The radical notion that women like good movies
Amelia didn’t need to be possessed to have feelings of vitriol towards her son; they were already there, lurking inside her at the beginning. Rarely, if ever, is a mother depicted in film this way. Mothers are expected to be completely accepting and loving towards their child 24/7, despite any hardships or challenges their child presents to them.
Most people I talked to and most of the reviews that I read about ‘The Babadook’ concluded that the film is about motherhood or mother-son relations. While I agree, I also really tuned in on the complicating element to this whole narrative, which is that the mother is mentally ill.
This is not to say that Amelia and Die are not sympathetic characters. Both want to do the best for their sons, but neither can handle the stress and actual responsibility of disciplining them. I do not mean for this to seem like an attack on Die and Amelia’s parenting skills, but rather a way to look at the sudden appearance of women in film who are not good at parenting.
Jennifer Kent: “I didn’t start with motherhood being the primary focus, but it is a very important part of the film, and I’m very adamant not to make this woman the evil mother. That’s why I placed the film very much inside her experience.”
Firstly, ‘The Babadook’ complicates the depiction of women as primarily victims by presenting Amelia as a complex and multi-faceted figure. For one, she is a not a young big-breasted girl but a mother and fully grown woman. This is not necessarily groundbreaking in itself.
In addition to featuring a female protagonist with disabilities, ‘Hush’ crafts a home-invasion story that isn’t about her “problems” or obstacles or the attacker at all, but rather it focuses on the tactful solutions she chooses along the way. …Its depiction of Maddie as a full, engaging character who fends for herself and thrives alone is an asset to adding more characters with disabilities in films, especially horror, as not victims but stars.
With regular bombings being an everyday part of their lives, and a warhead landing in the apartment above them, the two of them live under the “shadow of war” in a very real sense. … The jinn, and the hauntings, also serve as a metaphor for Shideh’s own insecurities about motherhood.
Our theme week for October 2017 will be Women in Horror. Horror films have long been analyzed and critiqued for both their feminist and misogynist themes… With so many women protagonists and explorations of primal emotions, there is a lot to unpack regarding gender and horror.
It’s pretty uncommon in Hollywood to see a movie directed by a woman as only 3.4% of all film directors are women. It’s even more uncommon to see women directing films in genres intended for a largely male audience. Granted, all movies of any genre can be and are watched and enjoyed by people of any gender. However, Hollywood tends to market certain genres towards men, and for that reason, it’s even more difficult for women directors to get in on the market.
Women directors face myriad obstacles: despite there being an abundance of talented female directors struggling to produce work, many companies refuse to give them projects — only 3.4% of all film directors are female, only 7% of the 250 top-grossing movies in 2016 were directed by women… Despite all these obstacles and hardships, women continue to make amazing work with a wide range of genres and topics.
Are spine-chilling films always in demand because they help us dialogue with and about death? … In the past year, I’ve been focused on seeing films directed by women because I participated in the “52 Films by Women” initiative.
So what makes sisters such fascinating subject matter for horror films? What makes them both scary and powerful, yet the most vulnerable, both to outside forces as well as to each other when they are threatened? … Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with.
