Affect, sibling bonds and childhood sexual abuse in Shame and The War Zone

ABSTRACT

This paper considers how subtextual suggestions of childhood abuse overshadow the centrally presented narratives of sex addiction in Steve McQueen’s Shame and adolescent daughter-father incest in Tom Roth’s The War Zone. Drawing on these films as companion pieces, we discuss how the unseen, unspoken, and physical conveyance of emotion – understood as affect triggered by life experience – is able to capture the trauma of familial child abuse, the disavowal of these histories, and the inescapable and exclusive relationship of co-traumatized siblings.

KEYWORDS:

• Shame
• affect
• childhood sexual trauma
• siblings

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank See-Saw Films for providing the 2010 script of Shame and La Trobe University for the Outside Study Program that enabled the completion of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Terrie Waddell

Dr Terrie Waddell (PhD) is Associate Professor/Reader in Screen Studies at La Trobe University. Her research focuses on the relationship between screen media, gender, popular culture and psychology – her most recent book, The Lost Child Complex in Australian Film: Jung, Story and Playing Beneath the Past (Routledge) was released in 2019. She is the co-founder of ‘Psychology of the Moving Image International’ (PAMII).

Sally Waddell

Sally Waddell (MA public policy) is a senior Policy Officer for family violence reform. She has worked for government and community service organizations managing family violence and child welfare services and has provided direct service, practitioner supervision and programme management to support children and families experiencing family violence, trauma, abuse and neglect.