The Continuing Horror of Rosemary’s Baby

Rosemary’s Baby is one of those old classics in the supernatural horror genre. I saw the movie several years ago and scooped up the book when I found it at a library sale. I decided to give the print version a spin this Halloween.

As I’ve written about before, one of my reasons for loving horror is due to the rich symbolism. It’s not enough to just have the surface plot. The best horror movies, for me, are the ones that manage to portray the horrors of real life as monsters and ghosts.

And for Rosemary’s Baby, the horror was all in the subtext. The plot point about sex with Satan and birthing the anti-Christ wasn’t particularly scary to me, but the terror of having those you trust gaslight and manipulate you is always terrifying.

Early on in the book, Rosemary is drugged and raped. She is partially conscious throughout it, conscious enough to know that something happened the next morning, but when she confronts her husband, she has her feelings of violation dismissed. He didn’t want to “miss” the window of opportunity for impregnation.

Since she wants a baby so much…and since she thinks it was her husband who raped her, she convinces herself that her feelings are silly, that she’s making a big deal out of nothing–even that she is partially to blame.

Later, when she finds out she’s pregnant, the circumstances surrounding how she became pregnant become even further buried as everyone around her celebrates her “good fortune.”

Immediately, the reader begins to see how Rosemary’s desires and concerns are overridden by others, beginning with being pushed into going to a doctor who ignores her concerns about her pregnancy complications and scares her away from talking to her friends, telling her that the only information she needs will come from him.

When she does want to get a second opinion from a different doctor, her husband shames her for being disloyal to the doctor she currently has. Protecting his ego as doctor takes precedence over her comfort as the patient.

As things progress, she becomes more and more suspicious of the motives of her husband and neighbors. When she finally figures out that they have been manipulating her for their Satanic rituals, she flees, seeking protection and help from another doctor.

Bur rather than believing her, he assumes that she is psychotic. After all, her doctor and her husband are both well-respected men.Rosemary is even aware that the way she tells her story will affect whether she is believed and takes every precaution to seem calm in order to avoid being accused of hysterics, but to no avail.

In a move familiar to every woman who has ever been disbelieved about sexual assault or domestic violence, the reputation of the men she is accusing of conspiracy undermines the believability of her fear.

After she has been handed back over to her captives, who now make no pretense of hiding the fact that they are drugging her to keep her docile, she goes into labor and delivers her baby. It is quickly whisked away, and she is told that it died.

The gaslighting continues when she hears a baby crying and feels her body responding to its hunger but is told that she is imagining it…then that it is the upstairs neighbor’s child.

Rosemary fights to hold onto her sense of reality and succeeds to an extent, but at the expense of her will. Once she is brought face to face with the horror of her rape baby and the truth surrounding the conspiracy to use her body for their own ends, she finds herself succumbing to the pressure to accept the situation. Surrounded by so many people who have completely disregarded her own boundaries, she finally submits to her role.

The demonic aspect of her pregnancy and birth are almost secondary to the horror of how she is consistently used and abused and then convinced that she is the one over-reacting when she is upset about it.

And perhaps the scariest part is that women in this day and age don’t have much more guarantee of being believed when they come forward to accuse men in power. They’re still convinced to overlook increasing violations against their autonomy and duped into thinking that they want what others are forcing them into.

Ultimately, Rosemary’s Baby isn’t a horror story about religion. It’s a horror story about patriarchy.

 

Halloween: Facing Fear and Breaking Taboos

Last week, I wrote about why I think horror movies resonate and appeal to people. This week, I’d like to build off of that and talk about why I think it’s important to have dark holidays like Halloween.

Halloween gives us permission to face fear, anger, sadness, death, destruction, and taboos. We shouldn’t necessarily need permission to approach these subjects, but I think we often feel like we can’t most of the time. Society has made them unmentionables. We come into contact with them only when we have to, and then because they’re so unfamiliar to us, we’re unequipped to face them. I don’t think it’s healthy or even possible to try to avoid dealing with the darker aspects of life, and because society tries to pretend they don’t exist, we need an outlet. Halloween provides that outlet.

In October, we feel that we are allowed to openly express the things that all year round we’ve been pressured to keep buried. They not only become allowed, they become expected. Few people, at least in the area where I live, do nothing for Halloween. Yards and houses are decked out in grotesque decorations. Adults and children alike design their most fearsome costumes. People host parties centered on macabre themes. Art shows pop up featuring gruesome works. There’s even a community zombie run, not to mention the ghost walks and haunted shows.

It’s the time of year when we can openly approach the disturbing and uncomfortable as a community, and as a community, break our own community rules.

But it does more than that.

It provides an outlet that turns fear, anger, sadness, death, destruction, and taboos into amusement, which is very important for a couple of reasons.

First, we need to know that fear doesn’t rule us. Taking fearful and somber topics and reducing them to comical absurdities allows us to face our fears and build the tools for overcoming them. The whole purpose of so many aspects of Halloween is to scare the shit out of people, and we do it deliberately to ourselves. There’s something exhilarating about approaching the things that disturb you and choosing to face them down. It’s empowering to take fear and turn it into a positive, fun experience. Seeking out fear in a safe environment gives us an opportunity to build tools to use in less safe environments. We learn that fear can be exciting, not just terrifying. We find ways of soothing ourselves as we head into the unknown, and we discover the tremendous high that comes when we face a fear and conquer it.

Second, it’s important for us to “blaspheme.” Taking the somber or taboo topics and turning them into a game gives us a break from their seriousness and takes away their power. Humor is an important coping mechanism, and dark humor (or satire) has a long history of helping people through difficult transitions and of enabling social action. Whether it’s someone buying a costume of a priest, which has recently taken on a more sinister quality than the mere desecration of a sacred symbol, breaking gender norms, or dressing up as a zombie Jesus, Halloween gives us a means of safely denigrating things that are normally off limits. It allows us to point out the irony of the world around us and to reduce or release the tension that is built up. Humor and ridicule bring these things back down to a form that we can handle.

On a slight tangent, I think the reason that so many girls like to dress “slutty,” as some would describe it, is because one of our biggest societal taboos is allowing women the freedom to their bodies. I’m hoping that in addition to the general disregard for modesty, women will also use this year to express the other attempts at suppression on their bodies like the invasion of their reproductive organs.

Next week, I will upload some pictures of my own Halloween preparations and discuss the personal applications of the Halloween season.