https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=UG01VKb_VD4
Hello everyone. So I need to take this symbolism thing into more serious questions now. When something appears on the horizon of our world, let’s say, something that doesn’t make sense, that’s when you have to start paying attention to it. This is precisely what happened with the Pepe meme last year during the Trump campaign, and that’s why I felt it important to analyze it. The Church Fathers often speak of this notion that the most mysterious and revelatory things in the Bible or in tradition are found in the ambiguous and the seemingly contradictory texts, and that’s when something is clearly in front of you, but it doesn’t fit, and that’s when you have to pay attention. Now in the past week we’ve seen many articles in the mainstream media discuss the surprising use of an obscure horror movie monster, the Babadook, as an LGBT icon. Online now and in pride celebrations this figure is being framed as a gay character, even though at first glance neither the character nor the movie has anything to do with the question of gender or sexual orientation. When reading articles on the subjects you can feel the writers being somewhat uneasy and unsure of what this means, while still strangely celebrating this association. So what’s happening? Every movement, every group, every ideology has a network of associations under it which make it exist. These patterns are what make something itself and not something else. Now for important movements and situations this network of associations has underlying symbolic structures, archetypal structures one could say. And the proponents of this group or this movement, they’re not always completely aware of the extent of this web of analogies which underlies what they are and what they think. And so it’s precisely when an image pops up as an icon, let’s say as a representation of something, despite all logic, all normal intention, that’s when we should focus on that thing to understand it. Because by all logic the LGBT community who’s pressing for acceptance and recognition, they would not strategically associate themselves with this demonic force, this pathological state which wants to bring a mother to murder her child. But that’s what’s happening. So I never heard of this character or this movie, partly because I’m not really interested in horror movies. But because of all the brouhaha I decided to watch it and it’s really kind of a suspense movie rather than a straight horror movie. In fact it’s not very frightening at all. So I’m going to present you with an interpretation which takes into account the lens, let’s call it, of gender and sexuality because see that’s what’s happening. And after that you can all make your own conclusion as to what the movie and this figure means in relation to the question of gender and sexuality. So the movie is about a woman whose husband dies in a car accident on the day she gave birth to her son. That’s how the movie starts. We see the accident in a dream and her son wakes her up telling her that there’s a monster. After looking through the house to no avail the boy stays in his mother’s bed and sleeps with her. Now remember to always pay attention to the beginning of a movie. For the movie will reveal itself in those first moments. In terms of gender, this movie is about one thing, the absence of the father. It’s about the absence of the masculine. In fact the boy is surrounded by girls during the whole movie. The other mothers whose husbands we never see who fear his aggressive behavior. He only interacts with girls. He goes to a princess party, princess birthday party where he’s told by a girl that they don’t want him there, that he’s not good enough to have a dad. And all through the movie the boy makes these weapons. He does all these kind of boy things and he does it to save his mother from the monster. His mother keeps taking away his weapons and maybe with reason. And once the boy, he climbs and he stands up at the top of a swing set and his mother and her friend, they freak out and she takes him home as he’s screaming in the car. And another moment when the boy goes down into the basement to interact with his father’s things, the things that his father has left after dying and he talks to his father. He tells his father that he’s going to defend his mother from the monster. And his mother freaks out. And right there at that moment in the movie the only other significant male character shows up and the character shows romantic interest in the mother. He brings her flowers, brings a gift for the boy. When things degenerate and the young boy screams, he screams that she won’t let him have a birthday party. So there you have to read that she will not let the boy grow up. Will not let him become a man. And then he also screams that she won’t let him have a dad. So if you have not picked up on it yet, what we’re dealing with here is an Oedipal mother who is devouring her son. Who both wants to protect him at all costs but also hates him profoundly because she sees him as the cause of her losing her husband. So it’s Oedipus all the way here, no holds barred. And with the son constantly in the mother’s bed, it’s hard to ignore this theme. The mother’s bed is a constant image in the movie and the fact that the son sleeps in her bed is emphasized. I mean, there’s even a scene where the son interrupts the mother at one point by jumping in her bed when she’s, well, let’s say she’s busy. So enter the Babadook who hides in the closet. He’s a masculine figure with a top hat and a trench coat and he’s fanged. So he’s not a normal masculine figure, but he’s a predatory masculine figure. He wants to possess the mother so that she finishes her job as the Oedipal figure that she kills her son. And as the movie progresses, we discover that the Babadook is really masculinity itself, for he appears to the mother in the very figure of the father. So the Babadook slash father tells the mother to give the boy to him, to give the boy to the masculine predator who demands that you let him in. The movie emphasizes this because at some point when the mother is fined and not being possessed by the Babadook, this force of the Babadook begins to abuse the boy directly and throws him around. So once the mother finally defeats the Babadook, then her relationship with her son is normalized. She celebrates his birthday and the movie uses these very directly male images. She praises the boy for being good at darts and she kind of helps him to be better at darts when before she wanted to take away his darts and his weapons. And she praises his masculine capacity to transform reality when she watches him do a magic trick where he uses the very masculine image of a wand to transform potential. In this case it’s a coin. Money is always an image, well most of the time money is an image of potential. And so with his wand he transforms this coin into a dove. The Babadook is still there though. These things, they don’t go away. He’s locked in the basement and fed only worms. So it seems like the only thing missing, and I was hoping to see this happen at the end, the only thing that would be missing would be that man who had showed some interest to the mother could have made a final appearance to confirm that the pathology has been fully managed, let’s say. Now there could be other interpretations of this movie. I mean it can be seen as relating to depression obviously, but if we see it through the lens of gender, because that’s what’s relevant right now, that’s what was started in this discussion of using Babadook as an LGBT icon. So we’re looking at it through the lens of gender, what do we have? We have the absence of a father which brings on pathological feminine. It brings on an extreme, Oedipal relationship and its shadow desire to give in to the predatory masculine who wants a young boy for some reason, who hides something under his clothes that if you saw it would make you wish you were dead. I mean, it’s an interesting movie. It’s actually not a particularly good movie, but it’s interesting. And so now I’ll let all of you decide why the Babadook is an LGBT icon.