by Bryce Barnett

A Film and Media Studies major from Ft. Worth, Texas, Bryce Barnett wrote this essay for Catherine Mintler’s “Doppelgängers and Doubles” class.

In a 1972 episode of The Dick Cavett Show (a popular daytime program that ran from 1968 to 1995), Cavett began his interview with Alfred Hitchcock with a reference to the director’s iconic taste for the macabre, asking “How did you acquire this turn of mind?” “I think my mother scared me when I was three months old,” Hitchcock begins, pausing while the audience laughs before he continues, “You see, she said, ‘BOO!’ It gave me the hiccups. And she was apparently very satisfied.” Hitchcock later calls upon the theme of a frightening mother in his 1960 film Psycho, which altered the course of horror cinema completely. For context, horror as a genre traditionally relied on the external aggressor for the source of the horror. Universal Studios lead this tradition with classic thrillers such as Dracula (Tod Browning and Karl Freund, 1931), Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931), and The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932) all using fictional monsters to scare audiences. In Paula Quigley’s 2016 essay, “When Good Mothers Go Bad: Genre and Gender in The Babadook,” Quigley references authors David Greven and Robin Wood, who “[situate] the birth of modern horror in 1960 with Hitchcock’s Psycho, and the concomitant transition from an externalized threat or clearly identifiable monster, as occurs in classical horror, to a focus on the family and its attendant terrors” (59). In other words, due to Hitchcock’s impact, audiences no longer found their horror in fictional monsters but instead the tangible ones they encounter throughout their lives, especially at home. Family became a new focus of terror as seen in the mother-son dynamic of Psycho, the murderous father of The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenburg, 1979), and the possessed child in The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973). No aspect of the traditional nuclear family was safe from the genre’s vilifying lens.

By redefining what a monster could be, the horror genre also redefined who a monster could be. In doing so, the genre broadened itself to allow entirely new arguments to result from the “monstering” of various people, including women. “Feminist horror” is a flexible umbrella term used to encompass horror films that have arguments and opinions about womanhood and is described by Allison Gillmor’s 2015 article “Feminist Horror: Plotting Against Patriarchy” as “profoundly cathartic: It constructs imaginary spaces where [women] can work through true-life trauma”(21). Gillmor admits that there is no one true definition of the subgenre as “[t]here are many approaches to feminism, so it follows that there is no single infallible form for a feminist film” (21). Above all else, however, Gillmor identifies subversive feminist content to be the most important factor of a feminist-horror film, admitting that some of the subgenre’s acclaimed films fail to produce such content. Simply reversing the gendered expectations (i.e.. a male killer with female victims) within a horror film, while being enough to be considered feminist-horror, is not enough to produce subversive content. For example, Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama, 2009), while featuring a female succubus who preys on young, dumb, teen boys, doesn’t utilize the horror genre to its full potential. Sure, the roles are reversed, but Gillmor argues that this reversal “isn’t enough to produce meaningful feminist subtext” (21).

To work around this, Gillmor evokes the idea of a “feminist spectator.” This spectator is essentially a lens for the audience to view media through, as explained by Gillmor: “The notion of the ‘feminist spectator’ asserts the viewer’s ability to interpret popular culture through a feminist lens, so that canonical works . . . can yield new insights into our culture’s social, political and psychological stress points” (21). This isn’t to say that Gillmor rejects the idea of feminist-horror altogether, but rather invites the viewer to find feminist subtext in other films as well, even if those other works did not intend to produce feminist subtext. Gillmor exemplifies how the feminist spectator lens can be applied to non-feminist films with American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000). The movie follows a caricature of a machismo, egocentric, heavily misogynistic man who juggles a murder spree with a need to constantly demonstrate his superiority to his peers. Although the film sounds as though it has no connection with feminism, Gillmor argues, “By positioning [the man’s] masculinity as a constant, desperate, ultimately hollow performance, the movie becomes a sneaky-smart feminist statement” (21). Thus, as Gillmor applies the feminist spectatorial lens to American Psycho in order to find feminist subtext, she expects us to carry the torch and shine a new light on horror films which may not consciously aim to produce such subtext.

With Gillmor’s feminist spectator in mind, other horror films that may not be considered feminist-horror are now opened to feminist interpretation. To further focus on motherhood within horror, however, another theory must be added. After all, feminist-horror encompasses the overall representation of womanhood, not limiting itself to motherhood as needed for this exploration into maternal thrillers. In Quigley’s aforementioned essay, she presents critic Sarah Arnold’s insight that motherhood is represented as a dichotomy; mothers fall under a “Good” or “Bad” role. Quigley quotes Arnold from her book Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood in order to define these roles, writing:

The ‘Good Mother’ refers to ‘a particular and popular discourse of motherhood that valorises self-sacrifice, selflessness and nurturance’. The ‘Bad Mother’, on the other hand, is ‘a multifaceted and contradictory construct’, manifesting as either a rejection of the traditional expectation of self-sacrifice and devotion to her children, or its inverse, ‘the mother’s fanatical conformity to the institution of motherhood.’ (60)

Although these labels conveniently organize mother characters into “good” and “bad” boxes, Quigley argues that this binary is far too limiting for feminist subtext to arise, as these roles are “permitting certain elements to pass through while restricting others” (60). To combat this, Quigley proposes an alternative way to classify a mother’s role in the horror genre; the mother serves as “Mother-Victim,” “Mother-Monster,” and/or “Mother-Savior” (68). Not only do these labels broaden the portrayals of motherhood within horror, but their intersectionality and overlap produce meaningful feminist arguments and critiques on motherhood.

Finally, before analyzing films which include critique and examination of motherhood, as revealed through Gillmor’s theory of the feminist spectator, it is important to fully understand exactly what is being examined. What is motherhood, and who defines it? The most critical aspect to interpreting this critique within horror films is the distinction between motherhood the experience and motherhood the expectation. In her 2015 article “Re-Conceptualising Motherhood: Reaching Back to Move Forward,” feminist author and keynote speaker Fiona Green calls this distinction “fundamental to feminist theorising about the complex, layered, and gendered work of raising children” (198). Motherhood as an experience refers to the act of motherhood: the pregnancy, birth, and raising of children as the experience and moments lived by the mother. In contrast, motherhood the expectation refers to the Western-Patriarchal concept of motherhood, which Green defines as “a set of rules and regulations imposed upon and internalized by mothers (and others) that dictate not only how to mother but also who is a ‘good mother’ and who’s a ‘bad mother’” (198). Another way of thinking about this: Every mother goes through the experience, yet not every mother lives up to the expectations, and therefore, they are deemed “bad mothers”. These rules and regulations that Green references have a name—“Intensive Mothering”—a term coined by author Sharon Hays in her 1996 book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Green acknowledges this when she writes, “According to Hays, intensive mothering is ‘child centered, expert guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive, and financially expensive’” (198). To reincorporate the horror genre into this dialogue, the films to be discussed can be seen as critiquing the idea of motherhood as an expectation rather than the mothers themselves. These thrillers do not point the finger at mothers within their plots and say, “Look how bad she is!” Instead, they use maternal characters as a means of encouraging the viewer to reflect upon their own internalized, societal expectations of the mother. By bringing Gillmor’s feminist spectator together with Quigley’s maternal roles, subversive feminist subtext about motherhood can be found within horror cinema—whether intentional or not.

Intensive mothering is an expectation that the 2009 claymation film Coraline (Henry Selick) dismantles through the inclusion of an uncanny doppelgänger, according to the feminist spectator. The film follows Coraline, a young girl who (after moving into a new home) discovers a tunnel to an identical, idealized version of her world. And what perfect world is complete without perfect parents? Mel Jones, Coraline’s mother, is doubled by a creature called “The Bedlam,” who resides in the idealized world and resembles Jones completely—except for one crucial feature: The Bedlam has black buttons for eyes. Mel Jones’ doppelgänger is supposed to radiate uncanniness, which is defined by Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay, “The Uncanny” as, “…that class of terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar” (2). Similar to how The Bedlam finds uncanniness through her buttons-for-eyes, Freud’s essay centers on the 1885 Ernst Hoffman short story “The Sand-Man” which also utilizes fake eyes in order to unnerve audiences. Freud writes about this: “We know from psychoanalytic experience, however, that this fear of damaging or losing one’s eyes is a terrible fear of childhood” (7). Eventually, The Bedlam offers Coraline a chance to live in the idealized world forever. The catch? Coraline must replace her eyes with black sewing buttons, a request that frightens the young girl and hopefully the viewer as well. But before demanding this sacrifice, The Bedlam preemptively butters up Coraline with gifts, love, and attention, which are things Coraline believes she lacks from her real mother. Now faced with keeping her own eyes or leaving it all behind, Coraline must decide if she will continue to see things the way they are, or take the sewing buttons and look over the nitty gritty details of The Bedlam’s deal.

Using Quigley’s maternal roles in the horror genre, Coraline first positions Mel Jones as a “Mother-Monster,” while The Bedlam is “Mother-Saviour.” The “monstrous” tendencies that the film assigns to Jones do not arise from physical or emotional abuse towards her child but rather a perceived neglect. The mother in this film works from home, meaning that she cannot devote her entire attention to Coraline; a situation that the expectations of intensive mothering would demonize. Lisa Forbes, an author for the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, comments on this expectation of motherhood in relation to the working woman, writing, “Overall, the intensive mothering ideology asserts that it is primarily the woman’s responsibility to care for her child and that mothering, not career, should be her central focus” (271). Coraline has internalized this expectation of her mother, hence her frustration when Jones tends to her emails before her child during the workday. Forbes continues, describing these expectations of motherhood as “unrealistic” (271), an idea which is visually expressed within the film by Mel Jones’ doppelgänger. The Bedlam’s unrealistic eyes (the black buttons) parallel the unrealistic parenting style she performs in hopes of winning Coraline’s trust. In doing so, Coraline juxtaposes the two mothers through visual language and parenting style in order to prepare its feminist argument.

This argument first begins at the pivotal, uncanny moment when The Bedlam asks Coraline for her eyes. When Coraline declines, her “other mother” grows furious with her, loses her likeness to Mel Jones, and returns to her true state: an arachnid-inspired monster who steals the souls of children. In doing so, the mothers of Coraline trade titles; Mel Jones is now defaulted to “Mother-Saviour” while The Bedlam is revealed to be the true “Mother-Monster,” both in her actions towards Coraline and in her physical being. The film resolves with The Bedlam’s demise, as well as Coraline gaining more appreciation for her mother, Mel Jones. Gillmor’s theory of the feminist spectator would therefore recognize the subversive subtext of Coraline as revealed through the maternal character roles. The film serves as both frightening spectacle and defense of the working mother; moms like Mel Jones, who have both careers and children to look after, are not villains for refusing to conform to the expectations of intensive mothering (i.e., put their children above their careers at all times). While the patriarchal expectations of society would beg to differ, Coraline exemplifies the monstrous nature of such a parenting style, which leads to both the demise of The Bedlam (or, the intensive mother) and Coraline’s admiration of her.

When the mothers in horror films have doubles or doppelgängers, it is easy to assign and distinguish between Quigley’s maternal roles; such is the case in Coraline, where Mel Jones is mother-savior while The Bedlam is mother-monster. However, sometimes the feminist spectator is able to discover more subtext if such assignation is vague, or even impossible. This is the case in Jordan Peele’s 2019 film Us, which mirrors Coraline’s inclusion of an uncanny, maternal doppelgänger. The film centers around the Wilson family, as well as their doppelgängers who rise from the sewers in order to kill their corresponding selves. Adelaide Wilson, the matriarch of the Wilson family, is forced to protect herself against her doppelgänger-family, led by their own identical matriarch, simply named “Red”. The film suggests that Adelaide is the mother-savior, as she defends her family, while Red is the mother-monster; Red’s uncanniness towards Adelaide, as well as her own stiff movements and scratchy, hoarse voice, encourages the audience to automatically label her as monster. In other words, we assume she is the monster.

However, the film’s climax reveals these two to have swapped identities; Adelaide is the true doppelgänger, while Red is the true human, and their switch resulted from a violent encounter between the two during childhood. When paired with Quigley’s maternal roles, this reveal challenges the audience’s understanding of who the mother-savior is and who the mother-monster is. Although Adelaide’s actions (defending her family) prove her to be the savior type, Us suggests she is inherently a monster by being a doppelgänger. Adelaide’s complex identity is neatly paralleled with her son, who wears a monster mask although being human; it’s almost as if Adelaide does the opposite as she pretends to be human whilst truly being doppelgänger. This reveal further reframes the film’s narrative. Instead of viewing Red as a doppelgänger seeking bloodshed, Red is truly a woman seeking revenge against her double. And can you blame her? This reveal leaves audiences disillusioned, a result Erick Neher credits to Adelaide/Red’s actress, Lupita Nyong’o. He writes, “…the vast range of emotional and physical expression [Nyong’o] brings to the two roles functions first as precise delineator and then, as the film progresses, as blurring complicator” (111). Neher continues to explain the purpose of that blurring complicator, which is “…to disrupt that duality, to find the normalcy within the monster and the monstrous within the normal” (111); as writer and viewer, Neher reflects upon how Adelaide protecting the life she has built for herself and Red seeking revenge are both justified. Us leaves the viewer with a tough question: Who is the good and who is the bad mother?

This question is easily answered, however, through Gillmor’s feminist spectator. By considering Neher’s comments on Us in light of Gillmor and Quigley’s texts, we now see how the film refuses to allow either mother to be considered good or bad. By doing so, Arnold’s dichotomy of “good” and “bad” mothers is void. As Neher writes about the “disruption of duality,” the feminist spectator can bring together Us with motherhood at large, revealing the subversive argument: Motherhood is not easily labeled, defined, or boxed into any specific trait. Remember, the feminist spectator finds subtext throughout any and all cinema (hence why Gillmor’s lens can join both Us and the institution of motherhood—it finds the subtext). The audience now struggles to either sympathize with or vilify Adelaide; although doppelgänger, she still exhibits the “self-sacrifice, selflessness and nurturance” that Arnold defines as reflective of a “good” mother. Thus, Adelaide resides in a vague, gray zone. According to the feminist spectator, however, she is not alone. The subversive subtext found would relay Adelaide’s inability to be labeled as savior or monster onto larger society and argue that mothers are unable to be labeled as “good” or “bad.” This isn’t to say that the feminist spectator doesn’t believe in a mother having good or bad traits, but rather that there is no such thing as an entirely good or entirely bad mother. After applying the feminist spectator and Quigley’s maternal roles, Us reveals how attempting to sort mothers into various categories ultimately fails to describe them accurately. As Adelaide exists as both hero and villain, motherhood exists somewhere in between Arnold’s “good” and “bad” dichotomy, unable to truly be either extreme.

Although compelling feminist subtext can be revealed through the duplication of the mother and the subsequent transformation of the maternal role she (and her double) embody, two mother characters are not always essential for the feminist spectator to interpret horror cinema in meaningful ways. Alternatively, the evolution of one mother from “victim” to “savior” is an additional, and effective, vehicle for generating insights or arguments about the expectations of motherhood. For example, in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) Quigley’s maternal roles are transposed onto one mother-character, Wendy, and the film’s feminist subtext stems from her evolution from one role to the next. Author Elizabeth Hornbeck views The Shining as a film that details domestic horror, as evident in her essay, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf: Domestic Violence in The Shining.” The horror genre is able to impose on-screen experience onto the viewer, as Hornbeck describes: “While family dramas broadly elicit audience sympathy or pity for victims of abuse, the horror genre more directly invites audience identification with the victims, and thus allows viewers—including male viewers—to experience the visceral fear the abuser strikes in his family members” (691). This identification the viewer feels with the abused (in this case, Wendy) is critical for the effectives of the subtext found by the feminist spectator. In other words, if the viewer doesn’t feel as scared as Wendy, then The Shining loses its flair.

Before Wendy transforms from victim into savior, she is portrayed as an intensive mother. While her husband, Jack, works on his novel and tends to the Overlook Hotel (the family’s larger-than-life home for the time being), Wendy is expected to look after their son. In other words, Jack is allowed to focus on his writing career while Wendy is charged with the glamorous job of motherhood (lucky her!). As Jack transforms into the possessed hunter, Wendy quickly falls under the “female-prey” trope aforementioned in Gillmor’s essay; under Quigley’s lens, she becomes the mother-victim. Faced with the task of defending both herself and her son from her husband’s violent rampage, Wendy quickly evolves into mother-savior. Hornbeck underlines this important character arc: “[Audiences] witness Wendy’s transformation from subservient wife to fighter, and ultimately, heroine” (691). As the audience once felt Wendy’s fear, as previously detailed by Hornbeck, they now feel Wendy’s empowerment. The father of the family becoming a monster for whom the mother must defeat recalls Greven and Wood’s definition of modern horror’s focus on the family unit, yet it is Wendy’s evolution from victim to savior that enables the feminist spectator to find The Shining’s subversive subtext. The display of a woman standing up to her husband, whether a supernatural threat or not, reveals to the audience the potential power of the female victim. Thus, The Shining is an encouraging battle cry for mothers to fight back against their domestic abusers.

Although Wendy’s transformation and empowerment exemplifies how the feminist-horror lens, when applied to motherhood, works to critique patriarchal expectations, a mother’s evolution from victim to savior is not necessary for subversive subtext to be found. No better an example of this than Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanksi, 1968), where motherhood is categorized under Quigley’s mother-victim role and neither evolves nor transforms. The film follows Rosemary, who’s victimhood is specifically identifiable throughout the plot—she is tricked by her husband, raped by the Devil, and coerced by the next-door-cult into mothering her satanic spawn. The film’s simple, abstract core, however, is unlocked through Gillmor’s feminist spectator: the film portrays a woman being forced into motherhood. In feminist author Karyn Valerius’ article “Rosemary’s Baby, Gothic Pregnancy, and Fetal Subjects,” Valerius details the effectiveness of the film’s subtext: “The film elicits horror from its audience through Rosemary’s violation and the spectacle of her pregnant body” (119). As Hornbeck writes about the audience’s identification with Wendy in The Shining (highlighting how critical this identification is for the feminist subtext to be understood), Valerius believes the same about Rosemary and her connection with audiences: “Furthermore, although it is Rosemary’s abject, pregnant body that horrifies the audience, the film nonetheless invites out identification with her and provokes our fear on her behalf” (119.) Essentially, the audience feels the same terror Rosemary does.

And while The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby share in this overlap of connection between mother and viewer, they differ when it comes to who the mother and viewer are to fear. While Wendy has to defend herself from her husband, Rosemary’s aggressors aren’t limited to one person—they aren’t even limited to just men! Rosemary is made a victim by acts of her husband, her neighbors, and even the Devil himself. Furthermore, the expectant mother never leaves the apartment building, a physical representation of how institutionalized motherhood’s expectations are. If it’s not the people around her forcing her into motherhood, it’s the building itself trapping her in it. In relation to larger society, if it’s not the people around a woman pressuring her into motherhood, then it is the institution of motherhood itself pressuring her into a role normalized and expected within Western patriarchal society. As the audience’s identification with Wendy in The Shining is essential for the film’s feminist-battle cry to be heard, so is the audience’s identification with Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby. Instead of being encouraged to fight back against their abuser, however, audiences for the later film understand how horrifying the institutionalization of motherhood is for women who may not wish to become mothers.

Rosemary’s Baby is revered within feminist cinema, but the film inspires its fair share of purposeful misinterpretations. Valerius contests the most popular of these misinterpretations, which label the film as an example of maternal psychosis rather than feminist commentary on the forceful nature of expected motherhood: “To attribute Rosemary’s fears and suspicions to psychosis is to refuse a political interpretation of the narrative by failing to recognize the sexist social relations that conspire against her…” (119-120). These “sexist social relations” are the same patriarchal expectations of motherhood that Hays first labeled as “intensive mothering.” Those expectations of motherhood directly work against Rosemary as they result in her pregnancy, the sickness she contracts, and the control her husband and the cult have over her. Valerius puts this into her own words, “Rosemary’s exploitation by her husband and the coven, who coldly pursue their own interests in her future child without regard for her desires or well-being, might be read as an indictment of the more routine ways sexist social relations expropriate women’s reproductive labor” (119). Reading Valerius’ interpretation through Gillmor’s lens of the feminist spectator, we can see how Rosemary’s Baby defends women who do not wish to become a mother by displaying the violent and forceful nature of expected motherhood through the guise of a supernatural story.

Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018) presents an alternative evolution available for its mother character. Instead of the film’s mother, named Annie, evolving from victim into savior, she morphs into the film’s monster, yet the feminist spectator still discovers the film’s subversive subtext. For context, after losing her daughter due to a freak car accident while Annie’s older son was at the wheel, the mother spirals into deep grief and depression. These heavy feelings are paired with her own conflicts with her son; Annie blames him as responsible for her daughter’s death and struggles to look over the role he played in the car accident. Moreover, Annie is expected to continue serving her family as mother first, instead of being able to process all of her emotions. This perfect emotional storm manifests itself in Hereditary through Annie’s attendance to secret support groups, partaking in seances (with the hope that she may reconnect with her daughter), and ultimately, her possession by Paimon, a King of Hell who murders her family. With all this in mind, the feminist spectator steps in to reframe Annie’s transformation into the film’s mother-monster. By putting the film under Gillmor’s lens, it is clear how the subtext suggests that Annie’s inability to properly process her emotions stems from the expectations (either internalized or institutionalized) of her to perform as mother first and griever second. Her possession and explosive actions, therefore, are the film’s hyperbolic consequences to this unending expectation placed on mothers.

The subversive subtext found by the feminist spectator is not something pulled out of thin air. Aster (the film’s director) spoke with NPR about Hereditary in a 2018 radio program episode called All Things Considered and offered this important insight about his movie: “I wanted the film to function first as a vivid family drama before I even bothered attending to the horror elements.” After applying this quote to the film, it is evident how Aster repurposes the horror genre’s conventions and tropes (one obvious example being possession) to portray the melodrama surrounding the loss of a child. Thus, the feminist spectator may find the film’s deliberate subtext. Aster also portrays a very common, and well-documented, form of grief that is specific to mothers. In her 2018 article, “Holding onto Motherhood During the Grieving Process,” Dr. Vickie Harden describes losing a child as, “A recipe of profound loss, disappointment, and depression [that] can significantly affect the ability of the mother to move through grief and reach some sense of normalcy” (18). Using this quote as background to the grieving mother, it’s no wonder why Annie struggles with reaching normalcy after losing her daughter. Additionally, some of Harden’s more specific descriptions of grief are evident throughout Hereditary. For example, Harden writes about the “Grieving what could have been, rather than what is,” as she details how grieving mothers sometimes turn away from memories of their lost child that could possibly comfort them, and instead think about the future possibilities now lost with their child (19). In the film, Annie directly references Harden’s description of the “what could have been,” yelling at her son: “. . .I wish I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did—but your sister is dead. She’s gone forever. And what a waste. If it could’ve maybe brought us together—something!—if you could have just said ‘I’m sorry’ or faced up to what happened, maybe then we could do something with this!” (58).

How Annie’s outburst differs from Harden’s description, however, is that Annie is thinking of the big picture. While Harden’s writing portrays the grieving mother to think of their child’s potential future, Annie relays that lost potential onto the rest of the family; she’s frustrated that the death in the family pushed everyone away, instead of bringing them together. Additionally, Harden writes, “Losing a loved one can create a tailspin of emotions, feelings of lack of control of one’s own life, as well as a chasm in the normalcy of daily life” (19). The lack of control Harden highlights is reflected in a tongue-in-cheek manner in Hereditary as Annie literally loses control over her life due to her possession. Harden’s final nail in the coffin is her belief that “. . . this human process of understanding and living with loss is never really final, complete, or resolved” (19). Aster agrees with this, as Annie’s possession is irreversible. She meets her own demise during the climax of the film, leaving her grief and depression caused by the death of her daughter unresolved.

With this clear evidence that Hereditary is a depiction of grief through the family melodrama, with Aster using horror conventions to represent expressions of grief, Gillmor’s feminist spectator is now able to find meaningful feminist subtext about the relationship between grief and motherhood. Not only does Annie grieve throughout the film, but she also is denied the ability or space to process grief by her family. She is expected, not only by her family but by Western patriarchal society as well, to still perform as wife and mother. While her loss does not make her any less of a wife or mother, the expectations placed upon Annie refuse to acknowledge the grief she undergoes. Within the context of Hereditary, Annie’s inability to process her grief results in her possession, as she conducts a seance in hopes to reach her dead child and end her grieving. Instead of accepting the loss, Annie desperately performs rituals in an attempt to reconnect with her daughter, which instead invites the very demonic spirit that ends up possessing her. This isn’t to say that Annie doesn’t wish to process her grief, but rather that she is not given the proper space, tools, or support to do so. The feminist spectator, therefore, sees her actions throughout the film as a result of her inability to process grief.

Although most mothers in the real world do not end up possessed whenever they’re unable to process their emotions properly, there are still very real consequences that result from the expectation that women must be mothers before grievers. For example, there is a studied link between grief and substance abuse among women who have lost loved ones. Carla J. Groh and Jasmina Cunmulaj document their attempts to remedy this grief in their 2000 article, “Women, Addiction, and Grief: A Quality Improvement Initiative” in the Archives of Psychiatric Nursing. The improvement initiative Groh and Cunmulaj created invited women to attend both an intervention for their abuses, as well as grief counseling, a process lasting six weeks total. In the introduction of their findings, the authors write, “Grief and loss oftentimes provide substance abusing women (as well as men) a reason for drug use” (225). Just Annie turns to rituals and seances in Hereditary, grieving mothers may turn to substance abuse instead of processing their grief. After the initiative’s six weeks came to a close, Groh and Cunmulaj reported that the grief counseling had yielded positive results: “The women reported that the group was helpful in dealing with their grief, and the impact was positive, at least in the short term.” (227). The authors go on to cite the grieving women’s “increased awareness of the association between grief and substance use” as the reason behind the positive impact (227). Groh and Cunmulaj, therefore, identify the benefit to giving women a safe space to grieve as they reveal that a grieving woman’s awareness of the connection between their grief and substance abuse is critical for their recovery. While Annie isn’t addicted to anything, per se, it is interesting to see how her own inability to grieve relates to real women in our society. The horrific consequence of Annie’s possession is the exaggeration of the real world consequences (substance abuse, for one) that may affect grieving women.

Hereditary displays the alternative evolution for a mother—from victim into monster—and the subtext produced is identifiable through the feminist spectator. What if this was amplified and the mother’s evolution had a final step? What insights are gleaned through a mother’s evolution from victim, to monster, and ultimately, to savior? This question is answered by the film The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2016)—and it’s no wonder, as Quigley’s theory of maternal roles stemmed from this very film. The film follows mother Amelia, whose husband dies from a car crash as he was driving himself and his wife to the hospital as Amelia was giving birth to their son. As her son grows up, Amelia’s inability to grieve for her husband (as she is expected to be her son’s mother first, and widow second) mirrors Annie’s inability to grieve for her daughter in Hereditary. As Annie blamed her son, so does Amelia blame her own child, as it was his birthing that is responsible for the accident (according to Amelia). As tensions rise between mother and son, the pair are now plagued by the Babadook, a creature that manifests itself either as an eerie monster or an uncanny representation of Amelia’s late husband. While the creature terrorizes Amelia and her son, it eventually possesses Amelia and uses her to hunt the young boy—yet another parallel to Hereditary, as Amelia transforms from victim into monster. Eventually, however, Amelia is able to expel the Babadook from her body and tame the creature in order to protect herself and her son. In doing so, Amelia’s final evolution takes place, as she is now the mother-savior (both savior to her child and herself). This film’s timeline is, of course, not without feminist subtext. At the beginning of The Babadook, Amelia is clearly ambivalent towards her son and exhausted by the act of motherhood. Her child is a handful, to say the least. As this tension grows, the Babadook enters, suggesting that the creature is a manifestation of Amelia’s feelings toward her son. Viewers are therefore able to interpret Amelia’s possession as metaphorically “giving in” to her resentments, annoyance, and anger towards her son. The ironic thing is that through possession, Amelia is finally the intensive-mother she is expected to be; however, instead of her priority being to care and mother (as expected by her society), her priority is to hunt her son.

Thankfully, The Babadook redeems Amelia by evolving her into the mother-savior role by the end of the film. In Quigley’s essay, she describes this sanctification:

Amelia’s acknowledgement and acceptance of the Babadook (that is, as the “monstrous” manifestation of her inadmissible feelings about motherhood as a result of their repression, and (thus) as a very real threat to her and Samuel’s survival as a family) is integral to her revised relationship not only to her son, but also to herself as a mother. According to Cohen, “monsters are our children.” Amelia’s recovery implies a recognition of this as, ultimately, she assumes a quasi-maternal role towards the Babadook itself, giving it a home (in the basement), soothing it during its (epic) tantrums, and feeding it (worms). (74-75)

In other words, Quilgey views the film’s creature as a physical expression of Amelia’s feelings toward her son. And as her feelings threaten their relationship, so does the Babadook threaten the family. Thus, in order to save her family (and her relationship with her son), Amelia must tame the monster; but as “she assumes a quasi-maternal role” to the manifestation of her feelings, Amelia ultimately begins to mother herself. A simpler way to say this is that in order for Amelia to save her relationship with her son, she needs to take care of herself, too. This solution, of course, is something discovered through the feminist spectator. The expectations placed upon Amelia demand her to take care of her son fully, without having the room to take care of herself as needed.

Both Hereditary and The Babadook share in a common theme of possession being a consequence when mothers aren’t allowed to process grief. Beyond that, both of the mothers also blame their children as the reason for their grief, showing the tension that can arise when unable to grieve. While Annie in Hereditary fails to process this, Amelia displays the benefits to a grieving mother finding peace: she is able to move on. Through the horror trope of possession, both films clearly delineate between the true mother and the possessed mother. This mirrors reality, as mothers are different before and after losing a child. The Babadook also relates grief as less of an emotion, and more as a new state of being. As the Babadook is tamed, it now lives in Amelia’s basement where she tends to it regularly. As Amelia mothers the creature, the film uses this dynamic to highlight how grief never truly goes away once processed; it’s a continual effort.

In these six films, Gillmor’s feminist spectator is able to find the subversive subtext. Guided by Quigley’s maternal roles, we can see how labeling mothers and documenting their evolution from one label to the next (or, sometimes, lack of evolution) produces arguments about the expectations of motherhood. Some audiences may find that these mothers don’t deserve the feminist spectator’s defense. For example, as we understand Amelia’s possession by the Babadook to be reflective of her grief, other viewers may find her possession to be the consequence of her ambivalence towards her child. This interpretation, however, punishes Amelia for not being able to live up to the unrealistic expectations of intensive motherhood (as described by Hays). While art is certainly subjective, Quigley recognizes how interpretations that blame Amelia ultimately dilute The Babadook of feminist subtext. Instead of dismissing Amelia’s ambivalence, Quigley highlights it, writing, “The return of The Babadook as the ‘monstrous’ manifestation of Amelia’s repressed feelings about motherhood brings with it the opportunity to reconsider the maternal role in ways that can accommodate ambivalence” (74).

In a 2014 interview with VICE writer Hugh Ryan, The Babadook director Jennifer Kent describes her intentions in making Amelia a sympathetic character: “I had to tread gently… I wanted us to not judge her—it’s a real taboo.” Kent acknowledges how maternal ambivalence is taboo within our society, yet she still creates a mother that audiences feel not only for, but also with. We feel Amelia’s frustrations with her son, her fear of The Babadook, and her gain of strength by the end of the film. Through The Babadook , Kent shows that motherhood is not always glamorous, nor is it always desired. This isn’t to say that Kent nor Quigley are embracing a mother’s ambivalence towards her child, but rather that ambivalence is sometimes a part of motherhood. Not every woman is enthusiastic about motherhood, and the feelings that come with it may need to be figured out. Kent and Quigley acknowledge this, and their work encourages audiences to not only recognize the potential ambivalence, but to avoid vilifying it.

Who would’ve thought that, over time, audiences would grow from fearing werewolves, zombies, and vampires to family members? The horror genre’s evolution into a more nuanced, and layered genre has paired thrill with theory, and within the context of this essay, we have seen how audiences are able to fear both the onscreen horror (either perpetrated by mother, husband, or supernatural entity), as well as understand the subversive subtext underneath these film’s surfaces. Sure, sometimes people are watching horror movies just because they want to be scared, not because they want to glean new insights into the expectations of motherhood within Western patriarchal society. Yet, consciously or not, viewers are still able to understand the nuanced horror, like Wendy fighting against her abuser (The Shining), or Rosemary’s forced pregnancy (Rosemary’s Baby), both examples reflecting larger societal issues. In addition to highlighting these maternal arguments, these films also better enable male viewers to connect and understand these issues as well. While these arguments are under the guise of the horror thriller, men are able to relate to the maternal main characters in ways that they may not be able to (or willing to) relate to the women around them, who have very real frustrations and fears as reflected by feminist-horror. I’m not saying that these films exist solely for this purpose, but rather that it’s neat that men—who are unable to become mothers (and thus, unable to fully understand the expectations placed upon them)—are able to find ways to relate and empathize with motherhood. This subtext would be forgotten if not for Gillmor’s feminist spectator, the lens in which the viewer is able to find subversive subtext within cinema, whether intended or not. In addition, Quigley’s maternal roles help guide this lens, allowing the viewer to more accurately identify the roles mothers play in horror cinema. Ultimately, however, it is the mother characters themselves who demonstrate their respective film’s feminist subtext. Viewing them through these lenses, we perceive arguments about and insights into the expectations of motherhood, reminding of the impossible expectations our society places upon mothers.

Works Cited

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Hugh, Ryan. “’The Babadook’ Is a Horror Movie About a Mother Who Hates Her Son.” VICE, 24 November 2014, https://www.vice.com/en/article/yvq4jv/horror-movie-the-babadook-explores-mothers-who-hate-their-sons. Accessed 23 June 2022.

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Quigley, Paula. “When Good Mothers Go Bad: Genre and Gender in The Babadook.” Irish Gothic Journal 15 (2016): 57. ProQuest, https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fwhen-good-mothers-go-bad-genre-gender-babadook%2Fdocview%2F1842820591%2Fse-2

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