UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)

Escaping entrapment Gothic heroines in contemporary film Onaran, G.

Publication date 2017 Document Version Other version License Other Link to publication

Citation for published version (APA): Onaran, G. (2017). Escaping entrapment: Gothic heroines in contemporary film.

General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)

Download date:25 Sep 2021

CHAPTER II ghosts: What Lies Beneath and The Others

not so happily after all: from the marital gothic to the maternal gothic

In this chapter, I will investigate two contemporary gothic films, namely The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) and What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000), in order to explore the intricate workings of patriarchal family values and how these affect the contemporary gothic heroine. In doing this, I will follow Massé’s path and try to go beyond a classical psychoanalytic reading by incorporating a Deleuzean perspective in order to explore the deterritorialising potentials of these films. I will start by investigating the political implications of the ‘repression’ theme in the Gothic. Therefore, rather than focusing on the repressed personal traumas of the two films’ heroines, Grace and Claire, I will include social and cultural repressions by formulating the Gothic heroine herself as a symptom of a cultural trauma that needs to be addressed in order to break the Gothic repetition. I will continue by incorporating a Deleuzean framework and try to broaden my political analysis even further. I will mostly deal with becomings and how these are related not only to the heroine’s subjectivity but also to generic deterritorialisations that hybridize the Gothic with influences from the action film. The Others is a typically Gothic film in many respects, with its iconography, setting, and allusion to the supernatural. What Lies Beneath also follows Gothic conventions closely by presenting a typical ‘woman-plus-habitation’1 situation. Both films may be further studied with reference to Massé’s marital Gothic. In her study of Gothic literature, Massé identifies two ‘parts’ for the Gothic in accordance with its historical development: the earliest form of the genre concerns courtship, within which stories usually end in a wedding. The other variant, which Massé calls marital Gothic, began in the nineteenth century. It takes up from

1 Holland, Norman N. and Leona F. Sherman. “Gothic Possibilities.” New Literary History, No. 8 (1977): pp. 279-94.

47 the wedding and deals with the uncertainties of marriage.2 Massé especially focuses on this latter variant, defining it as “a later form of the genre where the husband is present at the beginning rather than the end of the story and ‘repeats’ the role of the father.”3 In these stories, after escaping from her father’s house by getting married, usually quite hastily with a man she barely knows, the heroine finds herself in the same nightmare she was trying to escape: the husband turns out to be the same kind of tyrant the father was, taking away the heroine’s voice, movement, property and, thus, identity.4 While in both the films explored here, the heroines do suffer from these conditions, The Others seems to move one step further, to the next step in marriage that a woman is expected to take: motherhood. Thus, I will call this variant, the maternal Gothic.5

grace and claire

Alejandro Amenábar’s film The Others, tells the story of Grace (Nicole Kidman), a religious woman, and her two children, Anne and Nicholas, who have been deserted in their great mansion during the Second World War when their father/husband left to join the army, and all servants took off one morning without notice. The children are photosensitive, meaning that daylight causes them to break out in sores; it could even kill them. Hence, all the mansion’s curtains and doors have to be kept shut at all times. One morning, three people – an older woman, an older man and a young woman – arrive, seemingly to apply for jobs as servants. Apparently they had worked in the house many years ago. The Others starts with their arrival, and the spectator is introduced to the children, the house and its strict rules at the same time as they are. Something is ‘off’ in this house. The children talk about a mysterious event that happened ‘that day’, and about how their mother ‘went mad’. Grace, however, doesn’t want to hear a word about it. Furthermore, Anne claims that there are people in the house and scares her little brother by telling him that a little boy comes into their room at night, which makes Grace, who does not believe in ghosts, very angry. Gradually, however, she also witnesses strange events. Initially she suspects the servants, whom she believes to be plotting something. Eventually, however, it turns out that Grace murdered the children and

2 Massé, Michelle A. In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism, and the Gothic. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press (1992): p. 20. 3 Ibid., p. 12. 4 Ibid., p. 12. 5 The two films I will discuss in the next chapter (Flightplan and The Forgotten) may also be regarded in this category. Whereas, for instance Roman Polanski’s film Rosemary’s Baby (1968) may be considered as a transition film where anxiety and paranoia are located in the experience of pregnancy.

48 then committed suicide. They are now ghosts and so are the servants whereas the ‘intruders’, who initially seemed to be ghosts, are actually living people. A family wants to move into the mansion but, having sensed a ‘presence’, they are holding séances with a psychic to get rid of the ghosts. When Grace and the children finally realize this, they scare them off and make a pact to hold on to the house, to never let anyone in. The film ends with their chanting, “This house is ours!” What Lies Beneath (2000) by Robert Zemeckis tells Claire’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) story. Claire lives with her husband Norman (Harrison Ford) in a beautiful house by a lake in Vermont, which used to belong to Norman’s father. Norman is a genetic engineer, which was also his father’s profession. Claire used to be a successful cello player, giving concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York. But, when Norman was offered the DuPont Chair in Genetics at the university in Vermont (which also was his father’s position) they moved there and Claire had to give up her music career. Claire sees a therapist because of memory loss she suffered after a car accident she had a year ago. Claire has a daughter named Caitlin from a previous marriage to a musician. When Caitlin leaves for college, Claire remains alone in the house and starts to reminisce about her old days as a musician. She also develops a curiosity about the new neighbours – Mary and Warren Feur – who fight and make love very loudly. She snoops around their house and, when she sees Warren carrying a big garbage bag out of the house one night, starts to believe that he has killed his wife and is now disposing of the body. Meanwhile, strange things happen in her own house: doors open by themselves, pictures fall... Then, at one point, Claire sees a ghost. She immediately shares her experience with Norman but he dismisses her. Thus, she starts to investigate the mystery behind the ghost who keeps visiting her by herself, with some help from her friend Jody. Eventually, it turns out that Norman had an affair with one of his students, Madison (Amber Valletta), and Claire caught them one day in the house. She left in a hurry and had an accident, causing the amnesia. As Claire gradually recovers her memory she also finds out that Norman murdered Madison and threw her body in the lake. Now Madison’s ghost is haunting them. When Claire refuses to turn a blind eye to this and insists that Madison’s body needs to be retrieved from the water, Norman tries to kill Claire as well. While the two are fighting, they fall into the lake together. As Norman tries to drown Claire, Madison rises from the deep and holds Norman back. Ultimately, Norman drowns, Claire is rescued, and Madison gets a proper burial. The film ends with Claire visiting Madison’s grave.

49 the return of the repressed

One of the most prominent themes of the Gothic has been defined from a psychoanalytic point of view as ‘the return of the repressed’. For instance, Jerold E. Hogle, who studies the Gothic extensively, explains that when something haunts the protagonists, it is usually something that has been repressed and that now returns (usually with a vengeance). “These hauntings can take many forms, but they frequently assume the features of ghosts, specters, or monsters (mixing features from different realms of being, often life and death) that rise from within the antiquated space, or sometimes invade it from alien realms, to manifest unresolved crimes or conflicts that can no longer be successfully buried from view.”6 Since The Others plays a trick (which I will discuss in detail below) with the typical Gothic formula, the haunting and its implications need to be analysed in relation to both scenarios in this film. While, for almost the entirety of the film, the spectator is encouraged to believe that Grace and the children are being haunted, it eventually turns out that they themselves are the ghosts haunting others. Once this twist is introduced, the issues and implications of haunting gain additional layers. In the scenario in which Grace is being haunted, we may ask what it is that she has been repressing and has returned to haunt her. In the other scenario, though, we need to investigate whose repression Grace represents, and what it is that has been repressed that takes the form of this woman when it returns. Starting with the first scenario, a traditional (psychoanalytic) reading of The Others, would focus on Grace’s repressions about her ‘unresolved crime’ of having murdered her own children, and would therefore probably lead to the conclusion that Grace’s paranoid behaviour is due to this terrible crime she has committed but cannot acknowledge. While the children keep mentioning ‘that day’, she does not want to hear anything about it. True to psychoanalytic definitions of paranoia, she is over protective of her children, suspicious about the servants, and believes that there are intruders in the house who are trying to harm her children. In fact, however, it is her conscience that is troubling her, and which she reflects onto ‘others’. She has been repressing the memory of her terrible crime, and the repressed now returns, causing her to have nightmares. The problem with this approach, according to Massé, is that by locating all anxiety in the heroine’s unconscious, these readings comfort the spectator, suggesting that they need not fear anything as long as they do not do anything that would cause such a disturbance in their

6 Hogle, Jerrold E. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002): p. 2.

50 unconscious. This then, of course, implies that as long as one follows the rules of the ‘system’, there is no need to worry about ghosts. Hence, such a reading of The Others would suggest that we, as the spectators, can feel safe, knowing that unless we do something as monstrous as killing our children, we have nothing to fear, no ghost will ever haunt us. Alternatively, it would be possible to explain the events in terms of psychosexual-pathology, potentially leading to the conclusion that Grace is not a good mother, that she is not fit for motherhood, probably due to some childhood trauma she experienced herself. These readings, however, fail to notice the conditions that drew Grace to murder and suicide – that caused her to go ‘mad’. They fail to ask the crucial Deleuzean question: “What could have happened?”7 Deleuze and Guattari’s approach to Grace’s experience would be quite different. In their account, “every delirium is first of all the investment of a field that is social, economic, political, cultural, racial and racist, pedagogical and religious” and only secondarily familial or oedipal.8 Judith Halberstam argues that, “Only a psychoanalytic model of interpretation insists upon the essential link between psychosexual pathology and monstrosity; the Gothic narrative itself sees monstrosity as infinitely more complex and dense.”9 And so does The Others, I would like to argue. By introducing its ‘twist’, the film subverts the self/other duality, implicating the self as the feared other. Once we start studying the film with this twist in mind, it inevitably leads to socio-cultural issues. Hogle makes a significant addition in this line to his formulation of the Gothic, arguing that the ‘thing’ that returns usually stands for “society’s deepest fears”.10 He thereby emphasises that there is a social/cultural dimension to the hauntings; that repression isn’t something that solely concerns the individual protagonist, but has wider implications. In a similar vein to Hogle, Massé also stresses the social and ideological attributes of Gothic texts, arguing that, “The gothic plot is [...] not an escape from the real world but a repetition and exploration of the traumatic denial of identity found there. Both the nightmare stasis of the protagonists and the all enveloping power of the antagonists are extensions of social ideology and real-world experience.” This means that the narratives raise issues that concern the whole society rather than a specific character. In this case, which of society’s deepest fears would

7 Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press (2007): p. 192. In his exploration of schizoanalysis in cinema Ian Buchanan also underlines that the question to be asked is not what certain things stand for but what they do: “In contrast to the psychoanalytic strategy of asking what the birds or rats stand for, Deleuze and Guattari focus on what they do”. See: Buchanan, Ian. “Is a Schizoanalysis of Cinema Possible?” Cinemas: Journal of Film Studies. Vol. 16, No. 2-3 (2006): p. 123. 8 Cited by Buchanan, “Is a Schizoanalysis of Cinema Possible?” p. 120. 9 Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke University Press (1995): p. 111. 10 Hogle, The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, p. 4.

51 Grace in The Others stand for? Most plainly put, Grace is a depressed housewife and mother living in an isolated mansion. My contention is that, in contrast to the marital Gothic stories, The Others adjusts its focus to contemporary issues, where “instead of being oppressed by their husbands, women are oppressed by both the pressure to have children and to be perfect mothers.”11 Thus, in The Others, it is the depressed, imprisoned and silenced mother who is being repressed. Since traditional family values and expectations about motherhood depend on the prescription that both bring eternal happiness, the possibility that some women may actually suffer from performing these gender roles is unacceptable. I will keep returning to this issue, but first I will look at What Lies Beneath. At first glance, What Lies Beneath seems to follow the classical Gothic formula of the return of the repressed quite straightforwardly. A psychoanalytic reading would most probably focus on Claire’s repressions: she has repressed the fact that her husband was unfaithful to her, and now the repressed returns. Exactly one year after a terrible crime was committed, the victim of this crime starts to haunt the perpetrator’s house in the form of a ghost. Eventually, what has been lying buried beneath the water (what has been repressed) rises to the surface. As already outlined, the ‘ghost’ in this instance is Madison, Norman’s student and former lover, whom he has murdered. Hence, from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, the first thing to investigate in the film is what Madison stands for. From the first shot onwards, a parallel is drawn between Madison and Claire. The opening shot shows Madison rising towards the surface of the lake, which then dissolves into Claire’s face rising in the bathtub. Claire emerges from the water breathless, as if she were drowning. Later, we find out that Norman drowned Madison in this bathtub, and will attempt to do the same thing to Claire. This connection between the two women is further underlined in various ways throughout the film. For instance, when Claire starts seeing a therapist, she tells him that she saw a ghost who looked like her self. The metonymic use of the heart- shaped necklace that used to belong to Madison and which Claire starts to wear, as well as the use of mirrors and reflections in the water where Claire sees Madison while looking at herself, are also significant in this respect. Conventionally, mirrors and reflections are frequently used to hint at ‘the other side’ of a character, whether an alter ego, or the character’s evil or repressed side.

11 Henderson, Angela C., Sandra M. Harmon, and Jeffrey Houser. “A New State of Surveillance? Applying Michel Foucault to Modern Motherhood.” Surveillance & Society, Vol. 7, No. 3/4 (2010): pp. 231-247.

52 This thread of resemblances and doublings would mean that Madison stands for the things that Claire has been repressing. Madison is a young single woman and thus unbound by the restrictions of marriage. She is very intelligent (according to her mother, she got all A’s at school, a scholarship from Princeton, and they wanted to put her in a special class for the gifted in school. Norman also calls her “a bright young woman”), and passionately pursues her desires (her mother calls her ‘wild’ for speeding in a convertible Mustang). Thus, what immediately comes to a psychoanalytically trained mind is that Claire regrets not having acted as Madison did by following her own dreams. She cries while looking at some old photographs from when she was a student wearing a Juilliard tank top or during a concert with her friends. Madison not only stands for Claire’s repressed ambitions, however; she is also a manifestation of her repressed sexuality. When her neighbor Mary says, “Do you know what it is like to be totally consumed by passion?”, Claire clearly has no idea what she is talking about, suggesting that there is no passion in her marriage. It is only when Claire is possessed by Madison that her normally affectionate body language, her proper clothes, and even the way she looks at Norman (her gaze) change drastically and become openly sexual, flirtatious and passionate. Another repression that Madison hints at is Norman’s betrayal, which Claire absolutely does not remember. Hence, again from a psychoanalytic perspective, Claire seems to be going through a process in which her repressed memories about her husband’s infidelity and her accident start to surface. It is very likely that when the therapist tells Claire to speak with the ghost, he presumes the ‘ghost’ to be a reflection of her unconscious. He wants her to communicate with her unconscious and thus deal with her trauma. Actually, although it would be possible to read the whole film from this perspective, the film clearly undermines such an interpretation. When Norman gets really desperate, not knowing how to ‘handle’ Claire’s situation – being the scientist he is – he calls a ‘specialist’ in paranormal activities. The first thing he asks is whether Claire’s unconscious could be causing these manifestations (i.e. the hauntings). Although we do not hear the answer, it seems to be negative. Even more significantly, after a certain point in the film, Norman also starts seeing Madison’s ghost (in the bathtub, on the road and finally in the lake). Thus, the film makes it clear that Madison is not simply Claire’s hallucination or a manifestation of her unconscious. One way to broaden this analysis is to include the socio-cultural aspect that Hogle suggests. It may be argued that Madison is not haunting Claire or Norman specifically but the patriarchal mansion. To which fear in white, American, upper-middle class, suburban, patriarchal society does Madison correspond to? A very rough answer might suggest that

53 Madison represents a fear about young, single, intelligent and successful women; an anxiety that such women may destroy the patriarchal family and its values. This reading, however, does not lead to an understanding of the conditions that cause Claire to suffer or lead to Madison’s murder. Neither is there any indication about how to end this suffering other than in conservative terms: as long as people avoid adultery, they have nothing to fear. It is exactly this kind of analysis that Massé warns against since it perpetuates the Gothic repetition by ultimately praising and reinforcing traditional structures, which in fact are the main cause of women’s misery. Therefore, I believe it is necessary to read away from this approach.

ghosts as deterritorialising forces

In the return of the repressed account of ghosts, these spectral figures return from their grave to reveal a secret, something that has been concealed or forgotten, to right a wrong or to deliver a message that might otherwise have gone unrecognized. So far, I have tried to unearth such secrets in The Others and What Lies Beneath, but I have also tried to show that this account is not sufficient in itself to investigate these films in their fullness. I believe that there is more to the hauntings in these films than just revealing that Grace murdered her children or that Norman had an affair and murdered his lover. Accordingly, I would now like to broaden my perspective by calling on Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. While discussing cinema and television in relation to his concept of hauntology, Jacques Derrida claims that, “The future belongs to ghosts.” 12 While Derrida’s interest in ghosts and haunting has a different purpose than mine, his approach and many of his arguments are interesting in relation to the films I explore here. According to Esther Peeren and Maria del Pilar Blanco, “The publication of Jacques Derrida’s Spectres de Marx in 1993 (and its English translation, Specters of Marx, in 1994) is commonly considered the catalyst for what some have called the ‘spectral turn,’ marking the appearance of a new area of investigation of which the past two decades represent an apogee”.13 Peeren claims that the spectral turn should be considered as “a loose convergence of interest in the conceptual force of ghosts and

12 Derrida, Jacques, and Bernard Stiegler, Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews. Trans. Jennifer Bajorek. Cambridge: Polity Press (2002): p. 114. 13 Peeren, Esther and Maria del Pilar Blanco. “Introduction: Conceptualizing The Spectralities.” In: The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory. Eds. Esther Peeren and Maria del Pilar Blanco. London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing (2013): p. 2.

54 haunting,” which involves “taking up ghosts and haunting as analytical instruments.”14 This approach has been inspirational for me and in the following pages I will ty to take ghosts and haunting as analytical instruments. According to Derrida, “To be haunted by a ghost is to remember what one has never lived in the present, to remember what, in essence, has never had the form of a presence.”15 He seems to define haunting as a deconstruction of presence and the present, and ghosts as undoing the binary presence/absence, which eventually throws the present out of joint.16 Thus, Derrida assigns an important subversive potential to ghosts. In Colin Davis’ words, “Derrida’s spectre is a deconstructive figure hovering between life and death, presence and absence, and making established certainties vacillate.”17 I would like to focus especially on the last part of this statement, on how the ghosts in What Lies Beneath and The Others “make established certainties vacillate”. The important difference of Derrida’s approach from the purely psychoanalytic one is that what matters in his account is not so much to reveal a secret from the past but to create doubt about present knowledge. Emphasising the ethical aspect of hauntology, Davis defines Derrida’s ghost as, “a wholly irrecuperable intrusion in our world, which is not comprehensible within our available intellectual frameworks, but whose otherness we are responsible for preserving.”18 Ghosts, suddenly burst into the established, taken-for-granted present order and throw it all out of balance. Thus, already many questions arise in relation to The Others and What Lies Beneath. For instance, what is it that Grace and Claire have never lived in the present? More importantly, what is the ‘certainty’ that is being deconstructed or the ‘present’ that is thrown out of joint in these films? Which ‘otherness’ do these films point at and aim to preserve? An especially relevant issue that Davis notes is that, “Derrida calls on us to endeavour to speak and listen to the spectre, despite the reluctance inherited from our intellectual traditions and because of the challenge it may pose to them. [...] Conversing with spectres is not undertaken in the expectation that they will reveal some secret, shameful or otherwise. Rather, it may open us up to the experience of secrecy as such: an essential unknowing which

14 Peeren, Esther. “The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility.” In: The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory. Eds. Esther Peeren and Maria del Pilar Blanco. London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing (2013): p. 11. 15 Derrida and Stiegler, Echographies of Television, p. 114. 16 Schwartz, Louis-Georges. “Cinema and the Meaning of “Life”.” Discourse. Vol. 28, No. 2-3 (Spring & Fall 2006): p 14. 17 Davis, Colin. “État Présent: Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms.” French Studies. Vol. 59, No. 3 (July 2005): p. 376. 18 Ibid., p. 373.

55 underlies and may undermine what we think we know.”19 This claim opens a way to approach the advice that the therapist gives to Claire in What Lies Beneath about speaking with the ghost from an altogether different perspective. This time the concern is not about Claire’s unconscious but about challenging her established ways of knowing, which in turn also challenge Norman’s account of the events.20 The most significant ‘certainty’ that What Lies Beneath deconstructs is the dominant scientific male discourse represented by Norman. The therapist defies Norman’s position and encourages Claire to act away from it,21 opening the path for her to experience the state of unknowing, which may be formulated in Deleuzean terms as a line of flight. Meanwhile, this challenge also urges the spectators to question their potentially negative rendering of Claire’s position and the ‘certainties’ that lead to this approach. Following this initial deterritorialisation, the film step-by-step moves further away from dominant ways of knowing towards ‘other ways of knowing’. For instance, right after the therapy session, Claire invites her friend Jody, buys an Ouija board, and together they hold a séance – probably the least prestigious method of investigation and knowledge creation. There is another aspect, though, to this deconstruction since the two approaches that the film initially opposes to each other are both ‘scientific’: psychology/psychiatry versus genetics. This conflict is underlined by Norman’s remark about Warren Feur, when he says, “He’s from the psych department. Figures they’re all nuts over there.” Such an opposition evokes Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of royal science and vague, vagabond or nomad science: the positive science of genetics (represented by Norman) and the ‘less prestigious’ social science of psychology (represented by the psychotherapist). In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari write about “the concern of a man of the State, or one who sides with the State, to maintain a legislative and constituent primacy for royal science. Whenever this primacy is taken for granted, nomad science is portrayed as a prescientific or parascientific or

19 Ibid., pp. 376-77. 20 This approach is also radically different from Freud’s take on ghosts, who writes: “In our great cities, placards announce lectures that undertake to tell us how to get in touch with the souls of the departed; and it cannot be denied that not a few of the most able and penetrating minds among our men of science have come to the conclusion, especially towards the close of their own lives, that a contact of this kind is not impossible. Since almost all of us still think as savages do on this topic, it is still so strong within us and always ready to come to the surface on any provocation.” Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” In: Writings on Art and Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press (1997): p. 218. 21 As opposed to the other films that I study here, What Lies Beneath takes a favorable approach to the psychotherapist. The film even seems to offer this figure as one of the main forces that set Claire on her line of flight. It is especially significant that he doesn’t disrespect Claire’s claim about having seen a ghost, as Norman does. Although this is a male character, he is African-American, hence not fully a representative of the dominant social, economic, ethnic class. In addition, his way of communicating is marked by a different sense modality, one that subverts the ‘hierarchy of the senses’. During their first session, he gives Claire a ‘fireball’, a candy that has an intensely spicy cinnamon flavor, which causes a burning sensation. In the next session, when Claire drifts off in her thoughts, he touches her lightly on the knee to get her attention back. Instead of speech (calling out her name to get her attention back) and vision (trying to catch her eye), he prefers touch and taste. Given that touching, especially touching a stranger, is almost taboo in American social behavior, this represents a step away from the dominant set of communicative behaviors.

56 subscientific agency. […] The State is perpetually producing and reproducing ideal circles, but a war machine is necessary to make something round.”22 Sending Claire to a therapist was Norman’s first attempt to ‘make her round’. When that fails to work (because the therapist does not seem to be ‘a man of the State’ – I will come back to this), he resorts to violence. The conflict between Norman and Claire further points at the opposition between patriarchal discourse and female discourse. The first is through which most ‘certainties’ are produced and the primacy of which is taken for granted. The second, on the other hand, is usually portrayed as a “prescientific or parascientific or subscientific agency.”23 Norman occupies the most privileged subject position: he is white, western, male, middle-class, middle-aged, professional, a scientist, a professor, heterosexual and married. Therefore, anything he says is bound to be perceived as ‘the truth’. Claire’s behaviour, on the other hand, seems especially strange to her husband and surely to the people around them, who for instance, witness her outburst at Mr. Feur. In this particular scene, Claire, who believes that Mr. Feur has killed his wife, openly confronts him publically by yelling at him. Her situation becomes quite desperate when Mrs. Feur, whom Claire believed to be murdered, appears in the scene, happy and healthy. At this point, the spectator is also left in an ambivalent state in relation to Claire, wondering whether she is reliable or not. Diane Waldman interprets the Gothic romance as “the dramatization of patriarchal order’s attempts at achieving hegemony over female perception and interpretation.”24 The moment this becomes most apparent in What Lies Beneath is when Norman insistently forces Claire to accept his view: “Say it! It was an accident! It’s not my fault!” This is almost literally brain washing: Norman speaking instead of Claire, putting words into her mouth, telling her what to feel and what to believe. Fortunately, however, with the encouragement of the psychotherapist, Claire avoids falling into this trap. Although terrified, she insists on being heard, being taken seriously and investigating her suspicion. When Norman tells her to keep her voice down, she screams back, “I will not!” She continues, “I am not crazy!” It is this scream that breaks one of the three main elements that cause the Gothic heroine’s suffering – silence. Madison quite forcibly enters Claire and Norman’s seemingly peaceful life, which is presented as a traditional, white, upper-middle class family life, and throws it out of joint. The

22 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 367. 23 Ibid. 24 Waldman, “At Last I Can Tell It to Someone!” p. 34.

57 film first defines Claire’s established order through the typically ‘beautiful’ lake house and her daily activities, which consist of taking care of her daughter and the garden while her husband goes to town for work. Then, this whole structure, which in dominant discourse would be the ‘ideal life’, is thrown out of joint. Here, I would like to emphasise that when investigated from this point of view, traditional family structures become much more noteworthy then Claire’s or Norman’s repressions, and the film seems to problematize these structures rather than dealing with individual psychological issues of the characters. In The Others, one of the things that throws doubt onto Grace’s certainties is the Book of the Dead. She is utterly confused when she finds it in the storage room, wondering, “How could people be so superstitious?” This throws Grace’s belief in religious teachings out of joint, causing her to question things she thought she knew. Earlier, when one of the servants, Mrs. Mills, introduced the idea that “people may stay with us after their death,” Grace was quite certain that “God would never allow such an abomination!” Eventually, however, she realises that ‘the father’ to whom she was running for help knows nothing about their situation and can do nothing to help them (I will come back to this scene below). Even further, Grace becomes aware of the fact that she and her children themselves are that ‘abomination’. Thus, one of the most noticeable ‘certainties’ the film unhinges is religious dogma. Regarding The Others with the knowledge that Grace and the children are ghosts demands a different reading. Investigating the film once again from this perspective raises questions about which present or certainty Grace and the children throw out of joint. Since they are haunting a family consisting of mother, father and son – the generic Oedipal family – it would not be too much of a stretch to argue that the film has an ‘anti-oedipal’ agenda. Grace and the children not only form a family without a father but in the final scene they also swear that they will never let anyone move into the house, which is against the taken for granted certainties that families should live in grand houses and that property belongs to patriarchs. A ghost family without a father will live in this mansion. So, here again, changing the conceptual framework shifts the focus from Grace’s repressions to socio-cultural issues concerning ‘certainties’ created by religious authorities and patriarchal family structures. Furthermore, the twist that The Others introduces urges the spectator to question her/his certainties regarding female characters in Gothic narratives, too.

58 patriarchy in segments

In her book The Matrix of Visual Culture, Patricia Pisters adapts the network of political lines inherent to Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic politics to cinema in order to discuss the political aspects of certain films that present characters who “strive to persist.” 25 According to Pisters, these political lines also determine the kinds of subjectivities these films create. As I am discussing the politics of What Lies Beneath and The Others, as well as the subjectivities of Claire and Grace, both of whom are striving to persist, drawing a rhizomatic map of territorial and deterritorial forces and taking a closer look at the various political lines in these films may offer a deeper understanding about the socio-cultural aspects of the situations that Claire and Grace find themselves in. In her cinematic adaptation of rhizomatic politics Pisters mainly refers to three lines. The first is the molar line, “the hard or segmental line, which frames the individual into social groups, family structures, classes, sex and gender, and professional structures.” Pisters draws attention to the fact that these lines refer to issues reaching beyond the film, to larger territorial segments in the world and in history26; they are “extracinematic: political, historical, sociologic and economic segments that are virtually present in the various filmic universes. Sometimes the molar line is referred to in the film, but mostly it is just an implied fact.” This is the territorializing line that leads us to the “encapsulating social systems that engender repeated trauma”, which defines the Gothic heroine’s life and causes her suffering. The second line that Pisters refers to is the molecular line, “the line where small changes (within the individual or within the group) take place, the line where resistance or deferral takes place but still remains within the segmental law and order.”27 A discussion of such lines helps to explain the ‘schizzes’ or ‘breakflows’ of different characters, although they need to be considered in relation to the film as a whole and the type of image it presents. Detecting these lines will furthermore help identify the deterritorialising forces that eventually set Claire and Grace on their lines of flight, which is the final type of line in the political rhizome: “Deleuze finally distinguishes a third line, which is the nomad line or line of flight, the line that draws one into new unknown domains and constitutes a real break with the segmental line.”28

25 Pisters, Patricia. The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press (2003): p. 58. 26 Ibid., p. 67. 27 Ibid., p. 58. 28 Ibid., pp. 58-59.

59 One of the most noticeable hard/segmental lines in both films is the patriarchal/Oedipal family and the home. This seems to be congruent with Deleuze and Guattari’s view of the home as inherently fascist. In their account, the home – a sedentary space marked by the limits of the State – and the family are purely repressive instruments.29 What Lies Beneath clearly takes issue with the way roles are structured and distributed within the family according to gender. One of Norman’s remarks offers the quintessential summary of the Gothic. One evening, Claire and Norman have dinner with a friend and his girlfriend, who turns out to be an old friend and colleague of Claire’s. She tells stories about how daring and courageous Claire used to be in her youth, to which Norman responds by saying, “I made an honest woman out of her.” This clearly implies that he made a molar woman out of Claire. Through such moments, the film seems to indicate how molar woman is constructed (violently) by patriarchal discourse. In this respect, it is significant that Madison, a woman who seems to resist molarity, is cast out of the system and murdered. Kavka writes about how the threatening ghost in most female Gothic films is reminiscent of the noir femme fatale, and argues that this ghost functions as the alter ego or double of the Gothic heroine.30 I have already discussed the reminiscence of Madison and Claire. Additionally, Madison fits the definition of femme fatale almost perfectly: she is a young, beautiful and ambitious woman blackmailing the married man with whom she is having an affair. Kavka also points out that, since the female protagonist is not only the investigator but also the victim of the haunting, this doubling suggests that, “women are not only dangerous to each other but also to themselves.” 31 What Lies Beneath seems to subvert this stereotypical notion about female relationships by suggesting that it is not simply women themselves who are dangerous but it is also their desires that are coded as dangerous – desires that threaten domestic normality, and therefore need to be contained.32 Madison’s desire for Norman and Claire’s desire for music make these women dangerous to Norman’s career as well as to his ideal image as father and husband. If Claire followed her desires, she would not be an ideal wife and mother while if Madison’s

29 Lewis, Tyson, and Daniel Cho. “Home is Where The Neurosis is: A Topography Of The Spatial Unconscious.” Cultural Critique, No.64, (Autumn 2006): p. 83. 30 Kavka, Misha. “The Gothic on Screen.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, Ed. C. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002): p. 220. 31 Ibid., p. 219. 32 For instance, in Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940), what makes Rebecca (the femme fatale ghost that haunts Manderlay) dangerous is her ‘deviant’ sexuality: her extramarital relations and her lesbian desire.

60 desires were left free-floating, she would pose a serious threat to Norman. Therefore, Norman had to contain both. From a patriarchal point of view, this also makes Claire and Madison dangerous to other women, since they set a ‘bad example’ that works against the idealized model of the molar woman. Madison is dangerous because, by irrupting into the carefully structured family that Norman has created, she leads Claire astray, putting her desire into motion. Interestingly, however, what makes women dangerous to themselves, according to What Lies Beneath, is the containment of this desire – the blockage of the flow of desire, which leads to isolation and frustration. Hence, the problem that What Lies Beneath points to is caused by a discrepancy between what women desire (millions of things) and what they are supposed to desire (to be devoted wives, homemakers, caretakers and mothers). I have earlier mentioned that one of the conditions the Gothic heroine suffers from is immobility. In What Lies Beneath this is manifested when, during their final fight, Norman drugs Claire with halothane in order to drown her in the bathtub. In an earlier scene, a researcher explains how this substance works: “It paralyses motor function but leaves her conscious. She can’t move but knows what’s going on.”33 The scientist here is of course talking about rats, but this sentence may as well be read as regarding ‘the wife,’ which would make this scene a condensed version of the Gothic nightmare: a woman being paralyzed and slowly suffocated by her husband. She is aware of it all, but has been stripped of all means of movement and resistance; therefore, she can’t do anything about it. Claire defines the workings of molar family structures when she points out (in protest) how she had to give up everything – her life, her music – so that she could be “the perfect wife in the perfect house” because Norman was trying to “topple [his] perfect daddy”. In this sense, the film presents a typically Oedipal situation: Norman is the son trying to overcome and replace his father, who was a highly respected scientist holding the same academic position that Norman now holds.34 Norman gets very angry when people confuse him with his father or ask about him (which happens several times during the film). Thus, the film also hints at another important issue, namely that the Oedipal system cuts both ways, oppressing men as much as women. Norman is, in a way, forced to do all these things because this is the way to be a man, a patriarch. When he tries to explain to Claire why he did what he did, he says, “Should I have sacrificed everything? My work for which I gave my whole life?” It is

33 It is significant that the definition is given with the feminine demonstrative, she. 34 The expression Norman uses to define the restoration of the house that used to belong to his father is quite violent: “We have gutted it!”

61 interesting that while Claire had willingly given up everything, Norman was so reluctant to do the same, and even resorted to murder to prevent it. The path Norman chose to follow may be regarded as the molar/Oedipal line that he insists on staying true to by all means. As Claire’s example shows, however, molarity is not the only option for responding to constraint. One may also follow the molecular line (which I will discuss in more detail below). What creates the family segment is marriage and both films challenge ‘certainties’ and values regarding this institution, and reveal its potentially damaging implications for women. For instance, the reason for Claire’s isolation is their move to Vermont after they got married. Because Norman was offered the ‘prestigious’ DuPont Chair of Genetics, Claire had to give up her own career in music so that Norman could pursue his. This seems to happen in most marriages, where the woman gives up her career to take care of the home and children. In this case, however the film also draws attention to another opposition between royal and vagabond science. A career in genetics is considered as more valuable – ‘prestigious’ – than a career in music; music may be easily given up for the pursuit of science. In The Others, marriage is problematized in a scene towards the end of the film. Here Anne tries on a dress she is supposed to wear at her first communion, and remarks that she looks like a bride. However, the lighting and framing make her look like a ghost (which she actually is). Hence, the film seems to overlap religious imagery (the communion) and marriage (the bride), defining them both as institutions that turn women into ‘ghosts’, into ‘the living dead’, stuck between life and death, past and present – figures who have no actual subjectivity in the present. Meanwhile, the home that Grace has created seems to match Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘criteria’ of fascism perfectly: her rule is strikingly harsh and repressive. She is almost fanatical about family values and religion, the two main segmental lines in the film. In an exemplary scene, instead of letting the children play, Grace forces them to study a chapter entitled ‘The House and The Family Morals’ – a piece that clearly idealizes the traditional family. Grace herself spends most of her time seeming bored, trying to busy herself with ‘feminine activities’ such as embroidery. Their home is clearly a sedentary space – it is inactive. Grace herself is aware of the discrepancy between her experience and the ideals she so fiercely defends. She tells Mrs. Mills that, “This is not an ideal home”, defining it instead as a place where nothing moves, a dark prison cut off from the rest of the world.

62 Another important part of the family segment is motherhood. Foucault writes about the hysterisation of women’s bodies as one of the “strategic unities which, beginning in the eighteenth century, formed specific mechanisms of knowledge and power centering on sex,”35 with motherhood being one of the main processes through which this was accomplished. According to Foucault, the mother, as ‘nervous woman’, is held both biologically and morally responsible for the lives of children.36 Motherhood has so far not yet been discussed much in relation to the Gothic, probably because the classical films didn’t seem to take interest in it. However, I believe it is necessary to explore this subject further since The Others rather openly takes issue with motherhood. In her analysis of the Gothic, Massé draws attention to the discrepancy between the romantic ideology of marriage and its praxis. Marriage – which the Gothic heroine hoped would elevate her into adult status, would make her the owner of a house in which she would be listened to – proves to have none of these attributes. On the contrary, the heroine is silenced, paralyzed and enclosed once again.37 I want to argue that it is possible to talk about a similar romantic ideology of motherhood, which, in the case of many women, does not match the actual praxis of raising a child. Many feminist scholars have discussed how ‘the myth of motherhood’ forms expectations in terms of ‘good motherhood’, which then create further psychological burdens for women.38 In The Others, motherhood is presented as an isolating experience through the photosensitivity of the children. Since they cannot leave the house, neither can Grace, who is therefore strictly bound to the domestic sphere. Yet she also seems to be the exemplary ‘nervous mother’, being very defensive about her motherly qualities. For instance, after she finds one of the doors unlocked (something absolutely against her house rules since it may expose the children to light) and nobody takes responsibility, she states aggressively, “I hope you are not suggesting that it was me! Would I overlook such a thing and endanger the life of

35 Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Vintage (1990): p. 104. 36 Ibid. 37 Massé, In the Name of Love, p. 18. 38 See for instance: Nicolson, Paula. “The Myth of the Maternal Instinct: Feminism, Evolution and the case of Postnatal Depression.” Psychology, Evolution & Gender. Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1999), pp. 161-181; Warner, Judith. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, New York: Riverhead Books (2005). One of the early examples of patriarchal discourse created about motherhood, which put a major burden on women’s shoulders is D.W. Winnicott’s (in)famous 1956 paper “Primary Maternal Preoccupation”. In this paper the influential English paediatrician and psychoanalyst elaborates on what he calls the “normal illness” of the mother, which “enables her to adapt delicately and sensitively to the infant’s needs at the very beginning of life.” Some mothers, he says, “are not able to become preoccupied with their own infant to the exclusion of other interests, in the way that is normal and temporary.” Winnicott, D.W. “Primary Maternal Preoccupation.” In: The Maternal Lineage: Identification, Desire, and Transgenerational Issues. Ed. Paola Mariotti. London and New York: Rotledge (2012).

63 my own children?!”39 I will further discuss the burden motherhood creates on Grace below in relation to Grace’s desires. Referring to Freud, Massé points out how developing an appropriate anxiety is necessary to cope with danger. The Gothic heroine’s problem, according to Massé, is the lack of such anxiety, caused by her blind trust and belief in abstract qualities associated with marriage, such as love and duty. This situation could be re-formulated in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms as blindly following the molar path/segmental line, “the pull towards assimilation or integration into the majority,”40 which is what Grace and Claire have been doing until the hauntings start to occur. The Others underlines Grace’s blind trust in such values – in ‘certainties’ – very clearly. She refuses to accept any objections, punishing her children when they do not take her lessons about the bible and family seriously. She is intent on perpetuating these ‘certainties’. As Mrs. Mills says, “There are things she doesn’t want to hear. She only believes what she has been told.” She also seems to have a desperate need to believe that she has been doing the right thing. When she tells her children that they are not missing out on anything by being unable to go out, that they “are much better off home”, it is like she is trying to convince herself rather than the children. Massé writes about how, because the Gothic heroine internalises cultural lessons, “she sees her trials as unique to herself and avoids systemic inquiry about the source of her suffering. She carefully monitors herself, finds virtue in her renunciation, and teaches other women to do so as well.”41 In What Lies Beneath, Claire’s blind trust in Norman – and, hence, in all that he, the white middle class, professional male represents (the ‘standard of identity’ or ‘majority’ as Deleuze and Guattari call it) – is not as obvious as it is in Grace’s case, but it is still there. When the therapist asks Claire how her marriage is, she insists that it is fine and even expresses her unwillingness to question it. The fact that she has forgotten everything, erased all knowledge about how she caught Norman cheating on her and keeps on living ‘happily’ with him shows how much she wants to believe in her husband and her marriage. It means that she has erased all of her husband’s faults (the faults of the patriarch), all knowledge that would threaten the oedipal/patriarchal family system. When Claire finally remembers what has happened, Norman says, “I’m asking you to forgive me,” which means that he is asking her to forget everything once again, and that in the name of protecting their family. Thus, the

39 The irony of this remark becomes clear at the end of the film when it turns out that she has actually murdered her children. 40 Braidotti, Rosi. “Becoming Woman: or Sexual Difference Revisited.” Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 20, No. 3 (2003): p. 54. 41 Massé, In the Name of Love, p. 3.

64 film points at a strategy employed by the patriarchal order according to which women are expected to ignore all of patriarchy’s faults and inconsistencies in order to make the system work. Massé cites Michael Balint’s work on trauma, in which he points out that trauma does not have to necessarily relate to a single event: “on the contrary, usually it amounts to a situation of some duration caused by a painful misunderstanding – a ‘lack of fit’ –between the individual and his environment”.42 According to Massé such a lack of fit is most obvious in gender expectations, which are most fully presented in the Gothic:

The heroines of the Gothic, inculcated by education, religion, and bourgeois familial values, have the same expectations as those around them for what is normal. Their social contract tenders their passivity and disavowal of public power in exchange for the love that will let them reign in the interpersonal and domestic sphere […] Yet, […] they are surrounded by couples who testify to the transaction’s failure. What is gives the lie to what they are told should be, and they are haunted by the discrepancy.43

Following this argument, I want to argue that Grace’s and Claire’s traumas refer to such a lack of fit between their personal experience of marriage, family and motherhood, and how it is defined by society – the molar order; between how they actually feel and how they are supposed to feel. Grace even mentions the ‘contract’ that Massé refers to when she tries to share her experience with her husband. She says, “Your love was enough for me to live in this prison.” Yet it is also exactly this unquestioning trust in the molar system that causes both women to remain trapped in it. For instance, at first, both women try to solve their problems through the means offered by the system, asking for support from various authority figures: Grace looks desperately for a priest while Claire asks her husband for help. As Massé points out, however, the Gothic heroine’s blind trust in the system not only causes trouble but also leaves her helpless in difficult situations. These idealized qualities even work to her disadvantage since they are ineffective for dealing with real world experiences.44 In The Others, for instance, not only are religious dogma and family values unable to explain where Grace is (limbo? purgatory?), who the intruders are (ghosts? Nazis? burglars?) and, most importantly, who or what she is, but neither can they explain why she

42 Cited in Massé, Michelle A. “Gothic Repetition: Husbands, Horrors, and Things That Go Bump in the Night.” Signs, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Summer 1990): p. 685. 43 Ibid., p. 688. 44 Pisters discusses a similar situation in relation to Alice in Wonderland. As it is with Alice, good manners and social rules don’t help Gothic heroines in this world. Pisters, The Matrix of Visual Culture, pp. 108-112. Ian Buchanan points out that, “Deleuze’s entire philosophy is dedicated to the mission of overcoming inadequate ideas.” My emphasis. Buchanan, Ian. “Introduction.” In: Deleuze and Music. Eds. Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2004): p. 4. The blind trust in the molar system is probably the most significant “inadequate idea” that needs to be overcome by the Gothic heroine.

65 feels such frustration (other than in terms of pathology or sin). Claire’s situation is similar: when she feels most desperate, her husband disregards and even deserts her. In one scene, after Claire sees something being written on the steamed-over mirror by an invisible hand and her computer turns on by itself, she gets terribly frightened and runs to Norman. He is very rude to her and even accuses her of trying to sabotage his work. Hence, neither Norman himself nor his scientific knowledge prove to be of any use in solving Claire’s problems or dealing with her trauma. On the contrary, they even amplify it for a while, leaving her lost and desperate. Clearly, the segmental line is not the preferable path to follow for Grace and Claire. Grace’s children in The Others also suffer from this situation. Susan Bruce writes about how the children’s reaction to light (breaking out in sores and blisters) is evocative of the reaction that photographic paper would give if improperly fixed.45 In photographic terms, ‘improperly fixed’ means “not prepared well to protect from light”. Cinematically, light is very frequently used as a metaphor for knowledge.46 In The Others, as well, this is one of the most evident metaphors, which then suggests that the children have not been prepared well to deal with knowledge, even though, Grace seems to be very careful with their education. Thus, the film seems to point at a discrepancy between the ‘certainties’ that Grace wants her children to learn, and the knowledge(s) that causes the children to break out in blisters and sores; between molar knowledge and everything that lies outside of its field of influence – outside the tightly closed curtains of the home. This then would suggest that molar knowledge is valuable only for situations defined by and within molarity. Outside the molar order it is useless and ineffective, which is probably one of the reasons why the line of flight is the most dangerous line, with direct consequences for the character’s body and life.47 Here, one is confronted with the unknown, with no point of reference on how to engage with it. It is as dangerous, however, as it is invigorating. Thus, once Claire and Grace depart from the hard segmental line, they seem lost at first and both have to confront great dangers. Deleuze and Guattari point out that following a line of flight also carries the risk of heading into the black hole of self-destruction, which may explain Grace’s initial response to molar oppression: in her desperation, she seems to have followed the fastest line to self-destruction by committing infanticide and suicide. Hence, both heroines

45 Bruce, Susan. “Sympathy for the Dead: (G)hosts, Hostilities and Mediums in Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others and Postmortem Photography.” Discourse, Vol. 27, No. 2-3 (Spring & Fall 2005): pp. 21-40. 46 Which, of course, comes from Enlightenment discourse. 47 Pisters, The Matrix of Visual Culture, pp. 58-59.

66 have to create new values and ways of knowing in order to be able to continue following this line safely. Before I continue to discuss the line of flight in more detail, I would like to take a closer look at Claire and Grace’s ‘problems’ from an alternative perspective to understand them in other than molar terms. In her Deleuzean study of horror cinema, Anna Powell defines the Gothic haunting as the expression of pent up frustration and rage trapped in the domestic space.48 What causes all this frustration and rage?

flows of desire

One of the main departures that Deleuze and Guattari take from psychoanalytic theory is in terms of how they define desire. While Lacanian desire is based on lack, Deleuze and Guattari argue that such a negative definition will lead us nowhere. In its place, following Spinoza, they propose a positive desire: a wish to live and make multiple connections.

We need to set aside the idea that desire has an intrinsic script it is supposed to follow and that all pathologies can be attributed to a failure to adhere to its dictates. We are neither sick from our childhood, nor essentially stuck in our childhood. Desire is a synthetic or machinic process with a multiplicity of operating parts and a tremendous power of association or connection which we think only in triangular terms – desire is much more complicated than mommy- daddy-me.49

Patricia Pisters defines Deleuze and Guattari’s version of desire as “a fundamental wish to live and to preserve life by connecting with and relating to those things and persons that give us joy, that is, that increase our power to act.”50 Again, joy in this respect should not be confused with the Lacanian jouissance. Deleuze borrows Spinoza’s notion of joy, which “is related to the power to form adequate thoughts and to act. To be active is to enjoy life; to be joyful is to desire connections that relate to affirmative powers, not to negative ones”.51 Pisters refers to Genevieve Lloyd’s work, and adds that, “[t]he virtuous life does not demand isolation; rather, it involves engagement with the rest of the world, especially with other minds that are also intent on virtuous striving to persist.”52

48 Powell, Anna. Deleuze and Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2006): p. 169. 49 Buchanan Ian, “Introduction: Five Theses of Actually Existing Schizoanalysis of Cinema.” In: Deleuze and The Schizoanalysis of Cinema. Eds. Ian Buchanan and Patricia MacCormack. London: Continuum (2008): p. 13. 50 Pisters, The Matrix of Visual Culture, p. 56. 51 Ibid., p. 20. 52 Ibid., p. 57.

67 When considered together, some common concepts immediately draw attention in these definitions: connecting, joy, action, affirmation, engagement with the world and other minds, and it is interesting that it is exactly these qualities that are absent in the Gothic heroine’s life. As I have been discussing, the Gothic heroine is in an altogether different, almost opposite state: she is isolated, silenced, inactive and disconnected; hence she has almost no engagement with the world or with other minds. Her discourse or experience is seldom affirmed; mostly she is not even allowed to express herself. She is “frequently left alone while her husband goes about his business”,53 creating an additional cause for isolation and frustration. Not even her husband is available for her to connect. Actually, Waldman explains how, “[a] necessary condition for the husband’s success or failure in invalidating the heroine’s experience is his ability to isolate her within the nuclear family, literally within the house.”54 Regarded from this perspective, it seems that the Gothic heroine’s suffering is not caused by a fear or guilt related to sexuality, as most psychoanalytic readings would claim, but rather by the unavailability of the conditions that would make it possible for her to live a ‘virtuous life.’ I would like to argue that approaching desire from this perspective also offers a deeper understanding of Grace and Claire’s situations, and especially of Grace’s seemingly horrible behaviour. Since their situation is typically Gothic in all respects, it seems that they too suffer from an inability to lead a virtuous life; in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, their flow of desire has been blocked. Connection and engagement with other people is necessary to let desire flow. Both, Grace and Claire are quite literally cut off from the rest of the world. The whole mise-en-scène in The Others is designed to emphasise Grace’s isolation: the locked doors, the thick curtains on the windows, the darkness of the interiors, the large fence around the garden, the heavy gate, the dark forest, the dense fog, and finally the ocean around the island, all build layers and layers of isolating walls around her life. Grace expresses her isolation in a dialogue with Mrs. Mills: “I am beginning to feel totally cut off from the world…” In yet another scene when she is talking to her husband, she describes their house as “this darkness, this prison.” In many shots, we see her from behind iron bars, or behind the large and heavy gate of the mansion. Writing about one of the quintessential Gothic mansions, Hill House, the mansion in House on Haunted Hill (1959), Anna Powell defines how, “[i]ts triangular, upward-pointing forms, shut by a heavy chain and

53 Massé, “Gothic Repetition,” p. 700. 54 Waldman, “At Last I Can Tell Someone!” p. 35.

68 lock, imply a barred realm of spiritual or transcendent reality, a timeless zone of eternal stasis.”55 The mansion that Grace is locked in seems to be just such a barred realm and a timeless zone of eternal stasis, a limbo (literally) where nothing moves, except the light. Taking a closer look at one of the prototypical Gothic tropes – the fog – will further clarify issues regarding Grace’s isolation. Just like all other elements of the mise-en-scène, the fog is rather significant in The Others, functioning as a boundary between the house and the outside world; it prevents Grace from leaving the house. When she wanders off into the fog to find a priest who she hoped would put everything back in order, she gets lost. Interestingly, while looking for the priest she finds another father: the father of her children, her husband, a soldier – a combination of various ideal forms of masculinity56 – emerges in the fog. Hence, the fog materialises into The Father, stops her from leaving the house, and brings her back into the home. Thus, in a sense, what hinders Grace from leaving the house, the reason for her isolation, turns out to be the Patriarch. Writing about Deleuze and Gurattari’s interpretation of the Wolfman57 case, Ian Buchanan points out how the frozen landscape beyond the Wolfman’s room is his plane of immanence, the point beyond which he would no longer be the same person. In The Others, the fog seems to function as such a plane of immanence for Grace. If she could go beyond it, she would never be the same person; it would mean to transgress the border between the domestic and the public; she would no longer be a wife or mother in the molar sense. It is noteworthy that the figure of the patriarch is hidden in the fog, which implies that the actual reason for the housewife’s isolation is obscured; that it is a blurry, undefined entity that is very hard to discern. Not having a clear target makes the heroine’s struggle even harder.58 As I have been discussing, most of her suffering is due to the lack of fit between her (feminine) discourse and the dominant (masculine) discourse, by not being able to define and express her plight. The Others narrates this difficulty by showing Grace desperately trying to find her way in the fog. This scene may be read as an exemplary image of a woman trying to find a solution to her problems in ‘a man’s world’.

55 Powell, Deleuze and Horror Film, p. 170. 56 It is interesting that the film overlaps all these ideal figures of masculinity in a sad, lost and wounded soul. 57 One of Sigmund Freud’s famous case studies. His actual name was Sergei Pankejeff. 58 In 1963, Betty Friedan pointed out “the problem with no name”, arguing that women embarked on a quest to become perfect housewives; in order to reach this goal, they gave up their identities to fulfil the expectations of their husbands. Friedan argued that this intrinsically unattainable image of perfection was perpetuated through the media. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton (1963): p. 126.

69 Another function that may be added to the fog metaphor is ‘depression’. The Wolfman described his depression as a veil cutting him off from the rest of the world, which is probably one of the most common symptoms of depression.59 Hence, the fog surrounding the house in The Others may also be an expression of Grace’s depression, a condition that is caused by isolation. A further cause for this isolation seems to be the literal lack of communication. Grace demands absolute silence in the house because of her migraines. For instance, the children are not allowed to play the piano. This, however, also means that no radio or telephone is allowed in the house. Thus, they literally have no connection to and no communication with the rest of the world. The lack of joy caused by this isolation unmistakably marks not only Grace’s face and body but also the whole house and the film itself. In Spinoza’s terms, to protect oneself, one needs to connect with forces that will enhance one’s strength,60 and the lack of such connection potentially leads to suicide. When Grace’s husband does not return from the war and the servants unexpectedly leave the house, she loses all kinds of connection and any strength to endure frustration. In Spinozian terms, all these diminish Grace’s desire to live so that she eventually commits suicide.61 Massé writes about how most Gothic heroines try to escape the oppressing system through madness and/or suicide, which, in their desperation, seems like the only possible way out.62 They escape into madness in order to gain at least a certain kind of autonomy and power in an alternative system they have created themselves and therefore that only they can understand. Massé draws attention to the irony of such autonomy, pointing out that the heroine prefers such a separation of body and mind to being “one of the living dead”;63 one of the women who have no voice, no property, no ability to move and are trapped in the patriarchal mansion. In other words, in their own limited way, these women actually refuse to live in a system that does not grant them any subjectivity. Accordingly, Grace too goes mad before committing suicide. However, this self-destructive line of flight only worsens the situation by literally turning her into a ‘living-dead’ – a ghost. She will have to discover another line of flight (with the help of her daughter Anne) and follow it in order to be able to escape the restraints imposed on her by the molar order.

59 There is even a condition called ‘brain fog’ or ‘foggy brain’, which is associated with depression. 60 Pisters, The Matrix of Visual Culture, p. 57. 61 Woollett and Marshall also point out that “women with good support networks report more positive feelings about motherhood and are less likely to experience isolation and depression.” Woolett, Anne, and Harriette Marshall. “Motherhood and Mothering.” In: Handbook of the Psychology of Women and Gender. Ed. R. K. Unger. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley (2001): p. 182. 62 Massé, “Gothic Repetition,” p. 697. 63 Ibid., p. 706.

70 Moving on to What Lies Beneath, Claire and Norman also live on an island. They need to cross a bridge to go into town and their cell phones only start to receive once they cross the middle of the bridge. Since Norman is mobile and goes to work in town, he has many opportunities to connect and engage whereas Claire stays at home she has far less opportunities to engage with others, to connect, and communicate. Here too the garden fence functions as a boundary that cuts Claire’s connections with others. When she tries to talk with her neighbour, Mary Feur, the fence gets in the way; it is too high and has too many splinters. Each time Claire tries to look over the fence, she hurts herself. Mary expresses the frustration this creates in a few stuttered words: “This fence… It is so…”64 Claire’s career as a musician is especially highlighted as the most significant manifestation of her desire. Music was her connection with other people, other musicians she played or went on tour with, and also a source of affirmation when audiences appreciated her talent in playing the cello. Pisters, referring to Simon Frith’s work, draws parallels between his arguments and those of Deleuze and Guattari, suggesting that, in contemporary culture, music has gained increasing importance “because it seems to offer a key to identity. This is not because music represents certain groups but because, like in perceiving certain images and telling and listening to stories, in performing and listening to music, certain identities are being formed.”65 Following this line of thought would suggest that when Claire was cut off from her music, this also had effects on her identity. While music “defines a space without boundaries”66 and is best understood in relation to a mobile self, Claire had to live in an isolated house away from her friends, away from everything that was nurturing to her, in a constant state of inactivity. It is significant that Claire’s investigation starts when she loses the two sources of joy and connection in her life: she was already cut off from her music because of Norman and now her daughter Caitlin leaves for college. Claire’s frustration is not related to any sexual desire. Rather it is connected to a desire to live an active life in connection with other people and to be affirmed – none of which are possible in her current situation. In this respect, it is also significant that all the female characters in What Lies Beneath keep saying that they cannot breathe, while Norman literally drowns one and he tries to do the same to another. Patriarchy in this film is presented as a suffocating immobility for women.

64 I have discussed how one of the Gothic heroine’s most frustrating problems is that she is not able to express her plight. Therefore, it is noteworthy that Mary is not able to fully articulate her feelings regarding the fence. 65 Pisters, The Matrix of Visual Culture, p. 175. 66 Simon Frith (1996) cited by Pisters. Ibid., p 176.

71 intruders and neighbours who kill their wives: who are the others?

Both films that I have been discussing here deal with issues concerning ‘the Other’. Even their titles are quite revealing: What Lies Beneath and The Others. Thus, I want to take a look at what it is that lies beneath and find out who the others are in these films. There are various instances of ‘doubling’ in What Lies Beneath. I have already discussed how Madison functions as one such double for Claire. Mary Feur, Claire’s neighbour, seems to be yet another double for her. The two women physically resemble each other and both play solitaire, for instance. Yet, even further than this individual doubling, the Feur house itself seems to function as a double for the Spencer house – but in reverse. It is almost the exact opposite of the Spencer house in that it looks like the archetypal Gothic haunted house – desolate, old, and neglected – whereas the Spencer house is pristinely beautiful, painted in bright colours with a picture perfect garden, which various people remark on with admiration. Hence, I want to argue that the Feurs and their house are reflections of the flip side – of what lies beneath – the Spencer house and its inhabitants, or in other words the shiny, happy, suburban family home. In one of the first scenes of What Lies Beneath, Claire hears the Feurs fighting and looks out of the window. At the same moment, a man’s arm wraps around Claire’s neck as if to choke her. This man turns out to be Norman and he is actually being affectionate. This instance not only introduces Norman as a potentially sinister figure but also defines affection and violence as notions that may be mistaken for each other. Earlier, I discussed Massé’s argument about how this theme of mistaking pain for love is prevalent in the Gothic,67 and how the heroine’s first step towards freedom involves recognizing the difference between pain and love, which is what Claire will have to do in What Lies Beneath. Soon afterwards in this scene, as Claire and Norman are about to make love, they hear the neighbours having sex very noisily, with the woman screaming loudly, causing them to wonder, “What is he doing to her?!” Thus, their act mirrors the Spencer’s – both are making love – but it also further enhances the resemblance between violence and affection. Later in the day, when Claire is crying in the garden, she can hear Mary Feur doing the same. She tries to see her from behind the garden fence. The framing is significant in these shots since Mary seems to be imprisoned behind the fence – it is the typical image of the imprisoned housewife. She is only partially visible and strongly resembles Claire – they are

67 Massé, In the Name of Love, p. 264.

72 both crying, their clothes, bodies and hair colour are very similar. After Mary momentarily disappears from Claire’s sight, she very suddenly appears right next to the fence, looking into Claire’s eye. In this shot, which is almost like a mirror shot of Claire looking into her own eye, what she sees there is fear. Seemingly terrified, Mary tells Claire, “I am afraid that one day I’ll just disappear.” Although Claire interprets this as a sign of domestic violence, it seems that it was a misinterpretation. As Mary will explain later, her words were an expression of extreme passion. Again a parallel is drawn between violence and passion, eroticising pain in true gothic fashion and marking Mary as a typical masochistic Gothic heroine. In order to escape this set up, Claire’s line of flight will have to lead away from her masochist double. The film continues by further hinting at Norman’s violent potential. The most obvious clue is a scene where Claire is again spying on the Feurs, this time with binoculars. She believes that Warren has killed Mary and she is trying to find proof. It is a rainy night and she sees Warren at the window, apparently looking back at her. He comes outside and walks towards her. Claire loses sight of him but follows his footsteps all the way to her own doorstep. Immediately afterwards, she hears someone behind her and panics. Again, it turns out to be Norman. Hence, the footsteps of the person Claire thinks is a murderer belong to Norman. In the moment when she expects to be attacked by someone, her husband appears behind her. Thus, as it slowly becomes apparent that Claire has been misreading the signs of affection and oppression, the question arises as to whether she has also been misreading Norman’s gestures of oppression as love and affection, which, on a wider scale, problematises idealised versions of love and affection, and ‘certainties’ regarding these concepts. That is, could the molar definition of love in the patriarchal order actually be a disguise for oppressive behavior? Claire’s remark during a therapy session goes deeper into the issue: “He’s [Norman] hoping that you’ll pack me with Prozac or lithium or something, so he can live out his life in peace.” This could be read as a statement on how the molar order regularly deals with women’s frustration: the main concern is not to discover the reasons that lead to this suffering and change the conditions accordingly but in ‘readjusting’ or reterritorialising these women; in putting them back on the segmental line so that the system can continue to work uninterrupted. Above, I have discussed Massé’s argument about how the Gothic heroine is deceived by ideals regarding romance and marriage, which later turn out to be imprisoning traps. What Lies Beneath builds its whole structure on uncovering what lies beneath these ideals and how they actually imprison and paralyze women – literally.

73 Another situation in which issues hidden beneath the veneer of well adjusted, successful, happy molarity are pointed at is the scenes in which Madison’s ghost insistently knocks down a picture frame. The frame holds a newspaper cutting reporting that Norman was given the DuPont Chair, with a photo showing Norman receiving his award together with Claire and two other men. When Claire eventually takes the picture out of the frame, she sees that behind it is another article about a missing girl named Madison. Hence, the film hints at how patriarchal power is achieved. What we see on the backside of the picture is the price paid for what we have seen on the front side. Norman’s success and seeming happiness is sustained through violence – he murdered Madison to save his career. More generally, the film seems to suggest that patriarchal power is achieved through covert violence against women. This issue is also emphasised by the camera movement during the film’s showdown. In this scene, Claire is lying on the floor, paralysed by the halothane, while Norman admits everything for the first time. This is the point when Claire (as well as the spectator) finally realises the severity of her situation by plainly seeing Norman’s ‘other side’. At this moment, the camera moves underneath the floor. This is a very self-conscious shot since there are no other such camera movements in the film. Hence, the film emphasises very clearly that we are now seeing what has been lying beneath the idealised home and family: patriarchal violence. What gradually becomes apparent in What Lies Beneath is that the ‘good husband and father’ as well as the ‘happy family’ are merely a façade, a performance that Norman has been acting out. What is especially interesting and significant is that, in each case, the other turns out to be the self. Norman is the neighbour who kills his wife, not Warren. Claire is the miserable housewife whose life is in danger, not Mary. The way The Others works is similar in many respects to What Lies Beneath, especially in that, here too, the film is structured to make the self/other division problematic. In an exemplary scene in which Grace is looking for the ‘intruders’, she goes into a room filled with furniture that has been covered with white sheets, looking like fairy tale ghosts. She uncovers one and sees a statuette of The Virgin Mary. Under another, she finds an old mirror, in which she sees herself. What Grace is looking for – an intruder, an enemy – turns out to be either herself or icons referring to her own (molar) religious belief. Thus, what threatens her and the children is nothing else but the virgin mother and (Holy) Grace herself. Eventually, as mentioned earlier, it becomes apparent by the end of the film that the intruders, the ghosts that have been haunting the house, are Grace and the children themselves.

74 The way Grace’s molar motherhood and piousness works may be understood through her harsh rules regarding the ‘containment of light’. She believes that the movement of light – the only movement in the house – is something that needs to be prevented at all cost. Her orders to the servants are very strict and clear: “This house is like a ship. The light needs to be contained!” I have already discussed how light functions as a metaphor for knowledge but I also regard it as an expression of desire since its blockage is what causes so much frustration for Grace by immobilizing and imprisoning her. Since the children are photosensitive, they cannot leave the house, and since Grace is striving to be the perfect mother, she cannot leave her children, which means that neither can she leave the house. In addition, her movement within the house is also restricted since she has to tightly close and lock every single door each time she goes in or out of a room. Thus, I would like to argue that the film holds the molar segments of motherhood responsible for blocking the flow of light – the flow of desire.

is it all her fault?

Since in both films everything seems to point back at the self, an important question comes to mind: Is then the self also responsible for all the suffering? Massé writes about how most Gothic heroines are made to blame themselves.68 In What Lies Beneath, this is underscored in many instances, such as when Claire and Norman are late for a dinner party, and Claire immediately ‘admits’ that it is her fault, or when she self-diagnoses her problem at the therapy session as an ‘empty nest episode’. Grace’s case, on the other hand, is much more complicated. Massé draws attention to how in the marital Gothic the husband replaces the father, forming a line of oppressive patriarchs.69 However, no such patriarch is to be found in The Others. Grace is also the one who gives the orders about blocking the light and keeping the house silent. Does this then mean that her situation is self-inflicted, that she herself is responsible for her own suffering? By focusing on Grace’s qualities as a mother and her repressed fears or guilt, a classical psychoanalytic reading would most probably relate her situation to ‘female masochism’ or the ‘death drive’ and eventually reach such a conclusion. However, I would like to continue to read away from the heroine’s faults, as I have been trying to do throughout this chapter, and try to find out how this behaviour may be related to or even caused by the functioning of the molar order.

68 Massé, “Gothic Repetition,” p. 700. 69 Ibid., p. 682.

75 Brian Massumi draws attention to how there are two ways of responding to constraint: molarity and supermolecularity.70 While molarity actualises constraint in the body, supermolecularity counteractualises it. Following this line of argument means that, for women oppressed by the patriarchal system, there are also two ways of responding to their situation: to actualise patriarchal values in their own bodies or to counteractualise them. Grace’s initial response is clearly the first: she meticulously follows the rules set by various patriarchs (the priest, the father, the soldier), and not only unquestioningly obeys them herself but also makes her children do so. In her article entitled ‘Refusal of Reproduction’, Patricia Pisters discusses issues regarding motherhood in Moroccan society, arguing that, “The female body has always had a double function with respect to reproduction. By becoming pregnant and giving birth the female body literally reproduces life. At the same time, metaphorically it is often seen as the safeguard of the nation, the reproduction of national values, tradition, and patriarchal history.”71 Clearly, Grace is fulfilling her role about reproducing national values, tradition and patriarchal history perfectly. Yet, at the same time, she is perpetuating the traumatic situation she herself is suffering from, causing her daughter to experience the same trauma and thus fuelling the gothic repetition. For instance, she denies her daughter Anne’s experiences (her anxiety), disregards her claims (that there are intruders in the house), and refutes her ideas (about the bible); she does not let Anne express herself (silence) nor does she let her go out and play (immobility and closure). Massumi also reminds us about Foucault’s claim that “cultural limitations are effective only to the extent to which they insinuate themselves into the flesh.”72 Grace’s rigid body posture, her severe clothing and carefully groomed hair not only imply the extent to which she has been oppressed but also the extent to which she has been incorporating this oppression in her own body. This is also in line with Massé’s argument about how the Gothic heroine has the options of being the beaten, the beater or the spectator. After her husband left, Grace seems to have assumed the position of the beater, probably because it was the only option she was aware of: “The beating fantasy’s static, invariant, repetitive formula insists that there are no other options outside the fantasy’s borders.”73 While she introduces the house to the new

70 Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 95. 71 Pisters, Patricia. “Refusal of Reproduction: Paradoxes of Becoming-Woman in Transnational Moroccan Filmmaking.” In: Transnational Feminism in Film and Media. Ed. Katarzyna Marciniak. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2007): p. 71. 72 Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 94. 73 Massé, In the Name of Love, p. 52.

76 servants, Grace expresses not only her misery but also explains how she herself has been blocking all flow of desire: “It is difficult, to say the least. The only way to endure it is by keeping a cool head. I don’t like fantasies, strange ideas. My children sometimes have strange ideas. But you mustn’t pay attention to them. Children will be children.” Grace’s strict rules about keeping the curtains closed and the doors locked mark the boundaries between inside and outside, between all the rooms, as well as between molar discourse (a cool head) and minoritarian discourses (fantasies and strange ideas). Her rules block the flow of light – of knowledge and desire – not only from the outside in (the closed curtains) but also within (the locked doors), imprisoning all the inhabitants in the darkness of patriarchal molarity. All circuits are (b)locked while, in a very Foucauldian fashion, Grace (the molar woman) is prisoner and guardian at the same time. She is the exemplary molar woman. Thus, I would like to argue that, through Grace’s insistence on perpetuating traditional values, the film seems to hint at how patriarchal discourse is very often internalised and reproduced by women, and reflected in their own authoritarian behavior. In other words, The Others seems to point at what it means to be a molar woman and the dangers this actually carries for women themselves. Thus, her line of flight must go through insight – the recognition that there are other options, other strategies for survival, as Massé points out.74

other women: sisters and daughters

It is significant that in both films ‘cracks’ in the patriarchal system, which open the paths for becoming-other, are congruently introduced by ‘others’. Interestingly, in both films, these are ‘other women’ – women who have been cast out of or not yet fully territorialized by the molar order: the femme fatale (Madison in What Lies Beneath) and the girl (Anne in The Others). Since each case also involves ghosts, I will refer to Claire and Grace’s becoming as becoming-ghost. This is also significant since ghosts themselves may be considered as ‘other’. Earlier I have pointed out that the way Derrida presents ghosts suggests that it is our responsibility to preserve their otherness.75 Accordingly, I would like to take a closer look at the ‘others’ and the ghosts in The Others and What Lies Beneath in hope of discovering which otherness these films suggest we should preserve. Actually, some instances may already be apparent from my discussions about royal and nomad science: What Lies Beneath favours

74 Ibid., p. 51. 75 Davis, “État present,” p. 373.

77 nomad science and suggests that a vague version of psychotherapy is something that needs to be preserved, as well as witchcraft and various other forms of contacting ghosts. This of course also means that a belief in ghosts is something that needs to be preserved, which is a clear deterritorialisation of the dominant rational discourse. Meanwhile, The Others approves of a belief in ghosts, too and suggests that such versions of vague science need to be preserved in spite of the royal science of institutionalised religion. What I would mainly like to focus on, however, are the ‘other women’ in these films since they offer a deeper understanding of how these films deal with gender issues. I have pointed out how, in Spinoza’s account, it is necessary to connect with forces that enhance one’s strength, and this seems to be what Claire in What Lies Beneath tries to do throughout her journey. For instance, believing that Norman may give her strength, she insistently tries to connect with him. Gradually, however, as it becomes clear that Norman has actually been draining Claire’s strength throughout their marriage, she starts looking for other forces that may have the desired effect. Her snooping around the neighbor’s house seems like such an attempt, and eventually Claire connects and engages with certain ‘other women’ who will not only enhance her strength but also set her on a line of flight leading to a becoming- ghost. One such relationship is the one between Claire and her friend Jody, who is characterised as an ‘other’ in relation to molar standards: she is divorced, gets shiatsu massages, makes decisions based on discussions with her psychic, talks about “picking up dudes” in her new sports car, and calls herself “an enlightened spirit”. Hence, she is quite a minority figure. Jody is affectionate towards Claire; she cares about her, and is always supportive. She is the first one to take Claire’s fears serious and to cooperate with her by holding the séance. Most significantly, Jody encourages Claire’s minoritarian ways of investigation by giving her a book on witchcraft. Claire’s old friend, Elena, also supports her ‘non-molar’ ideas during a dinner they are having together with Norman and his (male) friend. When Norman mockingly mentions that Claire is “hearing things”, Elena jumps in, declaring that she absolutely believes in such things, thereby changing the tone of the conversation to prevent the men from making fun of Claire. In addition, Elena also functions as a trigger that reminds Claire of her times as a musician – of times before Norman “made an honest woman out of her.” A third woman with whom Claire connects is her neighbor Mary. What is significant in this relationship is that the two women do not become enemies after Claire accuses Mary’s husband of murder. Instead, when Mary visits Claire and apologises for scaring her, the two women bond immediately.

78 Hence, aside from the therapist (whom I have earlier also defined as a minoritarian figure), everyone who believes in Claire and supports her is female. Thus, the film takes a rather unique approach to the relationships between women. Kavka points out how women in the female Gothic are usually depicted as rivals and as threatening to each other, and how the ‘other woman’ – the femme fatale ghost – is usually punished, exorcised or at least domesticated by the end of the film.76 What Lies Beneath, on the other hand, takes a radically different approach by presenting female companionship as a potentially deterritorialising force that breaks the Gothic repetition. Moreover, instead of punishing the other women, What Lies Beneath cherishes the otherness of these various female characters and offers sisterhood as a strategy for becoming-ghost. Madison is, of course, the most noteworthy ‘other woman’ in What Lies Beneath. She was having an affair with Claire’s husband, which makes her literally ‘the other woman’, but she is also ‘other’ in relation to the patriarchal system in that she seems to refuse to obey molar gender rules. Madison’s mother defines her as ‘wild’ and tells how she used to speed around in her sports car, which is more ‘typical’ of young men and rather ‘inappropriate’ behavior for women. It is also suggested that she is free with her sexuality (which becomes more apparent when she possesses Claire and initiates sex with Norman). Finally, she also is portrayed as extremely intelligent, pursuing a career in genetics – which is also rather subversive given that the field of royal science is mainly reserved for men. Despite their differences and supposed animosity, Madison and Claire become ‘sisters’. Although Madison initially seems to be a threat to Claire, the film refrains from demonising her, and it gradually becomes clear that Madison actually has an altogether different agenda. In her article on becoming-woman and becoming-animal, Ruth Jones writes about how border or liminal creatures are tremendously threatening to hierarchical structures. Jones points out that such creatures offer great potential for becomings: “Becomings are liminal in that they are neither this nor that, nor the relationship between the two, but the in-between, the threshold, the border.” 77 I would like to argue that ghosts are such border creatures – being neither dead nor alive –and therefore they also threaten the molar system. In this respect, as both woman and ghost, Madison is a highly threatening border creature. She is a woman who refuses to conform to traditional gender roles, crossing the border between masculine and feminine, between domestic and public, and eventually between life and death. Furthermore,

76 Kavka, “The Gothic on Screen,” pp. 220-222. 77 Jones, Ruth. “Becoming-hysterical – becoming-animal – becoming-woman in The Horse Impressionists.” Journal of Visual Arts Practice, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2004): p. 131.

79 Madison’s ‘strategies for haunting’ are also significant: she opens the doors and windows of the house – opening the way for Claire to transgress the boundary between the domestic and the public – a line of flight for her to escape the domestic enclosure. Madison also turns on the computers or the radio – all communication devices that will help Claire to connect and to solve the mystery. Hence, Madison opens the way for Claire to break one of the defining elements of the Gothic – the isolation caused by a lack of connection and communication with the world and other minds, which also means that she encourages Claire to let her desires flow. Eventually, Claire and Madison’s sisterhood sabotages the existing order of the oedipal patriarchal family so carefully constructed by Norman.78 In this respect, the steam-filled bathroom in What Lies Beneath could be considered as a liminal space or, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, a plane of inconsistency. The bathroom is central to the film’s mise-en-scène, since it is where Claire and Madison mostly make contact. It has two doors and ‘strange’ things happen here. In one scene, for example, Claire takes a bath than empties the tub and leaves through one door, leaving the bathroom empty. Immediately, steam appears from under the other door. When Claire goes back in, the whole room has filled with steam and the bathtub is now re-filled with hot water. Thus, it is a site where scientific/rational rules of the royal kind do not apply. Whenever Claire enters this plane, she emerges as a different person – it is her passageway to a minoritarian order. To come back to Kavka’s observation about how women in the Gothic are not only dangerous to each other but also to themselves, I want to argue that What Lies Beneath subverts the classic Gothic structure in this sense as well. Madison is dangerous to Claire only as long as Claire refuses to make contact with her. In other words, the film seems to suggest that women are dangerous to themselves (or each other) only to the extent that they dismiss their own desires (or each other’s), which is what the patriarchal system does at all times. Thus, going one step further, I would like to argue that the film indicates that women are a threat to themselves if they insist on being molar women and resist becoming-other. Once Claire communicates and connects with Madison – the other woman or the molecular woman – they topple the patriarch and the whole system is subverted. When Norman asks Claire to forgive him and to forget everything in order to save their family, in contrast with many Gothic heroines who repeatedly fall for this hypocritical idealisation of family, Claire insists

78 For ‘tactical sabotages’ see: Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 104.

80 on bringing Madison’s body out of the water.79 It is this insistence that introduces a major and decisive crack in the patriarchal system and the Gothic repetition. The ending of What Lies Beneath is therefore also noteworthy. The final shot shows Claire visiting a grave, implying that it is Norman’s. However, as the camera moves closer it reveals the name ‘Madison Elizabeth Frank.’ We find out that Claire does not mourn the death of her husband but instead shows respect to Madison.80 D.N. Rodowick writes that, “[t]o become-other is not to identify or to identify with and so to become-the-same-as. Rather, as Zarathustra exclaims, it is ‘to create itself the freedom for new creation,’ to affirm the ever- recurring possibility for change.”81 This is exactly what Claire’s becoming-ghost leads to. She creates for herself the freedom for new creation – to make music. It is significant that once she starts following her line of flight, (to Norman’s great surprise) she starts playing the cello again. Claire’s becoming-ghost takes her away from the decent, passive housewife she is (the molar woman) towards an undecided future and unthought-of possibilities. Hence, the open- endedness of the film. In The Others, it is Anne’s challenges that are most significant in tearing apart the fabric of good/common sense on which Grace so heavily relies. According to Deleuze and Guattari, “[i]t is certain that molecular politics proceeds via the girl and the child.”82 Ian Buchanan points out how the child plays an important role in Deleuze’s conception of the time-image: “the child is an astute watcher and listener of what goes on around them. The child absorbs the world.”83 Anne’s witty remarks and stubborn behaviour mark her as both a careful observer who absorbs the world and a girl who makes connections between these observations. For instance, one night Anne wakes her younger brother Nicholas to tell him that there is someone in the room. After Nicholas gets terribly scared and screams, Grace punishes Anne. As part of her punishment, Grace wants Anne to ask the Virgin for forgiveness but Anne refuses, stating that she will not ask for forgiveness for something she has not done, leading to the following dialogue: -Grace: Do you remember the story about Justus and Pastor? Children who don’t tell the truth end up in limbo.

79 There is an interesting resemblance between What Lies Beneath and Hitchcock’s Rebecca in this sense: The patriarch in Rebecca thinks that he has murdered Rebecca, his ex-wife. When he finally admits his crime to his new young and nameless wife, she is absolutely ready to forgive him. Significantly, censorship forced Hitchcock to alter the original ending of the novel in which the husband did murder Rebecca. In the film, however, the husband is deemed innocent by a ‘greater authority’. 80 Claire’s friend Jody’s (Diana Scarwid) remarks about her divorce hint at the film’s attitude towards losing a husband. When Jody comes to visit Claire, she is driving a new sports car and says, “It’s a beautiful thing, alimony. You lose a husband; you get a car.” 81 Rodowick, D. N. Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine. Durham and London: Duke University Press (1997): p. 151. 82 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 277. 83 Buchanan, “Is a Schizoanlaysis of Cinema Possible?” p. 11.

81

-Anne: That’s what you say. But I read the other day that limbo is only for children who haven’t been baptised, and I have been.

This is too much for Grace. Such a discrepancy is intolerable for her and she severely punishes Anne by making her read the bible for three days, sitting alone on the stairs. Later, Grace hears noises from an upstairs room. Knowing that nobody is there, she panics and asks Anne whether she has seen anyone. Anne replies, “I told you there was someone in the room and you punished me; now I don’t know what to say.” Grace demands “the truth”, and Anne shows her in which room they went. Although the room’s door is closed, light shines through the cracks. The whole scene is classically Gothic, where the secret is hidden in the attic (or the basement). Here too, it is a room that is normally not used – the junk room. In psychoanalytic terms, this room stands for the unconscious, where ‘the repressed’ is hidden. However, I would rather like to re-formulate this room as a plane of indeterminacy for Grace. Once she enters this room she is not the same person anymore. Massumi argues that paradox is closely related to becoming,84 and after going inside this room, Grace will have to deal with various paradoxes. Here, she finds the book of death, which will introduce a major crack in her system, and eventually she will have to face the light that is leaking through the crack. Anne has contact with ‘the others’; she sees them and, more importantly, she does not fear them. She is critical of religious dogma and frequently gets in trouble because she insists on speaking her mind. Hence, in stark contrast to the classic Gothic heroine, Anne is never silent, never disconnected. By entering a zone of proximity with Anne, Grace is forced to think differently, to feel and see new things.85 The paradox that Anne introduces in her mother’s ‘system’ makes Grace think. Massumi writes that “[t]hought is an unhinging of habit.”86 Grace’s life used to be all about habit, about her rules set and defined by dogma that she never ever questioned. Once she starts to think (about why people would take pictures of the dead, for instance) all habit dissolves. Significantly, by the end of the film, she does not have any pre-conditioned responses anymore; her last words to her children are “I don’t know more than you do…” D.N. Rodowick points out that, in The Time-Image, “thinking is posed as an act, an event in the form of becoming – in short, as movement.”87 If, as Rodowick

84 Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 107. 85 “Becoming is to emit particles that take on certain relations of movement and rest because they enter a particular zone of proximity. Or, it is to emit particles that enter that zone because they take on those relations.” Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 273. 86 Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 99. 87 Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine, p. 131.

82 argues, thought may be approached as an act, a movement, it would suggest that Grace breaks away from the Gothic stasis through thought, by becoming-ghost. I should add that it is not only Anne who initiates Grace’s becoming-ghost. Mrs. Mills, who is a servant and thus from the ‘other class’, has an undeniable influence on her as well. For instance, she encourages Anne to stand up to her mother, and deliberately plans Grace’s confrontation with her self. Thus, Grace’s becoming-ghost blurs the lines not only between the all-knowing adult and the naïve child, adult rationality and child imagination, but also between cultivated master and presumably ignorant servant, ruling class and ruled class. It is through sisterhood, by connecting with other women, that Claire and Grace find a line of flight away from the Gothic repetition. Massé’s steps on the escape route were insight/recognition, action and resistance.88 Claire gains insight into her own suffering by connecting with Madison and observing Mary. Grace gains insight into her complicity in the beating drama by connecting with Anne. These women then take action together: Claire and Jody investigate the case; Claire and Madison drown Norman; Grace and Anne take action against the intruders. Below, I will discuss the final and most important step towards changing the whole system, the one Massé defines as a utopian alterity.

the heroine’s subjectivity

I discussed earlier how Mary Ann Doane points out that although the woman’s film of the 40s seems to provide a genre for women, it actually denies them the possibility to identify with the female protagonist. Doane argues that these films often encourage the spectator to identify with the diagnostic gaze of a male authority figure rather than that of the female protagonist. Diane Waldman, on the other hand, discussed the female Gothic in relation to whether or not these films validate feminine experience in their closure. Depending on how the female protagonist’s suspicions about her husband are resolved (most often these are suspicions that he is trying to kill her), the films also function as either a validation or invalidation of feminine experience. Waldman points out how the films from the early 1940s, usually reach a closure that invalidates the female protagonist’s interpretation of events when her husband turns out to be totally innocent, suggesting that the heroine was wrong – just ‘being paranoid’ so to say. Thus, Waldman argues, “the unusual emphasis on the point of

88 Massé, In the Name of Love, p. 264.

83 view of the heroine has been put to the service of the invalidation of feminine perception and interpretation, equating feminine subjectivity with some kind of false consciousness, as the male character ‘corrects’ the heroine’s false impressions.”89 An important aspect that distinguishes The Others and What Lies Beneath from the classical films is that they do not encourage an alliance between the spectator and a diagnostic gaze, or with any other position that would objectify the heroines and undermine their experiences. On the contrary, in both films, the heroines’ fears, claims, and suspicions are undeniably validated. Consequently, the spectator’s possible alliance with any other point of view (for instance, Norman’s scientific/rational perspective in What Lies Beneath or conservative notions of gender roles in The Others) is expected to gradually shift towards a more critical position that problematises his/her initial stance. As I mentioned earlier, Massé argues that communication, movement and space are the markers of subjectivity, which are denied to the classical Gothic heroines, traumatising them in a recurrent nightmare. What Lies Beneath and The Others, on the other hand, both grant all three markers to their heroines. I explained how both Claire and Grace start to communicate, to connect, and to break the Gothic silence while gaining space and property. Grace and the children claim the patriarchal mansion by chanting, “This house is ours!”90 while Claire and her daughter become the sole owners of the Spencer mansion, the house Norman inherited from his father. Hence, an essential counteractualisation takes place in both cases since the patriarchal mansions end up ruled by women, unbound by the law of the father. Both create families without a father – anti-oedipal families – thus deterritorialising the patriarchal system. The ending of The Others needs special attention in this respect since it may be argued that it actually reinforces the vicious cycle of the Gothic by implying that Grace will be imprisoned in the domestic sphere for eternity. However, Grace and her children’s final chanting shows that Grace has gained her own voice. Although the film opens with her voice- over, which may imply that she already had a voice, she is actually telling the story of genesis in this scene. That is, she is giving voice to the words of the father. In the ending, however, it is her own words, her own claims that she utters. Massumi argues that the body-in-becoming converts constraints into opportunities. One of the strategies he offers for becoming is to cherish derelict spaces, claiming that “the derelict

89 Waldman, “At Last I Can Tell It to Someone!” p. 33. 90 Also, Anne says about the intruders that, “They are everywhere. They say this house is theirs.”

84 space is a zone of indeterminacy that bodies-in-becoming make their own.”91 This is exactly what Grace does: she turns the patriarchal mansion into a derelict space – into a haunted house – thereby making it a zone of indeterminacy, cracking the rational scientific rules of time and space, while subverting religious dogma. As ghosts, Grace and her children are outside of the realm of religion (the bible cannot explain where they are) and outside the rule of patriarchy (there is no father). Furthermore, no family that enters this space will come out the same. Grace converts her constraints into an opportunity by claiming the house that was once her prison, making it her own. I would like to consider one final issue that is quite important. It is noteworthy that both films are almost entirely characterised by a slow pace and minimal movement within the frames. Gradually, however, the editing accelerates as the movements of the heroines become larger and faster. Towards the finalé of What Lies Beneath, Claire and Norman fight in their car while driving extremely fast across a bridge. Despite plunging into the water, they continue to fight. In The Others, Grace hunts down the intruders with a rifle all over the house and garden. Thus, as Claire and Grace break their Gothic isolation and immobility – as they become-ghost – the films also become more ‘active’, deterritorialising the Gothic genre through the pace of the action film. Thus, I would like to argue that the Gothic repetition is broken through becoming-ghost, which is directly related to each heroine’s movement, voice and property – their subjectivity – and all these in turn lead to a generic deterritorialisation. That is, the Gothic repetition is not only broken on a narrative level as the heroines escape the constraints imposed on them by patriarchal molarity but also on a generic level by counteractualising the genre’s structure. As the women gain subjectivity, they escape the Gothic and become part of the quintessential masculine genre, the action film; as the heroines become-ghost, the Gothic becomes action cinema.

conclusion: what could have happened?

In the passage I quoted at length from Massé where she introduces the concept of ‘Gothic repetition,’ she emphasises that this is not merely an issue concerning the narrative. According to Massé, what Freud identifies as repetition compulsion not only shapes individual Gothic texts but also the genre’s relationship with culture, which causes the genre

91 Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 104.

85 to breed new texts. Furthermore, most traditional psychological readings of the Gothic, which focus on the heroine’s repressions, perpetuate this repetition as well. Hence, while the Gothic heroine relives her trauma, waking up to the same nightmare day after day, the Gothic also keeps repeating itself, and traditional readings of the Gothic seem unable to suggest an escape route from the Gothic nightmare. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the reactivation of trauma is an attempt to recognise and gain control over “the incredible and unspeakable that nonetheless happened.”92 According to Massé, the Gothic heroine, as well as the Gothic as a genre, aim to do the same – however, to no effect. The Gothic heroine relives her trauma but, while in other such cases this repetition serves its purpose, for the Gothic heroine it turns out to be ineffective. For instance, the victim of shell shock does not awaken to a world of war, and the validity of his trauma is never denied by society. The Gothic heroine, on the other hand, does awaken to the same patriarchal world that caused her suffering. In addition, her suffering usually makes no sense to those around her: “[she] will always reawaken to the still- present actuality of her trauma because the gender expectations that deny her identity are woven into the fabric of her culture, which perpetuates her trauma while denying its existence. […] suppression of identity, exists not only in the past but also in the present and in the implied future”.93 Therefore, while the films that deny the heroine’s identity by invalidating her discourse perpetuate this nightmare, any analysis that focuses solely on the heroine’s repressed desires does the same because it denies her any agency and offers no strategy to escape this vicious cycle. Simply repeating (re-presenting) the trauma does not help in coping with it in this case; neither does diagnosing the trauma lead to a resolution. Therefore, in this chapter, I have explored two films that, I believe, attempt to break the Gothic repetition through a generic deterritorialisation: What Lies Beneath and The Others. While following most classical genre traits, both films break away from the Gothic by subverting its basic elements. Most importantly, the heroines of these films – Claire and Grace – don’t remain passive victims who endure their pain in silence. On the contrary, they both fight, scream, run and claim their rights. All of these are traditionally masculine characteristics most clearly observable in the male action film hero. Therefore, in this case, it is not possible to speak about a ‘female masochism’ as is customary in most classical readings of the Gothic. Another important difference lies in the way these films approach sexuality and desire. Neither What Lies Beneath nor The Others seems to be primarily interested in their

92 Massé, “Gothic Repetition,” p. 681. 93 Massé, In the Name of Love, p. 15. Congruently, The Others starts with Grace’s waking up from a nightmare. She wakes up screaming. Her scream echoes throughout the house and, as we will find out, she literally awakens into the nightmare she was having.

86 heroine’s (repressed) sexuality. Or rather, neither film defines desire as exclusively sexual, but in a much more complicated way, as a wish to create and to connect, which brings them closer to a Deleuzean conception of desire. The finalés of What Lies Beneath and The Others are also very unusual as neither end in marriage. On the contrary, they clearly subvert the idea(l) that marriage is a ‘happy ending’. In the gloomily happy ending of What Lies Beneath, Claire’s husband is dead, and the film quiet clearly suggests that this means that she is now free to follow the flows of her desires. Furthermore, the film suggests that sisterhood is a more reliable and valuable relationship than the marital bond. I have discussed how The Others presents marriage and motherhood as imprisoning institutions for women. Grace does reunite with her husband at one point but it has none of the greatly expected effects of bringing happiness or order. He remains an insignificant figure with no impact on anything whatsoever. The finalés of both films are especially noteworthy because they introduce families without fathers and women in charge of the patriarchal mansion. Massé argues that, by locating all the anxiety the heroine suffers in her unconscious, classical Gothic films, as well as the readings of them, comfort the spectator, suggesting that they don’t need to fear anything as long as they follow the rules of the system. This, however, causes the Gothic nightmare to endlessly repeat itself since it means that the molar system, which is the cause of the heroines’ suffering, will be maintained and perpetuated. What Lies Beneath and The Others seem to do the exact opposite: neither film offers a comforting position for the spectator nor do they offer any reassurance that Claire and Grace’s fears are not ‘real’. On the contrary, their experiences are clearly validated and presented as very real (actual), having tremendous impact on their lives. Therefore, I would like to argue that these films function as ‘wake up calls’, aiming to cause discomfort in any spectator who tends to follow the molar line blindly. Approaching these films from a solely psychosexual perspective would miss most of their merit and further perpetuate the Gothic repetition, without offering a solution to the heroine’s perils. The horrors that Claire and Grace face are not caused by ‘the problematic pleasures of the female body’, anxieties are not localized in a fear of the mother, or fear of sexuality, and therefore they will not disappear through a ‘healthy sexuality’. The films are rather clear on this matter: Grace’s suffering does not disappear when she re-unites with her husband; neither would Claire be a happy woman if she forgave Norman’s crime. She already did this once (her loss of memory about the whole incident) but it did not work. Thus, the films, in a way, push us towards other ways of reading them, ways that would acknowledge

87 that Claire and Grace’s suffering is not their fault. This also points to a line of flight, to a strategy for breaking the Gothic repetition, which is what I have tried to do in this chapter: to show that Claire and Grace’s anxieties are located in traditional family structures, in the ways femininity is defined, and the expectations that come with these definitions. Most plainly put, these are anxieties caused by the prospect of having to “live in this prison” for eternity – of “Pain! Forever!” as Grace put it. In her Introduction to Deleuze and Feminist Theory, Claire Colebrook writes about how,

it is this structure – that there is always a subject, ground, or presence that precedes predication – that both Deleuze and Nietzsche try to overcome through a project of becoming. In so doing their main target becomes clear: man. The problem with the human is not that it is one concept among others, but that it presents itself as the origin of all concepts, as the presence from which all concepts arise or become. A becoming that is not subjected to being, or a creative concept of becoming, would need to direct itself against man. One strategy of becoming would be to think woman. For it is woman that blocks or jams the conceptual machinery that grounds man. […] Woman offers herself as a privileged becoming in so far as she short- circuits the self-evident identity of man. Thus Deleuze’s celebration of ‘becoming- woman’ begins by turning the concept of man around (or activating a reactivism). If man is the concept of being then his other is the beginning of becoming.94

I have discussed how in both films, the heroines direct themselves against men, not only literally (Claire against Norman for instance) but also in the sense that they “block or jam the conceptual machinery that grounds man.” Claire and Madison in What Lies Beneath short- circuit Norman’s self-evident identity as a scientist, the heir of the DuPont Chair, the master of the lakeside mansion, and the ideal husband/father. Meanwhile, Grace and Anne in The Others jam the traditional patriarchal religious machinery. It is important that the investigations that Claire and Grace lead, and which eventually give way to break flows, are not scientific or rational in the molar sense but may rather be considered as ‘vagabond science’. It is not what Claire sees through her binoculars that leads to knowledge about Norman’s crime but communicating with a ghost in séances or reading ephemeral writings on misted mirrors. Similarly, Grace has to give up her books and her glasses and start to listen to ‘children’s talk’ or flip through the book of death, which she thought was superstitious. In such ways, both films challenge ‘royal’ ways of knowing and investigating. Furthermore, what would have been coded as madness from a molar

94 Colebrook, Claire. “Introduction.” In: Deleuze and Feminist Theory. Eds. Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2000): pp. 11-12.

88 perspective is here presented as a line of flight that provides agency and freedom for women; a way of resisting patriarchal oppression. What appears to be a mad woman from a molar perspective becomes a woman on a line of flight from a molecular point of view. Finally, a ghost, which traditionally refers to a monstrosity that needs to be eliminated, becomes a deterritorialising force, cracking the oppressive patriarchal system and opening up lines of flight for women. It seems necessary at this point to address the issue of relevance as well. How significant could a single ghost in a mansion on an isolated island be? How much difference will it make that Claire kills her husband? Massumi argues that, “Even if a body becomes in the privacy of its own home, with no one else around, not even the dog, it is still committing a social act. Becoming performs an operation on collectively elaborated, socially selected, mutually accepted, and group-policed categories of thought and action. It opens a space in the grid of identities those categories delineate, inventing new trajectories, new circuits of response, unheard-of futures and possible bodies such as have never been seen before.”95 The finalé of The Others, for instance, implies that Grace will continue to break chains of molarity by not letting another family reside in the house – not letting another woman be imprisoned in the patriarchal mansion. So, let me try to answer the initial question – “What could have happened?” Plainly put, Claire was ‘murdered’ by Norman when they moved to Vermont, in that her connections with music and the world were cut off; a young, passionate and successful musician was turned into a ‘decent woman’. Through the bond that ties Madison to Claire, the film draws a parallel between Madison’s murder and Claire’s marriage. When Norman blocked the flows of Claire’s desire by ‘imprisoning’ her in the lake house, he murdered her. Norman’s murder of Madison mirrors what he has done to Claire by taking away her life – her career, her friends. Hence, on a wider political scale, I want to argue that What Lies Beneath holds that the molar patriarchal family system, in which the husband follows his career path while the wife takes care of the home, is responsible for women’s ‘death’ – for taking away their subjectivity. The film defines marriage as an institution that ‘drowns’ women. Something quite similar happens to Grace in The Others. After her connections were cut off and her flow of desire was blocked, she followed the line of flight into the black hole of self-destruction. Hence, The Others also defines family and traditional gender roles as imprisoning, even as fatal, for

95 Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 101.

89 women. In both films, the traditional oedipal family is defined as an institution that removes all joy from women’s lives. Most importantly, what I have been trying to show through my study of What Lies Beneath and The Others is that becoming-ghost breaks the Gothic repetition by enabling the heroines to escape the vortex in which the self-same molar woman is endlessly reproduced. Generic deterritorialisation takes place as the segmental system in the narrative starts to crack, which is closely related to the heroine’s subjectivity – her becoming. As Claire and Grace become-ghost, they also counteractualise the patriarchal system that constrains them, thereby breaking the Gothic repetition, enabling a generic deterritorialisation. In the next chapter, I will study two other films that have crossed the generic boundary away from the Gothic even further into action and sci-fi.

90