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.

☆☆☆

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. 

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