The film is adapted from Ella Raven's 1967 Gothic novel of the same name, which interprets the traditional religious conflict between good and evil. Different from the conventional practice of directly shaping the horror image-concretizing the horror in people's minds and placing them on the screen, and using audio-visual means to satisfy the audience's unsatisfied desires and impulses in reality-the film chooses a psychological level. Doing work, by constructing a "threatened" female image as a "victim", it triggers the audience's inner anxiety and creates "psychological terror".
Different from the demonized strong female image in other "female threat" themed horror movies, Rosemary belongs to the weak who are invaded by demons and have their bodies occupied. Deprived of freedom of movement and the right to "stare," Rosemary was repressed by patriarchal and patriarchal order throughout, and her condition was exacerbated by her pregnancy. She can't get rid of the status quo of being manipulated by others, and she can't actively verify the authenticity of the conspiracy. The growing closeness of her husband and neighbors, the sudden death of a friend, and the failure to seek help from the outside world not only gradually cut off the possibility of Rosemary's rescue, but also implied a vague conspiracy. The film is mainly based on Rosemary's point of view, combined with the deliberately set visual blind spots, closed spaces and the reproduction of the characters' dreams, so that the audience's emotions are mobilized together, even to the point of almost synchronizing with the characters, perceiving what she perceives and worrying about what she perceives. Anxiety, fear of what she fears. The orgasm (at the time of Rosemary's delivery) tends to total despair as the helplessness-stimulating anxiety escalates. What will be discussed in further detail here is the film's presentation of Rosemary's dream at the time of her conception. If horror movies satisfy people’s desire to experience nightmares awake, then the movie chooses to recreate the “nightmare” to reproduce our tension and depression in nightmares. The conception ritual of Satanism mixed with Rosemary’s spiritual world to form a loose Fragments, the audience witnesses this unfortunate peep and unpredictable adventure. Although these clips convey a lot of information, they still leave the audience with no clear grasp of the mysterious events that took place at the time. From this perspective, the audience also experienced her suffering.
Obviously, Rosemary's "female threat" reversely attacks the patriarchy by creating an image of a female victim (and also proves that both women who bring threats and women who are threatened can expose the problems of the patriarchy ), which also reflects the deconstruction and subversion of the patriarchal system by the rise of the American feminist movement in the 1960s. At the end of the film, Rosemary saw the Satanist organization lurking around her and the son of Satan she gave birth to, and chose to accept this result. The victims are completely reduced to mothers who have lost themselves, the guilty fathers have disappeared from disqualification, and the believers who worship evil gather together to celebrate, and the ideal social order will never return. At this time, cutting into the exterior of this Gothic apartment (also shown at the beginning), the changes in the whole society seem to have unfolded in a conspiracy, and the sense of crisis and worry behind it is self-evident. From this point of view, the fear of feminism by people who depend on the patriarchal social order is not an exact expression. The instability brought about by feminism's shaking of the social order is what they really fear.
View more about Rosemary's Baby reviews
