Spooped: The Babadook (part 2)

Sick! You decided to listen to me even more :) If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you probably didn’t read part 1, so here’s a link: https://bramsfunblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/spooped-babadook-part-1.html

Alright! So where to start? I don’t know rhetorical Bram, why don’t you decide? (Tricked you- both of those sentences were actually rhetorical Bram!) Shenans aside, there’s a lot to talk about because there are a lot of ways you can take this movie.

Signs this movie needed to be spooped:
Mr. Babadook the LGBTQ+ icon

Here are a few ways you can look at it:

1) it’s just a scary story. It doesn’t mean anything.

2) Amelia is the protagonist, who is being haunted for some reason.

3) Samuel is the protagonist, who is being forced to grow up because his mom is the true piece of sqib in the story. It’s a coming of age story

4) This one’s my favorite to think about. Mr. Babadook is the protagonist! Say what?!? How? You’ll see :)

5) Some minor character is the protagonist. I don’t know. You’re the one who didn’t think the 4 explanations I gave were good enough. Pick one. Maybe it’s actually the police. There are way more important things for the police to deal with than a bad mom avoiding the pain of her husband’s death (although maybe there aren’t- as the ending shows)

1: Movie is meaningless

Don't know who this guy is, but yeah...

While I don’t necessarily like this, because I like meaning, this is a valid way of enjoying the movie. The cinematography is beautiful. There are some shots that will definitely send shivers up your spine with their kubrikesque hollowness (the hall scene in particular). The music also evokes the mood perfectly. Most of the time there is no music, which helps to create a feeling of emptiness. When there is, it is very minimalist but eerie- just like Mr. Babadook himself it prefers subtlety, lurking in the background but always there, until it finally appears. The plot is also interesting and the dialogue is well-written. The characters are vaguely familiar, but have enough idiosyncracies to distinguish them from normal archetypes. Basically, you can easily enjoy this movie as nothing more than a movie.

2: Amelia the over-worked single mom

While this isn’t the only way to look at Amelia as a protagonist, it’s the one that makes the most sense to me. (disclaimer: I’m not, nor will ever be able to be, a single mom. This is single-motherhood through the lens of Bram, which is a bit of a caricature. If you are a single mother I apologize in advance, because I haven’t lived your experience and I imagine that it isn’t always the horror that this movie presents it as.) It also makes sense that Jennifer Kent would choose this character to tell the story, since it is likely the closest to her actual experience. I can’t find that much on Jennifer, but I’d be very curious to hear what inspired this movie and the source material (which Jennifer also wrote). Anyway, single moms.

No need for a caption. "Then why'd you
make one, Bram?"

Being a single mom seems fugging hard. So much of the conflict of this movie would be easily resolvable if she just had someone other than a frail old lady to help her. But her family hates spending time with her because they hate Samuel for being a little sqib, so she can’t go to them for help. When she asks her sister for help, that sister tries to fix her when Amelia probably just wants someone to listen to her.

She doesn’t have the luxury of quitting her job, because she is the sole provider for Samuel. Her coworkers want to help, but she fears that even the cute guy at work won’t be able to understand or help her. Work requires her attention and keeps her from getting the sleep she needs to deal with all of the other things she has to deal with. 

No one will believe you...

When she reaches out to the government (through the police) for help, they laugh at her. She sees that the Babadook is hidden in plain sight but that they are too busy taking care of “important problems” to listen to her. No, she has to deal with this alone. She has to protect Samuel from the world, even if it requires her to lose her sanity. 

And as easy as it would be to say this is just a movie, our society doesn’t do single moms a lot of favors. Most single moms don’t have to deal with Mr. Babadook trying to possess them and kill their family, but they have to put up with far more than any human being is capable of putting up with. And we act like their problems are their fault. “What’s that you said? Your husband died driving you to the hospital to give birth? Maybe you shouldn’t have been trying to have a kid. Maybe this a sign from God that you aren’t supposed to try to have kids. Maybe I’m just spewing sqib at you because I never learned how to empathise because our society doesn’t think that’s important (but it’s not my fault. I just wanted to fit in).” Thanks Strawman Bram.

What Amelia really needs is a break. She needs to not have to think about all of the things she is being required to think about. She needs sleep. But this is where her character flaws begin to show. She hits her breaking point so hard that she stops listening to Samuel, who is genuinely terrified by this book. She isn’t willing to confront the Babadook. She isn’t even willing to go into her own basement because it reminds her of her husband- the one person she feels could take away the pain she feels. She clings so tightly to the past that she refuses to look for other solutions. She just wants to be left alone to ruminate on a past that is impossible to return to without a time machine (she should really be studying quantum mechanics if she wants to go back; we don’t know enough about it yet to say that it couldn’t make time travel possible spib).

Husband dead and left you with a sqibby
child? Tired of everything? Quantum mechanics
has just what you need!

And it’s this refusal to listen that makes her easy prey for Mr. Babadook. Mr. Babadook shows her what she would be if she continues to hold onto and repress her feelings. And although she hates what she sees, she doesn’t hate it enough to save the poor dog.

But she gets a happy ending. Samuel helps save her from herself (or Mr. Babadook wearing her skin like a glove- there’s too many layers of allegory to be sure what any of this actually symbolizes, if anything).

3: Samuel the boy who doesn’t want to grow up

In my opinion, Samuel is the most relatable character, but it probably just looks that way because Samuel looks like me, or at least looks like I used to look (if you’re looking at me through a weird house of mirrors): little white boy with mental health problems that noone will listen to. He never got to have a father and his mother is too busy taking care of pragmatic things like work to give him what he needs: someone to listen to him and to let him be a kid without judging him. (Most of that does not acutally look like me. My parents are great and people do listen to me spib).

"Why does everyone, including the woman
who pooped me into this world, hate me?"

He is thrown, against his wishes, into a world full of evil monsters that want to hurt him. He is the only one able to see just how real Mr. Babadook is- a manifestation of all of the fugged up things about the world that are hidden from kids even though they affect kids. All Samuel knows is that everyone, including his mom, hates him and he doesn’t know why. 

He latches onto the Babadook because finally he has some name to put to the horror he is experiencing. If he can just destroy Mr. Babadook everything will be okay and he’ll be the hero for once instead of the monster that everyone keeps telling him he is. 

This is where his faults come into play. He isn’t really a child. He is already old enough that he can listen to those around him, who hate him because he won’t moderate his behaviour. He is actually violent towards his cousin. He needs to grow up and realize that other people matter too. 

"The only good Babadook is a dead
Babadook"

Luckily, his childishness proves to be more useful than not. He is the only one who will take Mr. Babadook seriously enough to see him for the threat he is. His mom isn’t listening to his warnings about Mr. Babadook. She’d prefer to sedate him so she doesn’t have to deal with his sqibness so that she can ruminate on the death of her husband in peace. Samuel doesn’t know this, but he knows he can’t listen to her. He knows what he saw and refuses to believe it is delusional. He refuses to take the medicine so that he can stop Mr. Babadook and save his mom from herself. And only once she has dealt with her demons can she help him grow up by learning to take care of Mr. Babadook. And a child will lead them…

3.5 Samuel the fugging annoying psychotic little boy who just won’t shut up

Alternatively, if you hate people with mental health “problems” (that’s me!) you could look at this whole thing as an allegory for a psychotic episode, in which Samuel gets so lost in his own head that he makes Mr. Babadook real for those around him, which hurts his mom (who is already dealing with her own sqib) so deeply that when she finally decides to buy into his overactive imagination, it makes her want to kill him. There is some evidence for this, though it pains me to present it.

One plausible reading is that Mr. Babadook doesn’t actually exist. But Samuel is so obsessed with him because Samuel isn’t willing to admit to himself that most of his problems are his own fault for being such a little sqib to other people (pushing his cousin out of a treehouse for example). So rather than admit he is wrong, Samuel attaches to the idea of the Babadook as the source of all his problems. His mom knows this isn’t true. But sameul just won’t shut up about it.

Please do us all a favor and shut your
sqib mouth, Samule

One piece of evidence for this is the car crash scene, where Samuel claims to see the Babadook but Amelia can’t see anything. She is so distracted by Samuel, who could easily be faking it for the attention he craves, that she crashes her car. Sometimes the world can’t pay attention to your needs. Sometimes there isn’t enough attention to go around. Sometimes it really is a good idea to trust your mom and take the pills she thinks will help you, lest you give life to demons that ought not to be given life.

The reason I don’t actually like Samuel that much as a character is that it hits too close to home for me. As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes having a “special” brain really is a problem. Sometimes mental health “problems” really are problems when they force you to only care about yourself, which severe psychosis most certainly does. In its grip, you are unable to think about other people and their needs because your mind plays tricks on you. I’m uncomfortable labeling this is as good or bad objectively, but I’m not too naive to admit that sometimes having Bipolar (which is about as far on the psychotic spectrum as you can get without reaching “the mental health problems formerly known as schizophrenia”) makes it impossible for other people to be around me.

Sometimes it is better to keep your mouth shut, because if you go off spouting the horror you see, you’ll make other people see it. You will hijack their attention by forcing them to see the world the way you see it- and they will also start to see the horror you see. 

Moving on…

4: Mr. Babadook the necessary and misunderstood "evil"

This is actually my favorite reading of this movie, because it is so unhuman that you get to play a lot with the motivations. I’ll let rhetorical Bram explain; or will I? (Gaw I hate/love this guy). What if Mr. Babadook isn’t the bad guy? What if he is actually the most deeply kind character in the story? Sounds crazy, right?

Let’s play pretend for a little bit. (It’ll suck; I promise; and then you can go back to being a grown-az hooman). Have you ever seen the movie Inside Out? It’s good, right? The premise is ingenious- what if feelings had feelings? So let’s imagine that they do. What would the darker feelings feel like? What would hatred, self-loathing, shame, guilt, remorse, apathy, you name it feel like? 

What if Mr. Babadook is the answer to that question? What if “The Babadook” is actually a weird crossover between “Inside Out” and “The Rugrats: all grown up,” but set in the real world? Sounds crazy, right? Okay, rhetorical Bram, you’ve done enough. Now fug off please and leave these poor readers alone.

It makes sense to view Mr. Babadook like this. It is clear that there are a lot of unprocessed negative emotions that the characters in this movie are hiding from. For Amelia it is the pain of her husband’s death, mixed with the shame society is making her feel for being a sqiby mom, mixed with the loathing she feels towards Samuel, mixed with the self-loathing she feels for feeling the previous feeling, mixed with a whole lot of other negative sqib. For Samuel it is the shame of living with a mental illness, mixed with the shame of not understanding how to relate to others, mixed with the emptiness of lacking a father, mixed with a loathing of others for making him feel lesser, mixed with a self-loathing for feeling the former, mixed with a whole lot of other negative sqib. For the old lady, it is being old; that’s all. 

Sometimes joy, sadness, fear, anger, and
disgust just won't cut it. Solution: let
Mr. Babadook into the control room

These emotions are too nuanced to even be given a name. They intersect with each other to such a degree that it is impossible to even determine what is even causing the pain. And that which can’t be named can’t be known. Mr. Babadook is those emotions personified. He is all of the pain and shame and hatred we refuse to admit we feel. He has a name: Mr. Babadook, but he is so disturbing that only a child would pay attention to him. Because at the end of the day, emotions are just like everything else: they just want to be listened to and acknowledged. They just want to feel useful. 

So Mr. Babadook knew he existed and tried to get the attention of Amelia. “Ey, lady. You got some unresolved emotional baggage to deal with.” (not sure why I gave Mr. Babadook a Brooklyn accent). But she wouldn’t listen. No matter how bad her life got, she always shut Mr. Babadook out. But then Mr. Babadook had an idea: he chose a new form- Mr. Babadook- and appeared to Samuel in an innocent-looking book. Samuel would listen. And Samuel did. A bit too well. 

Mr. Babadook just wants to be loved like
everyone else. Maybe the LGBTQ+
community was on to something (#shocker)

Rather than see Mr. Babadook for what he wanted to be- a necessary evil that movitates people to change for the better, Mr. Babadook allowed himself to become a monster by giving Samuel control over him. Unknowingly (or perhaps knowingly, it’s unclear how malicious Mr. Babadook actually is) he gave a child with a nondescript mental health condition control over his existence. He possessed Samuel to get to Amelia. This is Mr. Babadook’s character flaw: he wanted so badly to be heard, to be given the attention he thought he deserved, that he refused to listen to the needs of others. 

Like the other characters, Mr. Babadook was initially unable to see past himself. He thought he knew what was best. He’d already written the “correct” ending- in which he uses Amelia to kill Samuel and drive herself mad. But that’s not actually a very healthy way to process those negative emotions. You need to listen to them, but murdering your only child is very low on the list of good ways to use them. You gotta sublimate that sqib, Mr. Babadook. 

But like the other characters, he also gets a happy ending. He gets to live with Amelia and Samuel in the basement, where they bring him tasty worms to eat and he can exist in a way where he doesn’t have to hurt anyone. 

5- Everyone is happy but the gawrshdag dog

The only character that didn't deserve what
he got: Bugsy is a christ figure. He took all
the sqib of the other characters onto himself
and died. But unfortunately, he won't rise again.

Yay! Happy endings all around. The only character that doesn’t get a happy ending is poor Bugsy, the dog. This movie, while amazing, fails to be truly beautiful because Bugsy is just an object. No one cares what he thinks- that he’d prefer not to get sucked up in human affairs and murdered by some weird manifestation of human emotions. Amelia didn’t stop to think, hey, I wonder what Bugsy thinks. NOONE DID. This movie highlights just how little of a sqib we as humans give about animals. And there is beauty in how accurately this movie captures that, but that beauty is not truly beautiful to me. It is a beautiful portrayal of an ugly world- and with aesthetics the choice of subject matter is a crucial component of how beautiful that aesthetic is.

5.5- You decide
There are limitless ways you could interpret this movie. That's what makes it so amazing in my (not-so-)humble opinion. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section if you can think of other interesting ways to understand this movie. Hint: ask yourself what character you don't understand and try to look at the movie from their perspective.

CONCLUSION

It's even got the weird mirror aesthetic.
Gotta listen to more of these guys.

While very good at addressing key issues like parenting, single motherhood, alienation, childhood, mental health, childhood mental health, and emotional intelligence, the picture The Babadook presents of the world fails to capture the true beauty of the world. It does an excellent job of capturing horror and negative emotions and distilling them into a beautiful series of moving pictures (and has a great ominous soundtrack that would make Nurse With Wound proud), but that is not the way I want to view the world. While the world does contain horror, we can’t let that horror define our view of the world or we will become paranoid and disconnect from those around us.

Who needs pills when you got puppers?

Although the needs of a person or emotion are important and we as a society should try to give special attention to those who require it due to circumstances outside of their control, we can’t buy into the narrative this movie espouses: that the ends justify the means- that if your needs aren’t being met you should just scream so loudly that others have to pay attention to you- that poor bugsy and other nonhumans (and nonhuman-emotions) are just objects to be used by people to cope with the way they feel. Nor can we allow ourselves the luxury of listening to Strawman Bram, who also hates the authorities and everyone who doesn't agree with his vision of how the world should be and would like to see them ridiculed. (Sorry, Strawman Bram, going to have to throw you under the bus where you belong).

There are healthier ways to deal with these things. Did Amelia ever hear of mindfulness and meditation? Did Samuel ever hear of sublimating his beautiful imagination into art of some kind? Did Mr. Babadook ever hear about the danger of possessing people against their will and the possibility of them using him as a justification for their own pupperphobic violence fetishes? Has anyone in this gawrshdag story ever heard of a sense of humor? Nope. I give this movie a rating of sprim/spig- there’s definitely important lessons to be learned, but I wouldn’t let my Bramlets consume it on their own.

I hope you've hated this installment of Spooped (trademark pending). If you've got suggestions on how to improve future installments, shove them up your sqibber and leave me alone. Just kidding, I'd love to hear your feedback. Also, if you have other movies, books, or media that you'd like to see me spoop, I'd also love to hear them and hear why you think I should spoop them.

Good talk.