Comments on: Gyms and Jams

By: alex

alex — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:32:17 +0000

It’s not nightshade, it’s definitely grapes!!! Eat them grapes!

By: Yelena

Yelena — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 11:57:08 +0000

Oh wow, I had not given much thought to the supernatural stuff at all and really like your reading of Charlie as a confused devil struggling with dysmorphia. Wow. I have not seen Babadook (yet), but was compelled by the idea of motherhood horror to watch We Need to Talk about Kevin. That one too has the twin theme of horror at a mother possibly hating her child and the unreliability of the filmic reality. In both, my first thought was, is this really happening or is it a distorted perception through the mother’s warped psyche? (In Kevin, that is actually the case, since it’s all retrospective recollections through her guilty conscience.) Kevin also introduces the idea that the mother and evil child are the same or somehow similar, which I thought was a low key subtext in Hereditary (both are obsessive artists). Ultimately, both morhers struggle and are punished for the bad thing inside them, as personified by the evil child. Poor, guilty mothers, your ineffectual husbands will not help you!

By: Yours Truly

Yours Truly — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 12:11:49 +0000

P.S. definitely also very much agree re: disability = monstrousness. For sure the allergy, the clicking, the oddly adult/“weird” face and body I think call up disability and are def part of why the mom (and the audience) find Charlie disturbing. I mean the clicking was also a clever filmmaking choice bc it enables there to be a sound component to the haunting of the brother, but of course it also indicates Charlie has some kind of disorder or issue. And it’s clear that is part of the mom’s disgust and struggle. I think the movie presents that disgust as stemming from the mom’s perhaps unconscious awareness that the grandma has somehow tainted this child (that weird line where she says she kept her son away from the grandma but “let her have” Charlie), but the taint itself is def figured as disability in some senses.

Ugh!

By: Yours Truly

Yours Truly — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 11:58:24 +0000

Totally!! I love this reading. So much of the horror of the movie ended up being this kind of Freudian motherhood nightmare (prob not literally Freudian; I guess I use that word whenever I mean “creepy unconscious feelings between family members”), which is why I compared it to Babadook…I definitely agree that as the movie unfurls it becomes obvious the mom is massively struggling with her own hatred of her children (the dream where she tells him I DIDNT WANT YOU, or that crazily stressful dinner table scene where it’s so disturbing because you’re like wait, this isn’t how parents are supposed to talk to/about their kids eg!). It’s intense to think of all the Satan stuff being displacement—were you struck, watching it, by the feeling of doubting what was real? Over & over I felt like the movie pushed scenes until you started wondering if actually something else was going on. Eg the scene when she’s begging the husband to burn that book: at first I felt like “oh great she’s figured out how to fix this situation” but the scene of her begging & sobbing & him looking at her with such shock & sorrow went on so long that I started thinking, is this whole thing just in her head? She’s made to seem so unhinged, and there’s the whole subplot about her having mental illness in her past, he’s clearly been her caretaker in this regard…anyway I guess what I’m saying is, I wonder if there’s a way to read all the supernatural stuff as a manifestation of this woman’s profound struggle to not hate her children. In babadook that reading is made more explicit than in Hereditary but still…

(All this being said, sidenote: I also really like the idea that Charlie was so weird and repulsive because she was actually a devil, confused by his incorrect form. It’s actually very sad and probably another metaphor for something—the way Charlie (aka King Paimon) seemed confused by her own nature, her urges, etc. The idea of SATAN being a confused misfit kid was oddly compelling to me. Him not knowing who he is because he’s in a female body?!! I wonder if there’s a reading about gender/body dysmorphia in there as well. Charlie was such a troubling figure partly because she herself seemed so at odds with herself, so confused by just existing in the world. She didn’t know that her confusion wasn’t her fault, it was because she was Satan. She didn’t know! But that’s sad—and so sad how at the end Joan says “your first incorrect form has been fixed” or whatever. So sad to think of Charlie as simply an incorrect vessel. Which I suppose is how her mother also thought of her…!)

But yeah, I agree with your reading, and think it’s part of what constructs the low-grade feeling of dread and horror throughout the film—like it’s not just the supernatural stuff that’s scary, it’s also this woman’s incredible psychological strain at her inability to bond with her kids. Motherhood horror—also her horror at the fact that her hatred of her kids means she is just like her own horrible mother, hence the title of the film!

I don’t know if this is coherent but I love your reading and I’m so glad you watched it! I STILL find myself thinking about it all the time…

By: Yelena

Yelena — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 04:36:32 +0000

Also,—more spoilers—forgot to mention the extreme spectacle of the daughter’s decapitation as a wish-fulfillment to get rid of the troublesome disabled child and her repulsive (to the viewer) face stuff (clicking, chewing, wheezing, not speaking).

By: Yelena

Yelena — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 04:32:14 +0000

Spoiler alert to those who have not seen Hereditary. The previous post convinced me to go out and see it immediately and I just can’t get out of my head the idea that —-lots of spoilers ahead—-this is a movie about a mother’s fear of not properly bonding with her child(ren), and in particular, having a disabled child with whom she cannot connect, despite the fact that they are in some key ways totally the same character (obsessive artist). I was really bothered by the way the daughter’s exaggerated physicality, i.e. strange mannerisms, infantilized face and seemingly prematurely adult body (highlighted especially by the gross focus on her chewing on that chicolate bar) just really made her a repulsive character whose inscrutability added to her frightening nature. So basically disability > monstrosity > unnatural fear by the mother towards her child. Also, the son was for some reason a lot darker than the parents, and again, the mother just couldn’t quite accept him as her own (even if subconsciously with the fire). Am I totally missing something? Sorry to word-vomit on your comments page, I really would like to know what you think.