Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
According to
Jib Fowles, adults, male and
female alike, have a need to nurture children, animals, and other
helpless creatures. In discussing this need, psychologist Henry
Murray refers to feeding, helping, supporting, consoling, protecting,
comforting, nursing, and healing such dependents.
Horror fiction, like advertising, often taps this basic need, either by showing its neglect or by perverting it. In addition, such fiction frequently depicts the nurture of children or pets as a way to set up the later reversal of such care when a villain disrupts or destroys familial or relationships or relationships based upon friendships or, indeed, kills family members or friends.
Horror fiction, like advertising, often taps this basic need, either by showing its neglect or by perverting it. In addition, such fiction frequently depicts the nurture of children or pets as a way to set up the later reversal of such care when a villain disrupts or destroys familial or relationships or relationships based upon friendships or, indeed, kills family members or friends.
In the film Rosemary's Baby (1968), based on Ira Levin's 1967 novel of the same name, Rosemary Woodhouse is raped by Satan after her neighbors, a cult of Satanists, drug her. She believes that her vision of having been raped by the devil was a delusion and that her husband, Guy, is the true father.
After her baby is born, she is told that the child died, but she refuses to believe this and discovers the infant son in her her satanic neighbors' apartment, surrounded by the their fellow members of their cult. She is asked to accept the child as her own, and, reluctantly, she does so, rocking the baby's cradle as she smiles.
This plot involves the need to nurture, a drive so strong, especially when it is combined with the maternal instinct, the movie implies, that it can overcome even the fear and disgust that having delivered a son of Satan inspires. No matter what level of nurture Rosemary provides to her son, the child will not fare well; according to the Bible, her son, the Antichrist, or “the beast from the earth,”will be defeated and cast into hell, wherein he will suffer eternal torment (Rev. 19:19-20).
The plot addresses two questions: who (or whom) is to be nurtured and why?
Stephen King's
novella Apt Pupil: Summer of Corruption, which originally
appeared in his 1982 collection, Different
Seasons, presents,
as its subtitle suggests, a perversion of the need to nurture. Having
discovered that an elderly German immigrant, Arthur Denker, is a Nazi
war criminal, Kurt Dussander, a teenage boy, Todd Bowden, threatens
to expose him if Dussander does not recount the atrocities that
Dussander committed during the Holocaust.
The need to nurture is perverted in two ways: it is forced upon the nurturer, rather than freely given by him, and it involves teaching about atrocities rather than virtues. It also results in catastrophes, as, separately, Todd and Dussander murder homeless vagrants and Todd shoots a rifle at motorists on a freeway before he is killed by authorities.
The need to nurture is perverted in two ways: it is forced upon the nurturer, rather than freely given by him, and it involves teaching about atrocities rather than virtues. It also results in catastrophes, as, separately, Todd and Dussander murder homeless vagrants and Todd shoots a rifle at motorists on a freeway before he is killed by authorities.
King acknowledges that his own alcoholism and his anger and frustration concerning his own children's behavior was an inspiration for Jack's character. He also insists that Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of his novel, the 1980 movie The Shining, departed from his novel's theme of a family's “disintegration” and objected to Kubrick's suggesting that Jack is influenced from within, by his own psychological demons, rather than externally, by the ghosts of the haunted hotel.
Scottish broadcast journalist Laura Miller takes issue with King's criticism of Kubrick, pointing out that, in King's novel, Jack's own choices cause the evil that afflicts him and his family, whereas, “in Kubrick’s The Shining, the characters are largely in the grip of forces beyond their control. It’s a film in which domestic violence occurs, while King’s novel is about domestic violence as a choice.”
King's
Point of View
King's Novel
|
King's Criticism
|
Theme = family's “disintegration”
|
Film departs from novel's theme
|
Family's disintegration caused by supernatural
influences
|
Film suggests Jack's own psychological demons cause
his downfall
|
Miller's Criticism of King's Point of View
King's Novel
|
Kubrick's Film
|
Jack's
own choices cause the evil that afflicts him and his family
|
Family's disintegration caused by
supernatural influences
|
Domestic violence results from Jack's
own choices
|
Domestic violence occurs
|
In
short, Miller argues that King's novel is psychological, rather than
theological, in its identification of the cause of the domestic abuse
Jack commits, whereas Kubrick's film suggests that Jack's behavior,
including his domestic abuse, results from supernatural
influences—the opposite of King's own point of view and basis of
his criticism of Kubrick's film adaptation of his novel.
King's criticism of Kubrick's film has been inconsistent, with King first damning and later praising the movie. In one comment, he attributes the filmmaker's sometimes “flat” scenes to a failure of imagination and religious faith:
King's criticism of Kubrick's film has been inconsistent, with King first damning and later praising the movie. In one comment, he attributes the filmmaker's sometimes “flat” scenes to a failure of imagination and religious faith:
.
. . a visceral skeptic [concerning the existence of the supernatural]
just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of the Overlook Hotel. So
he looked instead for the evil in the characters and made the film
into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones.
That was the basic flaw: because he couldn't believe, he couldn't
make the film believable to others. What's basically wrong with
Kubrick's version of The
Shining
is that it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little
. . . .
Critic
Mark Browning suggests the opposite is true: King “feels too much
and thinks too little.”
King's
criticism of Kubrick and Miller's and Browning's criticism of King's
criticism of Kubrick seem to suggest that romanticism tends to
promote an emotional and psychological view of the problem of evil,
such as King's, while a rationalistic outlook tends to advance a
rational and theological or idealistic perspective regarding the
existence of evil, such as Kubrick's.
If nothing else, the controversy between King's perceptions of Kubrick's movie and Kubrick's own point of view concerning his film suggest that stories that involve the need to nurture can address much larger issues, such as the romanticism, rationalism, and the nature of both evil and ultimate reality.
If nothing else, the controversy between King's perceptions of Kubrick's movie and Kubrick's own point of view concerning his film suggest that stories that involve the need to nurture can address much larger issues, such as the romanticism, rationalism, and the nature of both evil and ultimate reality.
King approaches the need to nurture from a different perspective in It.
Not only do many of his adolescent characters lack a nurturing home environment, but one of them in particular, Beverly Marsh, is abused both by her father Alvin, and, later, her husband, Tom Rogan, among other, previous romantic partners. As an eleven-year-old girl, she is a member, with six of male friends of the same age, of the Losers' Club.
The parents of another member, Bill Denbrough, treat him with cold indifference following the death of his younger brother. His stuttering subjects him to the bullying of his classmates.
Benjamin Harrison, another member, is obese, which makes him a target of the same school bullies who torment and attack the other “Losers.”
Edward Kaspbrak is a victim of “smother love” and his mother's
Munchhausen syndrome by proxy; he also suffers psychosomatic asthma.
Michael Hanion, another “Loser,” is African-American; he is
persecuted by bully Henry Bowers because of a feud Bowers's father
had with Hanion's father.
Bowers also persecutes Stanley Uris, who's
a “Loser” by virtue of his Jewish faith.
As Fowles points out,
advertisements can allude to the need to nurture by suggesting its
absence. In fiction, children who are portrayed as being in need of
feeding, helping, supporting, consoling, protecting, comforting,
nursing, and healing are naturally sympathetic to readers, who hope
such characters will get the care they need.
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