Who is the Babadook?

The Babadook (2014) exists in a gray space within the theory Barbra Creed writes about in her essay, "Horror and the Monstrous Feminine”. There are different ways something is abjected. The first being “food loathing”, Creed explains that “Kristeva claims that food loathing is ‘perhaps the most elementary and archaic form of abjection’ (p. 2). Food, however, only becomes abject if it signifies a border ‘between two distinct entities or territories.’” (69). The border that Creed mentions here is an important element to the abject. When this border is crossed is where abjection begins. In the case of the “food loathing” what is abjected is the desire of the other from the self. Creed emphasizes this point when saying, “ ‘But since the food is not an “other” for “me”, who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which “I” claim to establish myself.” (69).  

The expelling of an ‘other’s desire from the self, connects to Creed’s explanation of the mother-child relationship. Creed underlines that, “mother–child relation as one marked by conflict: the child struggles to break free but the mother is reluctant to release it. " (72). The struggle for the child to break free, is the struggle for the I to expel the other’s desire. Buth this is not how the mother-child relationship in the beginning of the film find itself. Instead, it is the complete opposite. The boy, Samuel, is attached to his mother. While his mother, Amelia, wants to expel her son. It is important to note why this type of relationship is formed. It is established in the opening shot of the film that Samuel’s father was killed in an accident when his mother was about to give birth to him (in a weird way here, physically expelling him from her body). So, Samuel is the reminder of this death or can be seen as the past that haunts Amelia, which she wants to expel. This seen is also where the paternal figure dies, or as Creed describes, the “order” or “law”, which casts the maternal figure to be the dominant authority, throwing things into disorder.  

When Mr. Babadook, a male figure, enters the film, fear and disorder start to arise. At first the son is the one who sees the Babadook, but then the mother starts to become the most affected by it. The Babadook is what places this film into a gray area. Who is the Babadook? Is he actually real? Or is it all in the mom’s head, a manifestation of the past she is trying to expel. So, does that mean he is part of the mother, making him a maternal figure? The Babadook through my interpretation symbolizes both the maternal and the paternal. The maternal because the Babadook represents the past that is a part of Amelia's life. The paternal because in a scene towards the end Samuel’s father is projected in the basement demanding for the child. The Babadook also penetrates Amelia’s body, making them exist as one entity. The area where all of this starts to shift toward the “mother-child” relationship Creed talks about in her essay is when Amelia vomits (expels) the creature out of her body and confronts it in the basement. The scene with the father I just mentioned is when Amelia finally claims her son, she chooses to not give him up to the paternal figure, to “order”. Thus, this leaves the view to assume that her and her son have a better relationship because she expelled and rejected the Babadook, actualizing the “mother-child” relationship.  

 An element of Freud’s “Uncanny” (1919) can be seen in the figure of the Babadook because it touches on Freud’s analysis of what the uncanny. Freud talks about this return of the familiar which makes the uncanny, also the return to a “primitive” state. The resurfacing of the past through the Babadook is what makes the creature, the mother and the child exist in this uncanny state. They all exist in this cycle of the past that is left open to the viewers at the end when the mother is seen feeding the Babadook in the basement. The past still lingers, but not it is put away, it is put back into the subconscious.