Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Part IV. A Further Commentary On The Film: 'You Are Not My Mother'—Premiered, 13 September 2021, at Toronto, Canada.

1.0: Contents /

2.0–2.5: "Identity" /

3.0–3.5: A Macabre Tax /

4.0–4.1: Baal-zebub /

5.0–5.4: Paranoia /

6.0–6.3: "Devil's Elixir" /

7.0–7.8: The Sage /

8.0–8.5: The Christian Genius /

9.0–9.4: A Paradigm Shift /

10.0–10.2: Disclaimer //.

☆☆☆

2.0 — "Identity": An analysis of the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, would be incomplete with-out a commentary on that which is symbolically refused in the film's narrative: "mother-hood". Hence the film's title: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, that consists of an exclamatory phrase using the second-person pronoun: 'you'.

2.1 — The phrase is unusual because it's subject suggests a second-person form of distance to exist between the relations of the mother and child, in which case, the child or some-one who the woman mistakens for her child is probably making the exclamation to some-one not the mother of the person.

2.2 — Further, the phrase is unexpected because a mother typically knows who her children are. Conversely, a child will know her mother. The matter is one rarely confused, at least, that is the standard perception. According to Western World traditions, a mother represents some-one's origins, such as from whom some-one is born in to family as to establish social contexts and status.

2.3 — The importance placed upon parentage, familial origins and ancestry within Western World culture involves the special significance Christianity places upon personal identity.

2.4 — Many Asian countries once respectively named a child after his or her father or mother; little difference was perceived to exist between the parent and child, or children. The use of a Christian name, that is, a first name, acknowledged a difference between the parent and child as being one of character and soul, such that each person could be judged in reference to his or her own relation to God.

2.5 — The film's protagonist, named 'Char', is grossly ascribed that name because the character immolates her mother. To 'char' is to burn slightly, a back-formation of the noun: 'charcoal'. The name suggests a predisposition to burn—such that the question needs to be asked: is 'Char' a "pet name" attributed to her to predispose her to commit the act of burning, and in this case, burning and killing people? If yes, then, her family has encouraged such a disposition by way of "nominal determination", in which a noun as a pronoun has a defining impact on some-one's behaviour, that is, Char will probably char some-one more than some-one named Carol.

3.0 — A Macabre Tax: In Part III., my previous blog regarding: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, I have hypothesised that an arrangement of the family is made in which the hidden figure of Mephistopheles, most probably an older man, demands from the man of the house, as exemplified by the character of Aaron, to pay his way through providing him infants who will be at his mercy; that, in terms of common knowledge of the criminality involved with black-birding, may herald a system of child trafficking: a topic that is often elided in texts of Western World cultures as not so much taboo, but incomprehensibly horrorific.

3.1 — None of that sub-plot of a macabre tax, mentioned here, is necessarily narrated in the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, because of it's engendering taboo; nonetheless it is considered as still active to the narrative, only the sub-plot has been censored.

Figure 1. 'Faust And Marguerite In The Garden', circa 1846, oil on canvas, 218 cm x 135 cm, part of a private collection at New York, by Ary Scheffer. 

3.2 — It is argued because of the points of parallel between a text that is found to forward the position and role of Mephistopheles—the exemplum being the text: 'Faust', circa 1880, by the German Wolfgang Goethe—Kate Dolan's film of 2021 is considered a highly censored version of this arch-narrative. 

3.3 — One of the points which find no parallel to 'Faust', circa 1880, is the variant of the man of the house, Aaron, instead of Faust selling his soul to the devil, the man of the house pays off the devil with his children. Note, a man is, often according to patriarchy, his sons, or his sons are his soul: a symbolic inter-change represented in the Christian doctrine of Trinitarianism as a connection made through God.

3.4 — A further variation of the Faust narrative is found in what may have been one of Wolfgang Goethe's inspirations for the 'Faust' narrative, viz. 'The History Of The Caliph Vathek', circa 1782, originally published in French by the Englishman, William Beckford, the text was translated to English by Reverend Samuel Henley.

3.5 — "Vathek", as the text is referenced, involves a devilish figure, Giaour—a name that implies he is an infidel, or gabr, that is, a Zoroastrian magician—with who the protagonist, Vathek, bargains the lives of fifty children in order he gain great knowledge and enter: "the palace of the subterrain fire", where resides Soliman Ben Daoud, a Jewish, Israeli magician-king, who controls the talismans which control the world. The motif of the killing of fifty innocents, that is, children, is entered in a type of "Faustian bargain".

4.0 — Baal-zebub: The killing of fifty people is a motif with possible allusions to: 2 Kings 1:3–14, of the Old Testament, in which the prophet Elijah is involved with a "righteous kill" by means of divine fire of fifty Israeli or Philistine men. The killing of the fifty men is deemed righteous, because the fire is divine, sent from the heavens, to smote men representative of a lack of conscience. "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?"—Elijah is recorded as asking the Israeli monarch, Ahaziah.

4.1 — Baal-zebub, according to a number of Christian theological discourses, is one of the seven princes of Hell—each being a personification of the seven deadly sins—and Baal-zebub is a permutation of Satan, in a symbolic inter-change that is characterised by a high degree of morphology, in which case, Baal-zebub may also be a variant of Mephistopheles: both servants of Lucifer, the General and ruler of the legion of Hell.

5.0 — Paranoia: 'The Necromancer; Or, The Tale Of The Black Forest', circa 1794, by Karl Friedrich Kahlert, published under the pseudonym, Lawrence Flammenberg, involves a sorcerer who acts as a former lord of a castle, is discovered to be: 'a very wicked and irreligious man who found great delight in tormenting the poor pesants', to exhibit the killing of blameless persons, that demonstrates paranoia, not reasonable suspicion.

5.1 — Later in the narrative it is learned, the necromancer, so named because of his performance of black magic in the castle's dungeon, was a servant of a lord under whose tutelage he adopted the lore of black magic, through which various misdeeds and greater crimes were committed.

5.2 — The highly censored version of the arch-narrative that is found in the filmic text: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, arguably dissolves the macabre or Satanic aspects, which might incriminate the older father figure, a type of land-lord, who evades the accusatory blame for the familial organisation and suspicion to fall on the mother. 

5.3 — The textual variation may, in fact, pursue a vein of suspicion that was known to dislocate the relationships between fathers and sons; a circumstance that is arguably more easily arranged because of the mother's close proximity to the infant during birth, and the almost ubiquitous paternity test that has been applied across cultures for approximately a century.

5.4 — The failing of recognition of a beloved is to be taken a demonstration of the failing or non-existence of love. How could some-one not recognise their beloved?

6.0 — "Devil's Elixir": When lithium is abused to deliberately cause amnesia, the problem is the drug, the poison, and what the poison represents: acts of revenge, such as to involve the fathers against the mothers—at least it is inferred—for removing the men's role as father. 

6.1 — The use of poison, but as it is dubbed an elixir, is found in the narrative variation of 'Faust' in E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'The Devil's Elixirs', circa 1815. In this variant of the arch-narrative, 'Faust' a Capuchin monk, Medardus, is placed in charge of a monastery's relics, learns of the devil's elixir, which when consumed consigns ownership to the devil, but entwines any other who consumes the elixir to the other one who took drink of it.

6.2 — Not quite a potion, lithium is provided as dissolvable powder-compressed tablets which may be crushed and placed in consumable liquids or foods, such that it is plausible, it's use is out-side prescriptions, and out-side moral orthodoxies such as to symbolise the presence of devilish motives. 

6.3 — One must wonder as to whether an inter-cultural warring rages on between cousins of different tribes, such as to be involved with the Jews, or Phœnicians, Palestinians and Christians?

7.0 — The Sage: Whether the filmic text: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, that is almost completely denuded of cultural symbolism, could connect the discourses to a historical sense of meaningfulness, ought to be queried, because a psychotic state of foreclosure could arguably be considered the norm for partly ethnically Celtic, Irish teenage girls.

7.1 — The North Dublin suburban setting shown within Kate Dolan's film, certainly is stripped of Christian symbolism, but a type of Neo-pagan sage, that is, green leafed twigs rounded in to a ball, referred to as a good luck charm, is one of the few visual symbols to emerge in the film to which a wicca or neo-pagan influence is indicated—that is, amidst the Halloween carnival of night-marish costumes—as prevalent through-out Ireland.

Figure 2. A detail of a still of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021: during the film's finale, Char hands Angela a sage charm, as part of her fantasy her mother remains alive.

7.2 — The sage, a type of talisman, is a symbol of the globe or world, in which there are no regional boundaries, but a type of pantheism, in which the truth is found in universality, whereby boundaries and differences, cultural and political, are perceived as illusory—in reality, all is emergent of the one in complex uniformity. 

7.3 — During the 16th century the British Isles started to show signs of scientific discourse connected with Christian doctrines, with the advent of the encyclopædia that was integrated in to Christian texts used by missionaries against those who would misuse knowledge, advocates of the Anti-Christ.

7.4 — 'The Tragical History Of The Life And Death Of Doctor Faustus', circa 1593, by the Elizabethan play-wright Christopher Marlowe, was in part inspired by the man of science, art and Christianity, the "doctor mirabilis", Roger Bacon, circa. 1220, born near Ilchester, Somerset, England, until circa 1292, Near Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, who wrote 'Opus Majus', circa 1267, designed for Christian missionaries against those of the Anti-Christ who claimed to know greater than the Christian clergy.

7.5 — Another Elizabethan dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote the play: 'Friar Bacon And Friar Bungay', that was entered in to the Stationers' Register (a trade guild) 14 May 1594, as a dramatisation of Roger Bacon, who may consequently be regarded as identifying the figure of Doctor Faust who has partaken of too much knowledge has found him-self party to the "Faustian bargain".

7.6 — The theme of the Faustian bargain is prevalent henceforth in British literature, such as further represented by the play: 'The Merry Devil Of Edmonton', printed circa 1608, attributed to William Shakespeare, that narrates a pact made between a devil and magician—whether parents will consent to their children's education involving references to the devil, may decide as to whether the text is William Shakespeare's or not.

7.7 — The text that is officially attributed to William Shakespeare and that celebrates the supremacy of the magician-king, Prospero, is: 'The Tempest' circa 1610, in which his daughter, Miranda, is tutored by him, and conducts her father's plans; possibly as Char is found to eliminate her mother for her father's sake.

7.8 — Ben Jonson's satirical plays, 'The Alchemist', circa 1610, entertains the pseudo-pharmacist figure of science and superstition the alchemist at the center of a complex of social organisation, replete with eccentricities and irrationality, that is similarly treated in Ben Jonson's 'The Devil Is An Ass', first performed circa 1616 and first published circa 1631, to mock a society interwoven by a sub-culture beholden to the "Faustian bargain".

Figure 3. A statue of Roger Bacon holding a globe, at the University of Oxford, Britain.

8.0 — The Christian Genius: The point of Roger Bacon, circa 1220, Ilchester, Britain, until circa 1292, Oxford, Britain, as the British Isles's great man of knowledge, it's veritable 'magus', similar to a term of reference that had yet to gain it's popular world-wide appeal, viz. 'genius', emerges as a key figure of English-language based early modernity.

8.1 — Where the term magus is used, the term of doctor or professor and, or, or minister, was used in reference to the Christian man of learning: as found represented by the historical figures of Anselm of Canterbury, William of Ockam, or out-side of the British Isles, Albertus Magnus of Germany or Thomas Aquinas, France—for example.

8.2 — Such figures of scholasticism are often over-looked for their focus on the disciplines of the humanities, areas of skill and knowledge considered less lucrative than, figuratively speaking, the science of making gold, alchemy.

8.3 — Possibly, the man of Christian culture is of that genius of creativity connected to the arts, in which Leonardo da Vinci figures largely, who nowadays is so appraised for the monetary value of his works than anything else: refer to the documentary film: 'The Lost Leonardo, premiered 13 June 2021, directed by Andreas Koefoed.

8.4 — Comparatively, the evil genius, super-natural or some disguised fiend, Mephistopheles, is diminished in significance only as a ploy, viz. to delimit speculation that he is culpable of crimes and wanton despotism. The inference is, according to Kate Dolan's film of circa 2021, that he acts increasingly in a space of society, in which that society—the women and children—can only barely remember, if at all, his involvements, that is due to abuses of medical treatments, such as lithium.

8.5 — The speculative field is laid bare in films, such as: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, it would seem, to contemplate whether the grand-mother, son or daughter, are responsible for the immolation of the mother. 

9.0 — A Paradigm Shift: The mother being the pre-eminent figure, symbolic of the primary care giver, is made subject to a doubt of identification and authentication, such that the mother is needed less than that paradigm of care found advocated within Christianity, such as symbolised by The Nativity Of Jesus Christ, particularly by the Madonna and child, or per Eastern Orthodox Church, the Theotokos, is a symbolism pervasive through-out the visual arts of millennia?

9.1 — Are the feelings of trust, love and compassion, similar to the doctrines of Christianity, as easily dismissed as imagined, because society, secretly crafted by that svengali figure, Mephistopheles, finds only power attractive? 

9.2 — The values of society seem to be misplaced due to a submerged political discourse that ought to surface; in which the Mephistopheleses of the world ought to put down their disguises and reveal them-selves; to answer the question: wherefore, causing corrosion of the family and institutions of the church and education, viz. scholasticism?

10.0 — Disclaimer: This blog post is the exclusive intellectual property of Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–; Google email: craigsjlacey@gmail.com; by way of law, no hacking, copying, editing or disseminating of it is permitted.

10.1 — Four photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 3; each of which is identified to a resource and is used within the editorial rights' context.

10.2 — Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 189 Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, Queensland, Australia, 4000; Ⓒ 2022, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey. 

☆☆☆

Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Part III. A Further Commentary On The Film: 'You Are Not My Mother'—Premiered, 13 September 2021, at Toronto, Canada.

1.0: Blog Contents: 
2.0–2.4: An Unfunny Reality /
3.0–3.7: Edited Out /
4.0–4.7: An Early Reference To The Changeling /
5.0–5.7: Trimalchio As Mephistopheles /
6.0–6.4: Returning To The Direct Discussion Of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021 /
7.0–7.5: The Great Change Of The Changeling Myth /
8.0–8.4: The Adult Changeling /
9.0–9.3: Die Hexen /

10.0–10.2: Disclaimer //.

☆☆☆

2.0 — An Unfunny Reality: One of the earliest references to a 'changeling' is recorded in the satire, the Ancient Roman text by Gaius Petronius of Marseille, France, 1st Century A.D., an author who migrated to and lived in the city of Rome; Petronius became the "arbiter of elegance", that is, among the Emperor Nero's intimate circle—as is intriguingly chronicled in the historical novel: 'Quo Vadis' circa 1896, by the Polish author, Henryk Sienkiewicz.
2.1 — Gaius Petronius's satire: 'Satyricon liber' exists along-side: 'The Golden Ass', of the 2nd Century A.D., by the "Algierian" Lucius Apuleius, as seminal texts which satirically portray the social customs and cultures of the regions of the Ancient Mediterranean; possibly, the seat of the Western World's civilisation and, as such, continues to exert relevance to contemporary society through foundational tropes, arch-narratives and crucial symbolism.

2.2 — Satire is thought to have been developed by the Ancient Greeks, such as by the play-wrights Aristophenes of the "Old Comedy", and Menander of the "New Comedy"; as a means of portraying on stage, the truth of society: to affect a sort of realism for comedy in which the laughter of the audience diminishes the facticity and consequences of the revealed truth, the veritable revelation, as a matter of trivia or a point of which deserves sympathetic understanding to the common experience of limitation and frustration.

2.3 — The main inference of the comedic, satirical text is, that beneath the appearance of society exists cultural activities which remain hidden, and which require to be "spelt out" for what those activities represent, viz. brain-washing; exploitation; enslavement.

2.4 — An unfunny reality emerges when Kate Dolan's film is examined: the point should be made, while satire is often thought of as comical, some satire repesents racism and persecution of various categorisation.

Figure 1. A film still with Hazel Doupe as Char confronted by Ingrid Craigie as Rita, in the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, from the Internet Movie Database web-site, accessed 25 May 2021: <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10406596/>.

3.0 — Edited Out: Audiences ought to cautiously treat texts, such as 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, as signifying greater than that which is shown; rather that the text shows: "the tip of the ice-berg".

3.1 — The point to make is of the under-lying discourses of a political reality that apparently no-one is permitted to discuss or criticise; that is applicable to either side of the political divide, viz. every-one is censored and has been subject to concussed states by asphyxiation, drugs, electro-convulsive therapy, etc. The cause of failing to remember the truth of what really has happened, is equal to causing cultural genocide and the denial of democratic forms of government. 

3.2 — A film such as: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, to be taken as representative of a near-to-exhaustive exposition of a pattern of narrative is an improbability, because back-ground information drawn from similar narratives to construct a more truthful perspective reveal the lacunæ in the narrative's telling. The film's narrative is over-edited, either in terms of the film's script that focuses on a truncated narrative, or the film at the post-production stages, such as to have edited out strategic filmed parts.

3.3 — The argument must hold, that the audiences who attend and consider the film's narrative complete are the same as Char, edited and censored through brain-washing by psychological, violent or drugging methods. The cinematic screen is a mirror of the audience—all forms of art are mirrors of the soul, not simply the surface appearance of some-one or some-thing. I would estimate, that an older audience would resist walking out on such a trite and superficial film, because an older audience would know greater than that being shown; that the film constitutes some-thing of a mockery. 

3.4 — The presiding point remains that our existence occurs under the control of a tyrant, the veritable Mephistopheles who controls society from, not so much "behind the scenes", but from the point of a lithium-based, erased memory of his ever having involvement.

3.5 — The satirical form in which the tropes of hyperbole, sarcasm and irony, facilitate an insight beyond the perceptual reality of "the every-day", such that "the every-day" is shown to be a prescriptive conceit or contrivance, is nonetheless lived out. 

3.6 — Perhaps the contrivance is made bearable for the freedoms of use of the double entendre? Where double or further significations are made often to refer to a position of relation to the status of hiding, that is, one-self, others; or hiding some-thing which authorities or society would prefer to have revealed and dealt with. 

3.7 — Often there exists sympathy for the rebel who is inevitably a fool or newly emerging tyrant, but the matters are always ironically treated afresh regarding compliance, censorship and dictatorship, as concerns relative to each circumstance and to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps, there is a case for justice still?

4.0 — An Early Reference To The Changeling: What is the pattern of the changeling narrative, exactly? To turn to that earliest point of reference found in Chapter 63 of 'Satyricon liber', an indication of answer may be found; specifically regarding a narrative told by the character, Trimalchio, the ostentatiously wealthy freed-man, at whose dinner party, the protagonists Encolpius and Asclytos, are guests and serve as an audience. Trimalchio's anecdote of the changeling is prefaced with two brief anecdotes involving those other things of the æther-world, witches. Note, refer to an online version of Petronius's 'Satyricon liber' that is translated by W.C. Firebaugh, including the forgeries of Nodot and Marchena, and the introductory readings by De Salas and the illustrations by Norman Lindsay, on The Gutenberg Project web-site, accessed 25 May 2022, at: <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5225/5225-h/5225-h.htm#linkp050>.
4.1 — The first tells of a mysterious death of a boy steward whose death is blamed upon the peculiar and vindictive witches, heard screetching as the mourners mourn the steward's death.
4.2 — The second incident involves the witches who make provocation, such that a large Cappadocian slave leaves the group of mourners to enter the street from where a scream is over-heard to emanate, and from whence the Cappadocian returns, but: "black and blue, as if he had been flogged with whips." The discolouration is purportedly caused by the touch of one witches' "evil hand": and it is commented that the Cappadocian never regains his natural complexion and that he dies a few days later.
4.3 — The third incident refers to the topic of the changeling, in which the mourning mother of the steward finds a 'straw changeling' substituted for the boy's body: an act that is also attributed to the: 'witches [who] had swooped down upon the lad and put the straw changeling in his place!'.

Figure 2. A still of Mario Romagnoli as Trimalchio from the film adaptation: 'Fellini's Satyricon', premiered, 3 September 1969, Rome, Italy, from the "BAMPFA" web-site, accessed 24 May 2022, at: <https://bampfa.org/event/fellini-satyricon>.

4.4 — Trimalchio is found to remark in emphasising the point that must be derived from his own anecdotes: '...there are women that know too much, and night-hags, too, and they turn every-thing up-side down!'

4.5 — Can the summation of Trimalchio's narrative really be that the women—those witches!—must always be held to suspicion for using the evil hand, or swapping the body of a child for straw, viz. causing the changeling? Are Trimalchio's words to be taken in earnest, and the witches, who are only over-heard, not seen, not be taken as decoys? 

4.6 — The boy steward may have been intoxicated, laid unconscious, and misinterpreted by the mourners as dead—possibly a perception cultivated by Trimalchio. The boy is referred to as perfect, "a jewel", and may have been the object of Trimalchio's designs in abduction; an argument particularly plausible because pæderasty, men's erotic love of pre-pubescent or pubescent boys—not to be confused with sodomy, viz. the erotic love shared between men—is one of the central tenets of Petronius's satire; that is, the protagonist, Encolpius, through-out the texts' five volumes, contests with his friend, Asclytos, to find and regain the affections of a boy, Gitón—the central plot of the satire that consists of numerous sub-plots.

4.7 — Trimalchio's hair-raising tale is, then, to be considered propaganda used to direct suspicion for the offence of abduction to be directed at another, the witches, and to deflect suspicion from the men, such as Trimalchio and his Cappadocian slave. The latter, while brawny, is labelled a simpleton, a booby, who could inspire little cause for suspicion. Whereas Trimalchio, once a slave, has managed to free him-self—a praise-worthy feat—but also, Trimalchio has become a wealthy freedman, such that suspicion could be placed upon him as cunning enough to under-take a staged abduction.

5.0 — Trimalchio As Mephistopheles: Is Trimalchio really involved with a self-aware politics which seeks to manipulate people's perceptions, such as to allow him, as is said, "to get away with it", viz. the abduction of a boy to be at the disposal of his pæderastic fancies?

5.1 — Trimalchio indicates he is already aware of the cultivated opinion that the author, Homer, such as of 'The Odyssey', is of renown and repute, to mention Trimalchio grew up with long hair as of the fashion of the island of Chios, the place of origin of the great Greek bard, Homer, whose texts precede Petronius's own text of the 'Satyricon liber': 'When I was a long-haired boy, for I lived a Chian life from my youth up...'.

5.2 — The reference to Chios bestows a greatness, at least, regarding the ability to narrate, by way of association to Trimalchio. Homer represented then, and to an extent continues to represent, the greatness of authorship per se; that is, certainly to the author Gaius Petronius who constructs the character of Trimalchio and Trimalchio's use of association as to impress his guests.

5.3 — Acknowledge, that Trimalchio is only moments before to comment on his own prowess at narration in the apparently tasteful manner of self-deprecation, by comparing him-self badly to Niceros, whose narrative of a were-wolf preceded his own in being made to the dinner guests: '...if you’ll believe me, my hair stood on end, and all the more, because I know that Niceros never talks non-sense: he’s always level-headed, not a bit gossipy. And now I’ll tell you a hair-raiser my-self, though I’m like a jack-ass on a slippery pavement compared to him'.

5.4 — Trimalchio as representative of the nouveau-riche, while able to afford the gala, may not yet demonstrate the æsthetical and political sensibilities, such as of the existing elite, to gain membership. The horror tale of the witches, the evil hand and changeling, could be considered representative of a grotesque æsthetics crudely manipulative in a political context, that is, to the educated, not the laity.

5.5 — An analysis of the name of 'Trimalchio', 'Tri-' and 'Malchus' refers to: "Thrice King", or "king of kings", which is partly hyperbolic in the satirical gist of Petronius's text, but further alludes to Trismegistus, the Hermetic mage or magus, who may be a senior representative of a gnostic sect that involves the Phrygian or Oriental cultures of pæderasty.

5.7 — It ought to be remembered when Trimalchio introduces him-self as being from Asia, that is, Phyringia—refer to Chapter 44 of 'Satyricon liber'—he compares him-self to the catamite "Ganymedes": the boy stolen by the god, Zeus, who took the form of an eagle and "swooped down upon the lad"; that is, to use the very words used by the character of Trimalchio to describe the witches' conduct in swapping the boy for the changeling straw.

5.6 — Refer to page 80 in the article: "Trimalchio" by Gilbert Bagnani, in 'Phoenix', Autumn, 1954, Volume 8(3); pages 77–91; published by: Classical Association of Canada; stable URL: <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1086404>.

6.0 — Returning To The Direct Discussion Of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021: Earlier I averred that Angela is sorrow-stricken due to the inferred fact she mourns the loss of a child—a point to which reference is not made within the film. I provide a plausible explanation to the abduction or murder of a baby boy, that is, because depression is typically triggered by loss, such as the loss of a beloved, rather than, as some psychologists maintain, as a feature of an inherently flawed character, that is, as a manifestation of the unwanted change symbolised by the changeling, it-self. Psychology could be found to pathologise, that is, diagnose some-one along similar lines for being inherently flawed, such that to be labelled a changeling or some-one with a disability, such as depression, persecutes a person for illness that really requires understanding, not ignorance, fear and loathing.

Figure 3. A film still with the actor Carolyn Bracken as Angela tied to a bed-head and covered with a sheet in the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, from the IMDb web-site, accessed 25 May 2021: <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10406596/>.

6.1 — Arguably, a recurring pattern is found connected to the changeling mythos in which a boy is abducted, viz. the steward boy of Trimalchio's tale. The abduction of Angela's baby boy may be a second or third time of such a case of abduction, at which point, Angela, feeling trapped in a setting of a domineering brother figure and mother, starts to act in hitherto known ways, unfamiliar and spontaneous, exists out-side of the family's typical standards of control, and becomes the very fuel for confirming perceptions of her as a changeling, that is, the "changed thing".
6.2 — The point of explanation where Rita explains to Char that Angela is a changeling, that is, an adult changeling, arguably is made before Angela is about to convey to Char that Angela's infant sons are taken from her; because, by way of inference, the boys are labelled 'changelings'—similarly marked out through her to her sons, according to Rita's and Aaron's perceptions.
6.3 — By Rita telling Char before Angela, Char is indoctrinated to Rita's and Aaron's perceptual approach.
6.4 — There is the further sub-plot, that Char is similar to Margaret (also known as Gretchen) to have established a relationship with Faust, that is, Aaron; in which case—should the reading of the older narrative be considered edited out in the 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021—Char immolates her mother to remove the romantic competition. Margaret is, thus, far from being the guileless, gullible adolescent girl as Char portrayed in Kate Dolan's film.

7.0 — The Great Change Of The Changeling Myth: Should the ancient text of 'Satyricon liber' be taken as offering an elucidation of the changeling myth, because that text is one of the first to mention the changeling, there is a further inference of the figure of the patriarch who manipulates perceptions to blame witches—that is, to allow for his abductions of boys—such as that Mephistopheles who arranges to have the scenes of the action and drama, edit out the parts of his performance.

7.1 — Further, by applying the formula of Wolfgang Goethe's text of 'Faust', circa 1880, Aaron is a type of Faust him-self, who is inferred as paying Mephistopheles with his infant sons, supposedly as justified by the manipulative narration given by Trimalcio of chapter 63, 'Satyricon liber'. 

7.2 — Note, some of Wolfgang Goethe's texts can be read free of charge at The Gutenberg Press, at: <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/586> 

7.3 — The text by Petronius is by Goethe's text of 'Faust' to celebrate the dark powers of Trimalchio, the gnostic Trismegistus, as Mephistopheles, who takes possession of Faust him-self. A man's sons may be referred to as him-self, on which point 'Faust' shows a consistency with the variants of the changeling narratives mentioned in these blogger posts. 

7.4 — The film, 'You're Not My Mother', circa 2021, arguably, has removed all traces of culpability to the Mephistopheles figure, and only a vague inference of culpability on the father, viz. Aaron, to leave the witch, the grand-mother, who is Rita, to settle the matter. 

7.5 — The great change of this old narrative, then, is that the changeling is no longer a straw doll, nor a real but apparently tainted infant, nor the curious, and inasmuch, childish man, Faust, him-self—but is the mother labelled an "adult changeling", who, resembling the figure of the witch, can easily take the place of the witch as who is burnt at the stake.

Figure 4. The cover art of the album: 'The Changeling', 30 June 1982, by the British band, Toyah, in which Toyah Wilcox appears as a changeling, from the Discogs web-site: <https://www.discogs.com/ko/release/4542167-Toyah-The-Changeling>.

8.0 — The Adult Changeling: The female (and male) adult changeling began to make a cultural impact from within Britain through a post-punk, new wave, pop music scene of the early 1980s until current. The British musical artist Toyah Wilcox, represented her-self as a changeling with the release, 30 June 1982, of a same-named album by the band Toyah. The pop album became a vehicle to transport the audience to the world of the fairies or trolls, where the folk-lore offers a symbolic correlation to an alternative cultural presence within the Western World.
8.1 — The album's tracks, such as: 'Street Creature', 'Castaways', or 'Life In The Trees', convey a folk-lorish world that is less fantastical and more palpable, to suggest a musical experience as much as a lived experience. This involves the ancient notion of the artist as the medium: who offers a way of channeling between different worlds: which may, in fact, refer to an unobviated inter-cultural mixing.

Figure 5. The single cover art, 'Changeling', circa 2018, by The Dagons; image from the Bandcamp web-site, accessed 26 May 2022, at: <https://thedagons.bandcamp.com/track/changeling>.

8.2 — A more recent example—and note there are many musicians and songs predicated on the changeling—of the changeling mythos within music is provided by the Californian band: The Dagons, viz. their single titled: 'Changeling', 7 January 2018, in the cover art of which a reversal of the mildly strange within the nursery as represented by the changeling is affected by the strangeness said to impact the figure of a mother, that is, as the water monster, viz. the crocodile, "Moby Dick" or leviathan, depicted as nursing a "batch of infants" with ever-so-slightly a hint of menace.
8.3 — Two lines of the lyrics of the song reads of a sort of gripping reality, such that the nursery fairy tale elements are registered in the modality of realism: "So they pull the child from the bed / And put in something of their's instead ... Leave the windows open to your room / Lose you now, you're never coming home ...'.
8.4 — The Dagons' 'Changeling' single is similar to the film 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, in which a horrorific truth is indicated, but not "spelt out". The "indexical phenomena" is to be taken as "sufficient" in pointing towards a reality that is suggested as in occurrence within the Western World—possibly in what was once the true origins of the Western World, viz. Ireland. Denial is a powerful affect; or, is it people could not be bothered with the change that is required of society and one-self to prevent such "back-yard persecution"?

9.0 — Die Hexen: As for the film's own music, the sound-track is by Die Hexen ("The Witches"), also known as the Irish performance artist and composer, Dianne Lucille Campbell; who approaches the numinous with traces of the neo-pagan and macabre, made both visually and musically to references of films regarding dæmonic possessions—a Catholic sub-discourse of the changeling—such as portrayed by the films: 'Rosemary's Baby', 12 June 1968, the United States of America, by Roman Polanski; 'The Exorcist', 26 December 1973, the United States Of America, by William Friedkin; 'The Omen', 6 June 1976, Britain, by Richard Donald Schwartzberg; or to the musical compositions of Krzysztof Penderecki for the sound-track of films, such as: 'The Devils of Loudun', circa July 1971, Britain, by Ken Russell, or the more recent film: 'Wild At Heart', 15 November 1990, Australia, by David Lynch.

Figure 6. A still of Dianne Lucille Campbell within an audio-visual presentation titled: 'Siamese', based on a recurring dream of ceremonial magic; from 'Die Hexen' web-site, accessed 25 May 2022, at: <http://www.die-hexen.com/film>.

9.1 — The celebration of the witch is to be read as representative of a neo-paganistic discourse, that seems to resist the complete telling. Is the witch, who-ever she is, or Mephistopheles, who-ever he is, responsible for stigmatising and persecuting persons who ought to have been treated with dignity and respect?

9.2 — Personally, I feel for Angela who is imprisoned in a home life that society approaches as normal. Perhaps I am not the normal one? I have my imperfections, as do we all—but then, perhaps those are misdirected questions to start with? 

9.3 — For the sake of some perspective on the matter it ought to be remembered, Ireland was a country iconic of Christianity. Yet in this film, 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, a satire is displayed on the Christian sensibilities of home, family and mother-hood. Thus, the questions remain, how did Ireland and the many regions of Irish colonisation, including Australia, become places celebratory of not so much the macabre, but the Satanic? What do the permissible celebrations of the Satanic represent, really? 

10.0 — Disclaimer: This blog post is the exclusive intellectual property of Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–; Google email: craigsjlacey@gmail.com; by way of law, no hacking, copying, editing or disseminating of it is permitted.

10.1 — Six photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 6; each of which is identified to a resource and is used within the editorial rights' context.

10.2 — Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 189 Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, Queensland, Australia, 4000; Ⓒ 2022, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey. 

☆☆☆

Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Part II. A Further Commentary On The Film: 'You Are Not My Mother'—Premiered, 13 September 2021, at Toronto, Canada.

1.0: Blog Contents:

2.0 – 2.6: On Black-birding /

3.0 – 3.5: A Julius Cæsar Index /

4.0 – 4.4: A Deductive Method /

5.0 – 5.6: The Lithium Torture /

6.0 – 6.1: Neo-Paganism /

7.0 – 7.4: The "Faustian Bargain" /

8.0 – 8.2: Disclaimer //.

☆☆☆

2.0 — On Black-birding: Firstly, to provide a definition of 'changeling', the noun is used in reference to an infant suffering deformity, that is, disability. The infant's defectiveness or anomaly is taken, according to the folk-lore legend, as a sign that fairies have substituted one of their own children suffering physiological defects for an in-tact, healthy human child. Medical ignorance and superstition are found to be the source of a history of unjust persecution, that is woven in to a more historically grounded telling of kid-napping, such as narrated by the Scottish author, Robert Louis-Stevenson in the historical novel: 'Kidnapped', circa 10 May 1986, and the sequel, 'Catriona', circa 1893; or black-birding, such as discussed in Jack London's semi-autobiographical 'The Cruise Of The Snark', circa 1911. 

2.1 — The political discourses, with historical contextualisation, are often elided and remain mythified with a foreboding sense of the transgressive per the psychological thriller / horror genre: the film comes to represent the strange terror of which may have been over-heard among local gossips: known to afflict some house-holds, but never one's own—unless denial calls out for it's peculiar course of return to the truth: scary as it may be, it is avoided only out of foolish bravado and nothing greater.

2.2 — Another sort of recent text on the matter of black-birding, that is, the kid-napping and later coercion of children and some-times adults through isolation and deception to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in distant locations, is by the celebrated French director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, viz. 'La Cité des enfants perdus / The City Of Lost Children', co-directed with Marc Caro, 17 August 1995 at Germany; a film set within a dystopian world of highly improbable freaks, who bizarrely are reminiscent of the travelling circuses of pre-war Europe, serve a master scientist who "amorally" conducts experiments on abducted children. There is always the gaudy or obscene found to sustain a gaze of fascination among film audiences, if only to gratify a desire to confirm the deplorable state of some other world.

2.3 — Is the Western World, namely France, supposed to represent the failing of the post-punk, steam-punk, tubular or analogue "alternative" as portrayed during the 1980s, viz. iconically by the British film-maker: Terry Gilliam; for example, the failed utopia of 'Brazil', released, 18 December 1985, in the United States Of America? The gritty and grotty hyperbolic "kitchen-sink realism", that is cartoon-esque in style of satire, emanates from some-where else, but never home; no-one seems to have a home in which case no-one is responsible.

2.4 — 'The City Of Lost Children', circa 1995, is comparable to the explosive impact of entering a desolated society of strangers, where the community is over-wrought by the madness of science; whereas 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, is an implosive force: a step inside the home in which nothing is shown; every-thing is concealed; where nothing really happens, because it happens to other people, and as much because the dementing effects of deadly drugs used to cause amnesia make identity and cultural heritage for such folk irrelevant. 

Figure 1. The poster of 'La Cité des enfants perdus / The City Of Lost Children', circa 1995, from: Wikipedia.com at: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:City_of_lost_children_french_movie_poster.jpg#mw-jump-to-license>.

2.5 — Arguably the subject of the changeling invites a voyeuristic gaze in to the family home of different or similar folk, to allow commentary on the psychological and, perhaps, socio-cultural levels only? There is an immersion in to a way of life and familial relations, with the oddity of an horrific incident involved, the full measure of which is elided by drug-induced amnesia and psychological states of dissociation. Hence, the fetishism of the bed-room, involving bondage, torture, or talismanic objects, such as sages, and sites which act as a bridge to the spirit world, for example, in the film it is: EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. Such places (scenes) or objects are re-doubled with an intensity of focus upon which a sense of completeness is derived, no matter how delusional. Does the truth matter any-more?

2.6 — The domesticity of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, is far away or safe from black-birding, or is it? 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, claims to show insight in to the life of an adult changeling, viz. Angela, acted by Carolyn Bracken, whose life is under siege from within; that is, from the interior of her life: her family and home.

3.0 — A Julius Cæsar Index: The problem is conferring with Char's perception, as that perception is the only one shown by way of point of view per the film's direction. Char, her-self, is a victim of brain-washing, which often has the effect of setting the afflicted to a belief she has ascertained the whole or complete set of facts, when really all that is revealed is a contrivance, deceptively altered to seem beneficial, when really it is characterised by the central feature of betrayal, further surrounded by immorality and indifference.

3.2 — For this reason what is presented within the film must be considered indexical of an underlying truth. While few literal indexical signs are on offer by the film, the brother, Aaron, acted by Paul Reid, is some-thing of a human indexical sign: he is barely featured in the film. Quite the contrary of the standard narrative, that the protagonist is the central subject of the narrative, Aaron is at the core of what happens to Char and her mother and grand-mother. Similar to the minor (indexical) appearance of the renowned rhetor, Cicero, in William Shakespeare's play 'Julius Cæsar', circa 1599, Act I., Scene III. is portrayed as a silent audience to fellow states-man, Casca, who discusses a recent storm over Rome and the raising of the dead—that is, when the play is almost entirely indebted to the rhetorical theories of Cicero: his censure is a reversal of the truth.

3.3 — Despite being Angela's brother, the siblings appear to live as a couple might, with a maternal, parental figure, that is, an unusual arrangement. Perhaps, because Angela is considered from the æther-world, the incest taboo is unbreached and permitted? Aaron's portrayed silence regarding Angela's status as a changeling is the veritable "elephant in the room": he is, going from the perceptual demonstration of the family life, apparently an innocent by-stander, subject to the superstitions of his mother. Can Aaron really be as involved as he is, with-out committing complicity?

3.4 — In Angela's circumstances, being marked out, that is, stigmatised as different by her mother and brother, finds her degraded and tortured, in supposedly permissible familial betrayals; not dissimilar to the epileptic Julius Cæsar, betrayed by his own. As part of the trap, the palpable silence of the matter through-out the film—the matter is mentioned towards the film's end—could be interpreted as expressive of the silence and censorship observed among family as it is silent among community members. When the matter is voiced to the members of community, it is considered the form of treachery, or futile cry, against engrained patterns of communal behaviour; hence, visible protest is prohibited—and the matter remains a silent or invisible experience.

3.5 — Angela's experience of mental illness, viz. depression, is not innate or of other-worldly origins, but is a consequence of a socially constructed phenomena: her position involves the double-bind of being held captive by the ones who are supposed to care for her, yet family find her endengering an evil which they experience as an unbearable burden, a feeling that the community also understands, it would seem.

4.0 — A Deductive Method: The film's narrative finds Angela at a point of crisis in her already critical situation—what can be deduced from the reversal of facts witnessed by the teenage daughter? 

4.1 — When Angela drives her daughter to school and says good-bye, an analogy of the experience of child-birth is suggested. After the "birthing" of her daughter from the private space of the home and car to the community or public space of the school, Angela abandons her vehicle in an oval. The car is already appreciated as indexical, but what is perplexing is the re-staging of her trauma at the oval. The suggestion is, Angela abandons her-self and, at least it is inferred, she stumbles off in a fugue state, unable to remember what occurred at an earlier time, and again, this time, when Angela has been reported as missing. The lawn of the oval as a place where the vehicle is abandoned, may have been the location where Angela accidentally became pregnant, or was raped by Aaron, such as during a time both went on a drive away from the stifling environment of the house with Rita there.

4.2 — The later moment of confronting the fact, that her own infant was abducted, or possibly murdered, by Rita, acted by Ingrid Craigie, or Aaron, is thought to re-trigger her own unconscious wish to be some-one else: perhaps, to take the place of the child who was accepted by the fairies? Who would not wish to be some-where else; some-one other than her, the unjustly cursed?

4.3 — The position of Aaron is indicated as in greater concord with Rita than Angela, other-wise Angela would have convinced Aaron to bring Char with her to another home. Rita must convince Aaron, that Angela's history of depression in her familial environment, possibly being difficult in the past, has led to her running away or fugue-type states of behaviour, that requires for lithium to be administered. A politics becomes discernible at the point in which lithium is forced on Angela, who is clearly forced, because during one scene Angela places high volumes of crushed lithium tablets in to Aaron's cup of tea, that is, to force upon him, what he is indicated as enforcing upon her, at least, in triangulation of Rita's decisions: Rita is held as the source of home administration, because Rita is shown to monitor Angela's use of the drug: "they can put you off your appetite," Rita comments.

4.4 — Aaron's position and role is much greater than that represented by the film; he is shown to be convulsant in reaction to the lithium to suggest the notion he is a victim. Such representation must be considered in relation to the truth of the narrative as reversed. Aaron must be, in fact, the opposite of that which he seems, because the truth is being repressed, possibly in an horrific way.

5.0 — The Lithium Torture: The scientific / medical discourse often attached to the changeling mythos, involves lithium as a treatment to prevent radical changes in some-one's character or personality. The diagnosis of psychosis, such as bipolar disorder, has been held to suspicion, except in psychiatry where the causation is theorised as found in "the bio-psycho-social": quite an inter-disciplinarian notion, that is nonetheless reduced to a chemical solution, with possibly some psychotherapy to monitor the drug's effects. 

5.1 — The real concern is that lithium causes a number of harmful side-effects, such that it is the case, "the cause, the remedy". Lithium particularly causes a much unreported side-effect of blacking-out and amnesia, such that continuity of remembrance representative of some-one's character is lost. The memories which are depressing, or alerting such as regarding mania, are lost, and the person may afterwards present with a refreshed out-look, as though a cure has taken effect. The experience of dissociative states and unconscious disturbances of a truth that is repressed are perceived as being indications of a character flaw requiring to be "erased". Really the truth and responses to the truth are being censored at the psycho-physiological level; an abuse of medicine and psychiatry.

5.2 — For the record recent, more efficacious medications for bipolar disorder or other forms of psychosis are available, such as: Asenapine, brand name Saphris, or Carbamezapine, Tegretol—a possible prescriptive differential between the medications is in the patient's suffering brain damage caused from violence to the head, or experiences of asphyxiation, with subsequent states of concussion, which occur through-out the patient's life-time to cause episodes of seizures or convulsions.

5.3 — The use of lithium by Angela as enforced by Rita and Aaron, in fact, is indicative of a type of mental illness known as Munchausen von Proxy, that is based on poisoning some-one cared for to ensure the circumstances of care continue. While the changeling myth refers to fairies and other æther-world creatures, viz. pixies or trolls, the figure of the witch emerges here ex silentio: often perceived as an older woman who uses potions and poisons as her source of magic. Rita, whose filmic treatment by Kate Dolan offers no indication that Rita is or is not a self-proclaimed witch, is thought to be here because she later makes the extraordinary claim, Angela is an adult changeling: if changelings exist, then, witches do also. To construe the veracity of Rita's claims made to Char, who is an adolescent girl ignorant or unconscious of her family's inter-relations, that Angela is a changeling, Rita is inferred as using lithium not only to cause Angela's dissociative spells, but create the perception to Char, Angela's typically depressed, withdrawn character, changed to lively and demonstrative, is proof Angela is a changeling.

5.4 — By organising for Char to collect and provide Angela the lithium tablets, Rita makes Char blithely complicit in believing the medicine is not poison, and further, Rita shifts the modal paradigm, in which any-thing but the medicine could be questioned. Really, the lithium pack becomes the index of a hegemonic influence exerted by psychiatry, such as that it has become unquestionable.

5.5 — Rita's quite audacious claims are made in the context of the tradition of Halloween, when the nightmarish or macabre are celebrated, less as the Christian tradition of remembrance of the deaths of Saints, and more as a commercial form of revelry. Nonetheless, the Irish would approach the narrative of 'You Are Not My Mother' as redolent of 'Tam Lin', in which the eponymous character Tam Lin reaches his climatic release from the fairy queen's hold, during Halloween: the same time of Angela's climatic, tragic end.

Figure 2. A film still, viz. mother-hood under fire, in 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, from: Deadline, accessed 20 May 2022, at: <https://deadline.com/video/you-are-not-my-mother-first-clip-for-tiff-midnight-madness-horror-sold-by-bankside/>. 

5.6 — The hysteria of Halloween heats up the folk who go about trick or treating in costumes, and cause for their absence of recognition of Angela's ghastly change; she has lost her head of hair, experienced facial skin inflammation and acne, limps with a broken leg, caused by stomping on Arabic patterned carpet, to indicate that the lithium has weakened her bones. The folk lore is found to envelop Angela, whose chemically induced change, is interpreted by her daughter, Char, as demonstrating the truth of Rita's claim, that Angela is a changeling who must be burnt.

Figure 3. The poster for 'The Wicker Man', circa 1973, photograph from: Filmposter, accessed 20 May 2022, at: <https://www.filmposter.net/en/the-wicker-man-original-release-british-movie-poster.html>

6.0 — Neo-Paganism: At the back of an industrial site, where wooden crates are piled, a make-shift interior is made: a wooden cage, similar to that seen in the Scottish film: 'The Wicker Man', circa 1973, that holds within, it's sacrifice before being torched. Inside the wooden stack, a human sacrifice is placed, a type of pregnancy: here, mother-hood is set on fire—in the case of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, the sacrifice is supposedly done in a belief of killing for the sake of cleansing the beloved relative. Rita has told Char to burn Angela because that is the only way to cure a changeling, yet is it the case, pitted in the situation of survival, has Char sought to save her-self above her mother's survival? 

6.1 — Char is found to take a spray can of flammable liquid with a lighter, the weapon used by Char's bully, who earlier had Angela fended off of Char as the bully used it on Char. The true horror of the film then, is not the spectre of a changeling mother burned by a daughter, but the horror of a family to permit the torture and killing of one of their own. Is this not a reversioning of the neo-paganism of 'The Wicker Man', in which the social order is dependent and sustained by the human sacrifice? Through the warping and distortions of misuses of psychiatric drugs, and popular cultures which celebrate the macabre, the influence of neo-paganism in the Western World, once predominantly comprised of Christian cultures, is all encompassing. There is no church or Christian crucifix in sight within the Northern Dublin suburb of tenaments and grass-lands of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, but the symbol that is distinctly identifiable as pagan, the witch-based sage, a ball of twigs and leafs which is supposed to be little more than a good luck charm, is centrally placed in the narrative, the icon of Char's transition in to becoming a witch. The witch burning people seems quite the coup de tat, because burning witches was the scurge of the Western World for centuries, until the past forty years.

7.0 — The "Faustian Bargain": The question I have then is, when a daughter kills her own mother, but the social order believes there is nothing wrong with the act, is guilt still experienced? Char must fundamentally believe in witch-craft there-after, otherwise her act of murder is realised as guilty. The concern then is for the absolutism that takes place: there can be no question as to the act's correctness, whereas I whole-heartedly question the morality and humaneness of the changeling mythos.

7.1 — There appears to be an almost completely different cultural system at work in once Christian Catholic Ireland, in which a matriarchy invested in witch-craft lore, exists to corrode the very centre of Christianity, the position and role of the mother as to love her child and have her child love her also; refer to the Madonna and Infant Jesus Christ, viz. the Annuciation, the Nativity Scene and Christmas.

7.2 — Can the attack upon mother-hood emanate from women them-selves? The figure of the witch, particularly among the cultures of the Mahgreb, or Moorish Arabia, viz. Tunisia, Algiers, Libya and Morocco, may have transferred cultural practices to countries other than France. The film 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, suggests that witches from such cultures have brought a cultural complex predicated upon the position of the witch, attained within the family through the murder of a daughter's mother, as a variant of the "Faustian bargain". 

7.3 — The celebrated play, 'Faust [in two parts]', circa 1831, by the German author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, has a number of "uncanny" parallels with the narrative of, 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021. Such as, the involvement of an inferred bargain, as already mentioned; the use of potion, that is the medicine of lithium; a young teenage girl, viz. Gretchen (also known as Margaret), titled as Char; the death of the girl's mother; pregnancy, at least as inferred; infanticide that is also inferred in the latter text. The remarkable dissimilarity is the position of Faust compared with Aaron: in the text by Johann Goethe, Faust is the highly visible protagonist; in Kate Dolan's text, Aaron, is found barely visible.

7.4 — Arguably, the Faustian bargain that reflected the Moorish and Berber masculine cultures has covered over it-self with a visible female variation, to cause a barrier against accusations made by the Aarons of the families. There is, then, the further removal of blame to be made upon the imputed Mephistopheles, who in this film escapes recognition.

7.5 — Note, Johann Goethe's play was adapted to a silent film titled: 'Faust — A German Folk-tale', circa 1926, that is, produced by Ufa, directed by F.W. Murnau, with the actors Gösta Ekman as Faust, Emil Jannings as Mephisto, Camilla Horn as Gretchen, Frida Richard as her mother, Wilhelm Dieterle as her brother and Yvette Guilbert as Marthe Schwerdtlein, her aunt.

Figure 4. A 'Faust' film poster with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, circa 1926; the image is from Cinematerial, accessed 20 May 2022, at: <https://www.cinematerial.com/movies/faust-i16847/p/4etzjytt>.

8.0 — Disclaimer: This blog post is the exclusive intellectual property of Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–; Google email: craigsjlacey@gmail.com; by way of law, no hacking, copying, editing or disseminating of it is permitted.

8.1 — Four photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 4; each of which is identified to a resource and is used within the editorial rights' context.

8.2 — Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 189 Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, Queensland, Australia; Ⓒ 2022, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey. 

☆☆☆

Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Part I. A Commentary On The Film: 'You Are Not My Mother'—Premiered 13 September 2021, at Toronto, Canada.

1.0: Blog Contents:

2.0 – 2.9: Film's details /

3.0 – 3.8: On The Film's Style /

4.0 – 4.7: The Numinous /

5.0 – 5.10: Momento mori /

6.0 – 6.7: The Mythos /

7.0 – 7.3: Disclaimer//.

☆☆☆

Figure 1: Poster of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, from: <https://m.imdb.com/title/tt10406596/?ref_=ext_shr_tw>.

2.0 — The Film's Details:

2.1 — Title: 'You Are Not My Mother';

2.2 — First released: 13 September 2021 at the '2021 Toronto International Film Festival';

2.3 — Duration: 93 minutes;

2.4 — Writer and director: Kate Dolan;

2.5 — Producer: Deirdre Levins;

2.5 — Cinematographer: Narayan Van Maele;

2.6 — Editor: John Cutler;

2.7 — Sound-score by "Die Hex" also known as Dianne Lucille Campbell; refer to the web-site: <http://www.die-hexen.com/>.

2.8 — Production company: Fantastic Films;

2.9 — A film made in Ireland, distributed by Bankside Films and Magnet Releasing.

3.0 — On The Film's Style: The film is styled in a realist, or perhaps? "super-realist" manner (the film poster possibly reflects this aesthetic, refer to Figure 1). The realist, documentary approach to the cinematography is found to uncover incidentally, that is, "accidentally", numinous points of vision and focus. This fusion of the documentary style, using the found footage technique, and the subject of the numinous, is taken to it's extreme in the film, 'The Blair Witch Project', 23 January 1999 at the Sun-dance Film Festival (refer to Figure 2), where film or video as a medium is the subject of a medium to the spirit world; the blurring of categories of the real, imaginary and textual, is taken to new limits: the video record is as evidence hijacked by cinema to reveal how contrived it really can be as a cinematic form of thrilling entertainment.

Figure 2: Poster for 'The Blair Witch Project', circa 1999, from: <https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/?ref_=fn_al_tt_0>.

3.1 — Nonetheless, 'You Are Not My Mother' uses "indexical phenomena"—not as circumstantial or documentary evidence—the traditional approach of law enforcement to investigate the disappearance of Angela; the search for the mother of Char, acted by Hazel Doupe, is demonstrated as almost pointless by the police officer during the early moments of the film. The police officer arrives at the house-hold to ineptly ask of the events leading to Angela's disappearance. The suggestion is that the forensic methods to ascertain the truth are lost in such contexts of the mysterious: the disappearance is too great an absence, or there are less orthodox explanations to pursue.

3.2 — The indexical is taken to be incidental to the narrational focus, as signalising a paranoia or repressed thought, or is verifiable as part of the real world. One of the alerting effects involved with repressed thoughts is, while they appear as indicative of some-thing out-side the existing system of narration, viz. as some-thing almost totally disconnected, irrelevant or non-sensical, the thought flitters away as though it was never thought of. The indexical often carries this level of recognition as a subliminal recognition that is recognised as something other than what it usually signifies.

3.3 — Typography provides a good example: a reader will not consider the design of the letter 'a' when a reader is involved with interpreting and responding to a cultural text, such as a leaf-let for: 'You Are Not My Mother'. A misprint of the letter 'a' (for example the image, of Figure 3) on a leaf-let for a film which is based on the super-natural may be re-read as portentous of some further significance. This is the register of interpreting the omen or a medium through which divination is supposed to occur. Otherwise, a reader may over-look the deformity of a letter 'a' in a leaf-let for a film based on the super-natural, and dismiss it as a rare printing error, nothing greater. Refer to Figure 3, the photograph of a graphic of a smudged letter 'a' as an example.

Figure 3: A smudged 'a', that is not really a misprint as such, because misprints really no longer occur, but the "deformity" of the letter is the point, and it is shown; detail from: <https://www.behance.net/gallery/7589157/The-Art-of-Fugue-Theatre-Poster>.

3.4 — There is the so-called common-sense approach and the superstitious approach at either end of the scale. When one approach is taken too extremely then the other is cancelled, often to the disadvantage of "the extremist". There is the often repeated lament, almost of the ages, that "there can never be too much common-sense"; yet when some-one is obsessed with practical matters, the higher-order concerns of society, such as the law, government, politics, ideology, cultural heritage, identity, religion, etc., are forsaken.

3.5 — Many women go on about how tidy a house is kept by some other woman, yet tidiness is only a banal aspect of life, that could be of less significance than a woman's opinion of the recent cultural analyses of William Shakespeare's or Henrik Ibsen's plays. To sustain an inquring mind is of vital importance, rather than merely ensuring the house is kept tidy: the process of meaning-making is, believe it or not, prohibited to some women and children of poorer countries: the woman becomes the passenger par excellence; a tourist of her own home-life and community. This process of finding meaningfulness for one-self, that is often under the thumb of oppressors who would prefer to remain unidentified, makes the passenger: a "driver"; involved in life, but with the risks which often beset men such as during "men's adventures".

3.6 — Often such intellectual pursuits are side-lined because the rewards are non-tangible; when the reward is found in developing a position and relation to the world in which society takes place. The spiritual interpretation that can, in some religions, involve divination, often as folk lore traditions, are found to be non-sense, or, at another level, expressive of a secret truth, that, should it be discussed openly, could involve censure; hence, the necessity of encoding the truth within cultural texts and variations of dialect.

3.7 — I often find the films, some of varying quality, insightful of reading in to cultures, as an archæologist might approach an excavated artefact—the Ancient Greek vase, cracked all over is practically useless, but when reconstructed provides a missing piece in understanding one's position in the world, such as either European or Asian: the distinction can mean knowing on what side of the battle to be involved—because the cruellest joke of all, is to find one-self fighting one's own. History matters; identity matters.

3.8 — Style often involves a type of regulation as to deign what is permissibly expressible or prohibited or secretly expressible: may be involved with a dupe and complicity, or a protective stance against perceived "intruders".

4.0 — The Numinous: Arguably, the idiosyncratic chiaroscuro, particular camera angles, a trace usage of computer graphic imaging for horrific effect, within a banal, suburban setting, that is brought in to view at the grand cinematic scale, viz. as some-thing comparable to worship at the altar, an apotheosis of sorts, constitutes this super-realism of which I theorise. The effect is not surrealist in which an almost provocation of the viewer occurs in the spectacle or demonstration; nor is it the hyper-realism or photo-realism of the arts during the past twenty years in which verisimilitude, that is, with a pseudo-scientific or pseudo-medical scrutiny, is used to establish the style of the image, such as exemplified by the Australian sculptor, Hans Ronald Mueck, born circa 1958–; refer to the photograph of 'In Bed', circa 2005, (refer to Figure 4).

Figure 4: A photograph of Hans Ronald Mueck working on 'In Bed', circa 2005, from: <https://www.sartle.com/artist/ron-mueck>. 

4.1 — The formulation is based on similar principles which constitute 'magical realism' in literature, except in this sub-branch, the fantastical elements are minimised to the indexical, at the edge or corner as a margin line: the super-natural can be seen in the documentary realist film with a super-realist treatment. 'You Are Not My Mother' circa 2021, is argued to exemplify this 'super-realist' style, as an aesthetic that emerges from the magical realism movement of the 1980s until current.

4.2 — With an almost completely singular point of view sustained through-out the film, an adolescent girl, named Char, reveals her perception of the world as "a thinness to another, spirit world", where the film's style construes the super-natural within a scepticism that is typically applied to matters of the super-natural; often the basis of psychological thrillers / super-natural / horror based texts.

4.3 — A point of a "thinness" between the super-natural and real world, is discussed during an intriguing scene in which, Char, on a school excursion, stands in a subterranean museum amid an oral presentation by a tour guide, acted by Madi O'Connell, models of the museum's building and later video installation; where simulacrum and references to the spiritual are made "all at once" to leave an understandable level of questioning as to what is real, fantasy and spiritual.

4.4 — The scene of the museum—within the vaults of the "Custom House Quay Building", now titled: EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum, finds Char almost lost in a reality that is absent of true significance, (refer to Figure 5). Char's life is all quite derealised: Char is left questioning what is real, symbolic or imaginary. The adversary emerges, the school bully, during Char's viewing of a video installation to test Char on her family and identity. Char "reality tests" what unfolds by telling the school bully that she "looks shit." Whereas during earlier scenes Char is afflicted with a veritable paralysis: an hysteria of the type celebrated in William Shakespeare's eponymous character Hamlet, whose inertia to act is taken as the model of castration: a prince with-out authority.

Figure 5: A film still from 'You Are Not My Mother'; image from: <https://filmthreat.com/reviews/you-are-not-my-mother/>. 

4.5 — The "derealised" is approximated visually through the cinematographic techniques by Narayan Van Maele, that in one film review was compared to the cinematically influenced photography of Gregory Crewdson; for example: 'The Disturbance', circa 2014, (refer to Figure 6).

Figure 6: A photograph titled: 'The Disturbance' circa 2005, by Gregory Crewdson, from: <https://www.thebroad.org/art/gregory-crewdson/disturbance>.

4.6 — At the monumental scale of the cinemagraphic, the point of a camera's focus is to fore-ground an aspect of significance that is part of a narrative in which the contexts of significance is made. But when an apparently irrelevant point of observation is fore-grounded, the signifier is mysterious, possibly portentous and, quite to the contrary of the purely positivistic approach of interpreting a text, that the signifier can be dismissed; the marginal is what is most important.

4.7 — The still life artistic convention often denies the narrational, yet inasmuch a narrative is denied, a back-ground of significance emerges as important through indexical phenomena, often registered at the peripheral or syntactical levels of consciousness for exclusion or erasure. I discuss briefly here on the psychology of perception as a process intrinsically bound to elimination: a reduction by way of focus that eliminates the apparently irrelevant. This is a process that is arguably amplified by cinema in which the visual is played out at such a monumental scale.

4.8 — The super-realist film is a type of propaganda film, in which the film's values and beliefs are intended to hypnotise the audience—which is a criticism that could be leveraged at all forms of artistic expression: the audience or reader wants to be transported, moved, that is, changed by a new knowledge of an experience of artistic creation. The main point of assessment ought to be regarding the morality of the text, but the moral question is often dismissed as hypocritical, and I wonder whether this failing of human nature or character might be taken too far as signalising a complete failure, when often such failings signify a fall from which a lesson is learnt and the continuance of striving for ideals is resumed by picking one-self up, dusting off and going onwards.

4.9 — This 'super-realist' style aims at reducing the distance between the screen and audience member, rather than the realism that occurs in satirical forms of texts, which often really tell the truth with the allowance, the style is naïve, crude or vulgar: the reduction of value in style renders the message less threatening, particularly on a political level. One need only read the satirical cartoons of politics to appreciate this observation.

4.10 — In this style the suspension of disbelief takes effect at a greater effectiveness, than in other styles: the formula is, the greater the belief that is invested in the perception of a world coming in to view through the film, the greater the impact of the excitement and, often catharsis, that further takes place among the audience.

5.0 — Momento mori: This film apparently of the horror genre, is similar to the momento mori, in which death rears it's ugly head in the consciousness of an adolescent girl: the death of her mother, of which she feels responsible: yet she may be the only blameless one. A comparison may be made to the photo-realist art of Ben Schonzeit, born 9 May 1942–, the United States Of America, such as: 'Speckled Vase', circa 1988, acrylic on canvas, (refer to Figure 7) in which stylistic modalities are juxtaposed to heighten the realistic quality of the subject, viz. the still life. The green world in the back-ground, consisting of shadows is that emerald synonymous with Ireland, peculiarly flattened, skewed, compared to the painted still life, that is, apparently rendered in vivid, pseudo-scientific reality.

Figure 7: Photograph: 'Speckled Vase', circa 1988, by Ben Schonzeit, from: <http://www.benschonzeit.com/flowers/>.

5.1 — The psychological reality of this point is denied in a series of denials which leave the back-ground having to provide the information necessary to construct any-thing other than thrilling superficiality, that is, going from the indexical—for example, from a psychological perspective, Char is blithely unaware of the relationship between Angela and her brother, Aaron, to venture towards the taboo of incest and infanticide.

5.2 — Rather than the audience partake purely in the girl's malady, a sort of private universe, a rebus of indecipherable textual inscriptions—which would ultimately exclude the audience—the girl is found in a multi-regional, cultural mythos of a family and community, where Char's beliefs are not merely her own, but are shared and inasmuch engender an historical truth "by way of back-ground". Note, the changeling myth is known to the Celts, Gauls, Nords, Slavs, Arabs and Northern America.

5.3 — There is an earlier film, 'The Changeling', 28 March 1980, Canada, (refer to Figure 8) arguably that was an influence on Kate Dolan, stylistically, because Peter Medak's examination of the changeling phenomena in Seattle, Canada, is possibly one of the first films to demonstrate a super-realism, that again pivots on the mythos of the changeling. Peter Medak's film of 1980 makes minimal use of special effects and a cinematography that is large scale, negotiates the interior spaces of homes with a sense of the uncanny regarding privacy, the domestic scene of family life and the public world.

Figure 8: Photograph: 'The Changeling', circa 1980, film poster from: <https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/>.

6.0 — The Mythos: The grand-mother, Rita, played by Ingrid Craigie, is suspicious, it is suggested, that Angela is no longer her, it is suggested, but an "impostor" or a döpple-ganger; that is a folk-lore legend left as a possibility, rather than examined. The theme of the changeling mythos emerges as the central thematic concern of the film. The matter of the impostor, the döpple-ganger, is often one too painful to place as the subject of entertainment, even when that entertainment is of the genre of psychological thriller / super-natural / horror.

6.1 — The theme of the changeling is often deemed less painful, because infants are the ones made subject to the swap involving an abduction made of a "true child", for an ersatz replica, that was once the bastard sibling or look-a-like cousin, may now be a clone—a suggestion that sounds futuristic, but legislation passed through various parliaments world-wide prohibit human cloning, such that cloning is a reality, out-side the law.

6.2 — The subject matter of the changeling is treated as a peripheral concern, as one that constitutes a denial to the perspective of Char whose fanciful, child's mind prefers the fairy tale explanation rather than the gritty truth, that some-one has abducted her infant sibling (a suggestion only), or one of the family members has committed an act that is too horrible to conceive, such as that her uncle Aaron, acted by Paul Reid, has killed the infant.

6.3 — What can the explanation be exactly? Angela had previously been almost bed-ridden with what is inferred as being a major depressive disorder, since her disappearance, she has returned and transformed in to an occassionally exuberant, but impetuous, and at times intimidating woman. 

6.4 — Within Char's isolated world, Angela's transformation is explained as a swapping for another, who resembles her, identically, but nevertheless is not her, viz. the matter of the impostor. 

6.5 — The "super-realist" style returns the inquiry of what is happenig to a query of the truth of perception and matters of authenticity and imitation: abstract subjects which often constitute a director's pre-occupation of a film of the psychological thriller / super-natural / horror genre. This is because the super-natural establishes a limit of knowable knowledge and horror often identifies an experience of trauma which has occurred in the outer limits of knowable experience, except that it has become mythified. 

6.6 — While there are back-ground matters as to the real reason for Angela's depression, such as a grief for an aborted infant or killed infant (that is, to conject for a moment), the grand-mother is inferred as silencing and covering over the truth with a fantastical story, that nonetheless is plausible according to Irish folk-lore, the changeling, viz. that Char's mother is a changeling, and a changeling may unexpectedly change among other defining characteristics. 

6.7 — The truth is, that the grand-mother may have murdered a new-born child which has led her daughter to depression, and to create the impression that Rita is telling the truth, that Angela is a changeling, Rita has organised for Angela to receive high doses of lithium that change the patient's personality and appearance to seemingly verify the truth of a changed or possessed woman.

7.0 — Disclaimer: This blog post is the exclusive intellectual property of Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–; Google email: craigsjlacey@gmail.com; by way of law, no hacking, copying, editing or disseminating of it is permitted.

7.1 — Four photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 8; each of which is identified to a resource and is used within the editorial rights' context.

7.2 — Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 189 Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, Queensland, Australia, 4000; Ⓒ 2022, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey. 

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