Abstract
In a point early on in The Bad Seed, as the adults discuss the moribund news of the day—including a serial killer named Bessie Denker—Christine Penmark voices her distaste for talk of violence. Visibly disturbed, she rises from her seat and says, “I’m afraid I shy away from reading about … such things.” This statement encourages Monica, the film’s resident Freudian and biggest dupe, to embark on a free-association exchange with Christine to reach Christine’s “root anxiety.” Eventually, Christine reaches a point where she discloses that she always felt as if she were an adopted child. “Oh, you poor innocent darling,” chirps Monica. “Don’t you know that the changeling fantasy is the commonest of childhood? Why I once believed that I was a foundling—with royal blood!”
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Notes
Phillip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942). A bestseller in the 1940s, Generation of Vipers blamed overly affectionate and coddling “moms” for creating a nation of weak- willed men. This, of course, is much in keeping with cultural narratives of queerness and developmental crisis.
Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” in AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism, ed. Douglas Crimp (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988 ), 222.
Carolyn Steedman, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority, 1780–1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), viii.
Sigmund Freud, The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess: Drafts and Notes 1887–1902 (New York: Basic Books, 1954), 256.
Sandor Ferenczi, “Social Considerations in Some Analyses,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 4 (1923): 475– 78.
Penelope Gilliat, “Anguish under the Skin,” New Yorker, June 15, 1968, 87–89.
Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Rosi Braidotti, “Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences,” in Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, eds. Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick (London: Routledge, 1999), 290–301.
Sarah Franklin, “Fetal Fascinations: New Dimensions to the Medical-Scientific Construction of Fetal Personhood,” in Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies, ed. Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey (New York: Harper-Collins, 1992), 195.
See Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan… and Beyond: Expanded and Revised Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), and Tony Williams, Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996).
Vivian Sobchack, “Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange,” in Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 143–63.
See Patricia Ehrens, “Stepfather: Father as Monster in Contemporary Horror Film,” and Vivian Sobchack, “Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange,” in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1996).
Wheeler Dixon, “The Child as Demon in Films since 1961,” Films in Review 37.2 (February 1986): 81–82.
D. A. Miller, “Anal Rope,” in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991 ), 125.
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© 2015 Andrew Scahill
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Scahill, A. (2015). Raising Hell. In: The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481320_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481320_5
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