Barbara Creed discusses abjection in the mother-child relationship as the struggle for the child to break away from the mother. However, The Babadook features the opposite conflict, the mother becoming resentful of and struggling to break away from the child. The feeling of uncanniness comes from the mother's fear of the child's hold on her. If the Babadook is grief, its strength over the mother grows as she represses her grief and trauma in favor of "moving on", and she sees her child's attachment to her as something that holds her back. She struggles to break free from her child as he was born the day her husband died, equating his death with her and her child's initial separation. One might expect this to motivate her to maintain a tighter hold over her child, in Creed's sense, to undo that death and initial experience of abjection, but she pushes him away and becomes monstrous. The struggle between them ends when the mother stops overpowers her grief, but allows it to stay in the home.
One thing I would like to think more about is how the absence of a father affects this family's dynamic in relation to the section of the monstrous feminine reading that talks about how the child's favor for the father's structure causes the mother to strengthen her hold over the child. It motivates the feeling of uncanny by reaffirming the child's fear of attachment to the mother's body. The absence of the father in The Babadook turns the struggle around, as the child remains attached to the mother, yet she grows to resent him for it.
The Babadook presents maternity as the monstrous feminine in an unusual way. Like you point out, it is the opposite of how the relationship is normally portrayed, as seen in some of Hitchcock's films (like in Psycho and The Birds). It is interesting that both being too close and too distant to your child can come across as threatening. What is also interesting in both of these scenarios there is no father figure. What role do you think the patriarchal figure, or lack there of, has in constructing the monstrous feminine?
ReplyDeleteI really like your point about the role of absent paternity in this and other films. I think that Sam Luedtke's point about thinking of this question through some of Hitchcock's film is a really interesting way to go with it.
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