Film: Rosemary's Baby
My Horror Film class at ASU just wrapped up and I will miss it oh so much. So very fascinating to me to see how current events and societal fears play out on the big screen. Rosemary's Baby (Polanski 1968) is no exception considering it can be read as one of the definitive feminist texts of the latter half of the 20th century. Women's Lib, the Pill, the controversy over legalized abortion are all simmering just below the surface in every scene, the subtext that supports the horror. Like all great films, it is open to a great amount of interpretation and it can be equally argued that the film supports traditional family values, not subverts them.
Polanski does fine work here, and finished shooting just 8 months before his wife and unborn child were brutally killed by the Manson family. A real life horror greater than any of us can imagine. Just yesterday along with Bill Cosby, he was expelled from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which was long overdue. No amount of artistic brilliance or personal tragedy makes room for the rape of a child — and is especially poignant considering the rape of the child-like Rosemary in the film.
Mia Farrow was absolutely gorgeous in this film, and doesn't get the credit she deserves for her performance. Part of an ensemble cast that included John Cassavetes, Ralph Bellamy and Ruth Gordon — at just 23, she held her own against some venerable Hollywood heavyweights. If you're in the mood for a realistic, taut horror film, set in 1960s Manhattan — I suggest you rewatch this masterpiece, especially in light of the recent #metoo movement.
Crazy, huh?
Here's the paper I wrote for the class:
Victoria Zulkoski | FMS 394 | Arizona State University| Dr. Michelle Martinez | May 1st, 2018
Rosemary & the Bad ‘Guy’: Hegemonic, not Demonic Threats in Rosemary’s Baby
An exceptionally beautiful couple, young and in love, stretching just beyond their means to secure a spacious apartment in New York City’s Upper West Side, so begins Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). This ambition of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, played by Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, provides the fissure which permits a dark influence into their ordered lives. Though Rosemary may be impregnated with the devil’s child, the true antagonist in Rosemary’s Baby is not Satan, but first and foremost her husband Guy and the white, patriarchal society which surrounds her.
Long before that tragic night in 1980, production designer Richard Sylbert identified the building at 72nd Street and Central Park West, as the ideal location for this modern day horror film.[1] Gothic and imposing, the Dakota’s dramatic stone façade, soaring high against the trees of Central Park, conveys an adherence to tradition and civility. At a time when ‘back to the land’ cooperatives and sustained White Flight saw the exodus of white America out of city centers, the Woodhouses chose an ominous fortress in the heart of a New York City.
Guy, an actor by trade and not a very successful one (“he was in Luther and No One Loves a Albatross”) is reticent about the apartment, but he relents to Rosemary’s pleadings. As a housewife with little agency, Rosemary imposes her will for the last time until the film’s conclusion. Despite warnings of the building’s sordid past from Hutch, an older, kindly (and predictably, white) friend and mentor to Rosemary, they move into The Bramford.[2]
Dressed in childlike shift dresses of sunny yellow, the pig-tailed Rosemary sets to the arduous task of transforming the dark, cluttered apartment to a home for her and Guy. When they are invited to a seemingly impromptu dinner at the home of their elderly next-door neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet (played impeccably by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) they are apprehensive about befriending the older couple, whose houseguest, Terry, has just committed suicide. Over Guy’s protestations, they reluctantly agree. Though busybody Minnie seems bothersome yet benign, her attention to the cost of things and Rosemary’s fertility belies a darker purpose. In the kitchen after dinner, Minnie and Rosemary exchange small talk about children and families. When the point-of-view changes, the camera shifts to the dark, smoke-filled living room and catches Roman and Guy sitting on the sofa, their heads bent in conversation. While Rosemary was helping with the dishes, Guy was selling her body and their first born to a coven of witches for the promise of career advancement.
The next day, Minnie and another neighbor, Laura-Louise, intrude on Rosemary unannounced. Over their needlework, they discuss such gender-normative topics menstrual cycles and home decorating and give her a gift; a necklace with a charm containing the mysterious and odious tannis root. Minnie doesn’t know that Rosemary has seen this necklace before —on Terry, the protégé of the Castavets she met in the Bramford’s laundry room. Her reluctance to wear the storied, malodorous pendant is met with Guy’s consternation: “well if you took it, you oughta wear it”. Her compliance supplies the fuel for his insidious gas lighting.
Guy lands a plumb part when the lead actor of a sought-after play wakes with a sudden case of blindness; the coven has made good on their bargain. Never the most devoted and conscientious husband, he becomes pre-occupied with his new part. When Rosemary brings is to his attention, he plays his trump card and announces: “let’s make a baby.” On ‘baby night’ Minnie delivers a dessert, chocolate mousse. Guy digs in, and at first Rosemary does too, but after a few bites she notices a strange “under taste.” Reluctant to eat any more, Guy berates her with “that’s silly” and he refers to Minnie disrespectfully as “the old bat.” When Rosemary insists, his response is heated and paternal: “Eat it!” As a diversion, she asks him to flip the record over and he throws his utensil down and storms off. Rosemary takes this opportunity to shovel the majority of the dessert (and the drug surreptitiously laced into it) into her napkin.[3] When he returns, she shows of her empty dish and chides: “there Daddy, do I get a gold star?”
What follows is a deeply disturbing scene in which Rosemary is raped by Satan while the coven, including Guy participates. He looms over her, the up lit shadows on his face creating demonic shadows. In a surreal dream montage in which dialogue and images are strangely disjointed, Rosemary, ever the good girl is polite and compliant, though groggy. However, since she didn’t eat all the drug-laced dessert she has a moment of clarity and surfaces to full consciousness. She yells: “this is no dream, this is really happening!” in horror as the coven chants. The next morning, despite his behavior, he wakes her with a spank and demands breakfast. As she groggily awakens, he chastises her for drinking too much. Naked, she is surprised to see she is covered in lurid, red scratches. Guy offers feebly “don't yell, I already filed them down” (referring to his finger nails), “I didn't want to miss baby night, it was fun, in a necrophile sort of way.” The film is ambiguous in whether she was raped by Satan, but is clear that she was raped by Guy. At this inflection point, her complicity in her own loss of control to Guy indicates the “horrifying status of motherhood in American patriarchal culture” (Berenstein).
On the recommendation of a close friend, Rosemary visits Dr. Hill, a white, male doctor who confirms her fondest hopes; she is pregnant. Sharing the news with Minnie and Roman, they insist she see their friend, a society doctor (and fellow coven member) Abe Sapirstein. Another strong, white patriarchal influence, with ‘fatherly’ concern, he advises her against reading books and asking her friends for advice. With so much of her life now appropriated by the patriarchal society, in a small act of defiance, she cuts her hair in a popular pixie cut. Guy’s reaction is insulting. He belittles her and when she tells him about a pain in her abdomen he seems concerned, but is it for her? Or for his own future?
Like her pain, the hegemonic bands of white patriarchal society now begin to tighten around Rosemary in earnest. Dr. Sapirstein, patronizes and scolds her. Wagging his finger at her, he tells her the pain will pass in 2 days. Hutch stops by for a visit and he is shocked by her physical transformation; her severe haircut exacerbates her pale, pained complexion and she has lost weight. Roman stops by and he and Hutch, both old, white men — discuss Rosemary’s weight and appearance as if she isn’t there. They are talking about her, not to her. Guy arrives unexpectedly and steals one of Hutch’s gloves. With a personal object secured, the coven can now cast a spell which causes Hutch to fall into a coma and die. But not before he passes along a book to Rosemary. All of Them Witches, dog-eared and annotated by Hutch, provides the clues necessary to prove her worst fears, that Roman is part of a witches’ coven.
Despite her pain continuing unabated, Rosemary decides to have a party, excluding their neighbors in favor of friends their own age. Her girlfriends, shocked by her appearance and her constant pain, advise her to seek a second opinion despite Guy trying to interrupt several times. When she tells him she is going to see Dr. Hill, he blows up. He vilifies her friends: “They're not very bright bitches who should mind their own business!” Guy threatens her with his financial superiority by saying he won’t pay for it, but Rosemary won’t back down and their argument escalates until… suddenly the pain stops. It would appear that even Satan can show sympathy.
Still not suspecting a wider conspiracy, Rosemary seeks out the counsel of Dr. Saperstein who appears to take her side. When Guy confesses that he threw Hutch’s book out, she comes to suspect him too. By researching other books, she realizes that Guy is complicit as well and then, because he also wear tannis root, Dr. Sapirstein. Now desperate, she reaches out to Dr. Hill, only days before her due date. Though not a coven member, as a white male in the 1960s, it is all too plausible when he discounts her panic and rather than checking her into the hospital as promised, he turns her over to Guy and Dr. Sapirstein. Running for her life and that if her unborn child, Rosemary manages to get back to her apartment, just as her contractions begin. She is sedated and the baby is born. Guy, in arguably his cruelest offence yet, convinces her the baby is dead and that she suffered a temporary pre-partum insanity. Still suspicious, Rosemary confronts the coven and reclaiming the agency she lost early on, decides to be a mother to the (if not demonic, then) severely disfigured baby in the black bassinet.
In Rosemary’s Baby, there is no definitive evidence that Rosemary is the victim of black magic, which makes her husband’s betrayal even more egregious. He gives her up on the faintest promise of the coven’s influence. With the systematic help of the white, male dominated society, he is able to bully, abuse and rape his wife in pursuit of financial success. The Devil therefore, is a metaphor for his ambition and her complementary loss of control. A dexterous example of horror realism, director Roman Polanski “easily locates the uncanny and horrific in the most ordinary settings” and expertly uses the gender norms of the 1960s to support the film’s plausibility (Worland). By Polanski’s own admission there is “nothing supernatural in the film” which truly makes Rosemary’s husband, the bad Guy (Polanski).
Works Cited
Berenstein, R. (1990), Mommie Dearest: Aliens, Rosemary's Baby and Mothering. The Journal of Popular Culture, 24: 55-73.
Rosemary's Baby. Criterion Collection, 2014. Polanski, Roman, director. Performances by Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. Original release date: 1968.
Williams, David E. “Beyond the Frame: Rosemary's Baby.” American Cinematographer, 29 Mar. 2017.
Worland, Rick. The Horror Film: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
[1] John Lennon was fatally shot in the courtyard of the Dakota, where he lived with wife Yoko Ono, on December 8th, 1980.
[2] According to CBS News, Horror Movie Locations: Then & Now, The Bramford was named as a tribute to Bram Stoker, author of Dracula.
[3] On April 26th , 2018 actor Bill Cosby was convicted of 3 counts of aggravated assault for basically doing the exact same thing.
