Vivian Asimos's Blog: Incidental Mythology, page 3

The Meaning of Monsters

So I keep coming back to monsters. I know I do, but - I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone - I do love monsters. In fact, I am quite literally an expert on the Slenderman. Like legitimately. I’ve analysed other monsters on this channel, most notably the Babadook and the Pale Man. And, depending on your definition of monster, we also have GLaDos. And believe me, there will be more of them.

But I thought, today, instead of diving into the study of one particular monster, we should, instead, look at monsters more generally. I think it’s important to think about what these analyses of monsters actually means and why its important. Because, at the heart of all discussions and studies of monsters is an inherent truth: monsters are real.

Now, when I talk about the reality of monsters, I do not necessarily mean the human monsters in our world, like serial killers. The reality of monsters also includes the monsters we typically think of as really fun narratives to tell - the vampires and werewolves are real, too.

And before you call me crazy, let me explain. I think often when we talk about the reality of monsters, we think we mean things are physically manifest somewhere in the world. Like if I say vampires I real, I mean that I have witnessed or have seen vampires hanging around the world and walking around and looking at me.

We often think of this belief in actuality as something from ages long past. People long ago who did not know any better believed in monsters. Its associated with old world irrationality. But, as historian David Stannard wrote in 1977:

We do well to remember that the [pre-modern] world… was a rational world, in many ways more rational than our own. It is true that this was a world of witches and demons, and of a just and terrible God who made his presence known in the slightest acts of nature. But this was the given reality about which most of the decisions and actions of the age, through the entire Western world, revolved.

In other words, we only think of things as irrational because they seem so in comparison to the way we think. Our rationality is the basis of how other rationalities work in our eyes. But this is an ethnocentric way of viewing the world and history, meaning we are basing things off of our own way of life as the bar of “normal” even though it may be incredibly not normal, and potentially irrational, when others from areas of the world are looking at us.

The goal of anthropology, at least for anthropology that I like, is to try and see the world through the eyes of others. We want to understand the way they understand, not to judge it. One of the first Western anthropologists to talk about the rationality of other peoples was E.E. Evans-Pritchard, whose study of the Azande was focused on their thought process of being something based in rationality. Despite witchcraft being a focus of their attention and way of understanding the world, there was a rational system in place that also echoed elements of Christian England that Evans-Pritchard originated.

Belief in actuality is one thing, but that is also not necessarily the same thing as the reality of monsters, though it can be. Thinking of it this way is a kind of simplistic view of things, and not really how belief in general works, let alone monsters. And in reality, people still believe in monsters in the way they have in ages before.

Because, to see the reality of monsters is not to observe the monster, but rather to observe the people who belong to the monster. A monster is not known through its bright eyes in the dark of the night, but rather in the effect it has - its impact on society and individuals.

A monster shows us what a culture or a society finds horrifying. It shows us what they view as possible and impossible. It shows us how a culture marks out its boundaries - how categories are marked out as well as who is included in it, and who are the outsiders. A monster shows us a reflection. Through the monster’s eyes, we see how a culture views itself. What is respectful and “normal”, and what is filled with scorn and disgust.

Examples of the various ways monsters can be viewed and studied in this way can be seen through Jeffrey Cohen’s Monsters Thesis. In this chapter, Jeffrey Cohen sketched out his seven approaches to what it is monsters show us. One example is that a monster is a hybrid - think like the griffin who is half eagle and half lion. In more pop culture elements, a good monstrous hybrid example is the dog-daughter chimera from Full Metal Alchemist.

These hybrid monsters demonstrates a wider element of the thesis, what Cohen calls a monster as a “harbinger of categorical crisis.” In the simple form of the griffin, it’s not just combining eagle and lion, but also the categories of land and sea. Sometimes these categories are massively obvious, like in the case of the griffin. Hybrid monsters like the griffin, or our chimera from Full Metal Alchemist, are good examples of how the actual depiction of the monster is a combo. Other aspects of hybridity can be more structural, like the land/sea element of the griffin. In something like the vampire, its in the fact that its both alive and dead at the same time, two things that seem contradictory and cannot be present at once.

Jeffrey Cohen’s seven thesis of monster studies is not the idea that a monster is only one of the ideas presented, but rather is multiple at once, if not all three. The first one, for example, is that the monster is a culutral body - meaning that monsters represent the cultures they come from. Studying the monster gives us a look into the cultural system they come from. The hybridity found, for example, can also be paired with the monster “dwelling at the gates of differece” as well as policing the borders of the possible.

We can look into some of the foundations of these using a primary example from pop culture. Let’s actually use the example of the chimera from Full Metal Alchemist. I probably would do a seperate video on just this moment, because it’s one of the most horrifying and depressing moments most of us have had as young people. But I think there’s other things to say about Full Metal, so we’ll be covering that on another video. But for the moment, let’s talk about the chimera.

So a quick background, our primary character Ed goes to visit Shou Tucker, the “Sewing-Life Alchemist”. His daughter becomes, four year old Nina, becomes an important figure for Ed and Alphonse, representing the childhood innocence they both feel they had lost. In the anime, she calls Alphonse “big-big brother” and Ed “little-big-brother”, which is also, notably, one of the few characters to call Ed little that he does not get mad at.

She was a happy child, playful and excitable, and a representaiton of childhood joy and innocence. She is always embracing and playing with her large pet dog named Alexander. The brothers grow very attached to Nina, seeing elements of themselves in her lonely story, but in a way that is still protective and innocent.

What becomes clear far later, is that the brothers have come to learn from an alchemist who has turned to unwilling test subjects, including Nina’s mother who died in the process. While Al and Ed are away, Shou’s frustration and worry about his upcoming assessments which puts his license into jeapordy triggers his interest in human experimentation.

When attempting to pass her off as a speech-capable chimera, Ed realises what exactly happened and who is that chimera.

So there are a few elements of the monster happening here in the chimera. Obviously, we have what we have already discussed: the monster as a harbinger of categorical crisis. We have the hybridity, an obvious aspect of the monster that is present. The chimera is a combination of Nina and Alexander, a dog and a young girl. Therefore, the hybridity of the monster is pretty inherent in its existence.

Another important position that the Nina chimera embodies is the fifth thesis: the monster polices the borders of the possible. One verison of this example of monsters is that the monster borders what is known. Think of the “here be monsters” demarcated on old maps. This was mostly as a controlling mechanism, for example Cohen points out that merchants could have used this demarcation to discourage exploration into their etablished trade routes in order to maintain monopoloies. But it can also represent other things, primarily the risk of venturing into thoughts and actions unknown.

Shou Tucker represents the danger of pushing into the worlds of the unknown. The obsession with wanting to advance knowledge without any concern of what that might mean results in a lack of care or concern for those around him and what that may mean. In essence, the Nina chimera is a monster which demonstrates the boudaries that cannot - must not - be crossed. It is more than the categories of girl and dog that are crossed, but rather the boundaries of what knowledge and information is bordering scientific advancement. Scientific advancement may be great as an idea, but if it comes at the sacrifice of human life, particularly of the life of innocence, then is it truly worth the advancement that it produces? Shou was successfully able to make a chimera which was capable of speech, but at what cost?

What is truly scary about the chimera as a monster is not just that is a cross of a young girl and a dog, but rather the idea of how it came to be. Its the demonstration of what scientific advancement could do, what monsters border the boundaries. But more importantly, it shows us what monsters humans themselves could be. It is not just bordering the possible of scientific advancement, but also bordering the possible of humanity. It demonstrates how a man could turn against his love and his family for the sake of his own advancements.

This is how studying a monster can reveal much about what a story is telling us. Deep in the story of Full Metal Alchemist is the questionings of the morality of science - a hefty debate between science and religion in terms of what should be or should not. The show demonstrates regularly, both in the background of our main characters Ed and Al, but also in each alchemist they encounter, that there is great cost to doing massive advancements in alchemy. While cases like Ed’s limbs and Al’s body shows a personal sacrifice, Shou represents as selfish sacrifice - one that is inflicted on others rather than on the self.

In this sense, the chimera monster in Full Metal Alchemist a very real monster. The life destruction of many scientific advancements are historically noted, most obviously being the atomic bomb. While we can praise what advancements this showed us in scientific endeavours, it came at a great cost of life. Such sacrifices are frequently bordering the possible of our knowledge, and therefore the chimera is not exactly an unfamiliar consideration.

Monsters are amazing. They’re amazing because they scare us, they show us what categories we hold dear and don’t want to blur. They show us what boundaries we want to protect. They show us what we want to protect and care for, but also what we secretely desire, deep inside the worst recesses of our souls. The things that, some part of us, would sacrifice anything to achieve.

Food and Storytelling in Lord of the Rings

I’ll be honest. I’m not sure how it has taken me so long to get around to talking about Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien’s works in general, was my entry point to being more critical and academic about the nature of popular culture’s importance in storytelling. It also holds a lot of personal significance to me. But maybe that’s why it’s taken so long to get around to - there’s so much meaningful elements within this that sorting through it all can be tough.

While I could talk about all sorts of aspects of Lord of the Rings, today, I want to focus on one important point: food. That may not be where you may have thought this would go for this channel’s first foray into Middle-earth, but here we are. I think food, in general, is really fascinating. Cultures around the world have intricate food laws that delineate what should or should not be eaten based on aspects of morality. In many places, food regulations are what define one culture as being separate from another.

And Middle-earth is no different.

In fact, food is frequently used as a way to demonstrate differences between the varieties of peoples and nations throughout the world. The depictions of food, the relationships different peoples have with food, and discussions around food do a lot to give life to the story, and is an important aspect of Tolkien’s storytelling. His use of food and particularly of different eating metaphors throughout the work demonstrate relations with power, and food becomes an important part of storytelling.

Now, a quick note. Obviously, this is a video essay, which means that there’s an important visual part of what’s happening. That being said, a lot of what I’m going to be drawing on is the direct source material - the books, rather than the movies. Though, the movies did get a lot right, and are still absolute beautiful works in their own right. In fact, probably a lot of what I will talk about in relation to food in the books is also in the movies. But thought it would be worth mentioning.

Anyway. Food is demonstrated as important from the very beginning. There were lots of elements of the chapter on Concerning Hobbits at the beginning of the trilogy that concerned food. The hobbits here are desribed as having mouths suited to “laughing, and eating and drinking” and that they ate roughly six meals a day. There’s also a large portion dedicated to their various pipe weeds, most notably Old Toby. This means readers are brought to food’s importance very early when it comes to hobbits.

Hobbits are, quite frankly, obsessed with food. So much of the hobbits both in general around the Shire, and for the four hobbits who then embark on large adventures, food is always a large part of their life and engagements. Bilbo interrupts the Council of Elrond to demand lunch. When healed after defeating the Chief Ringwraith, Merry wakes up and says he’s hungry. Sam carries cooking equipment with him all the way to Mordor, and even laments the loss of his pots and pans when he’s in Mordor.

Hobbits just love food. Their culture is filled with simply joys and big feats. The presence and details of their food is what distinguishes Hobbits from other cultures. The food of elves, in contrast, is not described in great detail. Lembas is one of the most described aspects of elvish food, and becomes a staple in the lives of the Fellowship, but it’s not really described in detail or even in what it’s made of. The rest of the elvish food is not given much attention, so much so that some scholars think elves are vegetarian, but this is mostly due to the lack of descriptions of meat. But lack of description isn’t an example of what’s technically there.

The race of men also have food and some feasts, but their relationship with food seems vastly different. Feasts are reserved for special occasions and great occasions, while hobbits like feasts no matter the occasion. Food is much more a necessity of life for the race of men, rather than an aspect of life’s enjoyment.

The way that hobbits find food and eating so important is understood by other nations as well, and used as a definitional point. Even Treebeard uses their relationship with food to describe the hobbits when he amends his song about the various groups of people to include hobbits. In his poem, he describes hobbits as “hungry”.

Food is an important aspect of Hobbit language. The best example of this actually comes from a linguist joke of Tolkien’s. The river that runs through the Shire is, in the Elven language, Baranduin. But when Hobbits refer to it, the Elven word Baranduin becomes altered to Brandywine. Tolkien likes to make these little jokes and references about how language changes and moves overtime, but it also reveals how important food and drink is to Hobbits, that they would change the name to something so related to consumption.

Another fun moment that is also direct conversation about morality, is the stew made by Sam with Gollum. Sam discusses the nature of cooking and making things delicious, and even comments about cooking some potatoes. But Gollum reacts violently against the idea. While this is a kind of silly scene, it also demosntrates fundamental differences between the moralities of Gollum and the Hobbits.

Gollum always sits somewhere in between the corrupted and the Hobbits, who seem more jovial than corrupted (though, obviously, the corruption does happen). This is echoed in Gollum’s choices of food - he is always hungry and discussing eating. Like hobbits, he has songs about food. Though the words and depictions of Gollum eating are far more animalistic and gross feeling than that of hobbits. In the book, the words chosen to describe Gollum eating are words like “devouring” and “gnawing”. His choices of food are also equally disgusting to the likes of the hobbits, choices like raw fish, worms, and even trying to eat dead bodies in the Lord of the Rings.

Gollum essentially is a demonstration of hobbits when they are corrupted. More corrupted nations, like the Orcs for example, are also ones who eat with similar language - devouring and gnawing and chewing. Their choices are also more reflective, with discussions of meat and sometimes cannibalism. The description of this meat as being sometimes described as “flesh” instead of meat is an obvious choice to paint these choices of food in a specific light.

But I can’t let a full discussion of food and Lord of the Rings pass without discussing one of the most important, beautiful, and silly comments in the whole series. This is when Gandalf is talking to Bilbo about his life and how Bilbo is ageing (or, more accurately at this point, not ageing). Bilbo says he feels like “butter that has been scraped over too much bread”. There’s so much going on in this quiet statement, so let’s take it one at a time.

First off, we have a reflection on how hobbits have a habit of speaking more simply. As Merry explains to Aragorn: “But it is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place”. I think this is fair for many of the discussions the hobbits have. But In the case of Bilbo’s description, I think there’s even more going on. In fact, I think this is the exact proper phrasing to use.

This is because of our second point, which we’ve been waxing on about for a long time already today: the importance of food. Food is so all consuming (pun intended) for hobbits that it invades their language in names but also in metaphor and other forms of folklore or interpersonal relationships. For Bilbo to reach for food as a way to explain things, its an example of how pervasive food is for hobbits.

But also, this statement from Bilbo is accompanied by other food metaphors that are not as related to hobbits. In the follow chapter, Gandalf immediately uses eating metaphors to describe the Ring and Sauron. Faramir continues the metaphor by describing the men given the nine rings of power as being “devoured” by Sauron. Gollum says that if Sauron gets the ring he will “eat us all”.

Speaking of Gollum, he’s both described and seen as being mortally hungry since the Ring. Frodo sees a glimpse of a similar look in Bilbo when he reaches for the Ring in Rivendell.

Therefore, I think Bilbo’s little comment about feeling like butter spread over too much bread is not only an apt description of what it feels to age, but also a welcome entrance to metaphors and discussions around food, power, and corruption as it’s depicted in Lord of the Rings - through food.

No Face Explained

Miyazaki’s Spirited Away continues to be one of the most beautiful animated movies ever made. It tells the story of a young girl, Chihiro, who gets unwillingly whisked off to a spiritual world where she has to work at a bathhouse for the spirits in order to try and find a way to save her parents and return to her world. Its a movie filled with strange creatures, scary moments, but also moments of peace and beauty.

One of the most interesting characters encountered in this movie is No Face - a creature who, at first, is a silent figure standing on the bridge. Originally, this was going to be the only time Chihiro saw this figure, but during production Miyazaki needed a figure to fulfil some plot points, so decided to use the bridge figure in this fashion. No Face is quite a simple design - just a black figure that drifts into nothingness (other than his nice sexy legs, of course[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3qzeaeWY...]). Unlike the other creatures in Spirited Away, No Face is not based on any pre-existing Japanese figure. He’s purely from Miyazaki’s mind. But No Face is also a perfect examination of the main themes in the movie, and so today we’re going to do a deep dive into No Face and Spirited Away more generally, specifically it’s representation of the issues of disconnection and consumption.

Let’s start with disconnection. I’ve read some stuides on Spirited Away using the idea of liminality in their discussion of Spirited Away’s characters and locations. Liminality was made more popular in usage by anthropologist Victor Turner, and it’s a designation of a position between positions. It’s the bit where you’re no longer in one category, but not quite yet in the other one. For Turner, this was mostly used in relation to rituals, where at the start of the ritual you are no longer of your previous identity, but not quite finished the ritual where you are recongised as your changed state.

In this sense, Spirited Away’s liminality is seen primarily in location and setting. The fantasy world of the spirits is a world between worlds, one which is both like and unlike the world before. It’s also placed in an abandoned theme park. This is fair, but I think most of the movie makes more sense if you think of things in terms of connections rather than positions. The locations are not markers of liminality but of disconnection.

We start the movie with Chihiro and her family in the middle of a move. They are no longer living in their old house, but not quite yet at their new residence. They aren’t connected to place yet. They are new to the area they are moving to, but no longer connected to their old location. The abandoned theme park is also a place that once served a purpose, and was a location in which connections were made and fostered, but now is disconnected from the community it once served.

Disconnection extends to the characters as well. The way Chihiro’s parents act at both the beginning of the movie and at the end shows a disconnect between generations. The parents don’t seem to pay attention to how Chihiro feels about the situation they are in, and the mom even comments that Chihiro is clinging too hard when her parents are finally back.

After Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs, Chihiro is unable to connect to them anymore entirely - they can’t communicate with her, nor her with them. According to Haku, they are also disconnected from themselves, having forgotten their human form. Chihiro being forced to work at the bathhouse and find a way to solve her parents puts her in a lonely position. She is the only human at the bathhouse, and clings to the characters she recognition in desperate hopes to create new connections in her environment.

No Face is similar to Chihiro in this regard. No Face is quiet, and unable to communicate verbally with people at the beginning. His whole form is also a demonstration of his lack of place and connection. His body fades, not even connecting to the ground. I think this is a reason for No Face’s attachment to Chihiro. He recognises that she, like him, is disconnected and lonely. However, the two deal with their disconnections in two distinctly different ways.

This is where the second theme comes in: consumption. In fact, for most of the characters in the movie, their experiences of disconnection is what leads them to consumption. Haku has lost his name, and when Chihiro remembers that he’s the spirit of the Kohaku river, she explains that the river was filled in and is no longer a river. Earlier in the movie, someone says that Haku just “showed up” one day, and no one knows his origins. Like other figures, Haku is disconnected and lonely. He no longer has his river to return to, and even for most of the movie is unaware of who he is - disconnected from his sense of self. In response, Haku turned to greed. Zeniba points this out to Chihiro when she is trying to save Haku, that Haku got into the whole mess with Yababa due to his greed.

Greed and consumption are highlighted throughout the movie. When Haku tells Yababa that she hasn’t noticed that something dear to her has changed, she instantly is concerned about her gold, not her child. The parents at the beginning of the movie also highlight consumerism and consumption. When they begin to eat the food and Chihiro begins to object, her father insists its fine because they have “credit cards and cash”.

Sometimes, consumption and disconnection is forced upon a character. This is most present in the River Spirit who is first mistaken as a stink spirit. When Chihiro finds the thorn in its side, and finally manages to get it out, a large amount of pollution and waste comes pouring out of him. The consumption and disconnection to environment felt by the humans who polluted the river directly caused a disconnection to self from the River Spirit.

No Face is an embodiment of the consumption and greed in the movie. No Face is unable to connect to others, and so tries to connect to Chihiro and others through greed and items. First, he sees Chihiro needing a bath token but being refused due to being different and disliked by the other workers of the bathhouse. No Face helps Chihiro by getting her one of the tokens she needs. He comes to her again later, with a whole basket of tokens, but Chihiro refuses them saying she only needed the one.

And this sets up some of the issues No Face deals with in his relationship to Chihiro. He tries to give her things, but Chihiro’s lack of greed and consumption means that she is not brought in by the items. Chihiro is solving her problem of disconnection by forming new connections and friendships. She clings to the need to help others, sometimes sacrificing items she was saving to help her parents (her own quest) for the sake of those around her.

No Face’s embodiment of consumption is pretty literal, and this consumption does lead to him being able to communicate with others. His first consumption is a frog worker of the bathhouse, whose voice he then borrows in order to be able to speak to others. He continuously produces gold, which encourages the workers to cater to him and do what he wants. He sees the greed in others as a way to communicate and gather what he wants, though the connections garnered are not as deep or meaningful as No Face may actually want.

We see No Face gorge on huge platters of food, a direct comparison to the way Chihiro’s parents consumed large amounts of food. Even when at a feast, surrounded by others, No Face is needing to buy their presence and attention through producing large quantities of gold.

As No Face continues to gorge, his form changes. A body within the nothingness is made more directly obvious. The figure that started as emptiness and absence became large, dominating and overwhelming. In the bathhouse, No Face becomes grotesque and over the top.

When he finally sees Chihiro again, he tries to offer her more gold than he had offered the other workers, but Chihiro once again (like with the bath tokens) refuses to accept. This angers him, and he begins to devour everything in a fit of rage, turning the workers against him.

This is not to say that consumption more generally is considered bad in Spirited Away. Food is an important part of the relationships between people. While it is eating and food that changes Chihiro’s parents, and also changes No Face, it is also eating and food that connects Chihiro to her new friends. Haku gives Chihiro a piece of food to keep her from fading away when she first came to the spiritual world. After saving the River Spirit, he gives Chihiro a small piece of food. Haku also gives Chihiro rice balls that are to give her strength. These aspects of food giving and food consumption connected Chihiro to these figures in positive ways. Haku was there for Chihiro to make her feel stronger and to comfort her as she cried. The River Spirit gave Chihiro a way to save her parents, though this food source is also how Chihiro returns the food gift to Haku, and to save and connect finally to No Face.

To save No Face from his consumption, it’s not a lack of eating that saves him but eating. The small ball of bitter seaweed is consumed, and purges No Face of everything he consumed, returning him to the absent and empty figure he was at the beginning.

In fact, after his purge, we still see No Face eat. While he once sat at a huge banquet table with platters of food served to him by people who cared more about his gold than him, at Zeniba’s he is once again sat at a table with people. Instead of large platters of food, he has, instead, cake and tea and is surrounded by people who care for him and do not need his gold to love him. In contrast to his frantic large consumption, here, at Zeniba’s, he partakes in soft and quiet consumption.

In other words, consumption done in the service of filling one’s own void, or in the need to gain others to do what you wish them to do, is seen as something to be avoided. In contrast, consumption in the service to either create or foster the connections formed between yourself and others is something to be privileged and cared for.

In fact, it’s Zeniba’s where No Face finally finds a place to be. He finds connection, purpose and care that is focused on the quiet and humble life Zeniba lives, in contrast to the highly opulent bathhouse. Even when redeemed, it’s clear No Face’s place is not at the bathhouse, but in a life if quiet existence. Of eating cake and drinking tea and spinning yarn.

While consumption and greed are sometimes used to fill voids, it’s healing our disconnect that truly leads to a happy life. This is what Spirited Away teaches us. It’s what Chihiro shows the bathhouse workers through her actions to serve others. It’s what Chihiro taught No Face by refusing his gifts, and despite his actions allowing him to travel with her to Zeniba’s. And yet consumption is what connects us to others, what fills us with hope when there is none. Its what can fill us with strength when we have little left, and it’s what connects us to others. Not in large opulent feasts, but in quiet moments on a train, and in soft bites of cake.

Mythology’s Definition and Time

Over on the Incidental Mythology YouTube channel, I recently posted up a video essay on how video games are mythology. In it, we focus on what it means that video games are mythology and how someone would go about actually studying them as mythology.

I bring this up because I got an interesting comment on the video over on YouTube. It was a long post, and feel free to read it yourself. I’m so happy to say that most of the people who comment on my videos are positive, encouraging, and highly insightful, and this comment fits right in with it. The gist of the comment is questioning the relationship time has on definitions and considerations of mythology. The commenter says they think that notions of time passing should also factor into definitions of myth. They bring up a good point: should we consider stories that have staying power as more influential than newer stories that have yet to be tested? And if so, then wouldn’t the term “myth” be a perfect fit for that?

So, today, I want to talk about this idea. It’s an important one when we talk about the nature of pop culture as mythology, and so I think it’s worth giving a little bit of time to.

First, let’s review the definition of mythology that I use: a myth is a narrative, or something akin to a narrative, that an individual or a community uses to understand themselves and/or the world around them. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m perfectly happy adjusting this definition when given new information or new considerations. I see definitions as something to play with, and think with, and not steadfast things to adhere to without alteration. So let’s think about this definition. Nowhere in it do we talk about time, meaning new narratives can sit alongside old ones. So the critique that time being important not fitting with our consideration is a valid one. If we take on the argument, we would need to alter our definition. So is there credence to alter it?

God of War, a retelling of an old myth.

Before we turn our attention to mythology, I want to take the same argument over to a different arena, one where I have far more experience looking at this very question: religion. Religion and mythology can be tied, so it’s not too far a step to the side. The argument about the relationship of time passing is also one levied in the discussions of new religions. They are often dismissed as less important because they don’t have the staying power. “Real” religions are ones that have lasted throughout time, that have embedded themselves into the landscape and culture of a group of people.

So let’s grab one of the newer religions. Not something that’s super fresh, but also not one with four centuries under it’s belt. We’ll pick something in between: Mormonism. The Church of Latter Day saints stretches back to the early 1800’s. So while that does give us a good two centuries, it’s also two centuries of very documented time, and still not nearly as long as something like Catholicism.

Anyway. The effect Mormonism has had on the United States, and subsequently the world, was not exactly a slow crawl. It very quickly embedded itself into the cultural lives of many people, leading to a community who sacrificed their lives, their families, and their future to something inherently new. The reason why Joseph Smith and the early Mormons had to leave New York was because they were being violently persecuted. And rather than change their beliefs away from the “tried and true” religion from before, they risked their lives to stay firm, and even packed up their families and their lives and moved to a new place, somewhere un-established, to set up a new life far away in Utah.

One of the Witch Trees of Grovely Wood. A point of connection between landscape and an old story that continues to this day.

Now, I’m not a Mormon, but this feels like the actions of a belief that has taken deep root. And this all happened during the time of Joseph Smith, not centuries and centuries later. We can now see the effect of this deep rooted belief in 2024, nearly 200 years after the church’s creation.

So let’s now shift to mythology proper, and popular culture. As our lovely commenter says, if we rely on time we can consider pop culture as potential myths, stories that have yet to have the time spent required to know its staying power. But we can still see their potentional, we can note how it’s affecting others and take note, hoping that - maybe - in the future things will be demonstrated as mythology in the future.

But when we think about stories, it’s very rare that stories remain the same. We’ve talked about this several times, and will continue to do so because it’s not only one of the most interesting aspects of stories but also the most important. Stories are meant to change, they’re not meant to stay static. We tell things differently because we want to relate the story to our contemporary life, or the people telling the story.

The Slender Man, image by Victor Surge.

The story of Hades and Persephone, for example, has been retold in a variety of ways, over and over again. And not just in popular culture, but also way before that. As times alter, people change, culture moves on, our stories develop around that.

So when we think about a story having staying power, what do we mean? What version of it? Because if it’s only one version, one telling, one perspective, than there isn’t a single narrative that has had major lasting power over centuries.

So, in essence, I don’t think I’ll be changing my definition over time. Time is important, sure, and it helps to give us some credence to something powerful. The fact that the Slender Man is still kicking around the internet - a landscape that has a notoriously short attention span - is something that shows us this narrative is interesting and important. So it’s not that time is irrelevant, it’s that time isn’t a deciding factor.

Mythology’s Definition and Time

Over on the Incidental Mythology YouTube channel, I recently posted up a video essay on how video games are mythology. In it, we focus on what it means that video games are mythology and how someone would go about actually studying them as mythology.

I bring this up because I got an interesting comment on the video over on YouTube. It was a long post, and feel free to read it yourself. I’m so happy to say that most of the people who comment on my videos are positive, encouraging, and highly insightful, and this comment fits right in with it. The gist of the comment is questioning the relationship time has on definitions and considerations of mythology. The commenter says they think that notions of time passing should also factor into definitions of myth. They bring up a good point: should we consider stories that have staying power as more influential than newer stories that have yet to be tested? And if so, then wouldn’t the term “myth” be a perfect fit for that?

So, today, I want to talk about this idea. It’s an important one when we talk about the nature of pop culture as mythology, and so I think it’s worth giving a little bit of time to.

First, let’s review the definition of mythology that I use: a myth is a narrative, or something akin to a narrative, that an individual or a community uses to understand themselves and/or the world around them. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m perfectly happy adjusting this definition when given new information or new considerations. I see definitions as something to play with, and think with, and not steadfast things to adhere to without alteration. So let’s think about this definition. Nowhere in it do we talk about time, meaning new narratives can sit alongside old ones. So the critique that time being important not fitting with our consideration is a valid one. If we take on the argument, we would need to alter our definition. So is there credence to alter it?

God of War, a new telling of some old myths.

Before we turn our attention to mythology, I want to take the same argument over to a different arena, one where I have far more experience looking at this very question: religion. Religion and mythology can be tied, so it’s not too far a step to the side. The argument about the relationship of time passing is also one levied in the discussions of new religions. They are often dismissed as less important because they don’t have the staying power. “Real” religions are ones that have lasted throughout time, that have embedded themselves into the landscape and culture of a group of people.

So let’s grab one of the newer religions. Not something that’s super fresh, but also not one with four centuries under it’s belt. We’ll pick something in between: Mormonism. The Church of Latter Day Saints stretches back to the early 1800’s. So while that does give us a good two centuries, it’s also two centuries of very documented time, and still not nearly as long as something like Catholicism.

Anyway. The effect Mormonism has had on the United States, and subsequently the world, was not exactly a slow crawl. It very quickly embedded itself into the cultural lives of many people, leading to a community who sacrificed their lives, their families, and their future to something inherently new. The reason why Joseph Smith and the early Mormons had to leave New York was because they were being violently persecuted. And rather than change their beliefs away from the “tried and true” religion from before, they risked their lives to stay firm, and even packed up their families and their lives and moved to a new place, somewhere un-established, to set up a new life far away in Utah.

One of the Witch Trees in Grovely Wood. An old tree with an old story that still lingers to this day.

Now, I’m not a Mormon, but this feels like the actions of a belief that has taken deep root. And this all happened during the time of Joseph Smith, not centuries and centuries later. We can now see the effect of this deep rooted belief in 2024, nearly 200 years after the church’s creation.

So let’s now shift to mythology proper, and popular culture. As our lovely commenter says, if we rely on time we can consider pop culture as potential myths, stories that have yet to have the time spent required to know its staying power. But we can still see their potentional, we can note how it’s affecting others and take note, hoping that - maybe - in the future things will be demonstrated as mythology in the future.

But when we think about stories, it’s very rare that stories remain the same. We’ve talked about this several times, and will continue to do so because it’s not only one of the most interesting aspects of stories but also the most important. Stories are meant to change, they’re not meant to stay static. We tell things differently because we want to relate the story to our contemporary life, or the people telling the story.

An image of the Slender Man, by Victor Surge.

The story of Hades and Persephone, for example, has been retold in a variety of ways, over and over again. And not just in popular culture, but also way before that. As times alter, people change, culture moves on, our stories develop around that.

So when we think about a story having staying power, what do we mean? What version of it? Because if it’s only one version, one telling, one perspective, than there isn’t a single narrative that has had major lasting power over centuries.

So, in essence, I don’t think I’ll be changing my definition over time. Time is important, sure, and it helps to give us some credence to something powerful. The fact that the Slender Man is still kicking around the internet - a landscape that has a notoriously short attention span - is something that shows us this narrative is interesting and important. So it’s not that time is irrelevant, it’s that time isn’t a deciding factor.

Video Games are Mythology

So, the basics of this channel is the fact that our popular culture is our contemporary mythology. This idea underlies every analysis and every reason for every study. When we look at monsters like the Pale Man or the Babadook, it’s because these are inherently important elements of our cultural stories, telling us something important about what we find scary or what we find worth protecting. I get into the more general topic of pop culture as mythology in a previous video.

We’ve talked, as you may have already seen, or are just learning, about pop culture as mythology more generally. We talked about how the concept of popular culture can function as something inherently important, and how even something made for the purposes of making money can still be something someone finds meaning in. Today, I want to focus in on particular medium of pop culture to explore this further: video games. Today, we’re going to talk about how video games are contemporary mythology, and what that means when someone like me comes in to study them following this idea.

Lets start with a quick summary of the topics covered in our previous pop culture mythology video. If you want something more in depth than this, you know where to go. We explored the concept of mythology itself, and how myth is a meaningful narraive, one which an individual or a community uses to define themselves by, or to understand themselves better, or to better realise their place in the world.

So, let’s talk about the Legend of Zelda series. I did research into the Zelda series during my Masters. Side note, I’d love to return to the topic, but that’s a much longer discussion for a very different day. But anyway, during this research I spent a lot of time talking to people who love Zelda about why they love Zelda. I heard all sorts of different stories. I heard from someone who used the triforce to help guide them to make decisions in their life. I heard from someone who connected to an uncle, long passed, through his copious scribbled notes on the gamebook for the first Zelda game. I heard from someone who always cherishes the memories of playing the game while their sister played the recorder to the tune of the various songs.

Each of these stories have something important at the core of them: the games they are talking about have cemented them to something far beyond the game. They gave them something to use to understand the best ways to navigate a confusing and troubling world. They gave them a way to connect to family members who have passed. They gave them a connection to family members, and an avenue through which they will always remember and solidify their relationship to family members still living.

These are stories which connect us to something else. The strings of life which weave us together with other people or other places are formed best through stories, and these stories of video games make up these strings, tying us to our communities.

This is what I mean when I talk about video games as mythology. They not only tell us stories, but they form stories we then share and use. They are narratives which connect us and give us meaning in our lives. This meaning isn’t necessarily literal understandings of the world, like which gods created the world or what happened historically in the past, but more metaphorical meaning, or meaning thorugh active sharing with others.

This is all well and good, but what does this mean for actually studying these narratives? Sure, we can talk about what the game script says, or what locations the characters have to go to. But if a game is more than just its script, then how do we study more than just the script?

This is where some useful terms from structural anthropology come into play. Claude Levi-Strauss, the founder of structural anthropology, once described an inherent difference between the written myth, or oral recitation of the myth, and the ritual which accompanies the myth. He described the written myth as the explicit myth, and the ritual as the implicit. For Levi-Strauss, always a true linguist, always saw the explicit myth, the actual words themselves, as much more important than the implicit. However, other anthropologists have since altered this, and seen these two elements as much more even, or even flipped in importance depending on the community studied.

Jonathan Miles-Watson took this a step further, writing about Shimla in India. He wrote about how the implicit myth carries much more than just ritual, but also a lot of other elements of myth. Most notably for Miles-Watson, it was the connecting threads he found embodied the implicit myth. It was the way we connect to the landscape around us through the stories, and our own stories about the stories, which gives us this solidified connection.

For video games, I think these are very useful tools to think with. We can take these different considerations of various forms of mythology and apply them to the complicated interweaving of video games. Because video games are so much more than their script. They are also a script that keeps you from continuing if you’re not very good at the ritual playing of the story. Imagine if someone wasn’t allowed to continue telling their story about Loki because they just weren’t very good at reciting it?

So let’s think about the actual scripted narrative, the things the developers have coded and written into the game, as the explicit myth. This is the thing we can point at. The stuff I’m playing on the screen while you watch this. This is all the explicit myth (well, in a way, but we’ll talk about that). In contrast, we have the implicit myth of the act of playing. This is the way I, personally, play a game. Or maybe how I connect to the game. It’s the thought of an uncle while playing, as well as the choices made through the course of playing the game.

But these are not strict categories without overlap. As I mentioned, the clips playing over this video are a combination of both of these at once. Yes, they are the scripted game, the elements presented to us by developers. But they are also in the act of being played. There is an implicit mythology there.

Quick note: when I say “choices”, I don’t just mean the obvious things like dialogue trees, or games where your choices can affect the way the game unfolds. I also mean small things, like the way one plays. What weapon do you prefer in Elden Ring? How do you play? What elements do you carry with you? Do you prefer throwing Molotov Cocktails in Bloodbourne? These are all choices, just as much as dialogue options are choices.

So how does this work in practice, I hear you asking? Well, that’s obviously going to depend on the game, as well as on the person playing. But if we were to study a game, say like the Legend of Zelda, we would do our best to, at first, separate these two elements. While there is overlap, and these two forms of mythology are occurring simultaneously, to make our lives easier we should think of them separately at least at first.

So for the explicit myth, we would think about the game’s story, like if it was presented on a wiki. What are the steps that happen? What’s the resolution? Where do the various scenes take place? Think of it like it’s a book or a traditional myth in this step.

The next step is to think about how someone plays these games. We can do a wee bit of auto-ethnography here: when you play the game, what did it feel like? Were there any points you were scared, or you laughed out loud, or you cried? Where were you the most tense? What did it feel like to finally beat a boss you were struggling with for ages? While auto-ethnography is not everything, and should always be diluted with the stories of other people, it’s always a nice place to start.

And then we bring in other people. Talk to other people playing the game. What did they think about it? How did they feel about all those emotional bits you felt? But always leave room for the connecting threads. What else is happening outside of the game play experience that is affecting our players?

I know this video was a little more technical than other ones, but I thought it was improtant and was playing on my mind a little to reinforce some of these ideas. We could, theoretically, do similar things for all our pop culture myths. For example, the comments I get on some of my videos are wonderful implicit mythology stories people explain about their connection to the story, and the way the story further connects them to others. We are all just giant bags of mythology that are simply wrapped up in flesh.

Who knows, maybe we can think about how you connect to the videos as well. Maybe each video essay I make is, in essence, its own little myth, forming its own little strings that people can grab onto and tie to whatever they feel connection to. But that’s thinking very highly of myself and my videos. But it’s always a nice thing to think about.

Video Games Are Mythology

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So, the basics of this channel is the fact that our popular culture is our contemporary mythology. This idea underlies every analysis and every reason for every study. When we look at monsters like the Pale Man or the Babadook, it’s because these are inherently important elements of our cultural stories, telling us something important about what we find scary or what we find worth protecting. I get into the more general topic of pop culture as mythology in a previous video.

We’ve talked, as you may have already seen, or are just learning, about pop culture as mythology more generally. We talked about how the concept of popular culture can function as something inherently important, and how even something made for the purposes of making money can still be something someone finds meaning in. Today, I want to focus in on particular medium of pop culture to explore this further: video games. Today, we’re going to talk about how video games are contemporary mythology, and what that means when someone like me comes in to study them following this idea.

Lets start with a quick summary of the topics covered in our previous pop culture mythology video. If you want something more in depth than this, you know where to go. We explored the concept of mythology itself, and how myth is a meaningful narraive, one which an individual or a community uses to define themselves by, or to understand themselves better, or to better realise their place in the world.

So, let’s talk about the Legend of Zelda series. I did research into the Zelda series during my Masters. Side note, I’d love to return to the topic, but that’s a much longer discussion for a very different day. But anyway, during this research I spent a lot of time talking to people who love Zelda about why they love Zelda. I heard all sorts of different stories. I heard from someone who used the triforce to help guide them to make decisions in their life. I heard from someone who connected to an uncle, long passed, through his copious scribbled notes on the gamebook for the first Zelda game. I heard from someone who always cherishes the memories of playing the game while their sister played the recorder to the tune of the various songs.

Each of these stories have something important at the core of them: the games they are talking about have cemented them to something far beyond the game. They gave them something to use to understand the best ways to navigate a confusing and troubling world. They gave them a way to connect to family members who have passed. They gave them a connection to family members, and an avenue through which they will always remember and solidify their relationship to family members still living.

These are stories which connect us to something else. The strings of life which weave us together with other people or other places are formed best through stories, and these stories of video games make up these strings, tying us to our communities.

This is what I mean when I talk about video games as mythology. They not only tell us stories, but they form stories we then share and use. They are narratives which connect us and give us meaning in our lives. This meaning isn’t necessarily literal understandings of the world, like which gods created the world or what happened historically in the past, but more metaphorical meaning, or meaning thorugh active sharing with others.

This is all well and good, but what does this mean for actually studying these narratives? Sure, we can talk about what the game script says, or what locations the characters have to go to. But if a game is more than just its script, then how do we study more than just the script?

This is where some useful terms from structural anthropology come into play. Claude Levi-Strauss, the founder of structural anthropology, once described an inherent difference between the written myth, or oral recitation of the myth, and the ritual which accompanies the myth. He described the written myth as the explicit myth, and the ritual as the implicit. For Levi-Strauss, always a true linguist, always saw the explicit myth, the actual words themselves, as much more important than the implicit. However, other anthropologists have since altered this, and seen these two elements as much more even, or even flipped in importance depending on the community studied.

Jonathan Miles-Watson took this a step further, writing about Shimla in India. He wrote about how the implicit myth carries much more than just ritual, but also a lot of other elements of myth. Most notably for Miles-Watson, it was the connecting threads he found embodied the implicit myth. It was the way we connect to the landscape around us through the stories, and our own stories about the stories, which gives us this solidified connection.

For video games, I think these are very useful tools to think with. We can take these different considerations of various forms of mythology and apply them to the complicated interweaving of video games. Because video games are so much more than their script. They are also a script that keeps you from continuing if you’re not very good at the ritual playing of the story. Imagine if someone wasn’t allowed to continue telling their story about Loki because they just weren’t very good at reciting it?

So let’s think about the actual scripted narrative, the things the developers have coded and written into the game, as the explicit myth. This is the thing we can point at. The stuff I’m playing on the screen while you watch this. This is all the explicit myth (well, in a way, but we’ll talk about that). In contrast, we have the implicit myth of the act of playing. This is the way I, personally, play a game. Or maybe how I connect to the game. It’s the thought of an uncle while playing, as well as the choices made through the course of playing the game.

But these are not strict categories without overlap. As I mentioned, the clips playing over this video are a combination of both of these at once. Yes, they are the scripted game, the elements presented to us by developers. But they are also in the act of being played. There is an implicit mythology there.

Quick note: when I say “choices”, I don’t just mean the obvious things like dialogue trees, or games where your choices can affect the way the game unfolds. I also mean small things, like the way one plays. What weapon do you prefer in Elden Ring? How do you play? What elements do you carry with you? Do you prefer throwing Molotov Cocktails in Bloodbourne? These are all choices, just as much as dialogue options are choices.

So how does this work in practice, I hear you asking? Well, that’s obviously going to depend on the game, as well as on the person playing. But if we were to study a game, say like the Legend of Zelda, we would do our best to, at first, separate these two elements. While there is overlap, and these two forms of mythology are occurring simultaneously, to make our lives easier we should think of them separately at least at first.

So for the explicit myth, we would think about the game’s story, like if it was presented on a wiki. What are the steps that happen? What’s the resolution? Where do the various scenes take place? Think of it like it’s a book or a traditional myth in this step.

The next step is to think about how someone plays these games. We can do a wee bit of auto-ethnography here: when you play the game, what did it feel like? Were there any points you were scared, or you laughed out loud, or you cried? Where were you the most tense? What did it feel like to finally beat a boss you were struggling with for ages? While auto-ethnography is not everything, and should always be diluted with the stories of other people, it’s always a nice place to start.

And then we bring in other people. Talk to other people playing the game. What did they think about it? How did they feel about all those emotional bits you felt? But always leave room for the connecting threads. What else is happening outside of the game play experience that is affecting our players?

I know this video was a little more technical than other ones, but I thought it was improtant and was playing on my mind a little to reinforce some of these ideas. We could, theoretically, do similar things for all our pop culture myths. For example, the comments I get on some of my videos are wonderful implicit mythology stories people explain about their connection to the story, and the way the story further connects them to others. We are all just giant bags of mythology that are simply wrapped up in flesh.

Who knows, maybe we can think about how you connect to the videos as well. Maybe each video essay I make is, in essence, its own little myth, forming its own little strings that people can grab onto and tie to whatever they feel connection to. But that’s thinking very highly of myself and my videos. But it’s always a nice thing to think about.

Playing with the Body

So, I’ve been thinking about tabletop role playing games lately, and playing with the body. Quick disclaimer: I’m still very very early in the research, so these initial studies and thoughts are just that: quick thoughts, things to think about, brief considerations. Today’s consideration: the body.

I’m partly thinking about the body because of how close this research is happening to the finishing of the cosplay project. In cosplay, everything was about the body. The body was what was transforming through the art of clothes, the body’s performing and embodying of the pop culture myth. But tabletop role playing isn’t cosplay, even though sometimes cosplay can be involved. The exact boundaries are, as always, a bit fuzzy.

But where is the body in tabletop games? We have the obvious actions that the body must take, like rolling dice, taking notes on changes to stats, and sometimes moving model figures on a map. Some of the brief conversations I’ve had already, the player commented on how they prefer physically rolling dice to doing so on a phone app because of the feel of the dice in the hands. This also comes with small bodily rituals, like blowing on the dice. In one actual play, one player would have another player blow on the dice because they often got more lucky with dice rolls.

Then there are other aspects when playing around a table (as opposed to virtually online). The bodily actions of simply being with others can change attitudes and approaches to the way games and play are understood and experienced. A lot of the stories of the joy of tabletop playing is about the togetherness. There are stories of pizza deliveries, or, in one case, homemade meals instead, shared with a party around the campfire of the game table.

Role play itself is bodily. Even when the players aren’t in costume, and don’t move around, they are still role playing with the body. Maybe they pitch their voice differently in order to make it more obvious when they are speaking as their character versus themselves as player. Even the ways of speaking can be different, using different sentence structures or vocabulary in order to fall into the way a character would speak and move rather than the player.

The body is definitely actively involved in role playing, even if the play is entirely different from the cosplay type of play. While one may be more obvious, the other is still there and actively present. One of the determining words in defining these types of games is tabletop - which actively encourages images of gathering around a table to look at something together. An active bodily action. What kind of differences are there when exploring tabletop role playing online? How do these actions change or differ? What bodily actions are transferred, despite the virtual location? I’ve still got a lot of questions to unpack.

Playing with the Body

So, I’ve been thinking about tabletop role playing games lately, and playing with the body. Quick disclaimer: I’m still very very early in the research, so these initial studies and thoughts are just that: quick thoughts, things to think about, brief considerations. Today’s consideration: the body.

I’m partly thinking about the body because of how close this research is happening to the finishing of the cosplay project. In cosplay, everything was about the body. The body was what was transforming through the art of clothes, the body’s performing and embodying of the pop culture myth. But tabletop role playing isn’t cosplay, even though sometimes cosplay can be involved. The exact boundaries are, as always, a bit fuzzy.

But where is the body in tabletop games? We have the obvious actions that the body must take, like rolling dice, taking notes on changes to stats, and sometimes moving model figures on a map. Some of the brief conversations I’ve had already, the player commented on how they prefer physically rolling dice to doing so on a phone app because of the feel of the dice in the hands. This also comes with small bodily rituals, like blowing on the dice. In one actual play, one player would have another player blow on the dice because they often got more lucky with dice rolls.

Then there are other aspects when playing around a table (as opposed to virtually online). The bodily actions of simply being with others can change attitudes and approaches to the way games and play are understood and experienced. A lot of the stories of the joy of tabletop playing is about the togetherness. There are stories of pizza deliveries, or, in one case, homemade meals instead, shared with a party around the campfire of the game table.

Role play itself is bodily. Even when the players aren’t in costume, and don’t move around, they are still role playing with the body. Maybe they pitch their voice differently in order to make it more obvious when they are speaking as their character versus themselves as player. Even the ways of speaking can be different, using different sentence structures or vocabulary in order to fall into the way a character would speak and move rather than the player.

The body is definitely actively involved in role playing, even if the play is entirely different from the cosplay type of play. While one may be more obvious, the other is still there and actively present. One of the determining words in defining these types of games is tabletop - which actively encourages images of gathering around a table to look at something together. An active bodily action. What kind of differences are there when exploring tabletop role playing online? How do these actions change or differ? What bodily actions are transferred, despite the virtual location? I’ve still got a lot of questions to unpack.

The Babadook and Monstrous Mothers

The Babadook is an Australian horror film, focused on the relationship of a widowed mother and her son. Released in 2014, the Babadook set an example of psychological horror focused on monsters. The Babadook as a monster is a type of boogeyman, reliving aspects of childhood monstrosity that comes to life through paranoia.

The Babadook is an interesting monstrous figure, one that explores aspects of culture and self in the quiet and subtle ways it comes to life in the film. The way the Babadook manifests, plays with the expectations of fiction and reality, and comes to possess or alter our main character Amelia, is an example of how monsters can be a powerful force in horror and fiction. So, today, let’s explore the monstrous figure of the Babadook.

Perhaps the best place to start is in the two characters who dominate the entire narrative. Despite there being scenes with other figures, such as their neighbour and their family, the movie almost exclusively consists of our two primary characters: Amelia and her son Sam. Amelia’s husband died in a car crash while driving her to the hospital when she was in labour. The incredibly traumatic experience is obviously still haunting Amelia when the movie starts.

It opens with a dream-like sequence of the moment of death, where Amelia is reliving the moment in her nightmares. It’s Sam that wakes her from this dream, concerned about his own nightmares he’s reliving. This then takes us on a sequence of the typical parental ritual of checking for monsters, though there is a different experience of this in the movie’s rendering. Amelia looks exhausted from the movements; she’s tired and only going through the performance of the act because its what’s expected rather than out of love.

This sequence is the heart of the whole movie, and the birth of the Babadook. Amelia embodies a type of motherhood that is seldom demonstrated in popular culture. Amelia has dispassionate reactions to her son throughout the movie, especially in the beginning segments we see her acting through duty rather than love. She’s mechanical, going through the motions of helping her child with nightmares without the tenderness behind it. She flinches when Sam tries to touch her, she responds to actions with distaste, and shifts between feeling protective and dismissive of her son.

Adrienne Rich wrote of maternal ambivalence, saying:

“My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any expe-rience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guilt-less beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.”

As a monster, this is where the Babadook stands: at the borders of becoming, the possibility that society’s stressors and emphasis on the innate joy of motherhood is sometimes not present.

In fact, this expectation of care and nurturing is put on Amelia in all aspects of her life. For money, she works in a care home, has to take on the role of head of household in domestic work, she has responsibilities as a mother, she cares for the elderly neighbour through acts of labour. Her entire life is built around the idea of caring for others. She has both the internalised pressures of her expectations, but also the external pressures and expectations from those around her, including family and institutions.

The Babadook is a representation of this other form of motherhood, the ambivalent motherhood which hides within it social judgement and the toll motherhood can take on an individual. Writer and director Jennifer Kent talks about the assumptions of motherhood in saying:

“It’s the great unspoken thing. We’re all, as women, educated and conditioned to think that motherhood is an easy thing that just happens. But it’s not always the case. I wanted to show a real woman who was drowning in that environment.”

Her continued actions of her ambivalent motherhood continues to other her, both in the eyes of others and in her own judgement. Her family begins to reject her abilities as mother through the “not normal” actions of her son Samuel. When she turns to a GP for sedatives to help her and her son sleep, he tells her its a choice “most mothers” would not choose.

The Babadook begins to take over Amelia as she continues to give in to the harder parts of motherhood. The Babadook, therefore, is a doppelganger of sourts, an alternate version of Amelia which has become “possessed” by her feelings of distaste for her son. As she continues to give into the feelings of rage that are so often denied to her, she becomes more and more drawn to the monster.

The Babadook is both a source of horror and of emotional release. Although as a monster he stalks Amelia, possesses her, changes her, she also relaxes in the ability to voice the emotions that have been building inside her but that she has refused to let go because of the social expectations on her as mother. The scene where Samuel comes to her, expressing how hungry he is, her release of anger is both troublesome on how it would affect her child, but also a clear release of the stress that has been building up inside her.

In fact, one of the scenes that demonstrates her stress and anxiety is when she has a day off from her job as a careworker because she is supposed to be caring for Samuel. Instead, she has a day to herself, doing very simple acts like eating icecream or walking around a mall. These small actions of self attention are a demonstration of what she feels she has been missing within both grief and motherhood, but we also see the social pressures put on her from the way others look at her as she goes about this day. Her obvious guilt when caught out is not only in being caught in her lie but in her dismissal, even temporarily, of her social responsibilities.

This doppelganger monster is one that is constantly present. As the pseudo-children’s book tells us at the beginning of the film: the more you deny, the stronger I get. As the movie progresses, Amelia is not just denying the existence of the Babadook, but through him her own grief and ambivalent motherhood. As she continues to deny this, the animosity she feels towards her son grows.

In the scene where she shouts at Samuel as he says he’s hungry, her phrasings come to take on the rhythm of the Babadook’s call: Ba-ba-dook-dook-dook. “Why do you keep talk-talk-talking?” The doppleganger/possession of the Babadook is an exploration of her own emotional connections, or, more importantly, disconnections.

You can’t get rid of the Babadook. This is something the book tells us at the very beginning of the film, and is repeated by Samuel at the moment they first think they have completed the exorcisim of the Babadook. The ending of the movie demonstrates how this works in reality, when the monster is not made manifest in a coat and hat but is within ourselves. We cannot rid ourselves of the monster, in the way we cannot rid ourselves of this ambivalent part of motherhood. We must harbour it and bare it, but manage it under proper circumstances, an in a way that does not damage thsoe around us - like our children.

Jeffrey Cohen sketched out his seven thesis of monsters in Monster Studies, or seven ways that monsters represent our cultural and social fears. Two of them can be used to look at the Babadook. Monsters border the possible. In some aspects, we see this on old maps, where unknown seas where marked with “Here be Dragons”. But the monster can also monitor the borders of social and cultural possibilities. It shows us what we should or shouldn’t be doing. The Babadook borders what is socially expected and possible of mothers. Likewise, the Babadook stands at the threshold of becoming - another one of the monster theses. Here, the Babadook marks the possibilities of monstrous becomings for motherhood. It demonstrates to us that motherhood is not the flowers and pleasantries that society likes to paint it as. It’s hard work. It’s pain and suffering, but also moments of joy. But we are expected to hide those other bits away, pretend that everything is fine. The Babadook demonstrates the place where these moments consume the mother, and mark her as a social monster.

These feelings we have are always wanted to be let in, wrapping at our door to the rhythm of ba-ba-dook-dook-dook. But they can be exorcised. They cannot be completely let go. We should not deny it, but also should not allow it to consume us. They must be managed, cared for, and held within the special places of our homes.