glee/gloat

[torrain_circles]

Mwa-ha.
Mwa-ha-ha-ha.
It's mine, all mine.
My precious.

Mwa-ha-ha!

(Yes, that is only 64 pages of 8-1/2" x 11" paper halved and trimmed. No, I don't want to talk about how much shipping from France was. Mine!)

Comments

[jasmine-koran.livejournal.com]

But she HAS done something wrong. She has allowed herself to remain completely ignorant, despite her desire to have children, to the process of pregnancy and the workings of her own body. when I watched that movie and saw her doubled over in pain I wanted to scream at her, "THIS IS NOT NORMAL! HOW STUPID ARE YOU?!" Dunno 'bout you, but by the time I was twelve I knew pregnancy wasn't supposed to be painful. She allowed HERSELF to be exploited. The same issues were explored in Lewis' The Monk.
And as for the second, that's not strictly true....while Lewis does go into the sematary for the first time supposedly for Ellie's sake,we all know she'd likely have done just fine without it (and note that in no other cases did the child's parent do the burying). That first visit was the sematary's introduction to him. It's only when Lewis refuses to accept the sematary's lesson that it really gets pissed.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

If you are saying you think the movie is conveying that Rosemary is a bad person or has morally failed because she is ignorant--and it is the moral sense of doing something wrong which I am discussing--I am going to have to disagree.

That movie isn't just set in 1968; it was *made* in 1968. Roe vs. Wade hadn't happened yet. The idea of a woman existing outside of the role of happy housewife was still new and frightening, especially among people old enough to have established a household. The seminar in Boston that led to the first by woman/for women health course hadn't happened yet. Our Bodies Ourselves, the reference book eventually published as a result of that, would not come out for another five years. To expect a housewife of 1968 to be informed about women's health and argue with her doctor is like expecting Elizabeth to tell Victor Frankenstein that she's not marrying him because she's planning to study to become a doctor.

As to "Pet Sematary": no, it's strictly true. Spot was buried by a kid, and never hurt anyone, though he frightened the adults who knew he was dead. Church was buried by adults, and Church gets vicious. He's not really effective, because he's a housecat, but he's gone nasty and cruel.

Similarly, the boy who came back from the war was buried by an adult, and he was terrible. Gage was buried by an adult, and turns into the second coming of Michael Myers. (I'm pretty sure they cut Hanratty the bull from the movie, but IIRC *he* was also buried by an adult, and he got mean.)

[jasmine-koran.livejournal.com]

Nu-uh. The 60s were when women were starting to break out of the happy housewife role. The Pill was coming into common usage. Free love and sexuality were rampant. Equal rights and "know thyself" were the words of the decade. Rosemary's Baby is about a woman who allowed herself to remain ignorant and subjugated and paid the price. And one doesn't have to have a doctorate to know that pain throughout pregnancy is NOT normal.
And while I don't think the movie conveys that she is a bad person or morally wrong, I think she is wrong in the context of the film in the same way Kirsty was wrong in playing with the box. Both were doing something seemingly innocent and were nailed by the film for it. I say that if you claim that Kirsty is "wrong" for playing with the box, you have to agree that Rosemary is "wrong" for sealing herself in her little plastic fantastic bubble.
While Church did turn "mean" he never attacked the family. You'll note that his few aggressive actions were directed completely towards Louis ("giving" him dead animals). Louis in fact, thinks several times that "he has bought this", and Jud even says "it's your cat now". Church was a mild lesson; Louis is outraged by his death because Church is "within the magic circle of the family", and therefore wasn't SUPPOSED to die. The new Church was the Pet Sematary's way of saying "Okay, here's the alternative", but Louis refused to accept it, going into denial and deciding that he'd buried Church alive. THAT's when the Sematary got pissed and killed Gage.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

> Nu-uh. The 60s were when women were starting to break out of the happy
> housewife role.

Yes. Starting to. See "new and frightening". And apparently Rosemary didn't catch that particular wave.

> I say that if you claim that Kirsty is "wrong" for playing with the box,

(Which I haven't done yet, remember? "if solving the puzzle box is a violation of morality", "I'm not sure that you can open a puzzle that leads to hell and remain innocent in the eyes of the horror movie")

> you have to agree that Rosemary is "wrong" for sealing herself in her
> little plastic fantastic bubble.

Hang on, you're telling me that if I see knowledge being presented as morally wrong in one movie, I must see ignorance being presented as morally wrong in another? Please explain. :)

Church did attack Louis; he claws his face right before Louis goes to see Jud and gets the Sematary history. (And that's even if you're willing to count his almost tripping Louis all the way down the stairs after Gage's funeral as accidental.)

If Louis was actually in denial and had convinced himself that Church was alive, I think he would more likely have opened the conversation with "Damn, dumb mistake, good thing we didn't make the grave deeper" instead of "What did we do?" and go on about he tried (and failed) to lie to himself that Church was buried alive.

[jasmine-koran.livejournal.com]

Because BOTH of them were presenting ignorance. They were both doing something incredible without realizing it and without exploring/studying the consequences; Kirsty opened the box, and Rosemary brought a new life into the world, and neither of them had ANY idea what they were doing. As far as Kirsty was concerned, she was playing with a pretty box stolen from her tormentor, and as far as Rosemary was concerned a perfect little cabbage patch doll was going to be dropped down the chimney by the stork. They were both ignorant about what they were really doing and both of them paid for it.
And yes, Church did act a little aggressively towards Louis, but again, ONLY Louis, symbolizing that it was Louis who needed to learn the lesson. However, as Louis says as he's contemplating resurrecting Gage, he as a rational man was unable to accept the plain fact of Church's death and resurrection until the same possibility opened for his son.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

But my contention has never been that being ignorant of the world around you makes you morally wrong in the eyes of the horror movie. It's that gaining knowledge of things presented as being Beyond the Ken of Man strips away your innocence and makes you an acceptable target for the evil things.

Being ignorant is often a characteristic of characters who do this, but that is because it stretches disbelief most cruelly to have characters who regularly say "Wow! Puzzleboxes to hell, illicit sex that makes me a bad person, and demon-summoning incantations! Yeah, I want some of that!"

Louis doesn't say that; in fact, it's the morning that Church has come back to life, when his family's still out of town, that he says he wanted to disbelieve the fact and couldn't. He accepts Church's resurrection before Gage is even back in range of the highway, much less dead. He doesn't want to think about it before Gage dies, but he has accepted it.

Yes, Church only got around to attacking Louis. My point is that the fact that Church turns into a bad and cruel thing emphasizes that a wrong thing was done and a bad thing has been let out. Again, the one instance we are shown of a child burying an animal and having them come back results in a harmless animal. Every instance of an adult--who should know better, who should have learned that death must be accepted[1], especially a doctor--burying something in the sematary has bad things happen. Innocence may go unscathed through the darkness; exploiting knowledge results in monsters.
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[1] One wonders what would have happened if Rachel buried something...