Classic Review: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Rosemary's Baby
Director: Roman Polanski
Writers: Roman Polanski. Based upon the novel by Ira Levin.
Cast: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Charles Grodin, Victoria Vetri

Overview
Rosemary's Baby is widely regarded as a classic horror film. It certainly has some clever twists and creepy elements, but it ultimately left me underwhelmed. Furthermore, while Rosemary's Baby can be seen as having pro-feminist leanings, there are elements of the film that are highly problematic when it comes to it's depiction of sexual assault.

Synopsis
Rosemary (Mia Farrrow) and her new husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move into a new apartment and soon after, start trying to conceive a baby. One night, after they were planning on having sex, Rosemary falls into a deep sleep, in which she has a sequence of disturbing dreams. When she wakes up, she finds scratches along her body, which her husband claims he did to her while he had intercourse with her while she slept. Later, Rosemary discovers she is pregnant and she starts seeing Dr. Dr. Sapirstein when Guy insists, rather than see their old family physician. When Rosemary develops a sharp pain in her abdomen that won't stop, Dr. Sapirstein dismisses her concerns. As time progresses, Rosemary becomes suspicious that she is trapped in a plot involving witchcraft and becomes increasingly desperate to escape, only to find all of her efforts thwarted.

The Queering
As I understand it, Rosemary's Baby has strongly resonated with woman over the decades due to the way it captures the typical fears and anxieties that can emanate from anyone expecting a child. Furthermore, the way Rosemary is carefully controlled by both her husband and those around her certainly mimics the way society both overtly and subtly takes control of women's bodies when they are pregnant. Rosemary finds everything, her appearance, her weight, and her diet, constantly commented on and criticized by others. Meanwhile, her pains and fears are dismissed as both crazy and further reason for her to be placed under increasing systems of control, until finally she is locked up and sedated right before she is to give birth. Therefore, once the final "twist" is revealed, that this was all the work of a group of Satanists (who had recruited her husband early on in the film), can be seen as the film taking the evil that is typically done to women (particularly pregnant woman) and making it literally real.

For a variety of reasons, I do not wish to dismiss this interpretation out of hand. However, while watching Rosemary's Baby I found myself looking at the film from a rather different lens, one that I should point out at the outset involves me having a very biased opinion of Roman Polanski, due to his conviction of sexually assaulting a thirteen year old minor and the subsequent rape apologism that spewed forth from Polanski's supporters.

What I'm getting at, is that there are elements in Rosemary's Baby that can be seen as forms of rape apologism.

I'll start with the night in which Guy drugs Rosemary so that she can be impregnated by Satan. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds scratches on her body, which Guy admits that he did to her while he was having sex with her while she was asleep. In other words, he just admitted that he raped her, which the film never really strongly condemns as being rape, at least for my tastes. Instead, we later find out that Guy drugged her so that she could be instead raped by Satan, but the film doesn't really treat this as shocking until this is revealed. As it stands, it seems almost as if the film is agreeing with the legal standards of the time that a woman cannot be raped by her husband, thanks to the spousal exemption standards that existed.

To put it another way, in either scenario, Rosemary is raped, gets pregnant, and chooses to have the child in spite of having been raped. The only element that really has changed by the end, in terms of what we the audience and the character know, is who the actual rapist was. Guy simply goes from being the sexual assailant to being an accessory to rape. The fact that the crime itself occurred does not change, but the film doesn't treat it as a crime until the end.

Furthermore, another problematic element here, with regards to Rosemary being sexually assaulted, is the "Devil Made Me Do It" element that the final plot twist evokes, which helps soften the culpability for Guy. Rather than "The Devil Made Me Do It", it's "The Devil Actually Did It". Following this line of reasoning to the end, and one must conclude that the film is evoking the idea of "Stranger Danger" by blaming the crime on the devil, while minimizing the danger that frequently comes from more domestic sources.

The other really problematic element comes from the end, where Rosemary runs around, making an increasingly number of irrational mistakes and puts herself in unnecessary danger as a result. It takes her waaaaaaay too long to realize that Dr. Sapirstein may be a part of the conspiracy against her. Given the fact he was the one prescribing the strange drink for her, he should have been suspect number one. Then there is the way she blabs her entire tale to her new doctor, including the fact that she suspects Dr. Sapirstein and others of practicing witchcraft. Honestly, there was no reason to have included that detail, all she should have said in that scene was "help me, my husband is an abusive fuck and my old doctor, Dr. Sapirstein was an enabler. I don't want them to know where I am." In all fairness, this part could be included to comment on how society conditions people to not believe woman when they are claiming to have been abused. But it undermines the point due to the fact that a doctor has every reason to believe that a person may in fact be mentally ill, especially when they claim to be the victim of a conspiracy of actual witches.

Maybe this is the result of having watched too much Buffy: The Vampire Slayer but honestly, watching a female protagonist act this foolishly is difficult and makes me think that it is set up to enable victim blaming. There were points where Rosemary showed signs of autonomy and intelligence, which makes her ultimate inability to escape from the clutches the bad guys appear to be all the more her fault.

In short, while Rosemary's Baby may in fact capture the uncertainty and difficulties of being pregnant, by minimizing the culpability of Guy in the rape of his wife and evoking the idea of victim blaming, I find myself questioning the films message and intentions.

Recommendation
Rosemary's Baby is only for those interested in films solely for their historical value. This is one troubled pregnancy not worth trying to save.

The Rating
** out of ****

Trailer


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Silver Demon: Speaking for the Voiceless

In The Republic, Plato takes pains to express his contempt of most art. Plato's view of art of course was shaped by his conception of his beloved Forms. For those who do not know, Plato conceived of the forms as a metaphysically "real" world that everything in our world is based upon. A chair is only a chair, according to Plato, because within the realm of the Platonic Forms, the true form/idea of a chair exists.

Everything that is a copy of something else is inferior to the original (Plato claims) therefore, our world is inferior to the world of the forms. By default then art, which attempts to "copy" things in our world, is therefore a copy of a copy, and therefore further degraded from the Platonic Forms.

One hates to think what might happen to Plato, if he were still alive today, of the apocalyptic rage he might experience when he saw Hollywoods' fetish for sequels, remakes, adaptations, as well as the remakes of sequels of previous adaptations which then go on to have novelizations and video games based upon them.

In any case, this brings me to what I want to talk about: Speaking on behalf of those who have been marginalized.

In the process, of writing my LGBTQ Superhero novel Silver Demon, it did not feel right to me to not honor real life LGBTQ heros, as well as using the opportunity to highlight both bits of LGBTQ history and LGBTQ individuals that have either been overlooked or forgotten.

To that end, I created secondary characters based upon real life LGBTQ individuals. This is in addition to naming individuals after LGBTQ historical figures, even when It was only afterwards that I started wondering, was what I'm doing really all that ethical? After all, I am taking individuals, some of whom were quite controversial in their time, and putting words in their mouths that they themselves might not have agreed with. I have of course made every attempt to stay true to the essence of what the established record says about these individuals, but error on my part is always a real possibility.

In the same vein, I have felt a certain responsibility to raise awareness of issues facing the queer community, such as the high rate of homelessness among LGBTQ youth. I also felt it important that I not just include white, able bodied, cis-male character, in addition to characters of various religious and cultural backgrounds.

However, I personally am cis, male, able bodied, white, raised christian (specifically Methodist), identify as agnostic, currently part of Oneonta's Unitarian Universalist Society. I have also never personally experienced what it is like to be homeless. By creating characters who are not part of my tribe or within my own experience, am I, to a degree, committing a form of cultural imperialism? I do not know what it is like to live in our society as a person of color. I am not blind or deaf, nor am I required to rely on a wheelchair for basic mobility. I am not a member of either Islam or Buddhism. Is it therefore possible then for me to somehow appear not only to be speaking for other groups (which I'm not trying to do) but because I have included such characters, end up misrepresenting the experiences of these groups?

There is a phenomenon in many narratives, in which a member of a non-oppressed group (typically a white, cis, straight man) manages to save a member or members of an oppressed group. Examples of this are abundant, Dances with Wolves, Dances With Wolves in Space... er Avatar.

While I think Hollywood (or whoever is telling a particular story) does this for very specific reasons - they get to have a character (the white, cis, straight man) who appeals to the widest audience possible - while still getting to address the Important Issues of the Day. However, these narratives has the unfortunate effect of making the minorities in question look weak and unable to solve their problems. This problem is the one issue that I think I was fortunately able to avoid easily enough in my own work.

However, there are even thornier issues yet. When I was doing research, I discovered the stories of brothels that were maintained by the NAZI's in concentration camps such as Buchenwald, which is where a significant part of where the back-story in Silver Demon is set. This also happens to be the one topic I feel would be the easiest for me to get wrong. I do not wish to exploit a tragedy or human suffering but if I ignore the issue altogether in the story, would I be contributing to the oppressive silence surrounding rape and sexual assault?

I don't think there are any easy answers to these questions. Anything I create can only be considered a copy of something of our real, non-Platonic Form world. Therefore, I can only ask, am I creating something inferior and exploitative or enlightened and informative? And then work towards the latter and while trying to avoid the former.

On Censorship, Rape Culture, and the New Comments Policy.

Generally speaking, I tend to like to pretend that there is no topic too offensive that it could not be discussed by reasonable adults. Censorship is evil I tell you! EVIL!

There are of course moments when reality hits and I find myself forcing to take a hard look at my positions on free speech. A few days ago was one such day.

It came when I found a comment on the post Gore Vidal, Rape Apologist that basically defended Vidals' statements. Among other lovely little dripplings, the comment included the sentiment that somehow determining whether or not a rape victim was a virgin at the time they were sexually assaulted was somehow relevant.

Yeah, I too hate it when I've been conned into thinking this is now the 21st century.

In any case, I deleted the comment. I realize that I have now invited scores of people to decry my position as hypocritical. So be it. If someone out there wants to start a blog and pontificate about how morally upright rapists are, and how their slutty victims were asking for it, go ahead. But I will not allow such poison on Queering the Closet.

For the record, I have now updated the About page to include a section outlining the new commenting policy.