The Babadook

Both Creed and Freud often reference the uncanny and abject in terms of the viewer's relationship with them. Freud relates the uncanny to the term "unheimlich", that which is concealed or kept out of sight, but what he is really interested in is how that is related to "heimlich", that which is familiar and congenial. According to his theory, they are deeply intertwined with one another, meaning, our feeling of uncanniness occurs with the emergence of a deeply repressed, yet familiar event, idea, or thing. The uncanny is something we know. Similarly, Creed constructs the idea that abjection comes from the instability of borders between symbolic order (what is known and familiar) and that which threatens it. By applying Freud's theory, we can see that what is threatening, the unknown, is actually not so unfamiliar. I believe what lies on the other side of the border are the things we don't want to admit we think about, taboo subjects or inappropriate states of being in a way. What makes The Babadook work so well is its interpretation of the familiarity of fear. I am not a parent, but I can imagine that there is a fear that exists surrounding not liking your children, having a "weird" kid, or snapping on them in a time of weakness. The deep feeling of discomfort that came with this film was how these themes underlined the entire plot. Of course, I am not a mother, but I seriously came to question this when my mom shared her feelings about the movie with me. What she got out of it, was that some of the "frightening" scenes where Amelia yelled at, got short with, or became irritated with Samuel were quite familiar to her. She really did not think that Amelia was acting that crazy at all (except for maybe snapping the dog's neck) and actually related some very similar moments she had with me when I was kid. So I guess what partly made The Babadook so frightening was how close it was to real life parenting and the struggles and complications that accompany any form of child-rearing. Amelia's lack of maternal instincts cross Creed's border, for the idea of a mother who lacks these instincts and innate love for her child has abject written all over it.

Another point Creed discusses is abjection in the female, maternal form. In terms of familiarity, there is no place we are more intimately connected to than the mother and womb. The feminine becomes monstrous when the child attempts to break away from the mother who reluctant to do so. This struggle marks the relationship with conflict, creating the abject mother, as the child reaches for the paternal realm. The child then become weighted by the "dual relationship" of a desire to stay with the mother because they are scared to leave, but at the same time, risking castration by staying. But its not just the threat of castration; if the child stays in the maternal world, they will lose their whole self to the mother, never creating an individual self apart from her. What stood out to me for the whole movie was how Amelia and Samuel's relationship was portrayed in the shots. From just observing these, you can see a present conflict within their relationship with no prior knowledge of the content of the film. One of the first shots of the film opens with the two of them lying in bed while turning away from one another, creating a distinct line between mother and son. This type of positioning is maintained for a majority of the film, whether it is a border between them at the kitchen table, lying in bed, or riding in the car together.

This separation is indicative of the present relationship between the two of them. Samuel is growing up and gaining knowledge, fulfilling the role of the "knowing" child. Frequently throughout the film he inquires about his father, Oskar, demanding to know him, claiming that Oskar is his father just as much as he was Amelia's husband. Samuel is reaching into the world of paternal law that Amelia has virtually shut him off from and it threatens her perceived symbolic order. Not only is he breaking the boundary of a child with "inappropriate" knowledge, but he is leaving Amelia and her maternal authority that guard that knowledge. One scene that illustrates Amelia's desire for Samuel to stay in her realm is when she brings him into the bath tub with her. She is literally pulling him back into her symbolic womb, represented by the water. This same uterine subtext is present when she brings Samuel underneath the covers, protecting him from "The Babadook", which symbolizes knowledge of his father and the transition into that world.

Disorder is created by the lack of boundary between maternal authority and paternal law by the absence of Samuel's father. When Amelia finally accepts that the Babadook is real, the disorder comes to a halt. She let's go of some of the grief around her husband, thereby also releasing Samuel from her world and into the father's and willingly allows Samuel to obtain knowledge about his father.