The Monstrous Maternal: Abjection,

Ambiguity, and Horror in We Need to Talk

About Kevin

But first some final thoughts on Black

SwanThe Seven Myths of Femininity from Freud’s On Femininity

as articulated by Luce Irigaray

1. The attribution of narcissism: “..which also affects women’s choice of object, so that to be loved is a stronger need than to love” (112).

2. Vanity: compensating for sexual inferiority

3. “Shame, which is considered to be a feminine characteristic par excellence but is far more a matter of convention than might be supposed, has as its purpose, we believe, concealment of genital deficiency” (112).

1. That women have made very few contributions to “discoveries” and inventions----except for plaiting and weaving---which seems to be a model imposed by mother nature herself---the pubic hair that rises to conceal the genital deficiency

2. The “predominance of envy in their mental life”

3. Having weaker social interests

4. Having less capacity for sublimating their instincts

5. “A man of about thirty strikes us as a youthful, somewhat unformed individual...A woman of the same age, however, often frightens us by her psychical rigidity and unchangeability. Her libido has taken up final positions and seems incapable of exchanging them for others. There are no paths opens to further development; it is as though the whole process had already run its course and remains thenceforward insusceptible to influence” (113).

The Tale of the Ugly Duckling

The Sadist Duckling: Antisocial disorder

and Masculinity

When searching for images of the Ugly Duckling—this popped up. I think its really telling when comparing Nina to Kevin

No, really we need to talk about Kevin

While the little girls sadistic impulses in the anal sadistic phase are turned back around inward, the little boy must transform the mother into the ideal---that must be protected

Like Nina, Kevin never really makes it out of this phase

In what ways does Kevin sadistically punish his mother?

Freud’s anal phase is alluded to several times

Most prominently in the struggles the mother has in getting Kevin toilet trained

Ultimately, Kevin inability to turn the mother into the ideal, and cope with castration anxiety---which keeps the little boy from doing as he pleases---becomes a downward spiral culminating in the school massacre.

His sadistic drive cannot be satiated by killing the mother, but rather by punishing her to the point perhaps of suicide

Figuring the Mother

The promise of the son “As we see from the unavoidable fact that ‘a mother is

only brought unlimited satisfaction by her relation to a son; this is altogether the most perfect, the most free of ambivalence of all human relationships.’ Indeed, ‘a mother can transfer to her son the ambition from which she has been obliged in herself, and she can expect from him the satisfaction of all that has been let over in her of the masculinity complex.’”

From The Speculum of the Other Woman Luce Irigaray

“Thus it is not so much the fact of becoming a mother that would cause an ‘alteration in a woman’s nature…after the first child is born,’ or at any rate that simple fact would not be enough to solve her conflicts, particularly with her husband: if she is a mother like her mother, a mother of a daughter, the unfortunate relationship with her parents---who produced a daughter---will again threaten the union with her husband” (107).

While Freud suggests that the birth of the son eliminates all feelings of ambiguity, both Lynn Ramsay in We Need to Talk About Kevin and Rosemary Betterton in “Promising Monsters” suggest that the maternal is much more ambiguous than Freud imagined.

For instance, what happens to the mother when the son does not fulfill her but rather turns against her---and provides her primarily with pain, suffering, frustration, and terror

And what happens when the little boy cannot handle or integrate the idea of the mother having desires that are not his own

The Other is that which we define ourselves against

“But what if that otherness is enclosed in our bodies, as yet unknown, neither friend nor enemy, growing inside our own flesh and blood?” (p. 81).

“Such monstrous imaginings are the stuff of fairy tales and horror films, and yet, an ontological awareness of the body’s alienation from itself and an emergent new relationship with an unfamiliar being is familiar to many pregnant women…For if the ‘other’ is unknowable and monstrous, it can aos be intimate and indeed connected to what makes us most anxious about our bodily selves, disturbing our own sense of reality” (p. 81).

It is after all, a film about mothers/sons, about the Self and the Other---unknowable and yet it in intimate relation to each other.

Determine and rely on each other

The child who doesn’t learn to deal with his/her sadistic impulses will need applause to know that they even exist

The sounds of cheering at the end of Black Swan The roar of the crowd in the aftermath of the school

massacre---though horrific---still applause

The Politics of Blame/Shame

Instead of pointing to a system/schema of socializing young boys in which the possibilities for extreme violence continue to multiply, often the “blame” gets placed solely on the mother

Often the first figure that gets pointed to, other than the identification of the killer themselves, is the mother

Rather, than the idea that the possibilities of large scale trauma are woven into our very social fabric

The film suggests a much more ambiguous understanding of the role of the mother, as monstrous and intimate

As many have suggested, shame is a process of concealing and revealing---like the skin, it covers and uncovers. It conceals the depths of guilt and shame, while revealing them at the same time

This film can be the thought of as a kind of maternal surrealism, which employs a mother’s shame to reveal and conceal her repressed memories/feeling/experiences of being the monstrous maternal

Which as a “imaginative practice” can “explore the tensions that pregnant bodies [and the maternal becoming/experience] evoke through their ‘mutations, changes, and transformation,’ and thus offer ‘new figurations’ rather than theoretical closure” (83).

One becomes a mother through a process that is abject, disgusting, terrifying, monstrous, and yet intimate, sensual, and divine. It is never closed but rather a constant “becoming.”