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 //.
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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.
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