Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire

School of Creative Arts

The Uncanny Baby, Reproduction, and Parenthood

in Cinematic Horror

by

Billy Mac Donald

Submitted to Department of Film and Media in candidacy for the Bachelor of Arts Honours

Degree in Model Making, Design and Digital Effects, 2013

Declaration of Originality

This dissertation is submitted by the undersigned to the Institute of Art Design &

Technology, Dun Laoghaire in partial fulfillment of the examination for the BA

(Hons) in Model Making, Design and Digital Effects. It is entirely the author’s own

work except where noted and has not been submitted for an award from this or

any other educational institution.

Signed______________

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people on behalf of their support; academic, moral,

inspirational and motivational: Michael Connerty, Sherra Murphy, Helen Doherty, Elaine

Sisson, Sorcha O'Brien, Tamara Melly, Billy MacDonald Snr, and Ching Xu.

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore the relationship between cinematic horror and uncanniness in

the themes of reproduction and parenthood. Cinematic horror is film which is aimed at

horrifying its viewers. Its theoretical grounds are within the theory of the Uncanny,

described by Freud as the sensation experienced when something which is repressed

becomes unearthed or reconfirmed. The Uncanny is complemented by Julie Kristeva's

theory of the Abject, which is concerned with the crossing of symbolic boundaries which

help define the notion of the self. At the centre of all of this theoretical horror lies our

unconscious infantile complexes surrounding birth, the mother, and the primal scene. It is

Freud's insistence on these complexes being the source of uncanniness in reality and in

fiction which is the main concern of this thesis. In order to illustrate the power of horrorific

portrayals of the baby, reproduction and parenthood, I have chosen to examine the three

films; 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Alien', and 'Eraserhead'.

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1

Chapter one: Looking to Freud ..................................................................................................... 2

Freud's Influence ................................................................................................................................. 2

Freud and Film Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 3

Sublimation and Cinema ..................................................................................................................... 5

Chapter two: The Uncanny ........................................................................................................... 7

Chapter three: Cinematic Horror & the Uncanny Baby ................................................................ 13

The Maternal Experience in 'Rosemary's Baby' ................................................................................ 16

Birth and Reproduction in 'Alien' ...................................................................................................... 20

'Eraserhead' and the Uncanny Baby ................................................................................................. 25

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 32

Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 33

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Introduction

This three-part thesis explores the notion of the uncanniness found in the portrayal of the

baby, reproduction, and parenthood situated in cinematic horror. Adopting Steven Jay

Schneider's distinguishing of 'cinematic horror' as film which aims to horrify its audience, I

will illustrate these horrific effects in three notable films. I wish to explore the role of

psychoanalytic theory in film and in particular Freud's theory of the 'Uncanny'. The opening

chapter consists of an investigation on Freud's influence on film and how he has changed the

way we analyse both the form and content of film. The second chapter is an in-depth

analysis of his essay, 'The Uncanny', but will explore relatable theories such as Kristeva's

theory of the 'Abject' and Creed's essay on the 'Monstrous-Feminine' to contrast and

develop our knowledge of what it means to horrify.

In the final chapter, I will explore the extents of the three films; 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Alien',

and 'Eraserhead', in terms of their ideological content and their technical achievements.

With this I intend on illustrating why the content of these films is so powerfully horrifying

and how they technically achieve this effect through their use of visual and sound design,

cinematic effects and attention to the mise-en-scène.

In these three films I see a pinnacle of cinematic horror, which has yet to be surpassed. The

horror achieved by each film is a result of the marriage of ideology which exploits the

unconscious and technical prowess in the creation of an visual/audio experience.

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Chapter one: Looking to Freud

"implicit in what follows is my conviction that the production of horror effects in and

through film is by no means a simple or easy task."

Steven Jay Schneider, Towards an Aesthetic of Cinematic Horror, p.134

Freud's Influence

This investigation of the recurring uncanny baby in horror film begins with a discussion of

Sigmund Freud. Known as the founding father of Psychoanalysis, Freud was an innovative

and controversial figure. His writings not only established the central theories and practices

of psychoanalysis, they helped unearth important questions of the human condition. He

wrote many articles throughout his lifetime drawing from diverse fields including

anthropology, aesthetics, art, religion and society.

Although many of his views and sometimes speculative theories have been met with much

conflict and dissatisfaction, particularly from a feminist stance, his writings have provided

the impetus for a new way of looking at things, a new way of reading into the myths of

civilisation and a new way of excavating and interpreting the unconscious vestiges of daily

life. The 20th Century has been called the ‘Freudian century'; this clearly indicates that

Freud’s impact has been enormous.

Discussing Freud for the purpose of this essay is inevitable because not only has he

influenced the way we analyse Film, his essay ‘The Uncanny’ (1919) discusses what it means

to evoke an uncanny sensation and why certain things give us this feeling. The uncanny or

‘unheimlich’ will be discussed in depth in chapter 2. For this opening chapter, we will take a

look at Freud’s influence on Art and Film.

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The worlds of Art and Film have developed alongside the Freudian enquiries of the 20th

Century, both gaining new branches and refreshing outlooks. Surrealism, the art and

philosophical movement, is a product of Freud’s analytic writings reaching out to the art

world. The Surrealist collective, lead by its founder André Breton, used Freud’s theories and

practices as basis for their art work. Tired of the mundanity of 'rational art', they focussed

much of their work on dreams and the unconscious and took advantage of some

psychoanalytic techniques to generate their art and poetry as well as developing many of

their own techniques.

The paintings of Francis Bacon have similarly been both influenced by psychoanalytic theory,

and examined under it; "Freud's essay, "The Economic Problem of Masochism," available in

English translation in 1924, sketched what he called "moral masochism," arguing that the

child translates a sense of guilt into a wish for parental punishment, a wish expressed in

fantasies of beatings by the father and of having "a passive (feminine) sexual relation to

him." Freud's essay is crucial in interpreting Bacon's work."1

Freud and Film Analysis

Film theory has similarly undergone a development of adapting Freud’s practices in the way

we examine film, Freudian or Psychoanalytic Film Theory being a categorical branching of

film studies.

The birth of Cinema and the birth of Psychoanalysis both happened at the end of the 19th

century. “Lumière brothers were screening the results of their newly developed

'cinematograph', in 1895, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer published their groundbreaking

Studies on Hysteria.”2 The schools of Cinema and Psychoanalysis are said to have parallel

histories. It is somewhat scarce that their lines have happened to mutually cross.

Psychoanalysis does not look on film studies the same way that film looks to Freud’s

theories. Freud always had an inherent scepticism when it came to cinema; his disinterest

has been widely recognised. In a letter to Karl Abraham Freud refuses the powers of cinema

to capture the unconscious; “no way that the abstractions of psychoanalysis can be given

1 Eva K. Man, Reclaiming the Body: Francis Bacon's Fugitive Bodies and Confucian Aesthetics on Bodily

Expression

2 "Honey I Kidded the Shrink". The Guardian, June 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/jun/17/features.review

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acceptable plastic representations”3. Philosopher and psychoanalyst J. B. Pontalis remarked

when discussing John Huston’s film ‘Freud’ (1962), “the unconscious does not present itself

to be seen, fall into sight; the image does not receive, entertain, quite simply get the

unconscious.”4 Perhaps it is the psychoanalyst’s point of view that is not compatible with the

cinematic art form. Psychoanalysis’ method of excavating and untangling abstract mental

complexes differs from the intention of the film maker to create art and narrative through

images. As Stephen Heath puts it; “Freud’s psychoanalysis, that is, interrupts the vision of

images, challenges the sufficiency of the representations they make, where cinema aims to

sustain vision, to entertain – to bind in – the spectator with images.”5

Although there is much friction when comparing the role of the psychoanalyst and the role

of the film maker, Freudian analysis became central to film theorists in the 1970s and 1980s.

Christian Metz said in his 1974 book ‘Psychoanalysis and Cinema’ that he hoped these two

fields would be reciprocal someday. Psychoanalytic film theorists have analyzed films for

their content, and thus been able to discover artefacts of the filmmaker’s unconscious, but

more importantly film theory uses psychoanalysis as a means to discuss the process of

cinema. The relationship between the screen and the spectator has been compared, by

Metz among others, to what Jacques Lacan has called ‘the mirror stage’. This is the moment

when a child first sees its own reflection in a mirror and begins to develop the concept of

‘self’. In the film journal 'Screen', Stephen Heath admits that “psychoanalysis is an essential

tool for solving the problem of the psychological identity of the cinema spectator”6. Cinema

is a device that has been modelled on our unconscious, and when we, the spectator,

confront what is on the screen, we experience a reproduction of “the key moments prior to

the forming of his/herself.”7

Although cinema hasn’t made an obvious impact on psychoanalysis, many apt comparisons

have been made; “Andrea Sabbadini thinks that seeing a film 'is similar to what happens in

psychoanalysis' - for a brief period, you are taken outside of your world, outside of real time,

3 Stephen Heath, Endless Night: Cinema & Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories, p.30

4 Ibid, p.30

5 Ibid, p.31

6 Pedro Sangro Colón, "Films from the Couch: Film Theory and Psychoanalysis", Journal of Medicine and

Movies, Vol.4, issue 1, 2008 http://revistamedicinacine.usal.es/index.php/en/vol4/num1/194

7 Ibid

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to a place where entire lives can pass by in a matter of minutes. 'And then of course we have

to emerge from it,' he says. 'We leave the session or the cinema, and have to be careful

crossing the road.'”8 Cinema has often been said to be dreamlike, but notably this statement

has been inverted to form a concept of the dream state; in the late 1940s B. D. Lewin

discussed the idea of the ‘dream screen’ (the screen on which our dreams are projected). He

went as far as saying that it symbolized “the maternal breast hallucinated by the child asleep

after feeding – it realizes a regression to primary narcissism”.9 We can’t ignore the dark,

womblike cavity in which we experience cinema; the movie theatre; a place where we

confront fantasy and horror, as if being subject to a dream or nightmare.

Sublimation and Cinema

When we ask the question why do we make cinema, or any form of art, perhaps looking to

existentialism or aesthetic theory would be the most direct route to some answers, but

within Freud’s writings we can give light on the subject from a psychoanalytic angle. Many of

Freud’s works dealt with cultural and aesthetic issues, one of which discusses his theory of

‘sublimation’ and its relation to the development of culture. ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’

(1930) was written and published within the last 10 years of Freud’s life. He discusses the

structural needs of civilisation in comparison to the individual’s needs. He views the

individual as being in perpetual search of happiness, a happiness that is unobtainable

because the individual’s needs are repressed in order for the good of the community. Laws

and moral code are in place to protect society. He sees civilisation as a system of ‘repression’

and ‘sublimation’. When an individual’s instinctual needs are repressed because they are not

socially acceptable, they can be redirected (or sublimated) into non-instinctual modes of

expression such as art, music, literature, politics or science. Freud sees sublimation as a

necessary and positive aspect of civilisation; “an especially conspicuous feature of cultural

development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or

ideological, to play such an important part in civilised life".10

8 The Guardian, op.cit.

9 Heath, op.cit p.32

10 Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents part iii

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Freud’s definition of sublimation is not without flaws. Freud was unable to provide a means

of differentiating sublimation of repressed instincts from neurosis, other than using social

values to determine whether the individual’s activities were socially acceptable or neurotic

and therefore pathological. His relying on social norms to define a central psychoanalytic

theory has been criticized, but the concept of our repressed unconscious becoming

sublimated into art, film and culture is something of value to this essay.

When we view Horror film as a product of sublimation, Freud’s theory becomes quite

appropriate and applicable. Horror film is loaded with instinctual and unconscious themes.

Horror film has often been described as having society's repressed content at its focal point.

Whether it is society's taboos, repressed wishes and desires, or our childhood complexes

and surmounted primitive beliefs, Horror film reflects these repressed notions back at us,

the viewer. In chapter two we will explore Freud's analysis of the 'Uncanny' sensation, and

how it is at the heart of cinematic horror.

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Chapter two: The Uncanny

In this chapter I will focus on examining Freud's essay 'The Uncanny' (1919) and explore

some responses to it from both psychoanalytic and film disciplines. An uncanny sensation is

generally that which arouses dread, unpleasantness and repulsion, but it has special

properties which distinguish it from pure terror. Many questions will need to be answered in

order to understand the uncanny and its manifestations in horror film. From Freud's work

we can discover what classifies as an uncanny feeling, why such a feeling exists and what

triggers it. In examining the key points from which Freud constructs his analysis of the

uncanny, I hope to throw light on the relationship between the birth, childhood, parenthood

and the uncanny. To illustrate how such a concept has helped change the way we look at

horror film, I will be referring to Julia Kristeva's essay 'Powers of Horror' (1980) and Barbara

Creed's Screen journal "The Monstrous Feminine" (1986).

Freud introduces his investigation by acknowledging that the uncanny is related to the

philosophy of aesthetics, which he describes as being "not merely the theory of beauty, but

the theory of the qualities of feeling". He is aware of the seemingly counter-productive angle

of a psychoanalyst examining an aesthetic topic, as psychoanalysis is aimed at looking

beyond imagery and feeling, and unearthing meaning by examining the unconscious. He

assumes two courses of action in order to explain what it means to evoke an uncanny

sensation. Firstly, he analyzes the meaning that has been attached to the word 'uncanny' or

'unheimlich' throughout history. Secondly, he gathers together many examples of sensations,

situations and experiences which arouse in us the feeling of the uncanny, but before he

begins either course of action he reassures us that; "both courses lead to the same result:

the "uncanny" is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us,

once very familiar."11

In the first part of Freud's 3-part essay he unravels the meaning that has been attached to

the German word "heimlich" to discover that it has been interpreted in two very different

ways; one meaning homely, familiar or intimate, and the other meaning concealed, kept

11 Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny", The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. 17, p.220

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from sight, or withheld from others. Because of these two meanings, the opposite

"unheimlich", therefore, also has two possible meanings; something which is unhomely,

unfamiliar, or something which should be kept secret but is no longer. Freud quotes

Schelling; "'Unheimlich' is the name for everything that ought to have remained . . . hidden

and secret and has become visible."12 It is Schelling's definition of 'unheimlich' that Freud is

most interested in, as it supports the angle he takes through most of the investigation. The

initial interpretation of 'unheimlich' as simply unfamiliar is not ignored, it is used in contrast

with the second interpretation to show that there is more to the uncanny than just

unfamiliarity. Freud ends this first section by acknowledging that; "heimlich is a word the

meaning of which develops towards an ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its

opposite, unheimlich. Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of heimlich."13 This

dual nature of the uncanny can become confusing, but when broken down, it can help us

realise that there are simply two levels of interpreting the uncanny; the surface level being

concerned with intellectual uncertainty and unfamiliarity, and the second level being a

reaction to something familiar to us which has gone through a process of repression and

resurfacing. This "secret nature" of the uncanny, as he puts it, is what Freud aims to unravel

throughout the following sections of his essay.

In the second section of 'The Uncanny', Freud gathers and reviews multiple sources which

arouse an uncanny sensation "in a very forcible and definite form". Many of the examples he

uses are taken from his lengthy summary and analysis of Hoffman's short story 'The

Sandman' (1816). He discusses the anxiety in losing one's eyes and its connection to the

castration complex, the idea of the "double" being connected to an early stage of primary

narcissism, the notion of an inner repetition-compulsion and the belief in the omnipotence

of thoughts. He also adds to these examples taken from The Sandman, by recounting certain

patient's experiences from his own psychoanalytic practices. He concludes this collection of

examples with a very peculiar yet apt observation:

"It often happens that neurotic men declare that they feel there is something

uncanny about the female genital organs. This unheimlich place, however, is the

entrance to the former Heim (home) of all human beings, to the place where each

one of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning. There is a joking saying that

"Love is home-sickness" and whenever a man dreams of a place or a country and

12 Schelling, Ibid, p.224

13 Freud, Ibid, p.226

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says to himself, while he is still dreaming: "this place is familiar to me, I've been here

before", we may interpret the place as being his mother's genitals or her body. In this

case too, then, the unheimlich is what was once heimisch, familiar; the prefix "un-" is

the token of repression."14

This morbid anxiety surrounding returning to the womb has taken other forms, evident in

one of the examples Freud listed. There is a definite connection in the idea of being buried

alive, which Freud notes as being the most uncanny thing of all to some, with the idea of

returning to the womb. Freud elaborates on this; "psychoanalysis has taught us that this

terrifying phantasy is only a transformation of another phantasy which had originally nothing

terrifying about it at all, but was filled with a certain lustful pleasure - the phantasy, I mean,

of intra-uterine existence."15 Apart from illustrating a particularly obscure fantasy, this shows

us that not all sources of uncanny sensations began as sources of dread, some began as a

primitive desire which has gone through the process of repression.

In the final section of 'The Uncanny' Freud arranges the examples discussed in the previous

section into two categories. He claims that an uncanny sensation (specifically the

uncanniness brought on by repression) can either be due to the return of surmounted

primitive beliefs, or the re-emergence of repressed infantile complexes. When referring to

surmounted primitive beliefs, he suggests this includes discarded childhood beliefs or the

beliefs of our primitive forefathers. Beliefs in animism, the omnipotence of thoughts, the

return of the dead, toys and dolls coming to life are all examples of primitive beliefs we have

surmounted, but when something occurs which confirms any of these primitive beliefs to be

true we are left with a particularly uncanny sensation. On the other hand, when referring to

repressed infantile complexes, Freud is suggesting that it is the repression of a definite

material that has returned. "We might say that in the one case what had been repressed was

a particular ideational content and in the other the belief in its physical existence."16 The

examples Freud suggests as being a repression of infantile complexes are to do with

returning to the womb, or the mothers body, and the castration complex. Freud however

does not seem to offer any other examples of physical infantile complexes, simply suggesting

that similar complexes (such as the loss of one's eyes, or hands) are just disguised forms the

two prominent complexes mentioned.

14 Ibid, p.245

15 Ibid, p.244

16 Ibid, p.249

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This is where Julia Kristeva's concept of the 'abject' becomes helpful to us. She describes

that which is abject as; "what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect

borders, positions, rules."17 Barbara Creed extends its definition in her 'Screen' essay, 'Horror

and the Monstrous-Feminine';

"The place of the abject is 'the place where meaning collapses' the place where 'I' am not. The abject threatens life; it must be 'radically excluded' from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self."18

That which threatens the self, on a daily level, includes bodily fluids and waste which must be ejected from the body so that the body can continue living. Thus the corpse becomes the pinnacle of abjection. When the body itself falls beyond the border it is no longer subject nor object, it must be ejected from society.

Kristeva states that abjection does not fall under what defines the uncanny; "Essentially different from "uncanniness", more violent, too, abjection is elaborated through a failure to recognize its kin; nothing is familiar, not even the shadow of a memory."19 I feel that the two concepts are more closely linked than she insists. Abjection is likely an extension of the uncanny sensation. The abject is based on the symbolic borders of our civilisation, these borders help define the self and are concerned with abstract notions of our physical being. There are very similar traits shared by the abject and the type of uncanniness caused by repressed infantile complexes. Both consist of repressed physical material producing a horrifying sensation. This physical material in both cases is situated behind borders established in early childhood. Kristeva notes that the mother is a prominent figure in the defining of the abject; "Abjection preserves what existed in the archaism of preobjectal relationship, in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be."20 This reflects the infantile complexes surrounding the womb, the mothers body, and the oedipal taboo, with which Freud uses to define the uncanny. Although the two concepts are obviously not the same thing, I feel that Kristeva's theory of the abject can be seen as an extension of Freud's definition of the uncanny. Kristeva has

17 Julia Kristeva, "Powers of Horror". In Kelly Oliver (ed.) The Portable Kristeva, p.232

18 Barbara Creed, "Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine", Screen, Vol. 27, January 1986, p.46

19 Kristeva, op.cit., p.233

20 Ibid, p.236

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made progress by theorizing abjection, where Freud has cut himself short (which I will demonstrate when closing this chapter).

In returning to the subject of Freud's uncanny, differentiating these two situations in which

an uncanny feeling can arise from either the return of surmounted primitive beliefs or

physical infantile complexes is an important step towards the goals of this essay. The

uncanny sensation has its roots in beliefs and complexes repressed since childhood. Many of

these examples are formed in early childhood, especially that of the fantasy of intra-uterine

existence and complexes surrounding the mothers body. It is clear that situations which hark

back to a primary stage of development are sensitive and prone to evoking uncanniness.

When we look at the two modes through which the uncanny can arise, one is centred

around an intellectual repression, and the other a repression of physical material. Discerning

the intellectual uncanny and the physical uncanny is something of huge benefit for

examining where the theme of the uncanny baby lies in horror film, it also helps us discuss

the uncanny as a sensation which can be evoked not only in reality, but in certain cases

through fiction and the film medium.

"We must not let our predilection for smooth solution and lucid exposition blind us to the fact that these two classes of uncanny experience are not always sharply distinguishable. When we consider that primitive beliefs are most intimately connected with infantile complexes, and are, in fact, based upon them, we shall not be greatly astonished to find the distinction often rather a hazy one."21

Freud does not ignore addressing the fact that most of the examples he chooses to illustrate

the uncanny are from fictional sources. He uses these examples hypothetically in his essay,

as if they were real life situations, in order to support his hypothesis. These examples

themselves, as pieces of fictional literature, do not necessarily evoke an uncanny feeling.

Freud explains; "nearly all the instances which contradict our hypothesis are taken from the

realm of fiction and literary productions. This may suggest a possible differentiation

between the uncanny that is actually experienced, and the uncanny as we merely picture it

or read about it."22 He goes on to discuss what happens when we are subjected to

uncanniness in fiction; "the realm of phantasy depends for its very existence on the fact that

its content is not submitted to the reality-testing faculty. " When we read fiction, we readily

accept the new boundaries of the fictional world and leave behind us the world of reality.

21 Freud, op.cit., p.249

22 Ibid, p.247

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"Wish-fulfillments, secret powers, omnipotence of thoughts, animation of lifeless

objects, all the elements so common in fairy-stories, can exert no uncanny influence

here; for, as we have learnt, that feeling cannot arise unless there is a conflict of

judgement whether thing which have been "surmounted" and are regarded as

incredible are not, after all, possible; and this problem is excluded from the

beginning by the setting of the story."23

All of these uncanny themes have potential to evoke uncanniness in reality, but have no such

effect in fiction because they belong to the class of the uncanny which acts on surmounted

primitive beliefs. It is only in particular cases when the author brings us into a world in which

we are lead to believe is similar to our reality, and then deceives us by overstepping the

bounds of possibility. In these such cases we tend to feel slightly cheated as we are seldom

satisfied by the author's attempted deceit. Freud, in bringing his essay to a close, does not

elaborate on the possibilities of the second class of the uncanny (regarding physical infantile

complexes), he merely states; "the class which proceeds from repressed complexes is more

irrefragable and remains as powerful in fiction as in real experience". His investigation is

abruptly cut short, as though he has tread too far into aesthetic grounds of reasoning. As

mentioned earlier, this is where Kristeva's theory of abjection is a credit to us. Another

factor that Freud fails to include is the possibilities of film, which, if we recall from chapter

one, was among the least of his interests, as a new medium and experience of his time.

These two areas Freud has neglected are central to the development of this thesis. In the

following chapter, we will look to the "silence, solitude and darkness", elements of the

infantile morbid anxiety class of uncanny which finds itself in horror film, almost exclusively

evoked by portrayals of birth, reproduction, and parenthood.

23 Ibid, p.250

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Chapter three: Cinematic Horror & the Uncanny Baby

"Fiction presents more opportunities for creating uncanny sensations than are

possible in real life"24

In this final chapter, I will focus my discussion on three films which I have selected because

of their powerful uncanny effects and their central focus on birth, parenthood and the

uncanny baby. I will be analysing the content of these films to discover underlying

ideological connections to the return of the repressed. I wish to illustrate, in each case, how

the potent uncanny effects lie primarily in their portrayals of babies and events surrounding

the origins of life. Secondly, I will discuss the poetics of particularly uncanny scenes in each

of the three films, when discussing the poetics I will be examining aspects of the narrative,

mise en scene, visual design, and anything related to the construction of the visual and

auditory experience of film. The three films I will discuss are 'Rosemary's Baby' (1968) dir.

Roman Polanski, 'Alien' (1979) dir. Ridley Scott, and 'Eraserhead' (1977) dir. David Lynch.

By analysing these films adopting Freud's theoretical approach, I hope to uncover why these

films are particularly uncanny and why we seek to create and experience films which evoke

such a feeling, and by discussing the poetics of each film, I will also shed light on how such a

feeling is constructed and how the mise en scene can be loaded with connotations which

evoke the uncanny. Critical analyses can often fall short when they rely solely on ideological

findings. An uncanny sensation cannot permeate through film without the careful design

and construction of the mise en scene. It is the pacing, rhythm, visual design etc. that carry

the ideological messages. Without carrying any evocative meaning, the mise en scene can

only succeed in creating reaction-based feelings such as tension, fear, or disgust. However,

without an underlying structure and particular attention to visual design, meaning cannot

be communicated. The two are interdependent when it comes to evoking an uncanny

sensation in the viewer. In order to create successful cinematic horror, horror being

something other than fear or terror, I believe that both need to be carefully considered.

24 Ibid, p.251

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I have found in my research that film theorists have often dealt with horror film by drawing

from either extremities to support their arguments, on one side resorting to an ideological

uncovering of the text, and on the other side discussing the technical construction of the

experience. I feel it is necessary, and appropriate in this circumstance, to explore both

dimensions of film to address the quality of feeling the uncanny suggests.

As Robin Wood states in his influential essay "An Introduction to the American Horror Film"

(1979); "the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our

civilization represses or oppresses, its re-emergence dramatized, as in our nightmares, as an

object of horror, a matter for terror, and the happy ending (when it exists) typically

signifying the restoration of repression."25 This statement sheds light on why we choose to

create and experience horror film, but the essay itself is focussed on finding notions of social

repression in horror film's monsters. Wood sees the monsters as the object of horror and

thus repression, but Steven Jay Schneider suggests that this is too narrow a view. He

explains; "this by itself does not tell us very much at all about why some monsters are

widely held to be more (or less) frightening than others. Nor does it tell us how it is that

particular films (of whatever genre) manage to provoke horror and related emotional

responses in viewers when such effects appear to be only tangentially related to the

appearance or even the existence of a manifest monster."26 He goes on to say; "it seems

clear that no analysis focusing exclusively on what monsters "mean," or on why they are

capable of horrifying viewers in the first place, will be sufficient to explain the relative

power of horror (and other) films to horrify."27

For the uncanny sensation to be fully exploited, careful attention to detail in every aspect of

film making is what makes the difference. The horror film monster can carry cultural values

and repressed ideology, but it is the events surrounding the monster that evoke the visceral

sensations of horror in the viewer. Film, like literature, communicates fictional stories, but

film has the benefit of directly accessing our visual and auditory senses. Where literary

fiction can suggest uncanny imagery, yet rarely evokes an actual reaction of uncanniness in

the reader, film can succeed with its onslaught of image and sound. If we recall from

25 Robin Wood, Towards an Aesthetic of Cinematic Horror, p.132

26 Steven Jay Schneider, Ibid, p.

27 Ibid, p.133

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chapter one, Freud had a notable disinterest in film. Franz Kafka was also famously sceptical

of cinema's allure; "the speed of movements and the precipitation of successive image...

condemn you to a superficial vision of a continuous kind."28 Perhaps this "superficial vision

of a continuous kind" is what horror film uses to its advantage. Given the right conditions,

film can evoke horror in the viewer. Schneider looks to philosopher Robert C. Solomon for a

definition of the feeling of horror; "Solomon has analyzed the concept of horror as an

intensely negative emotional response to specific objects and events, one that cuts across

the fiction/reality divide insofar as it does not require those experiencing it to believe in the

existence of the horrifying object or event in question."29

Before we begin to discuss the three films I have selected, it is necessary to keep in mind

that not all horror film aims to horrify. Horror films can find themselves within the genre

because of their conventions or iconography, but their goals can be aimed towards humour,

spectacle, titillation, disgust etc. The films that I have chosen to discuss are examples of

cinematic horror, films which do aim to horrify. It is why they horrify and how they horrify

which I am set on discovering. I have particular interest in examining the cinematic

techniques used in these three films and will be paying particular attention to the execution

of visual design, use of puppetry, props and other special effects. I believe without these

techniques and thoughtful design, these films could not live up to their uncanny and horrific

ideology.

We will first look at the film 'Rosemary's Baby' (1968), directed by Roman Polanski, which I

have chosen to open with because it is the most grounded in reality out of the three films,

but it is by no means the least provocative or horrifying.

28 Franz Kafka, Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, p.31

29 Schneider, op.cit, p.135

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The Maternal Experience in 'Rosemary's Baby'

The film follows Rosemary Woodhouse, a young newlywed who has just moved into an old

victorian house with her husband Guy. Rosemary is intent on conceiving a child, but Guy is

more interested in advancing his acting career. When she does become pregnant, it is only

after her having a nightmare involving her being tied down and demonically raped before a

host of naked old men and women, among them stand their recently acquainted

neighbours, Roman and Minnie Castavet. The films horror begins with a creeping lull as

Rosemary's is naively led into what becomes a situation filled with dread and insecurity.

The proximity of their next door neighbours (quite literally separated by a hidden door in

Rosemary's closet which leads into the Castavets' apartment) becomes increasingly

uncomfortable to Rosemary. However Guy seems to become increasingly attached to the

peculiar old couple, Roman promises to help Guy further his career through his connections

in theatre. Minnie takes it upon herself to hook Rosemary up with the Castavets' family

doctor, she gives Rosemary a daily herbal formula and a charm necklace which contains a

stench of tannis root.

The uncomfortable relationship between the neighbouring families is the source of a

growing uncanny atmosphere. Rosemary's suspicion grows as her pregnancy advances. The

Castavets' are an uncanny family, although they appear friendly they are imposingly so and

they insist that Rosemary take their potions and that she adopt their beliefs in occult

charms. We share Rosemary's suspicion in the Castavets because they represent a return of

civilisations surmounted beliefs. They're proximity to Rosemary's home is a constant

reminder of the dual definitions of 'unheimlich'. They appear familiar, close to home, yet

they're proximity is threatening and this threat lies hidden behind the Woodhouses' closet.

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Figure 1: Rosemary's inversion of the maternal figure

The feeling of growing horror is also inherent in Rosemary's pregnant state. As her baby

grows, her figure becomes more and more gaunt. Her image is an inversion of the typical

expecting mother, instead of abundance and growth, she reflects sickness and death. Her

image is a reflection of her mental stability and her slow rejection of the Castavets' ritualistic

dependency.

She is captured and sedated after a hysterical attempt of escape. When she awakes she is

told that she delivered a baby which didn't survive the birth. It is in her weakest state that

she remains full of suspicion. She is awakened from a dream by a faint baby's crying. She

defies her bed-ridden state and follows the crying to the closet with the hidden door. She

clears away the shelves of the closet and with a knife in hand passes through the forbidden

door into the Castavets' apartment. When Rosemary clears out her closet and steps through

the literal and symbolic border between her apartment and the Castavets' world, she is

confronting all that is uncanny and abject in a hope to re-instate natural order/control.

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Figure 2: Through the keyhole of the hidden door

We follow her down the hall as she glances at paintings depicting hellish scenes. She

remains defiant when she staggers into the lounge and is greeted by a gathering of Satan

worshippers. Although she has uncovered the Castavets for what they are and can stand

defiantly against their Satanic beliefs for the sake of her baby, nothing could prepare her for

the moment she encounters her very own baby. As she leans over the ominous, gothic

cradle, finally ready to embrace her newborn child, her eyes widen and her hands rise to her

mouth as she is met with the image of her baby, or rather Satan's baby. Her reaction is

perhaps harking towards the reality of post-natal depression;

"Even Rosemary's response to her demon-child suggests a real mother's

contradictory emotions toward her infant. Bibring finds frequent 'disturbances in the

earliest attitudes of the young mother toward her newborn baby'; Deutsch remarks

that many women first view their child as a 'rejected alien object'"30

The idea of a mother rejecting her own baby is something of a challenging subject. Society

creates an idyllic image of the mother's love being unconditional and her pregnancy being

both sacred and wholesome. The reality of birth has had a long history of repression

30 Lucy Fischer, "Birth Traumas: Medicine, Parturition and Horror in Rosemary's Baby", Signs of Life, p.28

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stemming from the repression of sexuality and women throughout history. Rosemary's Baby

puts the viewer in Rosemary's position, we must confront this repressed material both

physical (the baby) and ideological (the Castavets' ritualistic beliefs).

Figure 3: Rosemary leans over the gothic crib

Although we never catch the slightest glimpse of Rosemary's baby, we can only imagine its

appearance judging by its mother's reaction, her frozen, silenced expression of true horror,

jarringly coupled with a distorted wailing wind instrument in the score. We are informed by

Roman, "he's got his father's eyes". This phrase appears traditionally as comforting,

reassuring in a real life situation, and there is no doubt that Roman meant it reassuringly.

We track Rosemary's instinctive glance towards Guy, who can barely be seen covering his

face with guilt. He is an actor after all, who has sacrificed his wife to bare the spawn of Satan

in return for advancing his career.

It is only at the closing seconds of the film where the viewer is left at odds with Rosemary's

place in all this uncanniness after empathising with her up until now. She makes her way

towards the towering, cradle clad in darkness, and she begins to rock her baby to sleep. She

steps up to become the mother to her baby, perhaps any mother would choose to do so. As

an audience, we are not prepared to accept this after following her through such a long,

harrowing journey. We are left with arguably the strongest uncanny sensation of the film.

Once again the mother becomes an object of self-sacrifice and unconditional love, but we

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are somewhat horrified by her decision. Rosemary's pain, struggle, self-sacrifice can stand in

for almost any mother's experience. The mother becomes a source of horror and

uncanniness to us in this very last shot. It forces us to reflect on the moments leading up to

our own delivery, and pulls on the chords of our unconscious infantile complexes.

As Lucy Fischer puts it; "In its social register, horror constitutes an expressionistic ‘allegory

of the real’"31 Rosemary's Baby, although telling a story with fantastical elements, becomes

a socially applicable allegorical experience.

While discussing the film's ideological traits, mainly through its' narrative, I have touched on

a couple of the films technical traits, such as the mothers gaunt image suggested by Mia

Farrow's delicate figure, makeup, and short hairstyle. The gothic crib is also a prominent

execution in the films visual design. It stands ominous and jarring against the Castavets

victorian decor, like an object from another world. The film is an adaptation of Ira Levin's

novel, published a year before the film's release, and is said to have been a very close,

scene-by-scene adaptation. Polanski has captured a rigorous sense of realism with an

underlying uncanny sensation. It is Polanski's attention to the mise-en-scène which throws

our glance at the slightest details, things which should have been concealed but have

nevertheless made their way into the shot. It is important to note that the mise-en-scène

often shows us a first person view through Rosemary's eyes. Thus we are subject to the

same suspicion and dread Rosemary experiences; “the film’s malign mise-en-scène

bespeaks a return of the repressed”.

Birth and Reproduction in 'Alien'

The arrival of 'Alien' (1979), "the crowning image of reproductive horror"32, marked a peak

culmination of the body-horror craze, the sci-fi horror genre and especially the growing

obsession with horrific babies. Ridley Scott's 'Alien' reached the widest audience out of the

31 Ibid, p.20

32 David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p.300

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three films I've chosen. Although commercially successful, it is not the most typical

Hollywood blockbuster. The sheer volume of analysis surrounding the film is a testament to

its individuality and the effect it had on its audience. This is not to say that all of the

literature on Alien uncovers ideology which was intentionally weaved into the film. Barbara

Creed's analysis of Alien in her essay exploring the 'Monstrous-feminine' in horror, for

example, is thorough and provocative. However, regardless of her focussing the discussion

on the horror of the maternal figuration in the film, the quantity and depth of analysis

almost overwhelms the film in discussion. Whether her investigation is over-zealous or not,

'Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine' remains a thoughtful source of inspiration, and a

powerful application of theory.

In this brief study of Alien, I will illustrate what it says about our taboos and repressed

notions of birth and reproduction. Once again I will refer to some of the technical

achievements in its production of uncanny effects.

The film's visual language is loaded with scenes of birth and reproduction. It opens with a

birth scene located in a womb-like chamber of the Nostromo, a mining spaceship on its

return journey towards Earth. Bathed in light, the crew members awaken from a long

artificially induced sleep. An artificial yet idyllic fulfilment of the fantasy of intra-uterine

existence, the ship stands in as the crew's mother, providing their life support. The scene is

calm, graceful and sterile, a stark contrast to the defilement and violation to come. After

landing on a nearby planet, following a distress signal, some of the crew members leave the

safety of the ship in hope to discover the source of distress. They traverse the vaginal

shaped entrance of an unidentified ship, seemingly a structure which has been untouched

since ancient times. Its horseshoe shape is reminiscent of the female ovaries. Its tunnels are

'gothic-organic' in their structure and give way to a huge womb-like cavity.

This is where, as Creed suggests, one of the film's many portrayals of the 'primal scene'

takes place. She states; "One of the major concerns of the sci-fi horror film is the reworking

of the primal scene ".33 The primal scene, as explained by Freud, is when a child either

watches, or fantasises about, its parents in a sexual act. A more extreme configuration of

the primal scene comes from a fantasy involving the parents in the sexual act of the child's

own conception, or while one is still an unborn baby in the womb. When the crew member

Kane sets foot in the sacred womb of the alien ship, he has already become part of an

33 Creed, op.cit., p.55

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enactment of the primal scene. The cavity is dotted with eggs, Kane cannot help but

approach one of them, placing his hand on its fleshy seam. When he makes contact, the

egg's opens up in front of him. When his gaze becomes fixated on what lies inside the egg,

this is where he is penetrated violently. His gender role is reversed in some way, as he

assumes the mother's role. The hatched creature blinds Kane by covering his eyes, it chokes

him by coiling its tail around his neck, and penetrates him, as the crew discover it has

inserted a phallic protrusion down his throat. "Kane himself is guilty of the strongest

transgression"34; He is punished for his fantasy of discovering the mysteries of conception

held within the egg, parallel to Oedipus' self punishment through blinding himself when he

discovers his treacherous act of incest and patricide.

Figure 4: Kane as the egg opens up to his fascination

We can see how the notions of this scene are potent with repressed material, mainly

infantile complexes surrounding the mother and the primal scene, using the question:

"where do babies come from?" as a means to draw in the audience and simultaneously

horrify them. Our unconscious infantile complexes are suitably exploited with this scene,

and the following birth scene.

When Kane is brought back into the Nostromo, the mother's body, Ridley advises against

this. His borders have been violated in an act of abjection, and thus she sees him as a threat

to the crew. After being unable to cut away the creature from Kane's face without

34 Ibid, p.57

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threatening his life, after a period of time it just falls off, discarded for its role has been

successful. The crew enjoy a meal with Kane, who has seemingly recovered without any

repercussions other than some bad dreams. As they are in the midst of eating, Kane is

suddenly suffers from convulsions and what appears to be an agonising pain in his

abdomen. They stretch him out on the dinner table and attempt to constrict his erratic

movements. The alien infant penetrates through the wall of his chest and stands protruding

like a phallus. What was hidden all along in his chest has violently re-emerged, bringing back

all the horror of the previous act. Kane's gender is once again inverted as he is forced to give

birth. This scene plays on a childhood belief most children rely on when they ponder the

very same question about the origin of babies; "what Freud described as a common

misunderstanding that many children have about birth, that is, that the mother is somehow

impregnated through the mouth and the baby grows in her stomach from which it is also

born."35 This reflection of an infantile belief adds to the scene's power to horrify, as does its

abject connotations; as Kristeva describes the effect of the abject within the subject;

“one can understand that it is experienced at the peak of its strength when that subject, weary of fruitless attempts to identify with something on the outside, finds the impossible within; when it finds that the impossible constitutes its very being, that it is none other than abject.”36

Figure 5: The foetal alien is born

35 Ibid, p.58

36 Kristeva, op.cit., p.232

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This scene is the most talked about scene of the film, it could even be the most memorable scene in the history of the sci-fi horror genre. It reached a wide audience, and had a lasting effect on them. David J. Skal talks of the films affect "the film prompted a good deal of repeat business - individuals challenging themselves to "handle" the scene, or bringing friends to watch their reactions."

Although the alien's form grows and changes throughout the second half of the film, it still

represents the foetal object born from a member of their crew, in an act of horror and

uncanniness. The alien foetus' growing threat and shape-shifting parallel to the infantile

complex changing form and intensity when under the process of repression.

Natural order is only redeemed when Ripley ejects the alien into the void of space, the

abject is forcefully ejected from society or the self, echoing the crews decision to eject

Kane's violated corpse into the abyss.

The poetics of Alien support its ideology with its high level of special effects and visual

design. Each scene of birth, abjection, and uncanniness is made visceral through attention to

detail in its design. As well as being the highest grossing of the three films, it also had the

highest budget. The costly special effects mark a huge part of its technical achievements, a

complete contrast to the humble crew and make-shift production design of David Lynch's

feature-length debut 'Eraserhead'.

H.R. Giger's concept designs are a credit to the films embedded ideological material. His

designs are employed in the visioning of the gothic-organic settings, technology and

creatures. Every aspect of the alien structures is a double image of sexual anatomy, and

death. From the ovarian ship, the vaginal tunnels and the womb-like cavity, to the bony

hands of death of the face-hugging alien, and the phallic/skull-like figure of the aliens head.

For all these designs to be made reality, credit goes to the special effects department. The

costume, animatronic puppetry, and set construction still stands the test of time. The scene

of the egg hatching and the aliens birth remain just as visceral and shocking to today's

audience as it did in 1979.

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'Eraserhead' and the Uncanny Baby

When sifting through Eraserhead to unearth hidden ideological connections there is a lot of

obscure and perplexing content which can be interpreted one way or another. It is

important that we don't resort to assigning arbitrary meanings to every abstraction or

detail. Many of the details Lynch embeds in his films are to add effect or to "make manifest

his desire to create 'film paintings'", as he had began his creative life as a painter and his

first piece of film based work was actually more of an animated painting of the title "6 Men

Getting Sick".

Lynch acts on his instinctual needs to create beauty from abstractions, his aesthetic vision is

based on following his instinct; "I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I

want to explore that are very disturbing. In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes

tremendous poetry and truth."37 Lynch doesn't see it fit to interpret his own work, and

leaves it up to the viewer. When we sift through his work, perhaps our judgments are as

good as any, but there is also a possibility that we can lift from his work the ideology which

Lynch might not have even been aware of, but which might have influenced his decisions

and his aesthetical choices on a subconscious level. Eraserhead is regarded as David Lynch's

most personal work. He began work on the film having moved to a particularly dangerous

part of Philadelphia with his first wife and baby daughter. His baby, who was born with

clubbed feet, needed corrective surgery which would have been a source of much anxiety

for him. He has also talked about having strange encounters on a day to day basis with

people in the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood depicted in Eraserhead is not far from an

uncanny reflection of Lynch's actual neighbourhood, suggested by the people, events and

setting.

Looking at the world of Eraserhead, we are faced with a truly 'uncanny neighbourhood'. The

post-industrial slabs of sheer concrete and rows of dirt mounds give way to a claustrophobic

and lonely cluster of dimly lit apartments and hotel rooms. We are unwillingly introduced to

a neighbourhood which fulfils the first meaning of 'unheimlich' meaning 'unhomely'. We

follow Henry, our main character, to the house of his girlfriend's family, who have invited

him to dinner. We soon discover that typical family behaviour is not to be expected in this

household. Every aspect of the family is uncanny, to Henry and the viewer. Henry is asked to

serve up the dinner, as a traditional act of respect. The dinner however is a distorted image

of the traditional family meal. A tray of tiny roasted chickens is presented to Henry, when

37 Schneider, The Cinema of David Lynch, p.5

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Henry proceeds to "cut them up just like regular chickens" the legs of the chicken begin to

wiggle and blood bubbles and seeps out from its cavity, a bad omen of what's to come.

Before Henry is brought to light about his fathering his girlfriend Mary X's newborn baby, he

is brought away from the dinner table and forcefully interrogated by her mother. She

demands that Henry tell her if he has had sexual intercourse with her daughter, to make the

situation more uncomfortable and completely out of Henry's control she begins kissing his

neck as she tells him he will be in a lot of trouble if he does not co-operate. This event

makes clear the underlying discomfort, obscurity, shame and repression attached to

sexuality, Henry's in particular. It is out of all this confusion and repression from which

comes the baby, the object which is most uncanny and horrifying in the film.

Figure 6: Henry's premature baby

The baby is both an object of uncanniness and abjection. The baby is uncanny because of its

appearance, there is some familiarity in its foetal form, but it is not fully formed. Our

expectations are used against us, but we are reassured/warned by Henry's soon to be

mother-in-law that it is in fact a baby "It's premature, but there is a baby". The baby is

uncanny because of the mental impediments it has on Henry. Throughout the film Henry is

Page | 27

helpless, the mother of the child leaves him after one night of trying to look after it, and

Henry is more or less incapable of taking any actions to help his situation. His nature is

passive and full of uncertainty, his only escape from reality is in his fantasies about a lady

performing in an imaginary stage within his radiator, but she is seen crushing sperm like

organisms below her feet. On some level, Henry is punished for his 'sexuality' (we get a

surreal preview of this from the film's opening scene capturing the moment of conception)

by having a premature child without prior warning. The baby's constant crying and sudden

falling into illness constantly challenges Henry's passive and unsure characteristics.

The baby becomes an embodiment of some form of the Oedipus complex. It is not physically

threatening to him, but mentally so. This becomes more forcefully obvious towards the

second half of the film. After a surreal and illicit sexual scene involving Henry and the

mysterious woman across the hall, where the baby is present at this suggestion of the

primal scene, Henry once again has a fantasy about the Lady in the radiator. She sings a

song of idyllic optimism on an empty checker-floored stage; "In heaven, everything is fine".

This time however, Henry appears on the stage as well. He moves to embrace the lady, but

is restricted by a searing white light and a wall of noise. She disappears and his fantasy has

become a nightmare as he is pushed off the stage by a dead plant on rollers. He grabs onto

a railing, and while rotating it in a nervous tick, his head pops off and lands in a pool of

blood on the stage. This moment's crude and violating nature is completely unanticipated.

Just visible is the phallus which rises from Henry's neck and decapitates Henry in a comical

and horrific act, accompanied with the 'boing' sound of a spring. Schneider illustrates very

adequately the horror of this situation;

"The slow, steady rise of the baby's (penis) head in place of Henry's own signals

Oedipal wish-fulfilment and in fact serves to over-determine psychoanalytic

interpretation: are we witnessing Henry's nightmare, the baby's fantasy, both at

once? Ultimately, the horror of this sequence is the horror of attack from within,

whether pyschically, socially ('As the internalisation of social labels, this interior

"baby" is an impediment to the fulfilment Henry seeks') or at a more primitive,

bodily level." 38

38 Ibid, p.15

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Figure 7: The scene of Henry's decapitation

Even in his fantasies, Henry's sexuality is under repression and this repression is objectified

by the appearance of his deformed baby.

Henry's baby also represents the abject. The baby constantly threatens the boundaries of

the clean and unclean, of the fully formed and half-formed. Henry is shocked when it

suddenly becomes ill. Its face is covered in pustules, its eyes glazed over and its rotted

mouth hangs open. Its body is bandaged and without limbs, almost looking like an

amputee's stump in itself. In the films finale, the pinnacle of abjection is reached when

Henry takes the scissors and cuts open the baby's bandages. The baby's torso opens up, as if

the bandages were required to keep its half-formed and defiled body held shut, to keep its

inner anatomy from being revealed. When Henry cuts the bandages open, he is finally

taking action and revoking his passive nature. What is repressed has now come to the

surface. He pierces the baby's bloated organs with the scissors in an act of desperation.

What follows is the flowing of every type of bodily substance; blood spurts from the baby's

mouth, and excrement piles high from the baby's organs. The abundance of waste is so

shocking that Henry cannot bare to look any longer. The baby's head begins stretching away

from its body, as if in a final attempt to detach itself. This is followed by a serious of shots of

the baby's head in a scaled-up form, taking up half of the room, even as Henry looks away,

he cannot escape the mental imagery. The light bulb burns out, and Henry's head looks

Page | 29

down in shame. A blinding light returns and Henry is finally able to embrace the Lady in the

radiator, the only object of redemption in the whole film, she is an abstract creation in

Henry's dreams who represents his resolved sexual anxieties. Kristeva illustrates the role of

abjection in the self and in society; "On the edge of nonexistence and hallucination, of a

reality that, if I acknowledge it, annihilates me. There, abject and abjection are my safe-

guards. The primers of my culture."39

Figure 8: The horror of Henry's infanticide

Looking at the film's poetics, we can safely say that Lynch has creatively constructed each

scene with a wide arsenal of techniques, including some which remain a secret to this day.

Most of Lynch's techniques are not quite as novel as theorists often make them out to be,

but it is the combination of his design vision and cinematic/audio effects that create a

particular atmosphere in Eraserhead. The film's ambient atmosphere is uncanny, our

perception of what is real and what is a daydream or nightmare is blurred at times. It

appears as though our difficulty in perception is shared with Henry, as a main character who

is so unsure of himself that his daydreams are sometimes hard to distinguish from his

waking life. Eraserhead's churning, dimly-lit, industrial neighbourhood provides an already

dreamlike setting. The characters in this setting frequently act abnormally, resulting in

uncontrolled outbursts of neurosis; such as Henry's girlfriend Mary X's twitches and spasms,

her mother's epileptic fit, and her father's frozen smiling gaze.

39 Kristeva, op.cit., p.230

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Almost any discussion on Eraserhead refers at some point to the mystery surrounding the

origins of the baby. All we can determine from the film itself is that the baby is a very real

impression of a half formed creature, which is brought to life in the film; living, breathing,

laughing, crying and excreting with such convincing presence. Our only explanation for this

mesmerising act is that the baby is puppeteered, its eye, mouth, tongue and head

movements are performed by an off-screen puppeteer. What remains a mystery is how this

puppet was designed, or conceived (possibly in a very literal sense). David Lynch has always

refused any explanation of the origins of the baby; "Lynch's staunch refusal to reveal the

answer on the grounds that 'magicians keep their secrets to themselves' has only served to

stoke people's curiosity."40 Critics and theorists are unable to determine whether the

creature was sculpted and fabricated, or whether it is composed of parts of an animal

foetus, modified to be puppeteered from off-screen. This enigmatic creature evokes a

profoundly uncanny feeling in itself; "Hoberman and Rosenbaum, who argue that 'the taboo

aspect of this question [whether the baby can be defined as a living creature] is, in fact,

central to the film's impact'"41 The baby is a liminal object, neither living nor dead, its very

nature is between the borders which define us.

I cannot go without mentioning Lynch's use of stop motion to add to the surreal atmosphere

of the film. It is somewhat reminiscent of the work of surrealist film-maker Jan Svankmajer.

He animates with clay and found objects, sometimes dead organic object such as a

dismembered tongue or pieces of meat. Lynch's mysterious baby has ties with Svankmajer's

bringing to life of dead organisms. Svankmajer's work just so happens to include a film

depicting a horrific baby, carved from a tree, of the name "Little Otik" (2000).

Lynch's powerful use of sound design cannot be ignored either. Lynch and sound designer

Alan Splet spent up to a year meticulously recording and treating the film's ambient

soundscapes and sound effects. There is an attention to detail and innovation that cannot

be matched, which coupled with the visuals has made this film unique and timeless.

40 Ibid, p.8

41 Ibid, p.17

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To close our discussion of Eraserhead, as Schneider remarks; "In Eraserhead, it is precisely

what can be represented (despite its impossibility) that generates such powerful feelings of

uncanniness, anxiety and disgust."42

By discussing the ideological and poetic aspects of these three films, I have illustrated that it

is exactly the focus on babies, reproduction, and parenthood which both draw the audience

and simultaneously horrify them.

42 Ibid, p.17

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Conclusion

The three films I have discussed form a pinnacle of cinematic horror. Not many films have

had quite the same effect on its audience. It just so happens that the three films deal with

different aspects of the same field of subject matter; the baby and reproduction as source of

horror, uncanniness and abjection.

In this three-part thesis I have sought to apply interdisciplinary concepts towards examining

the films. By first looking at Freud as a influential voice of historical, social and theoretical

significance, I have opened up our capacity to understand individual films and how they can

act as allegories of our civilisation. Freud's work has also influenced our discussion of the

experience of film itself and has shed light on why we choose to create and experience film,

a product of sublimation, as Freud suggests.

In the second part, I have examined Freud's essay 'The Uncanny' in depth, so that we can

get a better sense of how this sensation is constructed in both reality and fiction. By cross-

referencing Julie Kristeva's theory of 'abjection' ' I have shown Freud's essay to be a

somewhat incomplete analysis, where Kristeva is in place able to extend our understanding

of the feeling of horror attached to physical complexes and boundaries. I have also referred

to Barbara Creed's essay on what is considered the 'monstrous-feminine' in order to

demonstrate this field of ideology applied to actual films, and support my thesis which is in a

similar vein.

Where I differ from Barbara Creed's methodology is in the third part, where I discuss the

three chosen films in terms of their ideological and theoretical content, but also, of their

technical merits. By doing so, I have not based my whole study of what is horrifying and

uncanny solely on the abstract and intellectual but also on the concrete and visceral. The

nature of the uncanny is both abstract and visceral, and my application of ideological

knowledge and technical assessment is both appropriate and necessary. With examining the

three films adopting the methodology stated above, I have illustrated both why and how

these films are so outstanding in their ability to horrify. Having explored the notions of

cinematic horror and its obsession with reproduction the uncanny baby can be put to rest.

Page | 33

Bibliography

Books:

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Page | 34

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Colón, Sangro Pedro. "Films from the Couch: Film Theory and Psychoanalysis",

Journal of Medicine and Movies, Vol.4, issue 1, 2008

http://revistamedicinacine.usal.es/index.php/en/vol4/num1/194, (18/02/2013)

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/jun/17/features.review, (18/02/2013)