Introduction 1 the Good Mother

Notes Introduction 1. By ‘motherhood’ I am referring to the character of the mother and the practice of motherhood on screen. By the ‘maternal’ I am referring to the characteristics and symbolism which evoke motherhood. 2. This is not to suggest that the figure of the mother is entirely absent from pre-1960s cinema, rather that a range of socio-economic factors led to a development in the horror genre. For the purposes of clarity I wish to focus on post-Classical horror cinema. 3. This is not to suggest that no debates about motherhood existed prior to this, rather that discussions of the mother in film increased greatly after these years. 4. The woman’s film centres on a female protagonist, deals with specifically ‘female’ issues (such as motherhood or domesticity) and is aimed at a female audience. For Doane, the maternal melodrama is a sub-category of the woman’s film. While the maternal melodrama is more readily associated with films of the Classical Hollywood period, it remains a popular sub-genre of modern mainstream cinema. The maternal melodrama, as the name suggests, deals with the figure of the mother and the impact of motherhood on her life or that of the child. 5. This is not to suggest that discussion of the mother/maternal is limited to these genres, simply that they seem to have provoked the most interest. 6. For example, see Alien and the various studies by Creed, Bundtzen or Rosemary’s Baby as discussed by Fischer or Kuhn. 7. See Mulvey (2000); De Lauretis, Teresa, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. 1 The Good Mother 1. Drawing from Jung, Eric Neumann discusses the archetype of the Great Mother in detail. He examines various incarnations of Terrible and Good Mothers throughout civilisation. 2. I have taken this name from the book Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre by Lucy Fischer. 3. See Williams, Tony, Hearths of Darkness: the Family in the American Horror Film, London & Cranberry, NJ: Associated University Press, 1996. Also, as previously discussed: Wood, Robin (1985), Sobchack, Vivian (1996) 4. This is also the family that is most privileged in Western literature, film and media as well as legally. 185 186 Notes 5. I use the term successful as this form of mothering, which reproduces essential motherhood through maternal masochism and self-sacrifice, is established as the normative mode of nuclear family relations. 6. See Waller, Gregory A., ed., American Horrors: Essay on the Modern American Horror, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987 or Isabel Cristina Pinedo’s Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. 7. It is worth noting that in the film the majority of people who openly sus- pect that something is wrong and who strongly resist becoming infected are women. Women protest while men assimilate. Twice Carol is told by men to play along and act as one of them so that they can ‘pass’. Carol and other women are often detected by their emotion, usually considered a feminine quality. 8. Apocalyptic films are those which envision the end of the world through the motifs of natural catastrophe, disease, or supernatural forces. A good many of these films may be understood as representing a crisis of patriarchy. In some, the entire symbolic universe is destroyed, in others it is salvaged, albeit with the necessary revisions. The mother may act as a symbol of hope for the future (as I will discuss in later chapters) or she may be destroyed along with everything and everyone else. 2 The Bad Mother 1. For example, both Alien and Carrie have provoked a great deal of discussion about maternity in the horror film, yet rarely is the thematic strand fully explored. Even though Creed discusses both films, she does not explore the interrelationship between the mother in film and the maternal (imagery, for example). See Creed (1992), Bundtzen (1987), Scobie (1993), and Berenstein (1990) for discussions about Alien. See Creed (1992), Stamp Lindsey (1996) for a discussion of Carrie (which reads the mother through the experiences of the child). 2. For example, readings of films such as The Exorcist and Carrie often emphasise the role of the child and do not consider the function of the mother (or at least pay much less attention to her). See Sobchack (1996) and Wood (1985). 3. Creed’s work in turn has influenced a number of other theorists and film critics. 4. Another patient describes her as the Queen Bee among all the other patients. 5. There are two mothers in The Exorcist: Fr Karras’ mother, Mrs Karras, and Regan’s mother, Chris. I will be referring to both in this discussion, since the concept of absence is relevant to both figures. 6. See Creed (1992), Hutchings (2004), Jancovich (2002). 7. Even though Norman Bates kills his mother, she remains psychically alive to him. He keeps her alive by taking on her persona. 8. In the film, a mother brings her adopted daughter back to the town of her birth seeking a possible solution for the young girl’s nightmares. The town is destroyed, but mother and child unknowingly enter into a ghostly and empty alternative world. Within this world, there is also a hellish world which is inhabited by the original townspeople. Notes 187 3 A Comparative Analysis of Motherhood in Recent Japanese and US Horror Films 1. For example, there are similar mythological maternal figures. The ghost story or haunting story is common to both cultures. Likewise, early Japanese cinema drew heavily on the tradition of Western cinema. 2. Before the end of WW2 the Japanese family was characterised by the Ie system, which was legalised from the later 1800s. This was an extended, multigenerational family led by a patriarch (usually the oldest male). Inheritance operated through the male line. Filial piety was paramount. While this family structure existed prior to the Meiji Civil Code of 1898, it was a legal structure from then until the post-war years. People were registered through the family, not as individuals and women married into the family of the husband. After WW2 this structure was abol- ished and emphasis was placed on the marriage of two individuals, rather than the Ie. Likewise, women were granted rights regarding children and inheritance. 3. Like the Oedipus complex, the Ajase complex is based upon a myth. In it, a queen, fearing that her unborn child may be the reincarnation of a sage she had murdered, tries to abort her pregnancy. This fails and she later tries, and fails, to kill the child. However, she comes to love the child. In later years the queen’s son learns of his mother’s actions and, in anger, tries to kill her. Overcome with guilt he develops rancid pores that emit a foul odour. Only his mother can tolerate his condition and she nurses him back to health, during which both forgive each other. 4. The samurai family was a male-dominated extended family. 5. Here, I am not referring to the genre of melodrama (in its Western form) but to melodramatic motifs, which are a feature of both Western and Japanese melodrama. 6. For example, stories such as Ugetsu Monogatari and Akinari Uedo. 7. For example, Lafond, Frank, ‘Case Study: Ishi Takeshi’s Freeze Me and the Rape-Revenge Film,’ in Japanese Horror Cinema, ed. Jay McRoy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006, pp. 77–85. 8. For example, McRoy, Jay, ‘Cultural Transformation, Corporeal Prohibi- tions and Body Horror in Sato Hisayasu’s Naked Blood,’ in Japanese Horror Cinema, ed. Jay McRoy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006, pp. 107–119. 9. Originally a short story, ‘Floating Water’, in the book by Koji Suzuki, Dark Water, New York: Vertical Press, 2004. 10. Yoshimi is helped by a male lawyer but he is of far less significance than the lawyer of the US film. 11. For example, the Ajase complex (Japanese psychoanalysis) and the Mater- nal self-sacrifice paradigm (Western psychoanalysis). 4 Pregnancy in the Horror Film: Reproduction and Maternal Discourses 1. For example, Eric Neumann includes an index of imagery relating to motherhood and pregnancy. One such image of the pregnant Virgin Mary 188 Notes from Germany circa 1400 shows the baby in the region of the pregnant belly, rather than simply showing just the pregnant belly. 2. This recalls medieval artistic representations of the pregnant Virgin Mary, which showed the child in the womb. Later the church was to deem such images indecent. 3. Similar motifs and patterns are evident in a number of ‘devil’ impregna- tion horror films such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Visitor and Blessed.Inthese films, like other invasion pregnancy films, the female body is structured as passive and as a receptacle or a vessel with the potential for corruption. 4. Since this book discusses discourses of motherhood (in motherhood as well as pregnancy films), and since Rosemary’s Baby does not necessar- ily collapse motherhood onto the pregnant body, I have chosen not to discuss the film in great detail. Conclusion 1. We only see the dead body of Mrs Bates in Psycho, and in The Seventh Sign Abbey is only an actual mother very briefly at the end of the film. Bibliography Allison, Anne, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan, California: University of California Press, 2000. Altman, Rick, ‘A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre,’ in Film Theory & Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Anderson, Joseph and Richie, Donald, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.

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