Struggling for Recognition: Intensive Mothering’s “Practical Effects” in The Babadook

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Notes

Notes

1 Wood, “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 1970s,” in Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan, p. 74.

2 Kidd, “Umbilical Fears: Jennifer Kent's ‘The Babadook,’” in Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine, p. 9.

3 Taylor, “In ‘The Babadook,’ A Mother’s Sacrifices and a Monster’s Roar,” in National Public Radio (NPR)—Movie Reviews, para 5, 6.

4 Ulaby, “Beware The ‘Babadook,’ The Monster of Your Own Making,” in National Public Radio (NPR)—All Things Considered, para 6.

5 Taylor, Babadook… Mother’s Sacrifices, para 6.

6 Sawdey, “‘The Babadook’ Isn’t a Horror Movie About a Monster, But a Mother” in PopMatters, para 3.

7 Ulaby, Beware, para 5.

8 Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” in Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, p. 117.

9 Prince, Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality.

10 To paraphrase Gunning, An Aesthetic.

11 Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart, p. 126.

12 Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre.

13 Ibid.

14 Fischer, “Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in Rosemary’s Baby,” in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, p. 444.

15 Ibid.; Berenstein, “Mommie Dearest: Aliens, Rosemary’s Baby, and Mothering,” in Journal of Popular Culture; Sobchack, “Bringing it All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange,” in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film.

16 Skenazy, Free-Range Kids; Rosin, The Overprotected Kid. The Atlantic.

17 Fischer, Birth Traumas.

18 Wood, “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 1970s,” in Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan, p. 74.

19 Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood; Ennis, Intensive Mothering: The Cultural Contradictions of Modern Motherhood.

20 Waldman, “Truly, Madly, Guiltily,” in New York Times.

21 Waldman, “The Center of My Universe,” in The Guardian; “Truly, Madly, Guiltily,” in The New York Times, para 11.

22 Ibid.

23 Jameson, Fredric. Signatures of the Visible, p. 37; Fischer, Birth Traumas; Wood, American Nightmare.

24 Waldman, Center, para 11.

25 Adams, “Boogeyman Nights: The Story Behind This Year’s Horror Hit ‘The Babadook,’” in Rolling Stone, para 4.

26 For an extended discussion of gender tropes in horror, see, for example, Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

27 Lane, “Keeping Secrets: ‘The Imitation Game’ and ‘The Babadook,’” in New Yorker.

28 Sawdey, The Babadook Isn’t; Sharkey, “Review: ‘The Babadook,’ Smart and Dark, Delivers Grown-up Horrors,” in Los Angeles Times; Gilbey, “If You’re Feeling Sinister,” in New Statesman; Lane, Keeping Secrets.

29 Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, pp. 162–3.

30 Faden, “Movables, Movies, Mobility: Nineteenth‐Century Looking and Reading,” in Early Popular Visual Culture, p. 81.

31 Movable toy books for children, a category that gained popularity in the mid-19th century, have been theorized as remediating earlier forms of optical entertainments, anticipating cinematic effects, and functioning like contemporary new media (Ibid.; Reid-Walsh, “Activity and Agency in Historical ‘Playable Media,’” in Journal of Children and Media.

32 Burman and Stacey, “The Child and Childhood in Feminist Theory,” in Feminist Theory, p. 233.

33 Alaimo, Material Feminisms, pp. 3–4.

34 Pedwell and Whitehead, “Affecting Feminism: Questions of Feeling in Feminist Theory,” in Feminist Theory, p. 116.

35 Kidd, Umbilical Fears, p. 12.

36 Ibid., p. 10.

37 Reid-Walsh, Activity and Agency.

38 Ibid., p. 11.

39 Ibid., p. 12.

40 Jenkins, “Introduction: Childhood Innocence and Other Modern Myths,” in The Children’s Culture Reader, pp. 2–3.

41 Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, p. 8.

42 Wood, American Nightmare, p. 78.

43 Ibid., p. 80.

44 Waldman, Truly; Hays, Cultural Contradictions.

45 Creed, Monstrous-Feminine, p. 7.

46 Burman, The Child, p. 228.

47 Burman, “Beyond ‘Women vs. Children’ or ‘Women and Children’: Engendering Childhood and Reformulating Motherhood,” in International Journal of Children’s Rights.

48 Briefel, “Parenting Through Horror: Reassurance in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook,” in Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, p. 17.

49 Ibid.

50 Noah Wiseman;s chronological age matches his character’s age, which further adds to the film’s sense of “realism,” similarly to Ellar Coltrane’s 2014 performance in Richard Linklater’s film Boyhood.

51 Douthat, “Things That Go Bump,” in National Review.

52 Lury, The Child in Film: Tears, Fears and Fairy Tales, p. 150.

53 Caselli, “Kindergarten Theory: Childhood, Affect, Critical Thought,” in Feminist Theory, p. 245.

54 Lebeau, Childhood and Cinema, p. 40.

55 Home Alone film franchise: Director Chris Columbus, for the first two films, and Directors Raja Gosnell, Rod Daniel, Peter Hewitt, independently for the subsequent three films.

56 Taylor, Babadook… Mother’s Sacrifices, para 6.

57 Ibid., para 7.

58 Freud, Mourning and Melancholia,” in General Psychological Theory, p. 244.

59 Waldman, Truly, para 12, 13.

60 Todorov, The Fantastic.

61 Waldman, Truly, para 13.

62 Hunt, “A Love Story,” in New Yorker, para 35.

63 Waldman, Truly.

64 Hunt, Love Story.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jason Middleton

Jason Middleton is Associate Professor in the English Department and the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, and director of the Film and Media Studies Program, at University of Rochester. He is author of Documentary's Awkward Turn: Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship (Routledge, 2014), and co-editor of Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (Duke UP, 2007). His essays have been published in Cinema Journal, Feminist Media Histories, The Journal of Visual Culture, and elsewhere.

Meredith A. Bak

Meredith A. Bak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden. Her research focuses on visual and material cultures of childhood, as well as historical and contemporary children's media and toys. Her work has appeared in Early Popular Visual Culture, Film History, The Moving Image, The Velvet Light Trap, and in several edited collections. She is at work on a book about the role of pre-cinematic visual media from optical toys to early pop-up books in shaping children's media culture.