The Terror of Childness in Modern Horror Cinema Max Bledstein
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The Terror of Childness in Modern Horror Cinema Max Bledstein Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, Volume 9, Issue 1, Summer 2017, pp. 150-162 (Review) Published by The Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures, University of Winnipeg DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jeu.2017.0017 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/668009 Access provided at 16 Dec 2019 22:58 GMT from UNSW Library The Terror of Childness in Modern Horror Cinema —Max Bledstein Bohlmann, Markus P. J., and Sean Moreland, editors. Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters: Essays on Cinema’s Holy Terrors. McFarland, 2015. 278 pp. $35.00 pb. ISBN 9780786494798. In “An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” Robin Yet such restoration need not exist solely within Wood argues that “the true subject of the horror genre the horror genre, as Bohlmann and Moreland explain is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization in their introduction. Rather than limit the focus to represses or oppresses” (203). Given the predisposition horror movies, Monstrous Children examines films of horror films to give a voice (albeit an often violent “which reveal something generative and unsettling by one) to marginalized people, repressed groups in (re)moving, at least momentarily, the two-faced mask Western society are a natural fit for the genre. As a result, (little devil, little angel) that the child in the popular women, people with disabilities, and, as is the subject imaginary is normally made to wear” (14). Although of Markus P. J. Bohlmann and Sean Moreland’s edited Bohlmann and Moreland are careful not to ascribe volume Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters: Essays an overarching narrative to the work of their many on Cinema’s Holy Terrors, children, have been taking contributors, the introduction uses the term “childness,” their cinematic revenge on the marginalizing forces of as opposed to “childhood,” arguing that the latter is society throughout the history of the genre. Accordingly, “a term connoting membership in a group (children, Steven Bruhm states in the foreword of this volume that as defined within a particular historical and cultural “[m]onstrous destruction restores fairness to an unfair moment) and closely linked to a developmental world” (3). periodization,” meaning that it “is understood as 150 Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 9.1 (2017) something one passes out of at a particular moment in volume offers an important start to a discussion that can one’s life, or as something one must set aside in gaining be extended ad infinitum. maturity” (15). “Childness,” by contrast, understands the child as being “defined through a kind of elusive quiddity, Baby Monsters a spectral essence” (15–16). For the other main term “Look Who’s Stalking,” the opening section of in their volume, “monstrous” (and its various forms), Monstrous Children, covers the earliest stages of the life Bohlmann and Moreland offer the following explanation: of a “monstrous child”: conception and infancy. The “Monsters are monstrous because they always escape first essay in this section, Karen J. Renner’s “Monstrous human comprehension; they demonstrate what we do Newborns and the Mothers Who Love Them: Critiques not know, and remonstrate against our presumption to of Intensive Mothering in Twenty-First-Century Horror know” (18). Monstrosity is thereby defined through its Films,” examines films such as Josef Ruznak’s remake of inaccessibility to human knowledge. It’s Alive (2009) and Paul Solet’s Grace (2009), which In their volume on monstrosity and childness, depict a figure even more terrifying than an evil child: Bohlmann and Moreland (somewhat counter-intuitively) a monstrous intensive mother (32). Renner argues that resist the prescriptiveness of “childhood” by structuring these movies show mothers who become consumed the sections of their volume according to typical by the act of raising infants who cause violent havoc teleological benchmarks associated with coming of and thereby “condemn these women as embodiments age. The authors refer to this structure as “a parodic of a dangerous set of attitudes and practices” (28). The engagement with the teleological developmental monstrous mothers addressed in Renner’s essay take care assumptions that have bound childness to ‘the child’” of their violent children at the expense of everyone else (19). I emulate the volume’s framework in the structure around them, including (male) romantic partners (38). of this essay, in which I review not only the chapters in Where Renner looks at mothers, Kristine Larsen, Bohlmann and Moreland’s volume but also a selection of in “When Procreation Becomes Perversion: Zombie recent films not taken up in the volume that address the Babies,” examines how filmmakers create baby characters same themes. My filmic examples function as case studies who may be perceived as monstrous. Larsen looks that illustrate the strengths and limitations of the chapters, specifically at newborn zombies, which, she argues, allow as well as their applicability to a broader understanding of filmmakers to address “controversial scientific and ethical the depiction of children in horror and other film genres. issues” concerning modern childbirth (63). Larsen’s essay Bohlmann and Moreland tackle a rich topic, and their covers assisted reproductive technology (ART), abortion, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 9.1 (2017) Max Bledstein 151 and contemporary birth practices, highlighting how invasion horror film, À l’intérieur (Inside) (2007), takes horror films convey ways in which each may be seen as the infertile woman to a violent degree unsurpassed by monstrous through zombies. any of the films mentioned in Edge’s essay. À l’intérieur In “’She Needs More’: The Villainization of Infertile begins on Christmas Eve, with protagonist Sarah (played Women in Horror Films,” Brooke W. Edge moves away by Alysson Paradis) alone and pregnant following the from discussions of monstrous children to address death of the husband and father of her child in a car female infertility. Edge identifies the trope of the crash (in which she, the driver, was injured but not monstrous infertile woman, arguing that women “who killed). Suddenly, she hears a knock at her door from fall short of that ‘normal’ ability, are made monstrous in an unnamed woman (Béatrice Dalle) who knows about an effort to obscure and obliterate a perceived threat both Sarah’s tragic past and her pregnancy. After the to social and physical norms and expectations” (43). woman breaks in, she attacks Sarah’s belly with a pair of According to Edge, infertile women in film are often scissors and says that she wants the child, kicking off a marked as being self-obsessed due to their strong gory cat-and-mouse game as Sarah struggles to save her interest in their careers or their bodies, both of which life and that of her baby. lead to them being read as monstrous. As a result, As a flashback that appears late in the film reveals, infertile women become marginalized onscreen, a the unnamed antagonist is yet another monstrous condition which turns them into an “extreme, nearly infertile woman: her car was hit by Sarah’s crash, and she supernatural threat to humanity itself” when they try to suffered a miscarriage as a result. Thus, she seeks Sarah’s use ART (53). Such depictions of infertility “only serve to unborn baby as violent reparation for the women’s reinforce the cultural discursive frame of infertile women painful history. À l’intérieur takes Edge’s argument about and their children as unnatural and unwelcome” (58). the monstrosity of infertility even further by turning Edge thereby connects cinematic depictions of infertility the female monster against a pregnant woman whose with its broader treatment in culture. fertility makes her a target. Although Sarah can arguably be said to bear some responsibility for her antagonist’s Case Study: Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s monstrosity, it is the antagonist and not Sarah who reads À l’intérieur to the viewer as the film’s monster. Notwithstanding her Whereas Edge examines the original It’s Alive (1974), victimization, the antagonist’s violent actions onscreen Grace (2009), The Ring (2002), and Prometheus (2012), emphasize her monstrosity. She indirectly gets revenge Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s French home on another fertile woman when Sarah, in her anxious 152 Max Bledstein Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 9.1 (2017) and terrified state, kills her mother after accidentally mistaking her for the killer. The antagonist’s anonymity emphasizes the film’s definition of her as an infertile monster, since she does not even get a name to distinguish her (in the film’s credits, she is listed merely as “la femme”). In comparison, although Sarah is named, Maury and Bustillo call attention to her fertility throughout the film through CGI images of the baby in her womb. The film’s gruesome finale pits Sarah’s ability to give birth against the woman’s desire for a child, as she uses scissors to perform a home caesarean on Sarah. As Sarah lies dead on the stairs, the woman cuddles the baby in her arms, having finally satiated the craving that instigated her The antagonist’s monstrous actions. She is À l’intérieur’s monster, one whose monstrosity anonymity emphasizes results from her failure to give birth. Likewise, Sarah’s fertility makes her the film’s definition the sympathetic victim of the film’s brutal and unrelenting violence. As of her as an infertile Edge argues, infertility becomes a threat to be demonized. The graphic monster, since she does nature of the violence in À l’intérieur further emphasizes the grotesquerie of the infertile woman, thereby illustrating Edge’s point. not even get a name to distinguish her . Monstrous Frankensteins Similar to the opening section of Bohlman and Moreland’s book, the second section—entitled “Frankenstein’s Kindergarten”—also concerns relationships between parents and their monstrous offspring, but ones that specifically echo Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein.