CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY'S BLOG-POST ON THE SUBJECT OF "THE HUMAN ANIMAL" IN JOHN LANDIS'S FILMS: SCHLOCK, 12 DECEMBER 1973 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 79 MINUTES, AND: AN AMERICAN WERE-WOLF IN LONDON, 21 AUGUST 1981, 97 MINUTES—A BLOG-POST, 27 SEPTEMBER 2025, BY CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY /

§1.0 - Points 1.0–1.6: THIS BLOG-POST'S CONTENTS:

1.1 - THIS BLOG-POST'S TITLE:

1.2 - CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY'S BLOG-POST ON THE SUBJECT OF "THE HUMAN ANIMAL" IN JOHN LANDIS'S FILMS: SCHLOCK, 12 DECEMBER 1973 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 79 MINUTES, AND: AN AMERICAN WERE-WOLF IN LONDON, 21 AUGUST 1981, 97 MINUTES—A BLOG-POST, 27 SEPTEMBER 2025, BY CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY /

1.3 - THIS BLOG-POST'S LISTED SECTIONS AND NUMBERED POINTS:

1.4 - §2.0: Points 2.0–2.14: THE DISCLAIMER /

1.5 - §3.0: Points 3.0–3.2: THE DATES OF RESEARCH, WRITING AND PUBLICATION /

1.6 - §4.0: Points 4.0–4.57: ON THE SUBJECT OF "THE HUMAN ANIMAL" IN JOHN LANDIS'S TWO FILMS: SCHLOCK, 12 DECEMBER 1973 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 79 MINUTES, AND: AN AMERICAN WERE-WOLF IN LONDON, 21 AUGUST 1981, 97 MINUTES //

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§2.0 - THE DISCLAIMER—Refer directly beneath, to the points: 2.0–2.13.

2.1: All rights reserved © Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia, 2025; 2.2: Changing the content or re-publishing this blog is strictly prohibited; 2.3: This blog is protected by the: 2.4: Privacy Act 1988 of Australia, against unauthorized access to Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Samsung Galaxy A05s, and Google account; 2.5: Cybercrime Act 2001 of Australia, against computer fraud or internet fraud; 2.6: Copyright Act 1968 of Australia, against intellectual property theft; 2.7: Universal Copyright Convention, circa 1952; 2.8: Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 9 September 1886; 2.9: Fines and/or prosecution will apply according to Australian and International law in reference to unauthorized access and use of this blog published through the Blogger app of Google.com and the author's storage device(s) with the information. 2.10: A total of four images have been used in this blog-post at: 2.11: Point 4.29: The engraving of the German woman, Barbara van Beck, with were-wolf syndrome, circa 18th century, by G. Scott; 2.12: Point 4.35: two consecutive film-stills of Jack Goodman, acted by Griffin Dunne, at the hospital, who bears the injuries of the were-wolf's attack to his upper chest, neck and face; an anguished David Kessler is in the back-ground; 2.13: Point 4.54: is an image of "Anubis weighs the heart of the deceased', from the papyrus of Anhai. British Museum—image from plate 5 of: The Book Of The Dead: Facsimiles Of The Papyri of Hunefer, Ȧnhai, Ḳerāsher And Netchemet, With Supplementary Text From The Papyrus Of Nu, circa 1899, by E. A. W. Budge.

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§3.0 - DATES OF RESEARCH, WRITING AND PUBLICATION—Refer directly beneath, to the points: 3.1–3.3.

3.1: This blog-post was started, 14.09.2025, and published, 23:30, 27.09.2025, as researched and composed only by Craig Steven Joseph Lacey at Brisbane City, Queensland, Australia, 4000; 3.2: Word count: 3,237, and typographic characters count: 19,552; 3.3: Last up-dated: 13:00, 02.10.2025, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

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§4.0 - ON THE SUBJECT OF "THE HUMAN ANIMAL" IN JOHN LANDIS'S FILMS: SCHLOCK, 12 DECEMBER 1973 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 79 MINUTES, AND: AN AMERICAN WERE-WOLF IN LONDON, 21 AUGUST 1981, 97 MINUTES—refer directly beneath, to the points: 4.1–4.57.

4.1: I re-watched the film: 4.2: An American Werewolf In London, 21 August 1981, 97 minutes, director John Landis; production companies: PolyGram Pictures and Lycanthrope Films Limited; 4.3: with the expectation, that 1980s styled, platinum silicone, rubber prosethics, make-up, lighting techniques and cinematography used for the special effects of portraying the were-wolves and victims on screen would distract from the transportative experience into the film's narrative world. 4.4: Only a few moments emerged when such dated special effects defied the requisite suspension of disbelief. 4.5: The film sustains its cut above the B-grade of horror film status: certainly there is none of B-grade's hall-mark self-conscious, stop-motion animation as mixed with live footage—such as evident in another North American horror genre film of the early 1980s: 4.6: The Evil Dead, 15 October 1981, Redford Theatre, 85 minutes, directed by Sam Raimi; production company: Renaissance Pictures. 4.7: Yet the films of John Landis are not to be taken too seriously; there is a high sense of camp irony, which often distinguishes horror films by a categorisation of the arthouse horror subgenre—to which Sam Raimi's highly camp: The Evil Dead, 15 October 1981, 85 minutes, belongs also. 4.8: The concern of bad taste or indecent cultural values in reference to the horror film genre is inverted by its use of camp æsthetics in these films. 4.9: "Kitsch And Camp And Things That Go Bump In The Night; Or, Sontag And Adorno At The (Horror) Movies" by David MacGregor Johnston, critically assesses the camp æsthetics of the horror or sci-fi film genres as involving a recognition of "history's waste", by which it is meant, alternative versions to the "one official version of history"—a concept discussed directly beneath:

4.10: 'When we watch the best or the worst of the Universal Horror genre, we can enjoy them because “camp is a rediscovery of history’s waste. Camp irreverently retrieves not only that which had been excluded from the serious high-cultural ‘tradition,’ but also the more unsalvageable material that has been picked over and found wanting by purveyors of the ‘antique' [from: pages 308–309, “Uses Of Camp”, by Andrew Ross, in: Camp: Queer Aesthetics And The Performing Subject: A Reader, 3 November 1999, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Edinburgh University Press, English Language‎, 528 pages, 896 grams, 17.27 x 2.54 x 24.38 centimeters, ISBN-10: 0748611711, ISBN-13: 978-0748611713]. In a literal sense, these films are awfully good. The infamous [Plan 9 From Outer Space, 15 March 1957, 80 minutes, produced, written, directed, and edited by Ed Wood,] is perhaps the greatest example of a bad film rescued by the camp sensibility, but almost all 1950s sci-fi films are now viewed as camp'—pages 238–239, "Kitsch And Camp And Things That Go Bump In The Night; Or, Sontag And Adorno At The (Horror) Movies", by David MacGregor Johnston, in: The Philosophy of HoRrOR 11, 30 November 2010, edited by Thomas Fahy, American Popular Culture 9, University Press of Kentucky, ISBN 978-0813125732; pages 229–243.

4.11: What may be considered socially offensive, perhaps blasphemous? seeks to find artistic expression of the truths of sub-cultural perspectives and experiences, which may otherwise find expression according to the censors of the mainstream culture; (at least, that was a prevailing concern during the 1980s; during the 2020s the censors seem much less stringent). 4.12: As to the depths beneath the æsthetic surface of John Landis's film's "black humour", who can say exactly what might be found? 4.13: Along such lines, the obvious comparison to his film of circa 1981 is John Landis's film début: 4.14: Schlock, 12 December 1973 United States Of America, 79 minutes, producers: Jack H. Harris and James C. O'Rourke; 4.15: in which 'schlock' is a reference to an inferior quality, that is, a "B-grade standard" of product—the noun: 'schlock' is from the German Yiddish: 'shlak', that refers to a life-altering stroke, to further indicate that a degraded status has been associated with severe disability. 4.16: To pry apart the so-called 'degraded human form' of a disabled person from an ape-man or wolf-man hybrid, the disabled person traditionally is classified according to folk-lore as the 'changeling': a fey infant left by trolls or demons after swapping their own for a human child—and note some changelings manage to survive to adulthood. 4.17: The folk-lore topics of the hybrid child and wolf-man have met in reference to a North American cultural text, a film which struggles with its special effects and direction, not to achieve the arthouse categorisation as the films mentioned here, viz.: 4.18: Silver Bullet, 11 October 1985, 95 minutes, directed by Dan Attias; production companies: Dino De Laurentiis Company and Famous Films—an adaptation of the master of horror, Stephen King's: Cycle Of The Werewolf, circa November 1983, 127 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-960382828. 4.19: The changeling is often considered clairvoyant or gifted—the paraplegic boy protagonist, Marty Coslaw, acted by Corey Haim, is ordinary enough, though he demonstrates keen insight beyond his years—almost as a compensation for the disability afflicting him, and more often than not the changeling dwells in the human world, rather than the wilderness. 4.20: Yet as a freak, the changeling reminds civilization of the human physiology's animality, the body as an organism within the orders of biology and nature, a soul and spirit may nevertheless be found beneath the projections of freakishness the hybrid type is meant to "collect" from the prejudices of society. 4.21: Such as portrayed by the film: 4.22: The Elephant Man, 3 October 1980 New York City, 124 minutes, directed by David Lynch; produced by Jonathan Sanger; 4.23: in which the protagonist, the elephant man, Joseph Carey Merrick,  famously states: "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am... a human being! I am a man!" 4.24: Such folk as the ape-man, the wolf-man and the elephant man, take a place at the margins of society, often the wilderness—for example: Schlock lives in a cave in the state of California. 4.25: Schlock is considered a "throw-back" in human evolution: a living fossil and he lives accordingly; though comparisons emerge to the wildman raised in the wilderness with animals, such as epitomised in the film: 4.26: Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes, 30 March 1984, 130 minutes, directed by Hugh Hudson; produced by Hugh Hudson and Stanley S. Canter—as adapted from: Tarzan Of The Apes, circa 1912, by Edgar Rice Burroughs; re-published: 5 August 2008, Penguin, Imprint: Signet, 320 pages, ISBN-13: 9780451531025—in which an intelligent man may be found despite his personal history. 4.27: Further comparisons are made to the North American "Sasquatch", otherwise referred to as "Yeti", such as portrayed in the often comically absurd films: 4.28: Harry And The Hendersons, 5 June 1987 the United States Of America, 110 minutes, directed and produced by William Dear; 4.29: Sasquatch Sunset 19 January 2024 Sundance Film Festival, 88 minutes, directors: David Zellner and Nathan Zellner; production company: production companies: Square Peg, ZBi and The Space Program. 4.30: The complexity of definition is one regarding the similarities of the ape to the human; both are classified under the biological order: Primates, and being both anthropoid the relation can complicate the "animal–human" distinction that is often taken for granted in Western World cultures. 4.31: To an extent, the wolf, while not as similar to the human as an ape, has a similar physical size to an adult human, and when compared with a human who may be covered in hair—for example, as found in cases of Hypertrichosi lanuginosa, or "Were-wolf Syndrome"—that further involves facial features similar to a canine—the requirement is greater for differentiation between such animals and humans, as compared with a comparison made between a human to a snake or kangaroo. 4.32: Refer directly beneath for an example of the so-called medical diagnosis of Hypertrichosi lanuginosa, or "Were-wolf Syndrome", in the engraving of the German woman, Barbara van Beck, circa 18th century, by G. Scott.

4.33: A summarised excerpt describing the so-called "hairy maid", Barbara van Beck, as encountered at a Parisian fair during circa 1646 is paraphrased directly beneath. 

4.34: 'He had come across similar animal and human curiosities quite a few times before and gave them scant attention, but he had never seen anything like the Hairy Maid and described her in detail. She was eighteen years old, she said, and of German ancestry. Her hair was luxuriant and soft as silk, with the long curls beautifully dressed. M. Brackenhoffer, who was either a lecher or a determined lover of curiosities, then proceeded to undress her, after the payment of an additional fee. Her back was covered with thick, soft hair like a coat of fur. Her breasts he noted approvingly were round and white and less hairy than the rest of her skin. M. Brackenhoffer ended his account that he had ascertained that she was a true woman and not a hermaphrodite'—from: pages 23–24, Freaks: The Pig-faced Lady Of Manchester Square & Other Medical Marvels, circa 2006, by Jan Bondeson, Tempus, 334 pages, ISBN 075242968X, 9780752429687.

4.34: The notion of a wolf-men or dog-like people is technically referred to as 'cynocephaly', first discussed in Ancient Classics, such as Ctesias of Knid's lost text: Indica, 5th century B.C., as epitomised by Photius.

4.35: 'Of another race of Indians particularized by Ctesias we might reasonably despair of discovering any existing prototype; and yet, omitting what is hopelessly fabulous, it may not be impossible to conjecture an origin even for the Kalystrii, or Kunokephali, the dog-headed people. These are said to: "inhabit the mountains that extend to the Indus to the number of 120,000: they have the heads of dogs, with large teeth and sharp claws, and their only language is a sort of bark." They are said to: "be very honest, and to maintain a commercial intercourse with other Indians who understand their meaning partly by their bark, and partly by signs. They are clothed in the skins of wild animals, and feed upon their raw flesh. It is stated in another passage, that they bake it in the sun"—from: page 26 of Notes On The Indica Of Ctesias, circa 1836, by H.H. Wilson; re-published: circa 2018, Creative Media Partners, LLC, 86 pages, ISBN-10: 0342277219, ISBN-13: 9780342277216.

4.36: Pliny the Elder wrote the Naturalis Historia / Natural History Encyclopædia, circa 79 A.D., in which the cynocephali are classified as similar to a beast, though more accurately as a "monstrous race": a phrase of which is detailingly discussed in: 4.37: The Monstrous Races In Medieval Art And Thought, circa 1981, by Friedman, John Block, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, xiii, 268 pages, 24 centimeters; re-published: 29 August 2000, 2nd Revised edition, Syracuse University Press, English Language, 326 pages, 454 grams, 15.24 x 1.85 x 22.86 centimeters, ISBN-10: 0815628269, ISBN-13: 978-0815628262. 4.38: Claudius Ælianus in the seventeen volume set: On The Nature Of Animals / Περὶ ζῴων ἰδιότητος / De Natura Animalium, 3rd-century B.C.—available on-line: <https://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/aelian/home.html>—placed the cynocephaly at Africa, not India. 4.39: The Buddhist missionary Hui-Sheng of the 4th-century A.D., who traveled to India, wrote that in the sea beyond the fabled, Eastern nation of 'Fusang' (a giant tree / island), farther yet, an "Isle of Dogs" was located, populated by cynocephaly. 4.40: Their dog nation is mentioned in History Of The Northern Dynasties, circa 1775, by Li Yanshou; re-published as: Today's Annotated Twenty-Four History of Northern History—22 volumes in total, 30 September 2020, China Social Sciences Press, ‎Chinese Language, ISBN-10: 7520350223, ISBN-13: 978-7520350228. 4.41: While not obviously derived, generally the legend of "The Island Of Dogs" may be considered as the inspiration for films, such as: 4.42: The Plague Dogs, 21 October 1982 Britain, 103 minutes, directed by Martin Rosen; production companies: United Artists, Goldcrest Films, Nepenthe Productions. 4.43: Isle Of Dogs / 犬ヶ島 / Inu ga Shima, 15 February 2018 Berlinale, 101 minutes, written and directed by Wes Anderson; production companies: 20th Century Fox Animation, Indian Paintbrush, American Empirical Pictures, Studio Babelsberg, Scott Rudin Productions and 3 Mills Studios. 4.44: For all the allusions to dogs, 'cynocephaly' can refer to a sub-group of the family of Old World monkeys, such as macaques and baboons: species with dog-like heads, which are portrayed in the Ancient Egyptian religions—for example, the three gods with the head of a jackal: the son of Horus, 'Duamutef'; the opener of the ways, 'Wepwawet'; the god of the dead, 'Anubis'. 4.45: Of the three, mostly focus falls upon the later Egyptian god, Anubis, the lord of the underworld, where he and his cult of cynocephaly dwelt, at the city of Cynopolis; such that dogs, cynocephaly and were-wolves have been long associated with the living dead. 4.46: On this point, refer to the text: Death Dogs: The Jackal Gods Of Ancient Egypt, circa 2015, by Terry G. Wilfong, Kelsey Museum Publication 11, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, ISBN 978-0-9906623-1-0. 4.48: This particular subject of that which is canine being connected to the undead, emerges in the film: An American Werewolf In London, 21 August 1981, 97 minutes. 4.49: The character of Jack Goodman, acted by Griffin Dunne, the back-packing companion of David Kessler, acted by David Naughton, declares to David: 4.50: "I was murdered, an unnatural death, and now I walk the earth in limbo until the werewolf’s curse is lifted." 4.51: Refer directly beneath at the two film stills at the hospital of Jack Goodman, acted by Griffin Dunne, who, being the undead, advises David Kessler, of what he must now do to end the curse: Jack bears the injuries of the were-wolf's attack to his upper chest, neck and face.

4.52: As the narrative unfolds David Kessler accrues a number of phantom companions, his victims, who advise him of what action he must take to lift the curse of the were-wolf; such that he is indicated to return to the role of a dog-headed member of the Anubian cult, though Egyptian religious allusions have all but eroded in the film's modern contexts. 4.53: Further to Anubis's rule of the underworld, the god's role is to "Weigh the Heart" against a god's feather, a symbol of truth and order, in determining to usher the deceased into the kingdom of the afterlife, if had genuinely loved—a point finally decided by Anubis's "sniffing" of the deceased. 4.54: Refer directly beneath, at the image of: "Anubis weighs the heart of the deceased', from the papyrus of Anhai. British Museum—the image is from plate 5 of: The Book of the Dead: Facsimiles of the Papyri of Hunefer, Ȧnhai, Ḳerāsher and Netchemet, with Supplementary Text from the Papyrus of Nu, circa 1899, by E. A. W. Budge—at the website titled: 'Death Dogs', accessed 02.10.2025, at: <https://exhibitions.kelsey.lsa.umich.edu/jackal-gods-ancient-egypt/halls_truth.php>.

4.55: The character of David Kessler is confronted by his conscience, that is a process comparable to having his heart weighed, and he must face the consequences of his actions, realise his love for Alex Price and confront the reality of his having to die to end the curse. 4.56: The general interpretation is, that in reference to "the animal", love is the physical act of sex, an exercise in bonding or procreation; whereas within a spiritual context sex is love-making, and love and romance emerge from the profound respect derived from a knowledge of the spiritually eternal. 4.57: The cynocephalos / were-wolf and the ape-man / sasquatch serve to indicate that the human is, despite the achievements of civilisation, only an animal, per the Latin phrase: "homo, id est animal rationale mortale", that is, "a human being is a mortal and rational animal"—and humanity is reminded that to succumb to one's unconscious, animalistic instincts, the life of love and the spirit evades experience and that which is human regresses to the beast.

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PART I. CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY'S COMMENTS ON THE FILMS: 'THE CHANGELING, CIRCA 1980' AND 'CHANGELING, CIRCA 2008'.

1.0: BLOG'S TITLE: PART I. CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY'S COMMENTS ON THE FILMS: 'THE CHANGELING, CIRCA 1980' AND 'CHANGELING, CIRCA 2008' /

1.1: BLOG'S CONTENTS:
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 //.

☆☆☆

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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