I couldn't pick out a monster in particular from my childhood that really spooked me or stuck with me so I picked something that came out rather recently. I picked the movie The Babadook. In a short summary, The Babadook is a monster that terrorizes a woman and child. Throughout the movie we learn that The Babadook shows up soon before the anniversary of her husbands death. As the actual anniversary approaches The Babadook's haunting grows with intensity until the woman has to face it.
The Babadook fits very well with Cohen's seventh thesis, The Monster Stands at the Threshold of Becoming. The Babadook represents the depression the woman feels when she is reminded of her husband's death. It has been years since his death and she keeps pushing this away in her mind until one day her depression manifests itself as The Babadook to return in the biggest way yet, as Cohen's thesis claims. Cohen's thesis also mentions that one may need to reevaluate the world and ask why the monster was created. The woman does this by realizing that it's actually okay to be incredibly sad about a life changing event and that she shouldn't have kept everything in.
The Babadook is monstrous because bad things happen to people everyday and just like the woman, they may try to keep everything bottled up and push it away. In essence, everyone could be creating their very own Babadook.
The Babadook fits very well with Cohen's seventh thesis, The Monster Stands at the Threshold of Becoming. The Babadook represents the depression the woman feels when she is reminded of her husband's death. It has been years since his death and she keeps pushing this away in her mind until one day her depression manifests itself as The Babadook to return in the biggest way yet, as Cohen's thesis claims. Cohen's thesis also mentions that one may need to reevaluate the world and ask why the monster was created. The woman does this by realizing that it's actually okay to be incredibly sad about a life changing event and that she shouldn't have kept everything in.
The Babadook is monstrous because bad things happen to people everyday and just like the woman, they may try to keep everything bottled up and push it away. In essence, everyone could be creating their very own Babadook.
I loved The Babadook! Very scary and disturbing. I agree that the Babadook represents the mother’s state of mind, though, rather than depression, I’d say it specifically symbolizes grief. After her husband tragically died, it seemed the mother was unable to successfully cope with her grief, perhaps because she felt she had no one to talk to about it or, she believed she couldn’t give it the attention it needed because of how busy her life was at the time. Her grief, left untreated, was the source of the Babadook monster. What I found super cool, though, is how the majority of the movie could be viewed from two different perspectives: either that the mother and her son were being terrorized by an actual living monster or that the mother was just going insane and doing all the monstrous things herself. Being sick in the mind, she could very well have created those disturbing children’s books herself without realizing it or strangled her dog without the influence of any supernatural being. Whichever perspective you choose, I think the Babadook is a great example of Cohen’s 5th Thesis, The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible. As you say in your blog, it isn’t good to bottle up your negative emotions, a lesson the mother learns by the movie’s end. The Babdook is a warning to not ignore your grief because it never will truly go away and will only continue to cause more pain and suffering as long as it is neglected.
ReplyDeleteI actually just watched The Babadook last night with no prior knowledge of what it was, so after seeing this post I knew I had to comment on it. I agree with both Scott's original post and Mason's comment on how the Babadook matches Cohen's 5th and 7th thesis' but I would say that it also falls in line with the 6th thesis as well.
ReplyDeleteCohen's 6th thesis says that fear of the monster is really a kind of desire. While Cohen seems to focus more on taboo sexual preferences (incest) as well as interracial sex, I would say that in this case the desire is more literal: the main character wants her husband back. The Babadook produces itself in the shape of her husband several times, each time saying that they can be together if she kills her son. At the beginning of the climax of the movie, the woman tells her son that he can be with his father, and that it's "beautiful there". Not only does she want her husband back, but she also craves the escape from life that her husband found. Her son is continual wild and causes trouble throughout the movie, and she works in a home with senile old people under a disapproving boss. Her life has no respite, and the grief of losing her husband causes her to resent her son deeply.
Cohen says "When contained by geographic, generic, or epistemic marginalization, the monster can function as an alter ego, as an alluring projection of (an Other) self" (17). The main character knows that her husband is beyond all the pain and suffering she suffers herself, and the Babadook manifests itself in a way for her to escape all of it for good.