Category: Group B

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“Their bombs and their guns”: Zombies, Guns and Cranberries

As I began to analyze the violence present in the episodes we watched of Dead Set, I realized that in addition to the killer zombies, we encounter many other destructive devices. Characters use scissors, knives, axes, and even lamp posts to protect themselves and to kill the flesh-hungry zombies that come their way. The most notable weapon that the characters use, however, is the gun. Guns are not only crucial to the survival of many of the characters, but they are also integral to the progression of action throughout the series. Without guns, many of the main characters in the show could have been killed at the outset. In a sense, the presence of the gun enhances their chances of survival which enables the viewer to create a deeper relationship with each character. In turn, when each character subsequently dies, the viewer experiences the loss in a more genuine way. Guns are significant because they provide the characters with control and agency over the situation — when paired with a gun in hand, the zombie becomes the victim. Guns also serve as a plot device as they fuel an overall warlike tone and frame much of the action in the story.

The show also succeeds in showing the implications of abusing the power of the gun. We see that when Alex encounters Riq she assumes that he is a zombie and shoots at him right away. Additionally, the police officers utilize the gun to shoot freely at innocent characters. Although Alex and the police officers use the weapon as a means of protection, they submit themselves to the power of the gun and in a sense, let it control them. Another important scene involving guns occurs towards the end of the series when Patrick and Joplin steal the weapons in order to execute their escape plan. This results in the shooting of Riq and the eventual downfall and destruction of the other characters. In this instance it is evident that the abuse of the gun serves as a device to advance the plot and make the action more dramatic. The presence of the gun in this scenario made Patrick and Joplin seem like the zombies, giving them full control as the other characters submit to their power. This leads me to question if Charlie Brooker (creator of Dead Set) intended to make a statement about gun violence and its role as a destructive force since its presence is so crucial to the storyline.

The Cranberries. Found here.

The possible hidden meaning involved in the presence of guns also leads me to question whether the show works to represent a “reaction to the greater cultural consciousness — primarily social and political injustices” which Kyle William Bishop claims zombies do (Bishop 15). As I was thinking about zombies and guns I found myself humming the tune to “Zombies” by the Cranberries, a famous Irish rock band. Fitting, right?! The song was written in 1994 in response to the IRA (Irish Republican Army) bombing of Warrington, England in 1993. The lyrics reflect the turbulent political situation in Northern Ireland at the time as well as a cry for peaceful protest. I find the intersection between bombs/ gun violence and zombies in this song interesting, as it can potentially relate to some similar ideas regarding destruction in Dead Set. As Bishop writes, the “popularity of the zombie has continued to flourish in other media,” which can be seen through the utilization of zombies and the metaphors they evoke in song form (Bishop 17). For instance, the extensive violence occurring between Britain and Ireland fueled an emotional void that made society become zombie-like. Additionally, the repetition of  the words “in your head, in your head” represents how war has also become zombie-like through its inescapable and terrifying nature. By using zombies as a metaphor for the painful reality of war, it can be implied that war is not only inhuman, but it consumes human emotions.

If we were to look at Dead Set through the same lens, there may be a deeper meaning associated with the presence of weapons as a destructive force and whether the series intends to tackle the social and political injustices associated with gun violence. Has the gun in a sense become a zombie? As you think about it, be sure to tune into the aggressive and haunting tone evoked by the Cranberries powerfully evocative song, “Zombies.”

Works Cited

Bishop, Kyle William. American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2010. Print.

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Zombie/Horror Tropes in Dead Set

We’ve discussed the trope of the Final Girl a few times in class – basically, she’s the last survivor of the horror film (typically, but not always, a slasher film).  Conveniently, she’s usually a virgin (unlike the sexually active women, whose deaths many scholars interpret as punishments for sexual transgressions) and brunette (again, possibly interpreted as displaying more innocence/less sexuality).    Although she doesn’t fit the paradigm exactly (she’s not a virgin), when Kelly was trapped in the diary room after the rest of the characters had died, I immediately thought “Final Girl!”  While Kelly isn’t a virgin, she’s certainly less sexual than the other female characters, who are built like models and appear to rely on their looks and sex appeal as reality TV stars.  Kelly is the most rational, down to earth (read: masculine) woman on the show, so it’s fitting for her to assume the role of the Final Girl.

The term “Final Girl” was first coined in 1992 by Carol J Clover in this book. Source: amazon.co.uk

After I finished the last episode, I went to tvtropes.org to read up on the Final Girl  (that’s where I learned the bit about her usually being a brunette, which I had never heard before).  If you’re a regular consumer of media/pop culture, tvtropes.org is a very easy rabbit hole down which to fall.  As I usually do when on the website, I found myself with about a dozen tabs open, reading up on different tropes and seeing how they fit Dead Set.

I’ll come out and say it: I don’t think Dead Set  was a particularly original zombie show.  The reality TV element was interesting, and it was certainly enjoyable and well-written, but especially after seeing how many major horror tropes it fits, it strikes me as pretty standard zombie fare.  Here are some horror/zombie tropes I found while browsing tvtropes.org, and how they fit  Dead Set. (Tropes are all linked to their pages on the website both for citation purposes and in case you’re interested in doing any further reading).

The Zombie Apocalypse trope page reflects many elements seen in Dead Set: the collapse takes place quickly, people lose their humanity in the fight for survival, and there isn’t a happy ending.

The tropes entitled Black Dude Dies First and Bury Your Gays are pretty self explanatory: Angel, a black woman, is the first of the housemates to die and become reanimated, and Grayson follows not soon after.

Not Using the “Z” Word is another standard zombie trope displayed in Dead Set.  The characters never say the word “zombie” and act as if they exist in a world without them (like we mentioned in class).  This trope is an awfully common one called Genre Blindness.

Room Full of Zombies occurs, unsurprisingly, when a character enters a room flooded with zombies, like Kelly does when exiting the diary room.  The trope of Our Zombies Are Different, in which zombies depart from the usual shambling, reanimated corpses, covers the zombies’ speed.  The zombies also fit the tropes of Flesh-Eating Zombie and Plague Zombie.

I could keep going, but this post is already long enough.  What I’m trying to illustrate is that in terms of plot and characterization, Dead Set doesn’t strike me as very original.  While I didn’t find the show predictable, it was certainly familiar, and didn’t depart much from the mainstays of the zombie genre.

(If you’re looking for a somewhat weird, extremely creative and original zombie movie, I recommend Pontypool. It’s on Netflix, it’s pretty short, and it’s like no zombie movie you’ve seen before.)

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Zombies are about destruction porn and cheap commentary

The zombie narrative is about reveling in the destruction of all our institutions. Society collapses and what little life is left turns into raw survival. The military, law and order, or the police can’t save us; the government is in ruins; everyone you know and love is dead. You’re on your own.

In this way, zombies actually fit neatly into Susan Sontag’s critique of 1950s and 60s science fiction films. Within the “aesthetic enjoyment of suffering and disaster,” she argues, one can see “…the hunger for a ‘good war,’ which poses no moral problems, admits of no moral qualifications…” (The Imagination of Disaster, 215 & 219).

Zombie Kelly stares into a camera within the Big Brother house and is broadcast across television screens in Dead Set, directed by Charlie Brooker.

While the scenarios zombies force living characters to confront may seem tinged with moralistic shadows, it does not actually seem ambiguous or complex to me. Sure, characters may wring their hands over whether to put a bullet in a friend who has just been bitten — but when it really comes down to it, if survival is the name of the game, there is only one choice.

The zombies are stripped completely of their humanity, rendered into feral inhuman beasts. So, again, when a character wrings their hands over whether there’s “any trace of them left in there” — we already know the answer and the outcome. There’s not any trace. They’re already gone, and either you will kill them or they will kill you. It’s an easy bullet to fire despite initial shock and reluctance. Moralistic deliberating is shelved in the interest of survival.

For a genre that seems at first to be soaked in the postmodern, I’m surprised that zombies actually seem utterly black and white. We want ultimate bad, we want easy answers but tough, gory, wartime-esque survival story along the way. We want to be able to see mass destruction and zombies getting blown up without that tinge of moralistic guilt — finally, an enemy who really deserves it no matter what. It doesn’t matter if Jane was a sweet lady when she was alive. She’s a zombie now and it doesn’t matter. One man for himself. Screw the system.

In American Zombie Gothic, Kyle Bishop presents zombies as “valuable cultural indictors” that “cathartically, yet perhaps more destructively,” re-create modern social anxieties on the screen. (26).

Watching the system and the public be torn to shreds is thrilling and satisfying and yes, many times cathartic. The zombie as monster does take on metaphors for our postmodern anxieties; they objectify our anxieties about mass infection, terrorist infiltration, the total destabilization of society — but it doesn’t offer any way to then channel those anxieties into something else. How does our consumption of zombies as monster change the way we interact with the everyday, real monsters (institutionalized marginalization, Muslin bans, internment camps, the terrifying triumphs of neoliberalism, etc etc etc etc etc)?

If anything, zombie narratives render me even more hopeless to combat these corrupted systems. Zombies, as Kyle Bishop points out, remind us of our proximity to inevitable death. (American Zombie Gothic, 21). So what’s the point of trying to change anything? Time to either become a brainless zombie or a gun wielding survivalist. It boils down to a morbid, delightfully easy choice — A or B — which is perhaps what we crave most growing up in a postmodern landscape with a multiplicity of choices.

In this way, I think zombies could actually be damaging to how we understand our individual influence in society and our perception of “the public.” The key to resistance and enacting social, institutional, and societal change don’t arise out of the landscapes destruction porn presents: the masturbatory media equivalent of watered down anarchism (with all the flash but none of the well articulated socio-political theory).

So consuming zombies is really about consuming the easy way out of the system. It strains our social contracts to their breaking points. When those amorphous, tenuous contracts finally break — a sigh of relief! — release from the postmodern soup. The life then actually becomes very uncomplicated: survival. That’s it.

I understand how and why the zombie has become a powerful symbol. However,  I’m unimpressed by the quality of popular zombie works: it is destruction porn with vague societal commentary that barely rises above the horror visuals. The zombie medium has the potential to, as Jeffrey Cohen wrote in Monster Culture (Seven Theses), prompt us to reflect on how we interpret the world and “re-evaluate our cultural assumptions.” (20).

But the zombie only makes it half-way around to showing us the nature of our own society and what it could be instead; it get stuck in the reveling of destruction and the same old science fiction/horror tropes Sontag critiqued. It’s a fantastical catharsis but doesn’t push us further. Show me more zombie content that goes beyond the cheap, easy shot of critiquing the “public” or “consumerism.”

The zombie needs to show us more meaningful messaging to be a truly powerful societal mirror and crucible of change. We already know we’re suffering, exploited by neoliberalism and overwhelmed by the postmodern condition — now what do we do about it?

Zombies at the mall in 2004 film Dawn of the Dead, directed by Zach Snyder.
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Phoenixs’ don’t exist, and Ash is never coming back.

thecryptosphere.com/2015/05/15/interwebbed-cyber-and-crypto-news-for-may-15/

In Black Mirror we witnessed an episode that fired up our imagination to its limit, mostly because we consider the science behind the episode to be in the relative future. Martha and Ash were a somewhat generic married couple until the day that Ash died in the tragic car accident. On the day of the funeral, one of Martha’s friends told her that she could diminish her pain and suffering through the use of some new software. The software collects all the data that a person ever published online. The sources online include social media, and mostly public information, but then a more personal source which includes emails. At first Martha’s reaction to the suggestion was very negative (to say the least), but only within a couple of days of dealing with the grief of her husband’s death, she found out she was pregnant and succumbed to the temptation of speaking to her husband again. Her decision to use the software led her to live a life along the boundary of the real and digital world.  The software goes through three upgrades, from a kind of chatbot, to a voice chatbot, to a full-blown faux body with Ash’s memories and behavioral patterns. At first, Martha welcomed the new Ash, who was much like the old Ash. As time went by however, Martha began to realize the lack of details that were unique to Ash that the new Ash lacked. She comes to face reality once again, Ash is never coming back, and nothing can replace him.

I found it very intriguing that Martha missed the negative aspects of Ash’s personality which would cause arguments and tension in the relationship, which speaks to the fact that positive without negative is not really positive any more. It is evident through the show, but through common sense as well, that when one has complete control over another’s free will, then a relationship cannot exist. I’ve come to a conclusion, both after watching the show and after thinking on my own, that we will never be able to create a conscious creature. It seems that divine intervention is the only way consciousness will ever be recreated, in the case that it would be.

Peace,
Duka

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Intelligence Isn’t Enough: Why the Housemates Lost to the Zombies

While watching Dead Set, I was struck by the scene in which Kelly watches zombie Angel flopping around in the pool, and comments that she believes the surviving humans will beat the zombies because the humans are smarter than them. It was apparent well before this that the zombies were not particularly brilliant, emphasized by the way in which they seem incapable of opening doors and spend most of their time scratching at them. Yet, both before this moment and in the following episodes, it is clear that the humans are not winning the fight against the zombies, so I considered why.

A screenshot from “Dead Set,” Season 1 Episode 3. Kelly prepares to shoot zombie Angel. Accessed via netflix.com.

I was drawn to the section of American Zombie Gothic in which Kyle William Bishop addresses how humans are in fact the biggest threat to each other in many zombie films. He writes, “The symbolic threat of the zombies remains a fundamentally frightening part of these films, but because the threats of bodily harm, rape, and murder are real-world potentialities, both in and beyond the zombies, such scenes become all the more terrifying by being inescapable in supposedly escapist movies (Bishop 24-25).” There certainly are aspects of this in Dead Set. For example, the cops threaten to shoot the survivors, Marky almost shoots Riq, and of course Patrick and Joplin’s scheme in the final episode is relatively treacherous. However, I also noted that in an equally real way the humans were threats to themselves. Since they are not mindless zombies, several characters show very human emotions such as empathy and fear that end up resulting in their own deaths. For example, Grayson was clearly struggling with the idea of having to kill his friend Angel, and his hesitation in stabbing her cost him his life. Alex and Riq also seemingly would have been safe staying in the farmhouse, but Alex’s connection to Riq, and Riq’s desire to see Kelly again both drive them to their eventual deaths. In some ways, it seems as if those who become most like their zombie counterparts and lose some of the defining features of humanity have the best chance of survival. While I watched, I felt as though this set the characters up for a rather bleak outcome no matter what: either they died because of their humanity, or in fighting “the other,” they lost what made them better, or at least different, in the first place.

Bishop, K. W. (2010). American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Brooker, C. (Producer). (2008). Dead Set. United Kingdom: Zeppotron.

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Forgetting The Possession

Throughout A Head Full of Ghosts, I had always thought that adding “The Last Final Girl” blog chapters, which analyze the show and surrounding events directly, put more space between myself the reader and the supposed real events recanted by Merry in the book.  I was still unsure of what purpose it served within the story of A Head Full of Ghosts as a whole, other than to give us information about the Possession’s actual television episodes.  I had been wondering why Tremblay would create this alias (Karen Brissette) for Merry to write about the show, instead of just having her recall the episodes as they pertained to events that happened, drawing conclusions, comparing, and contrasting the two side-by-side, rather separating them.

Towards the end of the book, I learned of what happened to the family during the end of the show and post-production, i.e. the poisoning.  With this new information, I realized just how painful all of the memories related to the show must be.  It began to make more sense to me why Merry would create an alias to write about the show as if she had not experienced it.  It seemed to me like she was trying to convince herself that she had not lived those experiences, and I think Rachel puts it perfectly when she asks Merry how she found the “distance” (pg. 257) to write about the events of the show.  I believe that the blog was a way for her to create that distance.  In the blog “Karen,” while speaking about the dinner on the show the night of the exorcism, writes “Mmmm . . . Chinese Food. . .” as if the Merry behind those words had not recalled never being able to stand the taste of the Chinese duck sauce because of that night.

Merry writes the blog as Karen, in order to create a much-needed distance between herself and the events related to the show, in order to help her forgetfully remember the traumatic experiences.

Image from: here

Works Cited:
Tremblay, Paul. A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel. New York, NY: William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2015. Print.

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Creeping Vines: The True Monster in Paul Tremblay’s “A Head Full of Ghost”

Creeping Vines on Brick Wall. Source: https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/creeping-vines-brick-wall.html

Marjorie warns Merry throughout the book that the person who is actually possessed is their father, John. In Marjorie’s “growing-things” story, John slowly poisoned their mother to death and was in the process of killing Marjorie. His last victim would be the young, innocent Merry. Marjorie insisted that the “growing-things” story was true stating, “That one’s mine. That one is – real. You still can’t ever forget that story, little Merry,”  (Tremblay 125).

When the new night routine is set up, Marjorie spends the entire night watching John through the open door. Marjorie reveals, “I think he might be the one who’s possessed… Hasn’t he been acting so strange? So over-the-top religious now, and always so angry? I’m scared. I think he thinks about doing bad things, really bad things, like in the growing-things story I told you,” (184).

Like the creeping vines in Marjorie’s “growing things” story, John chokes the life out of every person in the house. He becomes possessed with such religious fervour, that he exploits his daughter’s illness and tears the family apart.

“The Shining” (Here’s Johnny Scene). Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ABIIZV3vA

John is depicted as irrational, violent, and on the verge of mental collapse. “He grew scarier by the day,” Merry recollected, as John turned to religious zeal to deal with his oldest daughter’s illness (192). Was he exploiting Marjorie to make money to support his family? Did he truly believe that his daughter was possessed by a demon?

When the family members were offered the chance to give individual commentary on camera, John “didn’t talk to the camera. He orated. He gave pep talks about how our family would overcome. He proselytised, working in Bible references,” whenever he could (188). John became deranged and was living somewhere between fiction and reality. He had no control over what was happening to his daughter, yet he tried everything he could to control it. There is no real explanation for Marjorie’s illness, but John is convinced that he can save her. His zeal fills him with energy and power, often erupting into violent outbursts and even resulting in an untimely arrest.

On the other hand, the mother, Sarah, slowly deteriorates. “She looked older with her puffy, bloodshot eyes. She gave me an unsure, sad smile. I thought about telling her that her teeth looked really yellow, that she was smoking way too much,” (140). Sarah collapses into a heap of guilt and becomes less emotionally stable, because she didn’t stand her ground against her husband’s wish of performing an exorcism and broadcasting it. As a result, she is alienated from her husband, Merry is bullied at school, protestors are lining the sidewalk, and Marjorie is disappearing altogether. The once put-together and sane mother continues to break down with each passing page, as if she were being slowly poisoned to death and buried alive beneath the weight of it all.

The cameras broadcasting Marjorie’s illness act as a public execution. Marjorie’s social life is completely dead and she is cut off from the outside world. Girls from her school start up an Instagram page and post images of Marjorie with disgustingly sexual captions and screenshots. Marjorie is unable to function even remotely as a normal teenager, and she is held prisoner in the hospital wards and church sermons. I have not finished the book, but I predict that the worse is yet to come.

Marjorie never asked for any of this. John is the one who offered up possession and exorcism as feasible diagnosis and treatment. John is the force behind it all, the one who pushes the family to the edge of destruction.

Marjorie as the Monstrous-Feminine

In addition to understanding the vines, this post intends to explore the relationship between Marjorie and Regan from The Exorcist. There are a number of notable similarities between the two characters. A few tie back to Barbara Creed’s “The Monstrous-Feminine.”

    1. “While the theme of spiritual decline is central to The Exorcist, it is secondary to the film’s exploration of female monstrousness and the inability of the male order to control the woman whose perversity is expressed through her rebellious body,” (Creed 34). Throughout the novel, John unsuccessfully attempts to control Marjorie’s illness. Unfortunately, he has zero control over her illness and even less control over her body as a whole. For example, when the family and crew bring Merry upstairs to confront her sister for the first time, Marjorie is topless. John wants Marjorie to cover up in front of the cameras, but he is unable to do so without the risk of interfering with Father Wanderly’s work. An almost incestual act has been involuntarily committed by John. The idea of control is central to Tremblay’s work, because there is a total lack of control. The father, the male figure, is trying to control the daughter’s body to no avail. John is unable to come to terms with this fact, and destroys his family in the process.
    2. There is a graphic association of the monstrous with the feminine body (37).  Marjorie’s body transformation mimics that of Regan. This includes the red marks on her stomach, the green vomit, the dingy hair and deranged eyes, and the multiple voices that are somehow still her own. She possesses a “body in revolt” (40). The source of this revolt, however, is unclear.
    3. While Marjorie represents Regan, Merry represents Regan’s mother. Merry is the only one who could pacify Marjorie as well as bring out her demons. Merry is the closest person to Marjorie, and Marjorie often confides her deepest secrets to her.

“DON’T PROFIT OFF THE DEVIL’S WORK”

www.blumhouse.com/2015/12/02/is-the-exorcist-movie-cursed/

Works Cited

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine : Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis.London: Routledge, 1993. Print.

Tremblay, Paul. A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel. New York, NY: William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2015. Print.

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A Head Full of Ghosts and cinematic haunting

I would like to preface this blog post by ashamedly admitting that I have watched every episode of A Haunting that the Discovery Channel has ever produced. A Head Full of Ghosts is an almost perfect critique of this style of television. From my grand experience as a consumer of this media, and my limited experience as a film boom-operator, I have surmised the following about reality film crews:

1. There is a set formula that sells, and the creative director will get what they need regardless of the family’s consent.

2. Efficiency is prioritized.

Despite reassurances from Barry, the film crew is here to take as much dramatic material as possible. This is epitomized during Marjorie’s pre-exorcism evaluation, where Barry does not allow a shirt to be put over Marjorie’s sports bra. This example is particularly disgusting, because it shows that Barry knows that is his artistic medium sex sells, even the sexual image of a schizophrenic fourteen year old girl. The film crew manipulates the events of the story through father Waverly, who takes complete advantage of John’s desperation and drives his marriage apart to ensure that the exorcism happens. Sex appeal, then shock value, then a climactic exorcism is the formula employed by the film crew. While they come off as being on the side of the family, they haunt the house in order to get what they need. When Marjorie sneaks into Merry’s room and wraps herself in blankets, the first thing Merry describes is the LED of her camera staring at her at the foot of her bed. The crew also loads a dresser drawer to slam open and shut during the actual exorcism. Their cameras are everywhere, and their influence stretches through the entire house.

The film crew as a whole is an unfeeling, uncaring specter that floats through the house, twisting events to most efficiently and reliably produce episodes. Barry has no interest in whether Marjorie gets better, and he lets this show during the time between the evaluation and the exorcism. Marjorie is finally acting normal, and while the family is watching TV together Barry shouts at the family to provide entertaining, dramatic content. Even this desperate act was calculated, in order to efficiently create content through domestic disputes. In this regard, series writer Ken is almost more guilty. He builds a relationship with Merry in order to obtain footage that may not have otherwise shared. All of these transgressions of trust compound to create an entity that in many ways terrorizes the Barretts.

If you do not know what I mean when I say “Reality Horror television” check out this opening of A Haunting:

The opening to A Haunting (2005) Narration by Tony Call.

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Victim or Villain: Marjorie’s Mental Illness

The other day in class, when Dr. Sample asked which of us thought Marjorie was actually possessed, I said “I hope she is.”  I felt that way for two reasons.  The first is that demonic possession is cool and scary and very entertaining to read about.  I find supernatural horror incredibly fun.   But the second is that if Marjorie is simply mentally ill (which is the conclusion I’ve arrived at upon finishing the book), I look at the entire story differently.  Instead of a creepy tale of demons and magic, we’re left with an incredibly sad story of severe mental illness wreaking havoc on a young woman and her family.   (That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy this book – it was an incredibly fun read – but I found myself disturbed by Marjorie’s story).

Beyond being let down that this novel is more tragic than terrifying, I’m also conflicted about Tremblay’s portrayal of mental illness.  On one hand, I find it falling into the tired and problematic trope of mentally ill people as monsters.  But on the other, I think it raises awareness of the gross mistreatment of people with mental illnesses.

Statistically, people with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it, and any violence they do enact is most likely self-directed.  Nevertheless, mass media consistently portrays the mentally ill as murderous.  The recent movie, Split, drew a lot of criticism for sensationalizing Dissociative Identity Disorder and suggesting it to be a cause of violence.

James McAvoy as the DID patient in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 thriller, Split. Source

So Marjorie’s threats to her sister and graphically detailed attack on the priest during the exorcism somewhat strike me as playing into that stereotype.  She rips a chunk of flesh out of a man’s forearm with her teeth.  That’s a pretty horrifying, animalistic sort of violence.

However, I also see this book as a critique of the treatment of the mentally ill.  Marjorie is clearly unsatisfied with her care from Dr. Hamilton, whom she describes as having “the fastest prescription pad in the east” (124), and her illness is not discussed candidly among her family members.  Marjorie’s illness is treated as shameful and taboo, and she therefore lacks the familial support to recover, noting that her illness was probably caused by stress in the first place (124).

Therefore, despite Marjorie’s display of violence during the exorcism, I found that scene to be the culmination of the misunderstanding and mistreatment she faced during the novel.  Already seriously ill, she was restrained (as the mentally ill often are) and left cold and frightened.  Marjorie had, in comparison, far more abuse inflicted upon her than she inflicted upon others.

The true horror of A Head Full of Ghosts is not Marjorie’s illness, or even the shocking revelation in part 3, but a depiction of the very real cruelty, misunderstanding, and abuse people with serious mental illnesses experience all too frequently.

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The Fall of the House of Barrett: An Inspection of Detail in “A Head Full of Ghosts”

In A Head Full of Ghosts, Paul Tremblay alludes to external elements to convey deeper meanings about the internal state of his characters. This is especially apparent towards the end of the book when he explicitly explores temperature, equating certain scenarios with cold temperatures and others with hot. We are exposed to cold in detail during the morning of the exorcism when Merry wants to play soccer outside but Ken warns her of the frigid temperature. She goes outside anyway and to her dismay observes, “He was right. It was freezing out. My ball instantly became a hard rock that wasn’t fun to kick” (Tremblay 204). It is almost as if the cold doesn’t escape the Barrett residence because during the exorcism, which occurs soon after, Marjorie claims, “Wait. Please, wait. It’s me. I thought I could take the cold, but I can’t. I’m freezing. Please, Father” (Tremblay 222). Although it is normally cold during exorcisms, it is interesting to note how Marjorie rejects the cold weather, heightening her self-awareness and rendering her more human. Her stated discomfort with the cold contrasts with Merry’s unwillingness to voice any of her complaints. Although the sisters react to the cold in different ways, Tremblay clearly wishes to associate it with the Barrett household.

Warm temperatures are later explored outside of the Barrett household when Merry and Rachel meet for the last time in a coffee shop. Merry observes that it is “steamy and warm” inside and mentions that she and Rachel chat about “how nasty it is outside but how warm it is in the coffee shop” (Tremblay 256). This comment indirectly hints at the inconsistencies between internal and external worlds, a theme that is explored in Tremblay’s story. The warm temperature inside the shop becomes sweltering, which prompts Merry to ask the barista to turn down the heat. Soon after, the coffee shop becomes incredibly cold, making it seem as if cold always triumphs over hot. Interestingly enough, the barista claims, “heat’s off, but it wasn’t me” (Tremblay 282). The coffee shop becomes consumed with cold air, thereby merging the external and internal worlds and blurring the distinction between the two. Ending with a cold atmosphere and the final words, “…it’s cold enough that my breath is a visible mist” signifies the mystery behind whether or not the breath is an extension of Merry of if it is a ghost (Tremblay 284). This brings into question how many selves we have and whether or not our heads are truly filled with ghosts — a perfect conclusion to the story.

The House of Usher before it crumbles to the ground. Click on photo to view source material.

After close reading the dichotomy between hot and cold in Tremblay’s story, I was reminded of the function of weather in gothic texts. Similar to the way Tremblay uses temperature to mirror and magnify the feelings of his characters, gothic texts use weather or other external forces as elements to underscore the action of the story or hint at the inner conflicts within each character. For example, in the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe describes external features of the house, including “bleak walls,” “vacant eye-like windows,” “rank sedges,” and “decayed trees” to convey the immediate pervasiveness of gloom and terror in the mind and body of the narrator (Poe 1). Aside from this, Poe’s story is also quite similar to Tremblay’s in its form. We are introduced to the idea that Roderick Usher is suffering from some sickness, or as Poe describes it, “an acuteness of senses” at the beginning of the story (Poe 4). Marjorie’s “sickness” is also the starting point of Tremblay’s story and drives the action in the text. Additionally, both stories occur in closed environments which place the “home” at risk. Roderick’s home is able to perceive certain things much like a human can and holds an inexplicable power over him. The Barrett home is not only corrupted by Marjorie’s mental illness but it more broadly represents the family unit that is at risk of being severed. Both texts culminate in the destruction of the home on some level — with the actual House of Usher crumbling to the ground after the death of Roderick and with the poisoning and eventual death of Merry’s family members. The similar forms of both texts as well as external descriptors such as temperature and weather make it evident that many of the important components of stories reside in the seemingly minute details or descriptors.

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Fall of the House of Usher – Poe’s Works | Edgar Allan Poe Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2017.

Tremblay, Paul. A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel. New York, NY: William Morrow, 2015. Print.