Girlhood

Creating Spaces of Agency Through the Reimagination of Black Female Identity in Girlhood

In this essay, I aim to locate the film Girlhood (Bande de Filles, 2014) within a tradition of European postcolonial cinema and to look at the ways in which it challenges notions of black female identity through conceptualisations of the gaze and the oppositional gaze. I argue that the film creates exciting new spaces of agency through the use of music, framing and camera movement, and challenges both gender and racial stereotypes.

According to an article published in The Guardian, there are more than 12 million first- and second-generation immigrants in France, many of them from former French colonies. Yet, people of colour remain fairly absent from French cinema. When Céline Sciamma’s film Girlhood hit cinemas five years ago, the all-black female cast stirred a debate on representation in French film, in it being one of a few of its kind. So how do we categorise Sciamma’s film? Sciamma herself is a white, French woman, wherefore the film does not count as immigrant cinema according to the distinction made by Sandra Ponzanesi and Verena Berger. The characters of the film are supposedly second-generation immigrants – they appear to be well integrated in their community, with no signs of other languages spoken at home. The film does however position itself as postcolonial European cinema. Ponzanesi and Berger argue that the broad concept encompasses notions of identity and socio-political formations in former colonial powers and looks at the ways in which the colonial legacy is reproduced. Through the uplifting of alternative or marginalised narratives, postcolonial European cinema reshapes the way that we think about contemporary Europe.

The French-Tunisian thinker and essayist Albert Memmi coined the term “mark of the plural” in mapping out the dynamics between the coloniser and the colonised; a term descriptive of a dehumanising approach to the colonised subject that deprives him or her of individuality. As Ella Shohat and Robert Stam elaborate on, this approach makes any form of representation of said group an object of generalisation. Though assumedly not in explicit dialogue with Memmi, it seems that Girlhood deconstructs such an approach through the nuanced portraits of Marieme and her friends in the film. The film centers around a group of four, but in the second half of the film the group has grown to include over a dozen girls. In one scene the camera simply lingers on every individual for a while before moving on to the next: a compelling tracking shot reclaiming the right to individuality.

One exciting way in which the film reimagines notions of black female identity is in its play with the gaze. Through her experience as a black female spectator, bell hooks toys around with the concept and locates the black (cinematic) gaze within a history of oppressed gazes, tracing it to the slave/owner relation where slaves were forbidden to look their owners in the eyes. There is a scene in Girlhood mirroring this notion where the pimp Abou is enraged with Marieme and orders her direct her gaze to the floor. Elaborating on this power dynamics, hooks sees the development of the television – a viewing context in which the black community was allowed to gaze at white people all they wanted – as liberating in a sense. Even though television culture reproduced a white hegemonic worldview, it formed a passage to a critical gaze, or what hooks calls the oppositional gaze. The oppositional gaze enables spaces of agency. With Laura Mulvey’s famous text about the male gaze in mind, hooks brings an interesting perspective to the debate, namely turning what Mulvey sees as an oppressing male gaze into an enabling black gaze.

Black, yes – but male nonetheless. In the words of Anne Friedberg: “Identification can only be made through recognition, and all recognition is itself an implicit confirmation of the ideology of the status quo”. Since cinema reproduces a western, white, male perspective, a black female perspective is often missing (hooks writes her text in 1992, and I believe her argument to be relevant still although a lot has changed over the past 27 years). While the repressed gaze had been liberated in one sense by cinema and television culture, hooks returns to Mulvey’s line of reason when problematising the objects of the gaze and the identification or lack of identification it causes. In her famous formulation, the male becomes the bearer of the look and the female the object of desire. Recognising the power of the gaze, hooks suggests that without any subjects to identify with on screen, the black female spectator is often forced to resist identification and look the other way or to “not look too deep”, ignoring racism and sexism. hooks stresses that shaping an oppositional gaze is still possible for a black, female audience, however – and necessary – as a force of resistance. This oppositional gaze will pave way for a new cinema.

hooks ends her article with a description of a scene from the film Passion of Remembrance (Isaac Julien, Maureen Blackwood, 1986) which offers new points of recognition for a black female audience. Two female characters, Louise and Maggie, dress up to go dancing and are portrayed in a non-voyeuristic way that emphasises their subjectivity as black women. There are striking similarities between this scene and one of the pivotal scenes in Girlhood. The girls have rented a hotel room and filled it with booze, snacks and shoplifted dresses. They laugh, take bubble baths, smoke, dress up, drink, dance and fall asleep in a pile. The last part of the scene is built up like a music video to the diegetic beats of Rihanna’s song “Diamonds”: the girls look straight in the camera, mime and dance. But more than resembling an actual music video, what the scene mostly resembles is teenage girls’ attempts at resembling music videos aesthetics, something I believe many spectators recognise from their own youth. In contrast to a music video that aims at selling, this scene captures the pure joy of dancing for no one’s sake but your own.

The dancing scene has become famous for a reason; I believe it illustrates the transformation of the black female spectator to that from an outsider to that of an insider. Marieme initially sits on the bed, looking at the other three dancing. Her eyes glitter – it is as if she as spectator finally identifies with what she is looking at, paving the way for an oppositional gaze. Recognising in that moment herself through looking at others, the identification enables her to crawl up from the bed and join the dance. On a narrative level, this identification tells us about the self-discovery of a teenage girl, and on a symbolic level, it tells us about the long sought-after self-discovery of a black, female audience. Just as Marieme is invited to join the dancing, a black female audience is invited to recognise themselves and to rejoice in the celebration of black female sisterhood, emphasised by Marieme’s gaze straight into the camera.

Narrative conventions suggest that the building up of this scene would have it ending with some sort of involvement with boys, but it does not. The girls do not even leave the hotel room. The dancing and dressing up is done for the sole purpose of their own enjoyment. This refusal to adapt to an oppressing gaze is emphasised in the mise-en-scène (the hotel room as an enclosed environment), in the dialogue (Lady forcing Marieme to say: “I do what I want”), and in the lyrics of the song (“We’re beautiful like diamonds in the sky”, “I chose to be happy”). The naive notion of choosing happiness has an empowering quality in this specific context, not least since it contrasts to the harsh reality in which it is not as simple as choosing happiness. Marieme is weighed down by domestic responsibilities; taking care of her younger sisters under the harsh rule of her older brother, having to compromise with her own space, getting punished for not answering her phone when she gets back home.

Though she is never portrayed as a victim, Marieme’s life is shaped by patriarchal and racist structures and it is fair to assume that her story reflects many people’s realities in modern-day France. If the city of Paris symbolises white hegemony, it is foreign land to Marieme who lives in the suburb. The white shop assistant looks suspiciously at her when she enters a Parisian store and the only time we get a panoramic shot of the glittering city is from a high rise that Marieme helps her mother clean. The distance from the city is illustrated in the hilarious mini golf scene where one of the courses are shaped as the Eiffel tower. In my reading, this scene suggests that the girls form a new (city) center, a world evolving around them, inviting the audience to a new subjectivity and new notions of black femininity. It effectively emphasises the marginal perspective that characterises European postcolonial cinema: replacing the real Eiffel tower that has historically been the focal point of French cinema to an alternative one.

”Girlhood: The Film that Busts the Myth of Conventional French Femininity”. The Guardian. 4/5 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/04/girlhood-film-busts-myth-of-french-femininity.

hooks, bell. Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.

Mulvey, Laura. ”Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. In Critical Vision in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, Meta Mazaj. Boston and New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2011: 713-725.

Ponzanesi, Sandra and Verena Berger. “Introduction: Genres and Tropes in Postcolonial Cinema(s) in Europe”. Transnational Cinemas. Vol. 7, No. 2 (2016): 111-117.

Shohat, Robert and Ella Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2014.

Gräns

Post-national film and the Scandinavian Other – the deconstruction of borders in Border (Gräns, Ali Abbasi, 2018)

Winner of the Swedish award Guldbaggen for best motion picture, winner of Un certain regard in Cannes, Sweden’s Oscar nominee, Oscar nominated for best make-up… Ali Abbasi’s debut feature film Border (Gräns, 2018) must be considered one of last year’s biggest Swedish success. Based on a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the film tells the tale of border police Tina who has the special ability of smelling out fear and guilt. Tina has a rather odd look (one might say ugly) with rough features, scrappy hair and a strange scar above her buttocks. When she meets the similarly rough Vore she learns the truth about her heritage – that she’s a troll.

The word border connotes a separation, a distinction of what or who belongs to either side of a drawn line. There are borders between countries, separating geographical regions, and borders that seek to separate one set of beings from another; man from animal, man from woman. In this essay, I argue that Border calls out the construction of these borders, on both a narrative and a structural level. Equal parts folklore fantasy and social realism, the film offers commentary on the historically rooted idea of the Scandinavian Other, toying with post-colonial concepts of normalcy and assimilation. On a narrative level, I read the film as echoing a Swedish history of oppressing minorities, and on a structural level I make the case that the film challenges the notion of national cinema, tying into a historical debate and actualising the term post-national.

Others in a Swedish context have historically been Sámi, Tornedalians, Jews, Romani people, and during the last decades, a wider range of immigrants. Let me be clear: I in no way intend to compare minorities in Sweden to trolls. Abbasi has made an entirely unique, artistic saga of alienation and belonging that however lends itself to thematical comparisons.

Sweden has a dark history of oppressing minorities. In her chapter of the anthology Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region, Anne Heith discusses the treatment of Sámi and Tornedalian people. Both minority groups have lived in Scandinavia for hundreds of years, predating the so-called ethnic Swedes. Tornedalen is a region that stretches between Sweden and Finland, and its people were brutally separated across the border between the countries as Finland gained independence from Sweden in 1917. The group have a language of their own, Meänkieli, but were forced by the state on both sides of the border to assimilate to either Sweden or Finland through education and language. The Sámi people live in the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia and also have several different languages of their own. In Sweden, they have been forced to partly assimilate through language in a similar fashion. Both groups have been seen as inferior to the ethnic Swede and therefore mistreated in various ways. The notion of inferiority was fuelled by, and fuelled, the establishing of the world’s first institution of race biology in Uppsala 1922, that set up to divided humans into a hierarchy of races. A particularly chilling scene from Amanda Kernell’s recent film Sámi Blood (2016) illustrate how scientists from Uppsala came to Sámi communities to conduct studies on the Sámi. A couple of years after the establishment of the institute, in 1928, prime minister Per Albin Hansson coined the term Folkhemmet (“the people’s home”), a metaphor that came to inform the development of the Swedish welfare state in the following decades. The people’s home promised to provide its citizens with basic safety and equality.

The term has an ambiguousness to it, however. It visualises a border, namely the threshold to the house. In that it works as a compelling image of the patriarchal “assimilate or get excluded”-scheme that minorities were forced under. The establishing of a house is conditioned on an outside, just like ideas of Normalcy is conditioned on ideas of Otherness.

In Border, Tina articulates a feeling of alienation to society in the scene where she explains to her “father” how she’s been considered ugly and different all her life. When she learns the truth from Vore, confirmed by her father, she seems as distressed as relieved. Her real parents – trolls, also – were taken into a mental hospital and experimented on, her tail was cut off, and the truth was kept from Tina all her life. The cutting of the tail lends itself to comparisons to the forced sterilisations that were conducted in Sweden up to the 1970s on people who were seen as deviant. Up to the point when Tina meets Vore, she’s somewhat assimilated in the Swedish society: she has a job, some sort of platonic relationship with a man living in her house, she drives a car and eats regular food, albeit with a strong sense of alienation. Vore, on the other hand, refuses to assimilate. He’s a rebel of sorts, staying true to his nature and his needs, with a strong sense of injustice from dominant society which he sets out to take revenge on. By refusing to assimilate, Vore refuses to submit to the ideal of normalcy and to the division between human and animal, but also to the division between man and woman, as indicated in a highly original sex scene. Dominant society tries to – but cannot any longer – force Tina and Vore into categories of normalcy, despite the fact that they are neither human, animal, man or woman in the traditional sense, but something altogether different. The end scene, where Tina holds a baby troll, suggests that she (together with Vore, perhaps) will be forced to exclusion from society since nothing in the film hints at the possibility of living outspoken as a troll in dominant Swedish society.

Trolls are a recurrent mythological figure not only in Swedish folklore but all over Scandinavia. Trolls were understood as a threat, deceitful, ugly and greedy. Vore is a troll form Finland. Or at least, he has a Finnish accent and seems to be based in Finland but travels around. However ironic the fact that Tina works as a police woman maintaining the Swedish border to its neighbouring countries, Vore is not bothered by borders – his troll community stretches over (at least) two nations (Sweden and Finland). The construction of geographical borders seems to be yet another way to force the trolls in the film into categorisations that are not relevant to them. I do make the case that the film echoes a Swedish history of oppressing minorities, but part of that oppressive history involves forcing people into constructed geographical regions. If anything, Scandinavia as a region seems more apt to discuss than Sweden as a nation in relation both to minorities like the Tornedalians, the Sámi, and the trolls in the film.

This blurring of national borders also reflects in the production. Is Border a Swedish film? It is certainly understood so; the pivotal example being that it was Sweden’s Oscar nominee. Ali Abbasi is Swedish with Iranian decent. The actors are Swedish and Finnish. The film is recorded in Sweden with funds from the Swedish film institute and the Council of Europe (to mention some). Both Sweden and Denmark are noted as production countries. More relevant yet: both Abbasi and co-writer Isabella Eklöf studied at the film school in Copenhagen. In a widely read article in the film magazine FLM, Eklöf (in connection to the release of her controversial debut feature Holiday (2018)) claimed that Sweden has large issues with self-censorship and moralism that Denmark doesn’t. Both Border and Holiday have been hailed as artistic and unusually bold debut features, and the text invites to a debate about and an examination of what passes through Swedish film schools and what doesn’t. This opens to another dimension in the discussion about national film: can a film be considered national if its creative and artistic freedom derives from another country? Are ideas bound by national borders?

In the silent film era, Swedish film was often seen as soulful as compared to other national cinemas. Films like A Man There Was (Terje vigen, Victor Sjöström 1917), The Outlaw and His Wife (Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru, Victor Sjöström 1918) and The Saga of Gösta Berling (Gösta Berlings saga, Mauritz Stiller 1924) were staged in nature in innovative ways. This was initially praised by an international audience, but with Hollywood gaining dominance of the film market in the 1920s, perceived as provincial and old fashioned. As a response to the expansionism of Hollywood, or Film America as it was called then, Film Europa was formed – a pan-European collaborative effort to stand up against Film America’s market hegemony through shaping an equivalent European film industry. Film America was seen as culturally colonising Europe. This not only referred to the large import of American films, but of American production in Europe and more important yet: in the established film language. It was argued that European spectators became “temporary American citizens” through American film. The historical discussion that Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby account for in their text echoes a still ongoing debate about culture imperialism and cultural diversity and is interesting in the way that it conceptualises ideas of national and transnational cinema. In the effort to create a Film Europa, the idea was to recognise the culturally specific to different nations, but at the same time recognising that borders are malleable in the ambition to transform these ideas into a pan-European corporate strategy.

In his text “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”, Higson continues to explore the concept of national cinema and asks whether the concept is useful. He points out several problems with the definition, initially by calling out the definition of a nation and national identity. Is national identity fixed? He points out a bit of a paradox in the idea of national film. On the one hand, national film is expected to reflect on a common identity and a cultural heritage within a fixed nation, but on the other hand, it has to look outwards in order to define the nationally specific in relation to the international. The outspoken goal of state funded national film has since Film Europa often been to produce counter-narratives, cinema that distances itself from dominant film culture in the search for more local forms of expression. Historically, there has been an ambition to counter Hollywood. Higson goes on to argue, however, that state funding does not guarantee independent film, state policies merely have a “cosmetic” effect. He makes the case that national cinema has often been confused with counter cinema or critical cinema, but that it is something different than state funded national cinema. Rather, as the case of Film Europa shows, national film has a tendency to adjust to a conventional film language in its ambition to reach an international audience.

Higson argues that there are two ways in which films can be understood as transnational products. The first in its production. In the global capitalist economy of today, there is often some sort of exchange between countries in production, involving everything from actors and personnel, shooting locations, production companies and funding. The other way that films are transnational are in the distribution and reception. In the market of flows films travel and find markets outside of the national. New audiences bring new meaning into the films they see. Higson concludes that the concept is in many ways irrelevant, but that is opens for other relevant discussions and would be unwise to ignore since it has taken part in shaping the way we understand different cinema cultures. Elsaesser agrees that national cinema has lost its defining character and is in fact a weak determining factor of the outcome of a film. He prefers to speak of hybridity and uses the term post-national.

Abbasi plays with national stereotypes, not least in the depiction of Tina and Vore as free spirited and close to nature, which echoes the national stereotype that Olsson derives from Swedish silent cinema. By working with folklore, Abbasi does this somewhat ironically, or at least self-consciously. Border fits well into Higson’s concept of transnational cinema. As elaborated on earlier, the production stretches beyond the scope of Sweden. The film has also found an international audience and been critically acclaimed. Peter Bradshaw writes in his review in The Guardian that: “in all its freakiness, Ali Abbasi’s film Border is something between a superhero origin myth, a cop procedural and a body-horror romance”. Howard Fishman writes in The New Yorker that “Border may be the strangest, most beguiling film that I have ever seen” and critics at Variety and New York Times agree that the film is unlike anything they’ve seen, that it is strange and bizarre. The Swedish critic Jacob Lundström notes that the film has an international quality, not least in its horror elements, a genre not typical for Sweden. This goes to show that Border plays well with an audience outside of Sweden, while also standing out in its strangeness. The post-colonial notion of Otherness can therefore be applied to the reception of the film itself: it being a strange cousin to mainstream cinema, but in this case, neither excluded or forced to assimilate. A good example of counter-cinema, one might argue. Its strangeness is indicative of the fact that the film was not produced by dominant Hollywood, where profit is secured by “playing it safe”. So though not a “national film”, at least it was made possible with the ideas behind national cinema.

With this essay, I have tried to show the various ways in which the film Border deconstructs the notion of borders by tying the film into a historical debate of national film as well as a post-colonial understanding of Otherness. On a narrative level, this involves the depiction of Tina and Vore as beings that cannot be forced into categorisations of gender and species. Society’s denial of their true nature and their forced assimilation reflects a Swedish history of forcing the racialised Other to adjust to ideas of Normalcy. Moreover, the film doesn’t play into a certain genre. Rather, it is a mashup of horror, social realism, fantasy and crime. On a structural level, the film is understood to be Swedish, and does reflect on both Swedish cultural heritage and history. However, the influx of ideas, funding, actors, story-telling modes and address in the production and resulting film testify to a reality where national identity is not fixed but negotiable. In fact, to add on to Higson’s definition of the transnational film, I would like to make the case that immaterial factors such as the flow of ideas, inspiration and meaning-making when it comes to production makes the most compelling argument against the claim that film can be defined in national terms. Ideas are not defined by borders. More suitable yet, I would like to use the term post-national rather than transnational to describe Border. It is not so much an exchange between different countries as a hybrid; a hypnotising, daring blurring of borders.

Bradshaw, Peter. ”Border review: into the woods for a body-horror romance”. The Guardian 7/3/2019. Controlled 22/3/2019. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/mar/07/border-review-ali-abbasi.

Böjesen, Björn. ”Troll spred rädsla i Norden”. Illustrerad vetenskap historia 5/2/2018. Controlled 22/3/2019. https://varldenshistoria.se/samhalle/mytologi/troll-spred-radsla-i-norden.

Eklöf, Isabella. ”Isabella Eklöf: Sverige har ett reellt problem med självcensur”. FLM 25/10/2018. Controlled 22/3/2019. http://flm.nu/2018/10/isabella-eklof-sverige-har-ett-reellt-problem-med-sjalvcensur/.

Fishman, Howard. ”I accidentally walked into ‘Border’, and it kind of changed my life”. The New Yorker 28/12/2018. Controlled 22/3/2019. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/i-accidentally-walked-into-border-and-it-kind-of-changed-my-life.

Hansson, Sven Ove. ”Rashygien i Sverige”. Vetenskap och folkbildning. Controlled 22/3/2019. https://www.vof.se/folkvett/ar-1992/nr-1/rashygienen-i-sverige/.

Kenny, Glenn. “Review: sniffing out guilt in strangely engaging ‘Border’”. New York Times 25/10/2018. Controlled 22/3/2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/movies/border-review.html.

Lundström, Jacob. ”Ali Abbasi och den svenska filmens internationella makeover”. FLM 10/5/2018. Controlled 22/2/2019. http://flm.nu/2018/05/ali-abbasis-grans-och-den-svenska-filmens-internationella-makeover/.

Simon, Alissa. ”Film Review: ’Border’”. Variety 11/5/2018. Controlled 22/3/2019. https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/border-review-grans-1202807503/.

Svensk filmdatabas. ”Gräns”. Controlled 22/3/2019. http://www.svenskfilmdatabas.se/sv/item/?type=film&itemid=79508#companies.

Uppsala universitetsbibliotek. ”Rasbiologiska institutets arkiv”. Controlled 22/3/2019. https://www.ub.uu.se/hitta-i-vara-samlingar/verk-och-samlingar-i-urval/rasbiologiska-institutet/.

Heith, Anne. “Aesthetics and Ethnicity: The Role of Boundaries in Sámi and Tornedalian Art”. In Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region. Edited by Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2012, 159-173.

Higson, Andrew. ”The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”. In Cinema and Nation. Edited by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, 63-74.

Higson, Andrew and Richard Maltby. ”’Film Europe’ and ’Film America’: An Introduction”. In “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange, 1920-1939. Edited by Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999, 1-22.

Elsaesser, Thomas. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005.

Olsson, Jan. ”National Soul/Cosmopolitan Skin: Swedish Cinema at a Crossroad”. In Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space. Edited by Jennifer Bean et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014, 245-269.

Rosemary's Baby

Publicerad i höstnumret av Filmtidskriften FLM hösten 2018 samt i FLM Weekend

När jag för första gången kände min bebis sprattla till i magen som en liten fisk så infann sig ett lugn i min kropp. Min kompis, däremot, ryggade tillbaka när hon fick känna (och se!) fosterrörelserna utanpå magen. Och det är inte utan att graviditeten – för att inte tala om förlossningen – har sina mörka sidor. Man rör sig nära döden som gravid, riskerar att bära den i sin kropp. På så vis öppnar sig graviditeten mot en potentiellt skräckfylld föreställningsvärld: den eggar till en visualisering av något okänt. Men i vems blick är det som graviditeten injagar skräck?

Det har gått 50 år sedan Roman Polanskis klassiska graviditetsskräckfilm Rosemarys baby hade premiär. Det är ett portalverk som följdes av flera besläktade filmer, som Det lever från 1974, Embryo från 1976, Datademonen från 1977, och så David Cronenbergs The brood – missfostret och Ridley Scotts Alien, bägge från 1979. Finns det någonstans i dessa manliga regissörers filmer spår av kvinnlig erfarenhet?

I ett av kapitlen i boken Cinematernity från 1996 försöker filmprofessorn Lucy Fischer kartlägga synen på graviditet tiden innan Rosemarys baby gjordes, för att förstå det plötsliga uppsvinget. Den romantiska och patriarkala synen på graviditet som rådde på 1930- och 40-talen, enligt vilken allt annat än ett lycksaligt havandeskap var tecken på en undermedveten motvilja mot moderskap, kom att utmanas av såväl feministiska strömningar som medicinska framsteg. År 1965 publicerade fotografen Lennart Nilsson sina banbrytande bilder på foster i Time Magazine och det finns under samma tid graviditetsmanualer där fostret beskrivs som en ”parasit som lever av sin moder-värd för egen vinning”. Det är inte utan att man undrar om visualiseringen av det, faktiskt, alienliknande fostret kan ha banat väg för andra slags graviditetsnarrativ.

Cronenberg drar ut idén om fostret som parasit till det yttersta med monsteravkomman i The brood. Filmen kretsar kring en splittrad familj. Pappa Frank har vårdnad över den femåriga dottern Candice, men låter henne träffa mamma Nola på helgerna. Nola bor på ett slutet psykiatriskt vårdhem i regi av den kontroversielle Dr Raglan. Raglan har arbetat fram en teknik, ”psychoplasmics”, som externaliserar obearbetade känslor så att de sätter sig på kroppen som bölder och sår. När Candice en gång kommer hem med rivmärken på ryggen och mormodern kort därefter blir mördad leder spåren till samma kortväxta skurkar. I filmens klimax får vi lära oss att Raglans experimentella terapiform av misstag har resulterat i att Nola föder fram missfoster som hon bär i en fostersäck utanpå kroppen. Förutom att vara otäckt fula hotar de mörda alla som Nola hyser agg mot.

Kelly Oliver argumenterar i sin studie om graviditet i Hollywoodfilmer, Knock me up, knock me down från 2012, för att det är just i sitt mitt-emellan-territorium som graviditeten injagar skräck. Då fostret är en ofärdig människa går associationerna lätt till angränsande livsformer – tänk bara på likheterna som Nilsson påvisade mellan tidiga människo- och grisfoster. Vid ett tillfälle i The brood refereras Nola till som bidrottning och hennes kräldjurslikande reproduktion väcker obehag i sättet den närmar sig det djuriska. Missfostren i filmen är varken barn eller vuxna, män eller kvinnor, människor eller djur, utan just ett obehagligt mellanting. Även den gravida kvinnan rör sig i ett slags gränsland. Var börjar hon och var tar fostret vid? Är de inte snarare en enhet, och i så fall, hur påverkas fostret av den gravida kvinnans psykiska (o)hälsa?

I en välgrundad genomgång av medicinska skrifter från de två senaste seklen finner Oliver en återkommande föreställning om att missbildningar kan skyllas på den gravida kvinnans mörka fantasivärld, vilken triggas av graviditeten. The brood tar den här idén till sin spets: de mordiska skräckbarnen är helt klart en produkt av Nolas vrede och vansinne, hon blir ett mammamonster som måste strypas ihjäl av pappan, som till skillnad från henne sätter sin dotters välmående i första rummet. Ja, nog är skräcken framför allt mannens i The brood. När en av Raglans tidigare patienter förtvivlat utbrister att männen inte längre ”är behövda” efter att ha blivit utkastade från vårdhemmet i slutet av filmen sätter han ord på denna skräck: förutom en befruktningsprocess gone berserk är mannen inte längre nödvändig i den. I sin reproduktiva förmåga bär kvinnan på en väldig kraft och makt som här blir fullkomlig, medan mannens redan marginaliserade roll i reproduktionen utraderas. Faderskap blir utanförskap.

I sann Cronenberg-anda är The brood mer explicit än många andra filmer i samma genre. Rosemarys baby är mycket mera psykologisk. Det är förstås svårt att se filmen idag utan att låta upplevelsen färgas av Polanskis person. Och filmen kan med rätta kritiseras för att på ett sadistiskt sätt göra Mia Farrows karaktär till en marionett. Men utan att tillskriva Polanski något feministiskt uppsåt kan en kontextualisering av filmen öppna för en feministisk motläsning.

Filmen, som är baserad på Ira Levins roman och handlar om det unga paret Guy och Rosemary Woodhouse som flyttar in i en stor hyreslägenhet på Manhattan. När Guys karriär som skådespelare plötsligt får ett uppsving och Rosemary blir gravid förändras deras tillvaro, men Rosemary börjar ana oråd när graviditeten ter sig märklig och grannparet Roman och Minnie Castevets blir alltmer framfusiga. I grund och botten är det en berättelse om en kvinna som fråntas all form av självbestämmanderätt i sin graviditet och tycks placera sig i båda ändar av 1960-talets dikotomi mellan klinisk förlossningsvård och hemmafödsel.

I forskningsartikeln ”The alternative birth movement in the United States” skriver Joan J. Mathews och Kathleen Zadak om hur mödra- och förlossningsvården i USA politiserades på 1960-talet. Siffrorna för hemfödsel hade sjunkit sedan sekelskiftet till förmån för mer kliniskt bedriven förlossningsvård på sjukhus: 1940 födde endast drygt hälften av alla kvinnor på sjukhus medan siffran år 1969 låg på 99 procent. Denna utveckling förflyttade vården och kunskapen från kvinnor i hemmiljö till en mansdominerad sjukhusmiljö. Vården blev allt mer medicinskt betonad och steril, med föderskan som en passiv mottagare. Som en motreaktion uppstod en alternativ gräsrotsorganisation som förordade kunskapsspridning, en stärkt barnmorskeprofession och hemmafödsel. Ett återplacerande av föderskan och kvinnan i centrum helt enkelt.

Rosemary är en ofrivillig hemmaföderska. Det är inte bara förlossningen som sker inom hemmets väggar, utan i princip hela graviditeten. Det dunkla Bramford-huset ger gotiska vibbar och med sin tunga arkitektoniska stil lånar det sig utmärkt till den kusliga filmen. Huset blir, inte minst mot slutet av filmen, ett regelrätt fängelse där en av fångvaktarna är grannen Minnie Castevets som varje morgon sticker hemmagjorda brygder i handen på Rosemary. Minnie är en excentriker och har något groteskt över sig med sin parodiska sminkning och överdrivna mimik. Kontrasten mot den milda skönheten Rosemary är tydlig. I Cinematernity presenterar Fischer en tolkning som gör gällande att Minnies karaktär kan förstås som en barnmorska. Enligt skrifter om häxkonst från 1600-talet finns myter, grundade i en misogyn rädsla för kunniga kvinnor, i vilka barnmorskan var en häxa som offrade spädbarn till djävulen. Innan sömnmedlet kickar in under värkarbetet utropar Rosemary förtvivlat: ”There was supposed to be doctors, hospitals!” Hemmet står här för förtryck, sjukhuset för trygghet.

Men låt oss bortse från Minnie som illasinnad barnmorska en stund, hennes makt är nämligen marginell. Rosemarys längtan till sjukhuset hade inte varit nödvändig om det inte var för alla män som förtryckte henne: maken Guy, läkaren Sapirstein, grannen Roman och djävulen själv. Rosemary får varken styra över sin kost eller val av läkare, hennes utseende kommenteras friskt och mer än en gång hytter män bokstavligt med fingret åt henne. Hon blir manipulerad och kontrollerad så till den grad att det är Guy som håller koll på Rosemarys menscykel. Denna påtvingande kontroll kulminerar i graviditet genom våldtäkt.

När Rosemary bekänner sin rädsla om något hon har läst för doktor Sapirstein skrattar han bort det och uppmanar henne att inte läsa mer om vad som händer i hennes kropp. Han säger det rakt ut: läs inte böcker. Han är också tydlig med att det är honom hon ska vända sig till framför väninnor och släktingar som själva fött barn. Den kvinnliga erfarenheten räknas för intet. På bokstavlig nivå berättar denna scen om hur Rosemarys detektivarbete hotar röja den stora hemligheten om hennes graviditets sanna natur, på bildlig nivå handlar den om den passiva föderskan och hur en mer självständig föderska hotar den sterila och läkarcentrerade förlossningsvården. Det visar sig att även denna sviker henne. Doktor Hill, som länge framstår som en hoppets fackla, tolkar Rosemarys berättelse i slutet av filmen som ett utfall av sinnessjukdom. Just det – Rosemary uppfattas som en hysterisk kvinna vars oförstånd måste tyglas av männens förnuft. Aldrig har väl en kvinnas hysteri framstått som mer befogad.

Å ena sidan mystifierar Polanski den kvinnliga kroppen med sin manliga blick genom att använda den som projektionsyta för sin berättelse. Polanski låter Rosemarys plötsliga begär efter blodiga stekar signalera ondska, men vilken gravid kvinna har inte känt en oförklarlig trånad efter något fullkomligt slumpmässigt? Jag har en vän som blev vegetarian när hon var gravid, en annan som slutade vara vegetarian. En började sukta efter skogsdoft, ytterligare en ville bita i gummidäck. Klart fantasieggande – samtidigt som de är fullt normala kvinnliga erfarenheter. När Rosemary i filmens sista scen får se sin avkomma; men trots sin förskräckelse bestämmer sig för att ta hand om den, förvandlar filmen henne till en ond kvinna. Denna ondska finns inneboende i själva moderskapet, ty hennes instinkt är att alltid sätta barnet i första rummet, om det så är djävulens son. I förlängningen införlivar både Polanski och Cronenberg den seglivade uppdelningen mellan manligt och kvinnligt där manligt står för det förnuftiga och rationella och kvinnlighet står för det dunkla och kroppsliga, en tankebild som är en grundpelare för genren.

Men till skillnad från The brood ligger Rosemarys babys styrka i dess alldaglighet, som skapar ett friare tolkningsutrymme. Djävulsspåret kan kännas lite fånigt femtio år senare, men trots sin övernaturliga tematik och sin paranoida stämning består skräcken i filmen till stor del av mer eller mindre naturliga graviditetssymtom: Rosemary blir blek, får cravings, går ner i vikt, får ont och blir orolig och paranoid. Filmen speglar således allt från odramatiska graviditeter med inslag av märkliga matpreferenser och en underliggande oro för fostrets välmående till skräckfyllda graviditeter inramade av terror och paranoia. I en tid då inomäktenskaplig våldtäkt var laglig kan filmen med fördel läsas som en berättelse om en kvinnas våldtäktstrauma och efterföljande psykos.

I och med att hemmet i berättelsen är förtryckande i dubbel bemärkelse – det symboliserar både hemmafödsel och patriarkat – slår filmen åt två håll. Läsningen i vilken barnmorskeprofessionen målas upp som bakåtsträvande och ondskefull utmanas av en feministisk motläsning i vilken hotet är den mansdominerande mödra- och förlossningsvården. I slutändan är det ändå skildringen av Rosemarys totala maktlöshet som drabbar mig.

Och på senare år? Graviditet fortsätter att vara ett tilltalande tema för skräckfilmskapare att utforska och det finns flera exempel där den lyfts ur sitt skumma ljus. John Krasinskis dundersuccé A quiet place från i år är ett av dem. Efter en förödande attack mot jorden lever familjen Abbott ett liv helt i tystnad för att inte locka till sig de blinda – men ljudkänsliga – monstren. Med finurliga life hacks som teckenspråk, sandvägar och utritade spår där golvet inte knakar så får de livet att rulla på något så när. Vad som framstår som en desto större utmaning är den stundande förlossningen – mamma Evelyn är nämligen höggravid. Att föda helt i tystnad, dessutom utan smärtlindring? Evelyn bemöter utmaningen med en urkraft och skildringen är rå utan att vara exploaterande. Inför hennes eldprov kan alla monsterbebisar kasta sig i väggen. En ny tappning på monsterbebisberättelsen står Alice Lowe för i sin skräckkomedi Prevenge från 2016. Lowe spelar Ruth (höggravid i verkligheten!), en kvinna som blivit ensamstående efter att hennes partner omkommit i en klättringsolycka. När fostret inifrån magen med gäll röst uppmanar henne att hämnas på alla inblandade gör Ruth som hon blir tillsagd och påbörjar en blodig hämndodyssé. ”I’m just the vehicle. Honestly, it’s like a hostile take over” säger hon till sin barnmorska i en lyckad drift med genrens föreställning om galenskap och graviditet. Medan Nolas avkomma i Missfostret är en produkt av hennes vrede är Ruths monsterfoster en produkt av hennes sorg, en sorg över en saknad partner. Pappa kom hem!

Graviditetsskräckfilmen både förfrämligar graviditeten och öppnar upp för ett potentiellt stärkande skräcknarrativ. Samma kväll som Rosemary ska befruktas lurar Minnie i henne sömnmedel gömd i en hemmagjord chokladmousse. Först äter Rosemary moussen uppskattande men stannar sedan upp. ”It has an undertaste… a chalky undertaste,” säger hon ogillande. Guy hävdar att hon inbillar sig. Efter lite tjafs tar hon ytterligare några tuggor och låtsas nu uppskatta den, innan hon skrapar ur resten i sin servett. Den kritiga bismaken blir en bild av graviditetens avigsidor – något otäckt i det söta – och scenen blir en elegant metafor för hur kvinnor tvingas förtränga allt som inte smakar gott i sina upplevelser av att vänta barn. Närmast ironiskt att Polanski med sin manliga blick på graviditeten som mysterium och källa till ondska lyckas ge uttryck åt en kvinnlig erfarenhet. Rosemary smaskar senare överdrivet: ”Mmm, it’s delicious! No undertaste at all!” – men hon spelar ju bara, det vet både hon och tittarna. Graviditetens kritiga bismak har gjort sig påmind och kan inte längre förträngas.