is human and monstrous at the same time, “a cross between . . . [Nosferatu’s Count Orlok] and The League of Gentleman’s Papa Lazarou” (Kermode). The use of in-camera stop-motion effects make his movements appear unnatural (Kermode). His voice
sounds distorted and unsettling and at times like that of a large animal. Only once is he clearly recognisable, when the protagonist sees him in a dream on TV (see figure 2). Using a fantasy creature to represent the experience of mental illness takes into account that it cannot be fully accounted for by rational thought.
Figure 2
Before the Babadook attacks Amelia and Sam in the car, when she still does not see him, he, reminiscent of the “Big Bad Wolf”, knocks on the door to make Amelia let him come into the house (The Babadook). Both scenes can be seen as attempts to intrude into a private space, the house, and the car, that forebode the final physical violation of Amelia’s body when the Babadook takes possession of her by wholly entering her body through her mouth.
According to Clover “[possession] via oral penetration is a cliché of . . . horror film.” (79). The scene is reminiscent of The Prince of Darkness (1987), in which the female protagonist “becomes possessed when some ancient liquid, churning in an urn, flies through the air and
lands in her open mouth” (Clover 79). The sexual undertone is rather obvious and in The
Babadook is intensified by a scene in which the female protagonist is shown masturbating
with a vibrator in her bed, the same place where the Babadook later takes possession of her. The scene also functions to portray Amelia as a sexual being, as opposed to the often innocent and infantile possession victims in for instance The Exorcist (1973) and more recently in The Possession (2012). However, the scene does not excessively sexualise the act as to overtly serve what film critic Laura Mulvey has called a voyeuristic-scopophilic male gaze (11). In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Mulvey coined the term “male gaze”, which involves that in “a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female . . . [and that the] determining male gaze
projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly” (9). Mulvey explores “the interweaving of . . . erotic pleasure in film, its meaning, and in particular the central place of the image of woman” (7). Based on Freudian psychoanalytic theory, she proposes that the “visual pleasure” of film the audience experiences consists of two facets: voyeuristic scopophilia (looking at the passive woman as icon) and fetishistic scopophilia (looking at the active male figure as the ego ideal of the identification process) (Mulvey 9-11). Both types of the male gaze serve, as the term implies, the male pleasure and also lead to a superficial, one-dimensional portrayal of female characters.
Countering a male gaze, the female protagonist is completely covered by a blanket, and there are no close-ups of her naked legs or other body parts, except her face. From this it follows, that the scene rather seems to present female masturbation as something normal and
mundane, but in this case also as a sign of loneliness and sexual frustration. Shortly before, the viewer sees a close-up shot of Amelia looking longingly at a couple passionately kissing in an old romantic film, presumably being reminded of her deceased husband Oskar.
by the Babadook, relates the sexual act to the possession. It underlines the sexual nature of the act of the Babadook entering Amelia’s body through her mouth, and further the theme of openness appertaining to the possession narrative. This physical openness in turn relates to the protagonist’s “emotional openness” in confronting repressed emotions about her husband’s death: “occult films code emotional openness as feminine, and figure those who indulge it, male and female, as physically opened, penetrated” (Clover 101).
In the possession scene, the Babadook’s stature and movements change from monstrous but human, to something clearly inhuman: a black creature crawling across the ceiling defying the laws of gravity. In Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic, Eugenia DeLamotte notes that physical violence is “a transgression against the body, the last barrier protecting the self from the other.’ (qtd. in Mäyrä 115). The entering of Amelia’s body is the Babadook’s, as the other, final - and successful - attempt to take control over Amelia, the self. From the following course of events it becomes apparent that the Babadook taking possession of Amelia can be seen as her ceasing to repress her grief about the death of her husband and the frustration about having to raise her child on her own.
This becomes more apparent, looking at a visual parallel between Amelia’s husband Oskar and the Babadook, which invites an extension of the interpretation of the creature that will be substantiated in the following chapters incorporating psychoanalytic concepts in the reading of the Babadook (Mayer 157). Amelia keeps all of her husband’s remaining belongings locked away in the basement, from which one day she catches Sam running out of in his magician costume. She finds her husband’s clothes, a suit and a top hat, hanging on the wall, presumably put there by Sam who had been performing magic tricks and imagining his father as his audience. The similarity of the dark suit and top hat and the Babadook’s clothes
suggests a reading of the figure as a monstrous version of Amelia’s husband, or rather the embodiment of his death. This interpretation of the Babadook is substantiated when he
appears to assume Oskar’s appearance in two scenes prior to the exorcism.
Amelia’s behaviour in her possessed state reminds of the events in the classic The Exorcist in which a twelve-year-old girl, Regan, becomes possessed by a demon (Scahill 40). The
question of its actual existence put aside, the demon possession as portrayed in The Exorcist can be said to be authentic as “[the] basic symptoms of possession, as well as the ritual of exorcism, and the supernatural occurrences during it, are based on documents and accounts of such cases from the history of the Catholic church.” (Mäyrä 144). As with Regan, Amelia’s behaviour slowly changes, when she starts to “[use] foul language, . . .and exhibits . . . rage” that culminates in the attempt to strangle her child (Scahill 40). With regard to the visible manifestation of Amelia’s possession, her body serves as another element that is used to -nonverbally - express the protagonist’s experience of mental illness. The first physical
expression of her illness is an increasingly frequent and intense clenching of her jaw to which is drawn attention by close-up shots. Amelia often very suddenly changes the tone of her voice from a very soft to a deep, angry and frightening tone that at times almost sounds distorted and not quite human. In a scene towards the end of the film, Amelia chases Sam into his bedroom and as she breaks in the door her movements seem animal-like after which she inexplicably floats above the floor over to Sam in a threatening manner. The changing of the tone of her voice, her strange movements and displays of heightened or supernatural strength are reminiscent of the demon-possessed Regan in The Exorcist (Clover 102-103). Clover describes Regan’s behaviour as a “ ‘male’ outburst, her “voice, aggressive speech, and physical strength [as that] of a masculine being” (Clover 102-103):
This ‘male’ outburst of the possessed person is one of the complex’s most archaic features. From biblical times on, the invading devil or dybbuk has been construed as a male being, and the possessed woman as hence subject to
masculinization from the inside out. (103)
Whether Amelia can said to be masculinised in the same way will be explored over the following chapters.
Despite the similarities between Regan’s and Amelia’s possession, there appear to be other crucial differences, stemming mainly from “the general framing of the novel [the film was adapted from] as Christian” (Mäyrä 143). The film, and the novel, “[employ] demonology and the Catholic Christian tradition to convince the reader and the film audience of the continuous influence of supernatural evil” (Mäyrä 144). This strategy is still used in current possession films such as The Rite (2011) starring Anthony Hopkins. The Exorcist marks a strict boundary between self and other, between the innocent girl and the inhuman and evil demon, as in the end Regan is completely healed, the demon is expelled, that is the otherness has been destroyed, a notion that is challenged in The Babadook. Here, admittedly, the immediate transgression of the body is reversed and in a manner that seems consistent with the logic of an exorcism when Amelia vomits a black liquid and thereby removes the Babadook from her body.4 However, the Babadook, the otherness, remains in the house, in the basement where Amelia regularly feeds him with night crawlers. The Babadook remains a part of Amelia’s life, and she treats it with fear but also with compassion and sympathy. This conclusion could be described as “a reconciliation with what Kristeva [in Strangers to
Ourselves] . . . names the ‘foreigner’ ‘within ourselves’ ” (Stone 31). Amelia and her son have
seemingly reached a state of calmness. Though, it does not fully resonate with Kristeva’s
4 Please note that the scene does not show an actual exorcism ritual in the religious sense as in for instance The Exorcist or The Possession. I, however, use the terms “exorcism” and “exorcise” as the film overall qualifies as a possession narrative.
notion, for there remains a fear of the other indicated by Amelia recoiling from the Babadook as she is trying to feed it. Furthermore, while the Babadook stays with her, he is kept in the basement, locked away from the normal life. Arguably, this might be partly due to the film’s genre, horror, which does not allow for a perfect happy ending. Confining the Babadook in the basement also suggests that Amelia, despite having confronted her emotions to some extent, has returned to repressing them (Mayer 157). In that, The Babadook is significantly different from the classic demon possession narrative, as seen in The Exorcist, for there remains an uncertainty about the character’s future, and the Babadook, Amelia’s mental illness and grief, her otherness, is, while incorporated in the narrative, not fully accounted for by it. In The Exorcist and The Possession, the ending does involve some ambiguity as the sources of possession, an Ouija board and a dybbuk box, respectively, are not destroyed and further pose a threat, however not necessarily to the former victims, as in The Babadook. Further particularities of the film as a possession narrative will be examined in the following chapter in which the relevance of gender will be considered in more detail.
The interplay of fantasy and horror in The Babadook makes for a narrative that widely parallels the concept of a “writing without power” (Stone 31). According to Kofman a “writing without power” “does not attempt to master the traumatic event; does not attempt to make that which is aporetic - intrinsically full of doubt - into something that can be fully known and understood” (Stone 23). Dream sequences disrupting the chronological sequence of events, plot repetitions, unexplained events, and an unreliable narrator/protagonist create an atmosphere of uncertainty and a narrative that is not entirely rational and can incorporate the experience of mental illness that cannot be fully accounted for by rational thought. These techniques and the metaphorical language of the film with its central element the Babadook allow for the unspeakability of mental illness.
Chapter 2 – Gender and Mental Illness in the Possession and Slasher Film
Traditionally and currently, the horror genre uses sensationalized depictions of mental illness that reflect its misconceptions held by the general public (Bullins 11). As Clover observed, the horror subgenre of the possession film ultimately concerns itself with mental illness (67). In the possession film certain roles in the narrative are associated with either female or male characters (Clover 111-112). The character who is possessed, or in secular terms struggles with psychological distress, is traditionally female, as in The Babadook (Clover 19). In the classic The Exorcist (1973), and in other possession films such as Witchboard (1986) and more recently in The Possession (2012), The Last Exorcism (2010) and its sequel, The Last
Exorcism Part II (2013), it is consistently a female character who becomes possessed by
some supernatural entity, such as a demon or an evil spirit, and is rescued - or attempted to be rescued - via exorcism by a male character. It is “a genre of which women have traditionally been at the center, though in no sense as heroes” (Clover 19).
Another horror genre in which female characters are at the center of the narrative, however as heroes, and which concerns itself with mental illness is the slasher film. In Men, Women and
Chain Saws, Carol Clover introduced the trope of the Final Girl in the slasher: a sole female
protagonist, “the one who did not die: the survivor”, “[the] one character of stature who does live to tell the tale” (39, 44). In the early slasher films of the 1970s the Final Girl is in the end saved by a male character after all, in later films of the genre however, towards the 1980s, the Final Girl “becomes her own savior . . . [and] a hero” (Clover 60). More recent examples are the Scream (1996, 1997, 2000, 2011) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, 1998, 2006) series and the The Final Girls (2015), a slasher-comedy, showing that as the possession film, the slasher film genre is still alive.
protagonist and possessed figure Amelia and the absence of a male protagonist appear in no way to be coincidental, thus relevant to the narrative and make for a plot that reminds of the slasher genre. I would like to explore the representation of mental illness in relation to gender in the possession film The Babadook to gain insight into how the film develops the role of the female character, whether in her portrayal she is marked as the Other, and if that portrayal allows for the audience to sympathise with a character struggling with mental illness (Eisenhauer 16).
Despite the fact, that the possessed figure traditionally is female, the centrality of her role is however questionable when taking a closer look at possession films. Clover identifies the recurrence of a “dual focus” narrative in occult films:
It is in the realm of the occult [to which the possession film can be attributed] that issues of masculinity and male sexuality come under long and hard
scrutiny. On the face of it, the occult film is the most ‘female’ of horror genres, telling as it regularly does tales of women or girls in the grip of the
supernatural. But behind the female ‘cover’ is always the story of a man in crisis (65, 70).
Clover argues that for instance The Exorcist exemplifies such a “dual focus” narrative in which the story behind the possessed girl Regan deals with the psychiatrist and priest Father Damien Karras who goes through a personal crisis struggling with feelings of guilt over his mother’s death and an inner conflict feeling torn between his identity as a psychiatrist and as a priest (65, 70, 86-87). This psychological conflict between “the universal claims of . . . Science and . . . the claims of a world-of religious, spiritual, magical, and mystical feelings and occurrences” is reflected in the physical conflict, that is the possession of the female
character. (Clover 98). “It is only by referring to her body that his story can be told [italics added]” (Clover 101). The conflict between science and magic, or the supernatural, is “gendered” with the former being constructed as male and the latter as female (Clover 98). Other possession films in which this narrative structure of paralleling the stories of the male-in-crisis and the possessed female character are also evident are for instance Witchboard,
Don’t Look Now (1973), The Unholy (1988), Beyond Evil (1980) (Clover 85), and more
recently and quite blatantly in The Rite.
With the character of Amelia, The Babadook continues the tradition of the female possessed figure; in several respects, however, the film challenges the relation between gender and specific figures and functions in the possession film. The Babadook does feature two
protagonists but the female protagonist’s story is not overshadowed by the male protagonist. Amelia is a full protagonist and her actions move the plot along.
Furthermore, the male protagonist, Sam, is still more child than man and it is his role as Amelia’s son that is at stake. Yet, he is also central in the narrative as the film draws attention to his anxiety and suffering, and emotional reactions to his mother’s distress through medium to extreme close-ups of his facial expressions and bodily expressions such as the clenching of his jaw and hands - that later Amelia starts to display - and the way he intensively hugs his mother seeking intimacy and comfort.
Still, the film does not constitute a proper dual focus narrative as the story ultimately revolves around Amelia’s psychological conflict and Sam’s involvement in that conflict. In The
Babadook the female “cover” identified by Clover becomes the main narrative; “the figure of
the male in crisis” becomes the female in crisis whose psychological conflict is reflected in her own body, in the bodily narrative about the possession by the Babadook (107).
Apart from Sam, there is no - living - significant male character. The only other male character who is truly relevant to the story is Amelia’s deceased husband Oskar. Amelia’s
psychological conflict is rooted in or at least triggered by the death of her husband on the day she gave birth to her son Sam. However, his character is not fleshed out as it is rather his death - and the absence of him as the paternal figure - and not himself as a character that is relevant to the story.
With regard to the male-in-crisis figure, Clover further says that “[parallel] to and simultaneous with this spiritual crisis is an interpersonal one, as the man confronts and accepts the deep feelings he has towards others -wife, girlfriend, children, parents, and male friend.” (98). These intrapersonal and interpersonal crises can also be identified in The
Babadook. Here, the “spiritual crisis” translates into Amelia’s psychological crisis stemming
from the loss of her husband and dealing with her role as a single mother which is connected to her “interpersonal” crisis in which she confronts the troubled relationship to her child. Converting the role of the possessed female into a full protagonist, brings her psychological conflict into focus and opens up the possibility of a detailed portrayal of the troubled main character Amelia and her son Sam that offers the audience the chance to empathise with the character. The Babadook uses the narrative component of back-story extrapolation in offering the audience insight into a traumatic event the protagonist has experienced. This plot element is also employed in slasher films to offer an explanation of the killer’s violent behaviour (Bullins 11).
The film opens with the protagonist dreaming about, as the viewer later learns, the car accident in which her husband died. The unsettling dream sequence sets the tone for the film and presents the event around which the film plot will revolve. Through the dream the viewer is given insight into the main character's inner mental and emotional state which is the film's central theme. From different scenes throughout the film the audience learns that Amelia's husband died seven years ago on the day of Sam's birth and that Amelia worked as an author but has stopped writing ever since the accident. A majority of the scenes take place in
Amelia's and Sam's home which is reflective of the central theme and creates an intimate atmosphere. In many of those scenes the main characters are dressed in their pyjamas which adds to the atmosphere and underlines the characters’ vulnerability. The protagonist’s
portrayal includes frequent close-ups, especially of Amelia's face, while crying, and dialogues in which she expresses her emotions that facilitate a depiction of the character that lets the audience relate to her and evokes empathy (see figure 3).
The appearance of a children's pop-up book, Mister Babadook, whose main character of the same name becomes the embodiment of Amelia's mental condition, sets the film plot in motion. Having read the book, at first only Sam starts to see the Babadook, while Amelia still seems to suppress her grief about her husband's death. When Sam becomes increasingly frightened by the book Amelia rips it apart and throws it away. It reappears outside the house on the doormat after which Amelia burns the book in the garden. The book had been glued Figure 3
back together and included further pages that showed the possibly following course of events which included Amelia killing the family dog, her son and finally committing suicide. When she starts having hallucinations, she begins to distrust her own sanity. The following night the Babadook comes into Amelia’s bedroom, crawls across the ceiling and leaps into her mouth and takes possession of her.
Following this event, the protagonist’s behaviour becomes increasingly unsettling,
unpredictable and violent. She severely neglects and emotionally abuses her son and when she kills the dog, the Babadook's predictions seem to start to become true. One of the final scenes, in which Amelia’s violent behaviour culminates in malice in the attempt to strangle her child, presumably puts the audience’s, if existing, sympathy to the test. However, the victim’s, Sam’s, reaction is compassion and affection, gently stroking Amelia’s face which appears to make her realise her doing.
During her possession, Amelia is represented as frightening and dangerous which however does not compare to the disfigured appearances of the possessed girls Regan and Em in The
Exorcist and The Possession, respectively. Along with using mental illness as an explanation
for the killer’s violent behaviour, homicidal characters in slasher films also often display physical deformities that become closely associated with their mental conditions and further mark them as the Other (Bullins 10). “Incorporating elements such as physical abnormality . . . [allows] the audience to view from a safe distance”, a technique that is reversed in The
Babadook (Bullins 9). Here, the way the main character struggling with mental illness is
presented, allows for a great extent of identification on the part of the audience and thereby denies the viewer a “safe distance” from which to judge. Amelia is not clearly denoted as the Other, resisting a precise “[boundary] between ‘us’ and ‘them’ ” (Bullins 9; Eisenhauer 16). On the contrary, in the beginning, she is presented as a grieving widow and loving and caring mother who evokes empathy that might persist throughout her violent episodes.
Having let go of Sam, Amelia regurgitates a thick black liquid freeing herself from the Babadook which is the film’s key turning point. After that she is no longer possessed by the creature, that is her mental state seems to be stabilising. However, the Babadook remains in the basement where Amelia feeds him with night crawlers. She seems to have overcome her psychological conflict but it still remains a part of her as the potential for it to manifest again persists.
However, the portrayal of the anti-heroine also reinforces a problematic stereotype regarding people with mental illness: her mental instability is associated with violent and potentially homicidal behaviour. Even so, one could also argue that, as the film’s fantasy elements, the character’s behaviour is not to be taken literally, but as part of the metaphorical
representation the film builds to convey the inner experience of psychological distress. Perhaps, the film might not convey the gravity and extent of mental distress if a subtler and less offensive visual language were used.
Yet, the danger of perpetuating a negative stereotype regarding mental illness persists nevertheless. This is counteracted by the detailed and nuanced portrayal of the main character’s course of mental illness. In Media Madness, Wahl notes that “[along] with the notion that mentally disordered characters are fundamentally evil rather than ill, there is also the frequent suggestion that those with mental illnesses do not get better with treatment – and thus they remain violent and dangerous” (Wahl 76). The Babadook conveys a different message.
In the course of the story, Amelia experiences different phases regarding her mental condition. The audience first meets a grieving widow and struggling single mother with which it appears to be easy for the viewer to empathise. She does display violent behaviour but the - through Sam’s reaction - suggested response for the viewer is compassion and empathy, or at least to keep an open mind. After her severe episode of mental distress,
Amelia, and Sam, seem to be on a path to recovery challenging the widely-held
misconception about the potential for violence of people with mental illness, and fatalistic beliefs about the chances of recovery for them (Wahl 76).
The more detailed portrayal of a character struggling with psychological distress does
however clearly not mean that Amelia is portrayed as a purely good character. The episode of possession, the exorcism and the continued presence of the Babadook in the house thereafter, complicate her function as protagonist in the narrative.Amelia starts out as the protagonist with the Babadook building her antagonist, however for a large part of the film the two become one as Amelia becomes possessed by the Babadook. One can no longer differentiate between protagonist and antagonist as those are the same character, Amelia. Usually, the protagonist and antagonist of a story can be described as, put simply, the “good” and the “bad” or “evil” character, respectively. In The Babadook, this binary distinction between good and evil is challenged as Amelia is both, or neither, protagonist and antagonist.
Hence, a crucial difference between The Babadook and other possession narratives is that it is more difficult to differentiate between the possessed female and the entity that possesses her, that functions as the antagonist in the narrative. In The Exorcist Regan becomes possessed after she uses an Ouija board, and in the more recent The Possession Em is possessed by a dybbuk5. After Regan has been freed from the demon she does not remember anything about what has happened, which separates her from the evil of the demon and presents her as the innocent victim. Em is still aware of the events after the exorcism, however, the rabbi who
5 “The term dybbuk (dibbuq) was used in Jewish mystical circles to designate a spirit of a dead person, a notorious sinner in his lifetime, that took temporary possession of a human being, usually a female, by inhabiting her body”; unsurprisingly “with only a few exceptions, the spirits belonged to male sinners” (Bilu 348).
performed the exorcism tries to dispose of the dybbuk – and dies in the attempt. Whether the attempt is successful or not, there is a clear desire to remove the evil spirit from their lives, as opposed to Amelia who after the exorcism keeps the Babadook in the house and feeds him. The violence Amelia commits and the fact that she tolerates the Babadook’s presence in the house, conclusively denies the viewer to simply see her as the purely good protagonist. A further contrast to other possession films relates to the role of the female protagonist. Amelia as protagonist - and antagonist - is not only the victim of possession but also the saviour or hero as in the end she exorcises the Babadook and recues herself and Sam. Drawing from writings of Teresa de Lauretis and Jurij Lotman, Clover states that in horror overwhelmingly “the victim function . . . [is manifested] in a female, and . . . the monster and hero functions . . . in a male” (Clover 12, 13).6 As aforementioned, an exception to which she points is the slasher film in which the figure of the Final Girl becomes the hero of the
narrative.
With regard to the extent of agency the female protagonist in The Babadook is given, she is reminiscent of the Final Girl as she too is victim and hero of the story. Yet, Clover argues that the slasher film “finally has little to do with femaleness and very much to do with
phallocentrism” as the figure of the Final Girl reflects Freudian castration anxiety on the part of the predominantly male audience (53, 61). This problem, of the lack of the phallus, in “the slasher film. . . [is resolved] either through eliminating the woman (earlier victims) or
reconstituting her as masculine (Final Girl)” (Clover 50). The reconstitution of the female protagonist as masculine in psychoanalytic terms means that she is phallicized; in her
6 See Teresa de Lauretis‘s “Desire in Narrative“ in Alice Doesn’t and Jurij Lotman’s “The Origin of Plot in the Light of Typology“, Poetics Today for more details.
characteristics, behaviour and symbolically by linking her to phallic symbols she uses as weapons, such as knifes and chain saws, to kill, that is castrate, literally or symbolically, the evil killer (Clover 49-50). Drawing from Laura Mulvey’s work, Clover does however admit that the Final Girl trope entails that the “classic split between ‘spectacle and narrative,’ which ‘supposes the man’s role as the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen,’ is at least unsettled” (Clover 60; Mulvey 12).
Despite the similarities between character Amelia and the Final Girl as both active figures, Amelia does not appear to be reconstituted as masculine in the way the Final Girl is. Clover contrasts the slasher and the occult film with regard to the role gender plays in the narrative:
Both subgenres have as their business to reimagine gender. But where the slasher concerns itself, through the figure of the Final Girl, with the rezoning of the feminine into territories traditionally occupied by the masculine, the occult film concerns itself, through the figure of the male-in-crisis, with a shift in the opposite direction: rezoning the masculine into territories traditionally occupied by the feminine . . . They [the Final Girl and the male in crisis] are triumphant survivors of horror precisely because they have transcended their assigned gender (107).
Clover describes how in the slasher film the Final Girl who is represented as more masculine than her fellow female characters, takes on an increasingly masculine behaviour until she becomes the hero by killing the evil psychokiller and saving herself; while the male-in-crisis character in the possession film behaves in a more feminine way by psychologically opening up to resolve his “spiritual” and “interpersonal” crises. As seen, Amelia both occupies the role of the (fe-) male-in-crisis and possessed female figure. She opens up both physically and
psychologically, and as a result confronts her repressed grief about Oskar’s death. She
displays the agency of the slasher’s Final Girl figure, however regarding the reconstitution as masculine the similarities are less conclusive.
In the film’s exposition, Amelia is clearly established as a feminine and motherly character. This is conveyed by the soft tone of her voice and her wardrobe including her nursing uniform which is a symbol of femininity in itself. The Final Girl is “boyish” and more masculine than other female characters (Clover 40). She is a “masculine female . . . a physical female and a characterological androgyne”, which means she shows both feminine and masculine behaviours (Clover 63).
Indeed, Amelia’s characterological gender, more specifically of her as the monster, is destabilised as she becomes possessed by the Babadook who is not only human-like but is represented as a male figure. In the children’s book he is referred to as a “he”, as “Mr Babadook”, and displays a rather male stature and his clothes, coat and top hat, are traditionally considered men’s attire. Through the possession by the Babadook, that is
through the invasion of a male figure, Amelia comes to occupy the function of the monster in the narrative. Furthermore, she uses a knife as a weapon that could be seen as a typical phallic symbol.
However, it appears that she is not reconstituted as masculine as the Final Girl is. When Amelia is no longer possessed she still moves the story forward and her agency reaches its peak. As she ultimately fights the Babadook off, holding her son, her only weapon is her anger and a terrifying roar. Clover points to “the broader range of emotional expression traditionally allowed women . . . [as angry] displays of force may belong to the male, but crying, cowering, screaming, fainting, trembling, begging for mercy belong to the female . . . [hence, abject] terror . . . is gendered feminine” (Clover 51). Amelia’s scream, then, could be both seen as a feminine emotional expression and an angry display of force. Its impact on the
Babadook who consequently collapses and escapes into the basement could be characterised as his castration as he is defeated and no longer in control. Still, a significant difference appears to be that in this instance Amelia is not only protecting herself but also her son and it is her role as a mother and her relationship to her child that are emphasised. Sam’s role in Amelia’s conflict will be examined in more detail in the following chapter.
The Babadook is most generally a possession film but the traditional form of the narrative is
changed. In terms of the “dual focus” narrative employed in possession films, the female “cover” becomes the main narrative: “the figure of the male in crisis” becomes the female in crisis whose psychological conflict is reflected in her own body, in the bodily narrative about the possession by the Babadook (107). Amelia, as the possessed female, becomes a full protagonist who opens up both physically and psychologically.
The possessed female’s full-protagonist status brings her psychological conflict into focus and creates a more detailed portrayal of the troubled main character Amelia and her son that facilitates identification and empathy with the character on the part of the audience. The film expands the use a back-story extrapolation to explain the violent behaviour of the protagonist by making the experience of mental illness the focus of the film as opposed to only a sub-narrative.
Amelia is both the narrative's protagonist and antagonist, as she becomes possessed by the evil creature, the Babadook, and functions as both the “good” and the “evil” character. The
Babadook thereby blurs the lines between “good” and “evil”, healthy and ill, sane and insane:
normal and other. As Amelia constitutes an active and forwarding female character who survives the horror and rescues herself and her son instead of being saved by a male paternal figure, she is reminiscent of the Final Girl trope of slasher films. Significant differences between Amelia and the Final Girl remain, as Amelia is not only protagonist, but also the antagonist, and, as she becomes possessed by the Babadook cannot be described as “good”.
She does not represent pure - virginal - good, as the Final Girl, but also evil. Furthermore, the emphasis on Amelia’s feminine, maternal role, parallel to the depiction of her male anger, counteracts the masculinisation of her character.
Chapter 3 – The Possessed Woman as Abject and Monstrous
Over the course of the previous chapters, it became apparent that a central theme in The
Babadook is the violation of various borders and forced entrance into intimate spaces - the
door to the basement, the front door of the house, the car, the bedroom door and finally Amelia’s body. The Babadook takes possession of Amelia by entering her body through her mouth. She rids her body and mind of him, exorcises him by regurgitating the creature in form of a black liquid. In the end, she and Sam are reunited as mother and son in a new state of harmony, with the Babadook remaining in the house, however locked away in the
basement.
Predominantly, the scene of these border transgressions is Amelia’s and Sam’s family home. In Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema, Sophie Mayer states that “[the] home – and its associations with motherhood, family, domestic labour and the economic - is . . . both hymned and horrorized in feminist cinema . . . [and that in] particular, the middle-class white mother seems caught in the double bind.” (157). Character Amelia who represents this demographic has been assigned to the trope of the “mommy trap” for her troubled
relationship with her son depicted in The Bababdook (Oler). “The Babadook is motivated by ambivalence about the family home as safe space. . . [as] Amelia’s . . . home . . . contains deep grief for the loss of a husband, a grief that she can’t move through.” (Mayer 157). In The Monstrous-Feminine, Creed asserts that “the concept of a border is central to the construction of the monstrous in the horror film; that which crosses or threatens to cross the ‘border’ is abject.” (10-11)7. With regard to the possession film she goes on to say that “[the]
7 Creed uses the “term ‘monstrous-feminine’ as the term ‘female monster’ implies a simple reversal of ‘male monster’. . . [; the] reasons why the monstrous-feminine horrifies her
possessed or invaded being is a figure of abjection in that the boundary between self and other has been transgressed” (Creed 32). This notion draws from Julia Kristeva’s theoretical work in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Kristeva states that what “causes abjection . . . is what disturbs identity, system, order . . . [what] does not respect borders, positions, rules” (Kristeva 4). Kristeva’s work is grounded in psychoanalytic theory and juxtaposes in opposition the male, paternal symbolic order and the female, maternal, semiotic authority (Kristeva 72). With regard to the mother-child relationship, she states that when the child tries to weaken or break the bond to the mother, to “take up his/her proper place in relation to the symbolic”, “the mother becomes an ‘abject’ ” (Creed 9, 11, 12; Kristeva 13). The “maternal figure and the authority she signifies are repressed.” (Creed 14).
Relating the theory to horror film, Creed argues that one of the ways “in which the horror film illustrates the work of abjection refers to the construction of the maternal figure as abject” (Creed 72). Creed claims that in films such as Psycho, Carrie and The Birds “the maternal figure is constructed as the monstrous-feminine . . . [which means in terms of the mother-child relationship that she refuses] to relinquish her hold on her child, [and thereby] . . . prevents it from taking up its proper place in relation to the symbolic” (Creed 12). Within that framework, “the image of woman’s body, because of its maternal functions,
acknowledges its ‘debt to nature’ and consequently is more likely to signify the abject” as opposed to the “clean and proper body”, or “symbolic body [that] must bear no indication of its debt to nature” (Creed 11; Kristeva 72, 102).
Amelia possessed by the Babadook, the Other, then constitutes an abject figure as the
audience are quite different from the reasons why the male monster horrifies his audience . . . The phrase ‘monstrous-feminine’ emphasizes the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity.” (Creed 3).
boundary of her Self has been transgressed. As aforementioned, the symbolic figure – both in the common and psychoanalytic sense - can be interpreted as a monstrous version of
Amelia’s deceased husband Oskar. The Babadook revolves around a widowed mother and her child. However, the family’s loss and absence of husband and father is introduced as the foundation and catalyst of the plot, as the very first scene depicts the car accident in which Amelia’s husband died on the day she gave birth to Sam. In this last chapter I would like to further explore the role of gender in the problematic issue of the representation of mental illness in horror film with regard to the absence of a male protagonist as the paternal figure. This will shift the focus from Amelia’s psychological inner conflict to its relation to her role as a mother and her relationship to her child.
The invasion and possession of the home and finally Amelia’s body transforms her into a violent, dangerous, abject figure who attempts to murder her child which will be followed by suicide as predicted by the book Mister Babadook. What Creed has called “the monstrous-feminine”, here, is not absolutely feminine, as Amelia as the feminine becomes monstrous through the invasion and possession of a male creature; the male Babadook as a monstrous version of Oskar. In two scenes, the Babadook assumes his appearance, and in the first, tells Amelia that she just needs “to bring . . .[him] the boy”, so that they can be reunited (The
Babadook). The background turns pitch-black and Oskar’s voice has changed to a deep and
distorted tone, when he repeats the demand. Amelia tells him to “stop calling him the boy”, which links the scene to her meeting with the school’s administration regarding Sam’s disruptive behaviour, and removal from the class to be put under supervision of a monitor (The Babadook). Amelia expressively asks the principal not to call her son the boy, but by his name. The term “the boy” implies emotional distance and anonymity, and relates to the marking of Sam as other due to his difference from the other children. He cannot be part of the “normal” class any more, as Amelia and Sam are not part of the “normal” part of - the
