1.1: BLOG'S CONTENTS:
2.0–2.4: A QUESTIONABLE WHITE IDENTITY /
Figure I. A film still from 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' of Char, acted by Hazel Doupe, in which the camera-shots of interiors become symbolic correlates to the constrained psychological interior of the protagonist.
Figure II. A film still from 'The Wicker Man, circa 1973' in which the carnival atmosphere provides for jests at the prospect of human sacrifice.
8.3 – It is a point now-a-days that is mostly accepted as a systemic matter, when white, Celtic Christians, viz. Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Danish, etc., are continuously blamed for the atrocities of white or Euro-appearance Asians.
2.0–2.4: A QUESTIONABLE WHITE IDENTITY /
3.0–3.1: GLOBAL CULTURES /
4.0–4.3: ON (SUPER-)REALISM /
5.0–5.5: PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM /
6.0–6.6: ARGUMENTUM EX SILENTO /
7.0–7.6: DIFFERENT WHITE ETHNICITIES /
8.0–8.4: AKIN /
9.0–9.6: THE CHANGELING, CIRCA 1980 /
10.0–10.7: CHANGELING, CIRCA 2008 /
11.0–11.6: THE CHANGELING MYTHOS /
12.0–12.2: DISCLAIMER //.
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2.0 – A QUESTIONABLE WHITE IDENTITY: A year has passed since I wrote on my blogger-site 'thoughtsdisjectamembra': I have watched a number of intriguing films and written notes on a few, similar in the psychological-thriller / horror genre as that of the Irish film: 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' by Kate Dolan; the basis of my five earlier blogs—films such as: 'Smile, circa 2022' by Parker Finn; 'Barbarian, circa 2022' by Zech Cregger; 'Pearl, circa 2022' by Ti West.
2.1 – I am mindful of the fact, the films I critique are focused on the English language and are of the Irish / American countries.
2.2 – As an Australian with Goìdelic / Celtic ancestry, I am ethnically and culturally representative of the English language and Anglo-Saxon cultures.
2.3 – There is the further point to make: when here in Australia, British and American films dominate cinema, what else can be written on?
2.4 – In any case, such films show a questionable white identity that is arguably due to a cultural alterity which remains at the outer parameters of such films's ideological construction—ironically, as that which exists out-side the film as might another calibre of monster be found after one already has been revealed in the unfolding narrative of horror film.
3.0 – GLOBAL CULTURE: Through mubi, viz. <mubi.com>, the access of films from around the world with streaming on the Internet or renting digital copies, an insight is provided to different ways of perceiving the world.
3.1 – Yet still many Han Chinese and Indian films are kept away from "Western World" audiences and, as such, global cultures are a theory rather than reality.
4.0 – ON (SUPER-)REALISM: In my blogs on that artsy, horror-flick: 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021', I made the criticism the film is overly edited: not as an observation on Kate Dolan's direction, or the editor's competence, or the parochialism of contemporary, Irish film, but as an observation made as to the film's (super-)realism existing in the constraints of film-making, as much as the constraint definitive of the Celtic female of contemporary Ireland.
4.1 – That is, as if the film's editing sought to express the overly-edited consciousness of Char by the film being overly-edited.
4.2 – The argument can always be made: "oh, it's only a story, not a piece of journalistic reportage," when it is the case, the truth can be fore-grounded inasmuch that it can be said after-wards: "it is only a story."
4.3 – In my blogs I wrote that the film is representative of a super-realist æsthetic not only punning the ambiguity of the cinema verité style as fantastic, as when special effects or tricks of lighting emerge within the style as equally punned, realistic: truth is represented as based on perception: in such films the audience enters a point of view different from their own.
5.0 – PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM: The truth is, that the truth exists in such contexts of perspective, which in the telling of truth must be emphasized, because the broader contexts of history, religion and politics when referenced, reveal the effects of the lulling mind; that is, humans are said to only handle a small dose of reality before "the lullaby" is sought after either in romance or the highs of recreational drugs.
5.1 – Yet the realism of constraint, minimalism and foreclosure, which are factors of a dire state of existence—a veritable autism—evokes an absence of detail, a sparseness of style, to contribute to the super-realist æsthetic.
5.2 – Psychiatry with a problematic history of meting out medications for mental illness—such as the earlier discussed lithium salts—cannot contain a truth of reality that the discourses of mental illness claim to address.
5.3 – For example, there is an other-worldiness, a cultural alterity, that permeates the film which cannot be reduced to a diagnosis of autism with-out losing a perspective of the truth.
5.4 – There is the problem, psychiatry and psychotherapy offer discourses from which young women, such as Char, must retract to embrace some alternative, community-hewn, folk-inspired fantasy and ritual life, because such practices facilitate identity rather than anesthetization and programmed "gratuitous concurrence".
5.5 – Paradoxically, psychological realism pervades the super-realist film, because such films typically represent a single protagonist's experiences in an ironic, almost experimental way, since there are constraints made on the expression and representation of such people's lives, who live as the silent minority, are deemed not worthy of our attentions, engender a point of difference, in fact, intriguing for the fact a creativity and liveliness may be found.
6.0 – ARGUMENTUM EX SILENTO: In my interpretation of the film, the psychological focus must be placed upon the sins of the father, argumentum ex silento: an argument made on the fact obvious evidence is omitted, because the film is almost totally female.
6.1 – The particular omissions of the sins of the father as a pressure enforcing silence / censorship, is re-doubled with significance as the ex silento position falling upon the absent father or fleeting presence of the father-substitute, the adult brother.
6.2 – The family life is presented with-out a male causation as the reason for Angela's derailment, when it is known to be the cause for most troubled house-holds and, besides, it is not a point logically eliminated within the film's narrational structure, but is stifled to ever greater extents until the stifling moment of derealisation unfolds: Char is a witch who imolated her mother, an adult changeling: at which point the trace to the father as the culprit is all but extinguished, at least to the mind of Char.
6.3 – In 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' by Kate Dolan, I find that the hidden door opens to only an extent: had "the investigators", viz. the film-makers, examined the matter thoroughly, another hidden door would have been found in that earlier secret room, such that now the horrors frighten at one point of remove from the dæmon, the mephistopheles, causing the strife.
6.4 – The dæmon will always be clever enough not to leave behind obvious traces of his meddlings, but they will nonetheless be evident because he is an illusionist who plays most of all with perceptions.
6.5 – Similar to the floating lozenge seen in the Hans Holbein the Younger's painting: 'The Ambassadors, circa 1553', (taken as a sign of the artist possibly having a day on the booze), when the art-work seen from the far right reveals the lozenge as a skull, the symbol of piracy and the painting vandal's interference is revealed to be a gesture of an attack on diplomacy.
6.6 – The threat of war-mongering, almost dæmonic, and racism is only foolishly dismissed—perhaps the celebrated psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's 'The Four Fundamentals Of Psychoanalysis, Seminar IX, circa 1994, (SUNY Press, ISBN-10: 0791421841), could be criticized along such lines for doing exactly that, in reference to commenting on 'The Ambassadors, circa 1553?
7.0 – DIFFERENT WHITE ETHNICITIES: 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' by Kate Dolan, Angela is shown to be an adult changeling, at least through the eyes of the adolescent Char, when it is indicated, beyond the assumptive or contrived world view of Char, that she has dæmonized and wronged Angela as an effect of Aaron's and Rita's manipulations.
7.1 – The hypothesis is: an undeclared, foreign tax is demanded upon the Irish family home, viz. "the macabre tax", in unthinkable terms, that tax of abducting children, who are any-way mistreated due to the superstition of being labelled changelings, whether deserving of their fate or not, irrespectively suffer a tragic fate.
7.2 – Such fate is argued to be a construct of a social order which racially vilifies: to involve Celtic folk being the recipients of racism, despite our being white-skinned and wrongly categorised with the white supremacists, who are often Aryans.
7.3 – The historical propaganda of the 20th century's world wars is largely to blame: in which a white supremacist man from Germany, some regions of France and even England, is mistakenly taken for the white, Celtic man, who is indicated as being usurped by the white Asian / Arabic-Indian man, viz. the Aryan; that is, the white, Protestant men and women of Celtic origins have disappeared.
7.4 – Another fascinating, low-budget film, that is Danish, viz. 'The 12th Man, circa 2017' by Harald Zwart, reveals the differences between the white Celts / Nords to the white, Aryan Nazi, within the war-time contexts, but it is an exceptional film and that fact of ethnic-political difference remains mostly obfuscated or permitted to be confused in mass media the world over.
7.5 – On which point, the further question begs an answer: if the Anglo-Saxons of the Allies won the wars, for what reason are the cultural differences from the Aryans not made clear?
7.6 – Then there is the example of this film: 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' by Kate Dolan, in which Char's family's persecution is an imploded experience; a fact that is compensated by way of explanation in folk-lore tales.
8.0 – AKIN: There really are only indications of such truths to be examined amid cultures which often collude with the perception that: yes, the usual suspect can be justifiably blamed, when, as that intriguing, ironic and low-budget film: 'The Usual Suspects, circa 1995' by Bryan Singer, examines how the least suspected is revealed, in a reversal of perceptual paradigm, to be the very devil him-self: a revelatory moment denied to Aaron in 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' by Kate Dolan.
8.1 – The phenomena of a straw-man may occur, but if the film: 'The Wicker Man, circa 1973' by Robin Hardy, has any-thing to indicate, it is part of an engrained set of rites in which some-one is discovered to be "the odd one out"; in which case, each and every-one is glad it is the demise of "the marked one" and that it is not one's own execution.
8.2 – Should the illusions of a stringent minimalism in the super-realist film, viz. 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' by Kate Dolan, or the carnivalesque excesses of the weïrd and wonderful traditions of the horror film genre, such as 'The Wicker Man, circa 1973' by Robin Hardy, be seen-through, the indicators exhibit a persecution that is mostly unapologetically unjust and fouly corrupt.
8.3 – It is a point now-a-days that is mostly accepted as a systemic matter, when white, Celtic Christians, viz. Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Danish, etc., are continuously blamed for the atrocities of white or Euro-appearance Asians.
8.4 – The inference is, the white children of Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, deserve being labelled as changelings, because they are akin to those other whites, the Aryans, who as Nazis persecuted every-one not the same as them.
9.0 – THE CHANGELING, CIRCA 1980: I ought to do this properly and go one step further to comment that the reason the Aryans are so easily mistaken for Celts is, that the earlier history of Christian Celts in Europe being subjected to genocide, from at least circa 1845, remains hidden: but further, can the white supremacism of the Aryans be taken prima facie, when Germany was known to be under the control of the Han or Mandarin?
9.1 – A gradual over-throw of power, as a rebellion secretly extolled, not for obvious political reasons, but for reasons of stigmatization: the abducting, displacing and labelling of white Christians as changelings, was supposedly done by Aryans: a paradigm changing fact of World history, no less
9.2 – The film, 'The Changeling, circa 1980' by Peter Medak, that I only briefly mentioned in my previous blogs, mystifies the phenomena of Christian children being invalided by persecutors, often dressed as carers: the children were further mistreated for being disfigured to reveal an horrific history that was known to haunt many people's minds during the 1970s, regarding changelings or witches, may be a healed-over wound that is no longer sensitive, not even to touch.
9.3 – The inherited house of the deceased, disabled child, whose spirit crosses in to the reality of the domestic building, is metaphorically the phantom of the persecutors's minds, who more than likely murdered the child to misappropriate the house and move in.
9.4 – The matter could be one of group psychology: if every-one else is doing it, why should not I? the evils done by the beast that is the herd are supposedly cancelled by the anonymity of the lynch-mob; as is extensively discussed by Sigmund Freud in 'Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego, circa 1921', ISBN-10: 9356374570—I will comment, Sigmund Freud's sociology rather than psycho-sexual theories, remains note-worthy to socio-cultural criticism.
9.5 – Many white Christians were distant cousins to the Aryans who, under the banner of family, committed violences and more serious crimes, which were often over-looked on the proviso family are entitled to commit such acts "within their own ranks".
9.6 – Peter Medak was discerning to make a film which played upon a people's guilt or perverse reminiscence: such tales of domestic hauntings became the staple of a booming, super-natural genre, in which children are ghosts, channelled spirits, became possessed, or provided "indications" of a limbo, or dark history of almost-forgotten tragedies, parallel to every-day living and history.
Figure III. The 'Changeling, circa 2008' film poster shows the actor Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins, whose head is depicted above the silhouetted form of her son: or is he an impostor, a changeling?
10.0 – CHANGELING, CIRCA 2008: Almost the sequel to the film of circa 1980, 'Changeling, circa 2008' by Clint Eastwood, is set during the late 1920s, based on the Wineville Chicken Coop murders of circa 1928, at Mira Loma, California, in more direct ways than 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' is based on the murder of Bridget Cleary, Ireland: a point discussed at length in my last blog.
10.1 – The Wineville Chicken Coop murders of circa 1928, at Mira Loma, California, involve the killing of about three to twenty boys, in which the matters of silencing women, mothers of abducted children, is obviated as is the wicked role of a young man who captured and chopped-up boys, as if they were chicken.
10.2 – Yet the gender divide is not apportioned as neatly as the argument averred, the causation is to be found from the male sex; the women, victims who fight their own battles against a corrupt society, are devoid of culpability: the motives are indicated as occurring on the basis of racism.
10.3 – Louise Northcott, the mother of the 19-year old, Gordon Stewart Northcott, conspired in her son's murders of the children: regarding which, a variation of Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho, circa 1960' could be claimed as first observing the social pattern of a domineering mother and serial-killer son.
10.4 – The matter of mens rea is unexplained, but according to the available information sources, Gordon Stewart Northcott bought the land on which his farm stood, despite the fact of his youth and history of molestation and abuse within his own family.
10.5 – Gordon Stewart Northcott was not taking a "macabre tax" as such, to live on the land of the farm, nor was he answerable to an older, male figure; unless that older man was afforded censorship through media reports, books and film.
10.6 – The case was already mired by the Los Angeles police's activities to send mothers impostor, "changeling" boys, when, after a few years of being missing, the mother could no longer authenticate the child as he tried to fit in to a home that was better than an orphanage.
10.7 – There is the possibility that white Asians, who existed in California as Anglo-Saxons, were tasking particular men or families with the murder of Anglo-Saxon / American boys, a point of which the white Asian police of California conspired to usurp the original boys with an impostor, "ethnic other".
11.0 – THE CHANGELING MYTHOS: The film 'Changeling, circa 2008' is less concerned with supernatural genre stylizations than for being a drama of a film noir re-historization of the infamous serial killer, Wineville Chicken Coop murders of circa 1928, California.
11.1 – The folk-lore connections to the changeling seem to be absent in Clint Eastwood's film-noir crime-thriller, yet the the noun 'changeling' is imminent: used as the film's title, the irony is, how a fantastical myth provides no mythified narrative; it provides an historical drama in the film-noir style.
11.2 – Once again there are fragments of truth to be discerned amid a style: this time film noir, which in an exalted or reflexive style resists complete delineation, a cohesive picture; 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' is high-end / super realist stylization in which the unpretentious style of realism is exalted over meaningfulness.
11.3 – Is the inference, Gordon Stewart Northcott was considered an adult changeling, who, in living to an adult age, was found to murder child changelings, that is, to foreground the link to the mother Louise Northcott, presumably then a "witch" who ordered the murders?
11.4 – Through Clint Eastwood's film the changeling mythos is only loosely attached to a reality that seems to exist beneath the surface of an earlier revealed reality.
11.5 – There is no problem of racial integration or cultural / ethnic territorialities at 1920s California—quite unbelievably—on which point, the usurpation of white boys for other "white" boys, may not necessarily have correlation to a myth, but a gradual usurpation; an invasion of attrition at the neighbourhood scale, conducted "just quietly" amid the lucrative Western World society of California.
11.6 – The media has been involved to sort of record it and mitigate it, as might propaganda be used, sensationally, as an extension of folk-lore: the truth always refers to a conspiracy which must be denied, mythified or brocaded in style.
12.0 – 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.
12.1 – Three photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 3; each of which is used within the editorial-educational rights's context.
12.2 – Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 10 April 2023, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 4000; Copyright 2023, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey.
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