Oh my god HELLO and welcome to Screen Time with Sarah Ruthless, a podcast about

my #1 favorite activity ever: Screen Time. Thanks for joining me in our premiere season, as I
sink my teeth into a genre I have avoided all my life: horror.
Our lucky Screen Time Subject today is the powerful 2014 Australian horror flick The
Babadook, written and directed by Jennifer Kent. So I actually watched this movie a few
weeks ago, because I am super impatient and as soon as it was on my list I knew I couldn’t
wait until closer to the release date because I’d heard so many good things about it, and I will
be honest - it’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie where the entire time I was watching it,
all I could think was: “I can’t wait to watch this movie again.” Like the last time I felt that was
when I saw Parasite in theaters last year, and frankly, I’m lucky if I get that feeling with a new
movie once a year.
But before I jump all the way in, I am going to do something that I actually should’ve
been doing this whole time, which is offer a few trigger warnings! I’m so sorry it didn’t occur to
me until now, but I’m learning as we go, and so the trigger warnings for this episode include:
death of a spouse, infanticide, depression, my personal favorite subject, trauma, and my least
favorite, the dog dies.
Tbh that’s actually low key one of my Rules for a movie - I don’t want to watch an animal
or child die on screen. I’m really glad I didn’t know that before hand though, because it
honestly might have stopped me from watching it, because that’s how much I DON’T LIKE
animals dying. But even despite that, this movie is genuinely incredible - like this is legit the
first movie on the list that I have profoundly, deeply loved and respected, and I now highly
recommend it to everyone I know.
But usually, those are my boundaries. I’m also really not fond of movies where children
get ripped away from their parents, or movies where someone has to be really mean to an
animal because they’re trying to protect them so they like yell at the animal to run away and
the animal doesn’t understand, and they’re crying, and then I’m crying, and I just can’t fucking
take it, honestly, it’s just too much. Like I know it’s literally the least important plot hole that
Game of Thrones left unfinished, but how hard would it have been for Arya to be reunited with
her dire wolf, huh? HOW HARD?! You have literal DRAGONS but you couldn’t be bothered
with reuniting the single best heroine on the show with her PET WOLF?! Honestly, it was
worse than the Starbucks cup, for me.

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 Okay this tangent is kind of getting away from me now but I had to go fact check myself
because even though the last GoT episode was ONLY A YEAR AGO - can you believe that? -
it feels like it was a decade ago - I actually couldn’t remember what the fuck happened to
Arya’s dire wolf? So I just looked it up, and apparently in Season 7, Episode 2, “Stormborn,”
Arya DOES get reunited with her, but the wolf is like living her best wolfy life in the forest and
Arya wants to bring her home but then realizes that she’s a wolf, she’s not domesticated, and
she says “That’s not you” which is a direct callback to the first season when Ned Stark tells
her, “Someday you’ll get married and be a true lady of the court” and Arya tells him, “That’s
not me” and she says that to HER WOLF because of course the most badass, feral woman
on the show would have a badass, feral pet wolf and then Arya has to SAY GOODBYE TO
HER ALL OVER AGAIN, and that’s exactly why I don’t remember it, because it fucking
BROKE MY GODDAMN HEART and I blocked it out, and now I’m upset all over again.

Which is actually a wonderful segue into the first topic I’ll be discussing on The
Babadook: repressing trauma.

ICYMI, quick plot review: The Babadook centers on a single mother, Amelia, and her 6
year old son, Samuel. Amelia’s husband died tragically in a car accident while they were on
their way to the hospital for Amelia to give birth, and even though some time has passed, his
death still weighs heavily on them both. Amelia in particular is struggling to cope with working
and single motherhood, which is made even harder by Samuel’s precocious and frankly
exhausting behavior. It’s never explicitly said, but he does appear to be either somewhere on
the spectrum or struggles with ADHD, but honestly it doesn’t even matter because the point
is, regardless of your kid, parenting is fucking HARD. We weren’t meant to do it alone, and it’s
fucking rough. So one night Amelia reads Samuel a bedtime story from a book that
mysteriously appears on his shelf, and of course, it’s the Babadook - a children’s horror story
about a monster that will knock three times on your door, and if you let him in, he’ll never
leave, and he’ll consume you, and you’ll eventually die. So, you know, just a light kid’s bed
time story. Samuel ends up becoming obsessed with the monster, which he insists he keeps
seeing in the house. This just exacerbates his already difficult behavior, and after getting into
a fight at school he ends up getting expelled. Amelia loves her son, but it’s all just becoming a
bit much; she’s not eating or sleeping, she has a toothache, Samuel is now glued to her side
24/7, and she starts to really think she’s losing it when she starts to see the Babadook too.

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She looks through the book again and this time there are new pages, featuring images of her
killing their pet dog and killing her son - she rips up the book, but it shows back up on her
doorstep the next day, all put back together. She burns it, but then the Babadook starts calling
her on the phone, breathing and being super fucking creepy. She tries going to the cops for
help, but of course they just laugh at her and send her away. It would appear that the with or
without the physical book, the Babadook is in the house, and he is not going anywhere!
Amelia tries giving herself and Samuel sleeping pills to regulate their schedules and get
back to normal, but it only makes things worse, until one night Samuel decides to stop taking
them and try his hand at defeating the Babadook himself. But it ends up possessing Amelia
instead, and just like the book predicted, she tries to kill her son… but Samuel is able to
reach through to her, and remind her that there’s still some part of the real her in there, and
together they exorcise the Babadook. Amelia banishes him from their house, and tells him to
leave her son the fuck alone. It disappears… but the monster can’t really be killed… instead,
he lives in the basement, and they keep him there.
In the very last scene of the film, it’s Samuel’s birthday, a day that had previously been a
trauma anniversary for Amelia, because it was the same day that her husband died - but this
time they’re celebrating. Then she looks at the clock and says, “Oh, it’s time.” And Samuel
asks, “Can I come with you?” But she says, “No, not now. Maybe one day when you’re older,
but not today.” And she takes a bowl of worms that he helped her gather, and Amelia goes
downstairs into the locked basement and sets the bowl of worms down… aAll of a sudden,
the Babadook appears, and almost knocks Amelia backwards with his presence, and it looks
like she’s going to get eaten or die of fear or shock or something, but then she catches her
breath. “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay,” she says, and talks both herself and the Babadook
down. The bowl of worms disappears into the darkness, Amelia takes a deep breath, and
climbs back up the stairs to her son.

OH MY GOD THERE’S SO MUCH TO UNPACK HERE!!!! So yeah, for starters, this film
is so clearly an aggressive metaphor for trauma, and it’s really done so beautifully. Besides
the fact that, like, just aesthetically it is gorgeous - every single frame is so intentionally
crafted, you are saturated in these blues and burgundies with hints of black and white
everywhere… the whole world Kent created is just masterfully done. I am going to say that
like seventeen times this episode: masterfully.

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 I found this interview with Kent that came out with the film, if you’re at all interested it
was by Ryan Lambie and you can read the whole thing at DenOfGeek.com. I’ll be referencing
it a few times this episode, but I want to start out with this quote from her:
“The basis of it was, I had a friend who had a child that she was really having trouble
connecting with. He was little – maybe three or four, and he kept seeing this monster man
everywhere. The only way she could get him to calm down was to get rid of it as if it was real.
And then I thought, well what if it was actually real? That’s how the idea came about. I’m also
very drawn to facing the darkness in ourselves. That was a big pull for me, which carries into
the themes in [the movie]. …For me, what was horrific was what had happened to this
woman. And the fact that she couldn’t face it was her greatest terror. So this terror of not
being able to face something was always at the core of what I did.”
Now what really fascinates me about this film, and why it works for me on such a deep
level, is the fact that Kent chose to make it a horror movie. Granted we’re getting better at
respecting the genre, but even back in 2014 it was still a pretty bold, niche choice - not just
because women don’t write or direct horror enough, but because so many people look down
on it and grossly underestimate what it has to offer storytelling. Myself included, until I started
this podcast!! Later in the same interview Kent said,
“In some circles, before I made this film, people would be very excited to hear that I was
directing. Then when I described it as a horror film, I may as well have said I was directing a
porno. They were like, oh, that’s not a real film. It’s disgusting. And also, why would a woman
want to direct that kind of stuff?” [But] it’s fun to work in this genre, you know. It’s close to
dreaming – you don’t have to be straight with it on any level. [I don’t think you could explore
the same subject as compellingly in a drama. It would be relentless. And also, way too
melodramatic. I never disrespected [horror]. It can allow us to experience something from the
inside – a story can be very visceral in this genre.”
While I was writing the blog for Matriarch Madness I really broke down the core elements
of what I like to see in movies, and I hadn’t actually thought about it in months until now,
because I knew Babadook hit all those points for me. So here they are, Sarah Ruthless’s 4
Necessary Components for Exceptional Screen Time:

1. Is it compelling? Exceptional use of language and dialogue (or a well-crafted lack

thereof). Is the story "good," meaning: is there a sense of urgency or importance? Do I give

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 a shit about this? Are we headed somewhere? What are we fighting for? It can be a subtle
or internal fight, but there has to be some chutzpah. 

2. Is it worthwhile? Are the characters - especially the female ones - compelling, detailed,
& believable? Are they fully fleshed out, with enough detailed, meaningful, or pertinent
information that I am invested in them? Do I care about what they care about; do I care
what happens to them? Regardless of morality or ethics, do I believe that THEY believe in
what they are fighting for? 

3. Is it surprising? I do not require shocks or twist endings, but I ought to be surprised at

least once. Not necessarily by the plot, but perhaps by how they choose to tell the story:
for example, I was surprised in Birds of Prey by how the director chose to let the women
get bruised and sweaty in a believable manner, and I was surprised again by how deftly
she avoided luxuriating in the moments when they were the victims of violence. So while
the plot wasn’t necessarily “surprising” to me, the decision to include the harshness of
reality but without exploiting or desensitizing the gaze was a surprising and well-executed
choice.

4. Is it beautiful? Exceptional cinematography, production design, costumes and music

are a given, but it absolutely MUST have a sense of whimsy that serves the story: folklore,
fantasy, parable, a moment of surrealism, etc. It must take itself seriously enough to care
about being beautiful, but not take itself so seriously that it forgets to be whimsical.

So what I think Kent achieves so masterfully in The Babadook was her use of the
“whimsy” factor. Because she’s absolutely right, if this was a gritty drama, it would be
unbearable to watch. If you asked me to check out this really sad movie about a struggling,
widowed, single mother with a behavior-challenged young son who endures a massive
depressive episode I would NEVER have watched it. But even though that’s technically an
apt description, it’s also so much more than that. This story is incredibly important, and so
lovingly told. And those are all words I never thought I would use to describe a horror movie.
It’s funny, it actually reminds me a lot of comedy in that way. Historically, comedy as a
genre has also been grossly undervalued by the high-brow film world. But then you come
across a movie like last year’s Jo Jo Rabbit and you’re like oh shit! That is an objectively

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excellent comedy! And again I feel so weird praising a “comedy” that’s technically about the
brainwashing of Hitler Youth and one child’s journey out of a young lifetime of indoctrinated
anti-semitism. Like there’s a full fucking scene where the incredible Rebel Wilson is literally
strapping bombs to the Hitler Youth kids and sending them towards American troops - but
you’re somehow laughing? Not because it’s funny, but because it’s done in a quote-on-quote
“funny way,” it’s digestible, it’s palatable, and you’re actually able to process it and sit with it.
And what’s extraordinary is that it’s not in a desensitized way. I actually think that, exactly like
The Babadook, if someone tried to make that movie into a gritty realistic drama, it would’ve
been completely unbearable to watch, and actually would’ve ended up desensitizing the
audience way further, because that’s the only way you could sit through it. But through the
lens of comedy (or horror), you’re able to approach incredibly heartbreaking and devastating
truths without being totally overwhelmed and or inadvertently numbing yourself to the
experience.
It’s the same reason why I fucking love shows like BoJack Horseman - if that wasn’t a
cartoon, I would not watch it, because it would be way too fucking depressing. Same goes for
my favorite show of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There will be a spoilers so if you
haven’t seen the show yet and you want to, skip ahead like 5 minutes. Also just another
shameless plug and shout out to Jenny Owen Youngs & Kristen Rousseau from my absolute
favorite podcast ever, “Buffering the Vampire Slayer,” please invite me on your show
someday, you’re on season 6 right now which is my FUCKING FAVORITE and all I want in
life is to be a guest on it!!!
Okay so Buffy is a show that took traditional and familiar adolescent conflicts and
through the lens of fantasy and a little horror, frankly, transformed those experiences into
these absurdly exaggerated metaphors that profoundly describe what it feels like to be a
teenager. I was never personally into shows like The O.C. or One Tree Hill, those just didn’t
do it for me, they felt silly and embarrassing to watch. But something about how Buffy is done
really works for me.
To elaborate: Let’s take a commonly used teen drama story arc, like: “the girl finally
loses her virginity with the boy, and then he changes into somebody she doesn’t recognize.”
With real people? Yeah, that’s boring and I have a hard time letting myself care about it,
because it’s so common, it’s embarrassing to watch. It hits too close to home. But if you take
that same storyline and make it: “the girl who has ancient super powers to destroy evil
monsters falls in love with a unique vampire who has a soul and finally loses her virginity with

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him, only to discover that he’s the victim of an ancient curse wherein if he experiences a
single moment of true happiness - i.e. having sex with the woman he loves - he will lose his
soul, and turn back into the heartless, cruel, bloodsucking, monstrous vampire that the girl is
literally destined to hunt and destroy” …Now THAT fucking works for me, and actually
somehow succeeds in hitting WAY closer to home! Because honestly, that’s what that story
arc feels like. Having your heart broken feels like the end of the world, and Buffy took that
feeling and made it into a whole show about the world constantly ending.

So to bring this back to Babadook, that’s exactly what Kent does. From that same
interview she says:
“Horror and fairytales also do a similar thing, in that you can safely explore disturbing
subjects and fears. I think some fairytales are designed to keep kids in line and make them
stay safe, and there are the other ones, the ones I’m attracted to, that point out the chaos
of life to kids. Because it’s not perfect. It’s not always neatly tied up. I think that’s what
horror can do as well. It can actually be a refreshing way to look at the world, when it’s not
about perfection.”
So let’s dive in and take this whole thing apart, because every inch of this movie is
saturated with purpose and intention. I think it was a tremendously bold choice on Kent’s part
to write a film about such a heartbreakingly taboo subject - and I’m so glad she did, not just
because I think it is critically necessary to shed light on the parts of our lives that scare us,
but because this film would simply NOT have been as authentically executed if it had been
made by a man. You can tell that this was done by a woman in the absolute best way
possible.

To quote the article “Through A Mother’s Eyes: The Babadook and Examining Trauma”
by Kelcie Mattson for medium.com:
“[Amelia] is claustrophobic, isolated, lonely, and at wits’ end striving to fulfill the role of
domesticated mother. Her home, so often misogynistically coded as the woman’s “proper
place,” has become a living hell. These struggles are a taboo subject in both media and
culture. The truth is, motherhood isn’t universally easy for everyone. It doesn’t always
come naturally. For Amelia it certainly doesn’t, and understandably, between her untreated
depression and an irritating, demanding child. It’s hard to always feel love for Samuel. But
society dictates that a woman unable to demonstrate that nurturing, caring, patient,

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 protective, perennially smiling expectation of motherhood is an aberration. It’s only through
the Babadook’s possession that Amelia is granted an avenue to acknowledge and express
the depths of her feelings — which, at their darkest, include a repressed hatred for her son.
…Mothers are supposed to be givers of life, the caretakers, accepting and loving no matter
what hardships their children present. Anything on a spectrum from frustrated resentment
to vitriolic impulses is rarely, if ever, acknowledged.”
And what’s interesting to me is that on the rare occasions when it is acknowledged, it’s
when the mother is the villain. But Amelia isn’t the monster that needs to be destroyed, she’s
actually the victim of the monster too. The Babadook is an exceptional horror movie in a
myriad of ways, but one that particularly stands out is that no one in the movie dies. Not even
the monster. Instead, the monster gets tamed. But more on that later….
The fact of the matter is, a LOT of women experience this kind visceral of depression.
It’s not a matter of either/or, it’s a situation of both/and. Mothers can both love their children
and resent them. Mothers can both want the absolute best life for their children and want the
best life for themselves. What’s actually heartbreaking is how little we address it. According to
a 2005 study, "maternal filicide occurs more frequently in the United States than any other
developing nation.” I know Babadook takes place in Australia, but they’re not doing so great
either; according to a study just last year, at least one child is killed in Australia by a parent
every 14 days. That is a lot.

So, trigger warning, I’m going to talk about Andrea Yates now. I was nine years old when
that happened, and it was the first time I’d ever heard of a mother killing her children. Up until
then it had never even occurred to me that something like that could happen. So when I
watched that story unfold on the news with my dad after dinner, it was a serious glass-
shattering, innocence-ending moment for me. But upon really researching it now as an adult,
I am so horrified by how little I remember the news covering who she really was as a person
and what she was going through. I mean, it’s possible that the news did go more into detail
and my parents just did the responsible thing and changed the channel, but ICYMI, here’s the
real breakdown of the situation:
Andrea Yates, the infamous Texas mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub,
had suffered psychosis and depression that began after the birth of her first child. She had
been in and out of the psychiatric hospital (where she remained catatonic and mute to
hospital staff) following multiple suicide attempts.

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 Yates's first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, says she was shocked to disbelief when,
during an office visit with the couple, they expressed a desire to discontinue her medications
so she could become pregnant again. She warned and counseled them against having more
children, and noted in the medical record two days later, "Apparently patient and husband
plan to have as many babies as nature will allow! This will surely guarantee future psychotic
depression." Nevertheless, Yates became pregnant with her fifth child, Mary, only 7 weeks
after being discharged from a psychiatric hospitalization.
Both Andrea and Rusty were followers of a fringe Christian cult created by the
aggressive street preacher Micheal Woroneicki. In her biography of Yates, Breaking Point,
author Suzy Spencer reported that she corresponded with Woronecki through letters and
videos, becoming obsessed with his teachings, one of which stated that "only a few would
reach salvation." Poems from Woroneicki allegedly led her to believe her children were, as
she later told police in an interview, "stumbling." She believed she was a bad mother,
because Woroneicki had told her that "all women inherit a witchcraft nature from Eve" and
that children of permissive mothers will end up in hell.
According to trial testimony in 2006, her second psychiatrist advised Rusty not to leave
Yates unattended. However, he began leaving her alone with the children in the weeks
leading up to the drownings for short periods of time, apparently to improve her
independence. He had announced at a family gathering the weekend before the drownings
that he had decided to leave her home alone for an hour each morning and evening, so that
she would not become totally dependent on him and his mother for her maternal
responsibilities. The day of the murders, he had left her to go to work, and his mother was
supposed to come over an hour later. It was in that single hour that the drownings occurred.
Jesus fucking Christ. It should not be a controversial opinion to say that Yates was a fucking
victim here too. My God.
Infanticide expert Phillip J. Resnick stated that "Yates had delusions that if she did not take
her children at the age of accountability, which she put at age 10, she believed that they
would end up in hell. …It was better that they be in heaven with God, then living a life in sin.
[Yates] also assumed [because of Texas law] that she would be executed. So, even though
she would end up in hell, at least her children would be saved.”
The same Dr. Resnick, one of the leading psychologists on the subject, was the first to
put infanticide into 5 categories: acutely psychotic, altruistic (where the parent believes death

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is in the child's best interest), unwanted child, accidental, and spouse revenge. And in his
early studies, altruistic filicide was the motive of 49% of his subjects.

I also just have to say, like, it is legitimately heartbreaking that she really… Like, let’s put
it into context: this woman genuinely believed that hell was a real place, and heaven was a
real place, and wanted her children to live in an eternal life of beauty and love and warmth,
and believed that the only way for them to get there was if she did this awful thing. And to do
that awful thing, she would committing herself to an eternity of torture in a literal lake of fire -
that’s what literal interpretations of Christianity believe. I know it sounds absurd, but like,
really think about that! Like she really believed that’s what was gonna happen, and based on
that, I just… It’s hard for me at least to not have a lot of compassion and empathy for what -
not empathy, sympathy? I always get those mixed up. It just… It puts into perspective what
she was actually going through. Like this woman was literally psychotic, and I don’t mean that
in an ableist way, I mean she was genuinely suffering from postpartum psychosis.

So… When I was reading that I had this really weird thought, but I’m gonna say it
anyway… I don’t know if any of you are familiar with Amanda Palmer, she’s an incredible
musician and writer and artist, she actually just started her own podcast called “The Art of
Asking Everything” and I highly recommend you check it out, it’s amazing. Last year she went
on tour for her most recent album, “There Will Be No Intermission,” and I had the incredible
good luck of being able to see her perform it live in Chicago. And she’s such a fascinating
performer to watch, because in between all of her songs she tells these incredible, long,
personal stories that intertwine with the theme of her album, and this one happens to be
about her three abortions, her miscarriage, and the birth of her son. And shortly after one of
her abortions she talks about how she volunteered at a maximum-security prison support
group, like these men were murderers. I think the group she was with happened to have a
religious association, although Amanda Palmer is a proud Buddhist, but somehow the
discussion of abortion and rights-to-life came up, and Amanda talked very matter of factly, as
she does, about the decisions she made and why she knew they were right for her and her
body at the time. And one of those scary inmate prisoners - the way she tells it is so much
better than what I’m doing now, forgive me - but it was like the one guy who had been the
quietest the whole time - finally spoke, and said something like, “In nature, mother bears can
sense when a harsh winter is coming, and if they are not strong enough to protect or provide

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for their babies, they will eat them. I think we should trust nature, and trust mothers. Because
they know something we don’t.”

To be clear, I realize it’s tricky and complicated to even think of drawing a parallel
between abortions and infanticide, because they are NOT the same fucking thing, I am
staunchly pro-choice and you cannot change my mind - but learning that half of the
infanticides that occur are categorically “altruistic” just breaks my fucking heart. Obviously
murdering your live, born children is monstrous. But I don’t think those mothers are monsters.
Something fucking breaks them and even still, deep down, although they are tragically
mistaken, they really believe that they’re doing what’s best for their child. And that’s not totally
dissimilar to one of the many reasons why women get abortions. They know that even though
it sucks, it’s the best choice. And you know what, maybe if we had accessible, affordable, and
de-stigmatized abortions available to people, there would be less fucking infanticides. Just a
thought. Also if you don’t have a uterus, frankly it’s none of your fucking business. If you don’t
like abortions, don’t get one! Moving right along…

To go back to that Jennifer Kent interview again, she said that: “very early on in the script
development, reading a story about a guy who’d broken up with his wife and he was on the
top of a bridge in a traffic jam, and he took his five year-old daughter, and threw her over the
edge. I remember being horrified by that. But I also thought, well, he’s a human being. So
what actually got him to that point? And is there the seed of that in all of us? I was really
wanting to explore parenting from a very real perspective. Now, I’m not saying we all want to
go and kill our kids, but a lot of women struggle. And it is a very taboo subject, to say that
motherhood is anything but a perfect experience for women.”

While the case of Andrea Yates is unique because of her predisposition to severe mental
illness and her exposure to condemning religious fanaticism, all the ingredients of that potent
cocktail are prevalent in some way, shape, or form for mothers today: postpartum depression
and postpartum psychosis are very real things that are still heavily stigmatized, and while not
everyone is the victim of their husband’s psychotic religious beliefs, to some degree women
are invariably burdened by the societal pressures of the patriarchy. I know that sounds like an
aggressive, potentially obnoxious feminist perspective, but I don’t think I’m wrong. I’m not a

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mother, but I have two sisters who are single moms and I’ll tell you what, the double
standards are fucking real.
I am tempted to say this isn’t a totally gendered issue, because yes of course there are
great single dads out there struggling too - and we really do need to have more consideration
and compassion for single parents, period - but I also can’t ignore the staggering examples I
see in my sisters every damn day:
They face constant criticism and scrutiny if their kids have too much “screen time” but
are also expected to earn two incomes. If their kid falls at the playground and needs stitches,
it’s their fault for not watching them closer; but somehow my sister’s idiot ex-husband gets
away with feeding them oatmeal for dinner 3 nights a week.
Mothers are AMAZING. Serena Williams won the Australian Open while she was
pregnant! Gal Gadot filmed the first Wonder Woman while she was pregnant! Ruth Bader
Ginsberg, RIP, became the first woman on the Supreme Court while she was raising her
children!
A 2018 study found that working mothers clock about 98 hours of work a week, with their
day starting just after 6am. That’s the equivalent of 2.5 full time jobs. That they don’t actually
get paid for.
So as a society, what are we really doing to improve on this? Much like mental illness -
and how could you possibly imagine that a single, working mother could work 98 hours a
week and be mentally healthy? - we are really uncomfortable talking about it, and even more
uncomfortable acknowledging or listening to it.
It’s kind of like how every time a celebrity commits suicide we’re all like, “Oh, if only we knew!”
and make Facebook posts with self-help hotlines and write tweets telling our friends to reach
out if they need help. But then when people do reach out for help we’re like “ew gross no, get
over it.”

To bring this all back to The Babadook… I know I keep referring to the monster as
“trauma,” but it could as easily be a placeholder for depression. It really feels like a creature
that has come into your house and can’t be gotten rid of - and I think that’s actually a really
healthy way to look at it. You can’t let the monster run your whole house - you can’t let the
monster scare your children. That’s why at the end, Amelia tells Samuel that she’s the one
who’s got to go feed it, not him. And at first I was kind of stuck on that, like why would you
feed the beast? Shouldn’t you starve him, punish him? But just like the book warns, “the

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harder you deny him, the stronger he gets.” Our depression, our trauma, whatever you want
to call it, it does have a place in our homes, in our bodies and lives, whether we like it or not.
But we’re allowed to decide how big of a place it gets, how much power it has. Amelia isn’t
feeding him the cream of the crops, she’s feeding him worms. Because that’s all it deserves -
the bare minimum. But it does deserve that. It comes back to that both/and thing: Amelia both
despises the monster and needs to acknowledge that it exists. Some days it’ll knock her flat
on her back and leave her struggling to catch her breath, and other days, it’ll be pretty
uneventful.
And since every single detail in this movie is so spectacularly intentional, I even think
that the neighbor being named “Mrs. Roach” was on purpose. There’s even a scene where
Amelia thinks she sees a cockroach infestation in her house, and scrubs and cleans and
bleaches the whole kitchen, and then a second later they’re all gone, even the hole in the
wall. Mrs. Roach next door is the one person who keeps reaching out to Amelia, keeps
offering her kindness and tenderness, and even though it’s deep down what she really wants
and needs, it makes Amelia super uncomfortable. When we are really in our trauma, in our
depression and our baggage, having people reach out can feel as violating as an insect
infestation.
On a similar note… ugh, why did the dog have to die?!??! But also, I know why. It’s the
same scene when Amelia finally pulls out her own fucking rotten tooth like the terrifying
badass she is, and the dog won’t stop barking at the Babadook, and she fucking kills the poor
guy with her bare goddamn hands. Kent isn’t an idiot, she didn’t just add that scene for shits
and giggles. Obviously it was meant to kind of fulfill the prophecy from the book, but I think
there were really two significant things going on there: 1) the dog was acknowledging the
monster, something Amelia wasn’t ready to do yet. In a way, she was killing the messenger;
and 2) the fact that this happens right when she pulls her tooth out, which has been bothering
her throughout the whole film, I feel like it’s partly her finally accepting the message, but also
like this weird, abstract blood sacrifice. Much like the worms at the end - obviously dogs are
1000% better than worms and honestly humans don’t deserve them - but the Babadook did
kind of require this bloodshed, but at that point, it was Amelia’s choice whether or not she was
going to offer him any more. And doing it with her bare hands just offers this beautiful, double-
edged sword of a reminder that she is strong enough to kill her child - but that also means
she’s strong enough to protect him.

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 OOH BOY! Let’s end on a high note, shall we?
Okay, so if you even think about Googling Babadook, one of the very first things you’re
going to find is that he lives on, even today, as an internet legend turned Queer Icon?! And I
actually knew this going into the film, and then was really, really fucking confused as to WHY
THE FUCK people feel that way?? To directly quote Jennifer Kent, “I’m still trying to work that
one out… It’s quite perplexing. I feel it’s really quite beautiful, but I still have no idea why. … I
mean, I kind of do.”
So, a brief timeline… there are a number of theories as to how and why this happened,
and in all of them the internet is pretty much to blame. There was a screenshot floating
around for a while of someone’s Netflix account where The Babadook was listed as being one
of the top movies in the LGBT category. Was it photoshopped as a joke? Or did the accidental
placement spawn the joke? No one knows for sure. But regardless, at the time of its release,
thousands of gays were already embracing the monster as their own personal mascot.
To quote the article “How The Babadook became the LGBTQ icon we didn’t know we
needed” by Alex Abad-Santos,
“The Babadook’s queer legacy and our infatuation with it borrows on all these ideas [of
meme culture]: the desire to go with and improve upon the joke, the increasing earnestness
around that joke, and the resulting amplification of the absurdity of a homosexual Babadook
living a life of queer defiance by terrorizing a white, Australian family. …But although it’s
couched in absurdity, the idea of a queer Babadook is also perhaps a way to satirize bigger,
real-life ongoing conversations and cultural preoccupations. Brammer, who admires the
Babadook’s radically queer act of terrorizing a white family and living rent-free in their
basement for eternity, tweeted out this observation about the Babadook and representation in
April: “openly gay and with an affinity for hats and drama, the Babadook was the first time I
saw myself represented in a film.”
So while that’s all fine and great and part of me does low key love it, I guess my issue
with it is that I if the Babadook represents queerness, I don’t like the idea that someone’s
queerness has to live in the basement and eat worms? Like that’s a really real experience, it’s
a literal dramatization of “being in the closet ” but even WORSE. SO if that’s what you think
the Babadook was, then this movie quickly stops being a powerful breakthrough story and
turns into a pretty sour tragedy, and that really bums me out!

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 That being said, it did make for some pretty spectacular internet discourse, like the
Carlos Maza tweet:


BABADOOK: I’m a terrifying monster that destroys families that try to suppress me.

GAY PEOPLE: Oh my god, SAME. Drinks later?

There’s also an absolutely incredible meme floating around out there of how Pennywise
from It is gay too and him and the Babadook are dating. Absolutely precious, and frankly
makes me 10% less terrified and more excited to watch the movie It. God bless the internet.
Well, I believe that’s everything I have to say about The Babadook. I know I have spent
the last 30 odd minutes gushing about this movie, but I really can’t praise it enough. This is
what I came here for. Like I’ve watched these other horror movies and after spending hours
and hours researching and analyzing them I’ve found my own nerdy way to appreciate what
they have to offer, but THIS was the first movie on my list that really gave me what I’ve been
hoping for: proof that horror isn’t worthless, that much like a fairy tale, when done correctly, it
can be a powerful method of storytelling. And it can actually be beautiful.

Just one last thing: starting this week I am going to start putting up transcripts of all the
episodes on my website, www.sarahruthless.com, which is also where you can find the blog I
poorly plugged earlier in today’s episode. It’s something I’ve done in the month of March for the
last two years; 2019 was “Meryl Madness” where I made a bracket of 32 never before seen
Meryl Streep movies and they fought to the death to find the best one; this year was Matriarch
Madness where I made a bracket of 32 never before seen woman-directed films, if you’re at all
curious you can check those out on the website too. If you wanna follow me on Insta my handle
is @screentimewithsarahruthless and I’m also on Twitter @ruthlessscreen.

Thank you so much for joining me on this trip down the rabbit hole. That is all, folks, and
I’ll see you next time.

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 References & Works Cited

• Lambie, Ryan. “Jenifer Kent Interview: Directing The Babadook.” denofgeek.com. Oct. 10,
2014.
Link: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/jennifer-kent-interview-directing-the-babadook/

• Mattson, Kelcie. “Through a Mother’s Eyes: The Babadook and Examining Trauma (Women in
Horror Series).” medium.com Oct. 22, 2016.
Link: https://medium.com/@wewillbethestars/through-a-mothers-eyes-the-babadook-
and-examining-trauma-women-in-horror-series-e1f25804dca9

• Way, Mish Barber. “Why Some Mothers Kill Their Children.” vice.com. Dec. 2, 2015.
Link: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4xk973/why-some-mothers-kill-their-children

• Goldsworthy, Terry. “Why Do Parents Kill Their Children? The Facts About Filicide in
Australia.” theconversation.com. Feb. 7, 2019.
Link: https://theconversation.com/why-do-parents-kill-their-children-the-facts-about-
filicide-in-australia-111338

• Abed-Santos, Alex. “How the Babadook Became the LGBTQ Icon We Didn’t Know We
Needed.” vox.com. Jun. 25, 2017.
Link: https://www.vox.com/explainers/2017/6/9/15757964/gay-babadook-lgbtq

• Dry, Jude. “The Babadook Director Jennifer Kent Says Her Film’s Gay Icon Status is
‘Charming.’” indiewire.com. Jun. 25, 2019.
Link: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/gay-babadook-jennifer-kent-pride-
lgbt-1202153072/

• Wikipedia. “Andrea Yates.” wikipedia.org. Oct. 2, 2020.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates

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