Struggling for recognition: Intensive mothering’s “practical effects” in The Babadook

Jason Middleton & Meredith A. Bak (2019): Struggling for Recognition: Intensive Mothering’s “Practical Effects” in The
Babadook, Quarterly Review of Film and Video,

Jennifer Kent's The Babadook was praised for its depiction of grief, rage, and violence as a refreshingly "authentic" portrayal of motherhood. This essay argues that the film's much-valorized practical effects, production design, and homages to silent cinema magnify its horror, but also, more pointedly, that horror magnifies the reality-effect of the film's depiction of motherhood. This mutual intensification between the film's aesthetics and its ideology leads critics to interpret the film's representation of maternal suffering as a fundamental truth, rather than to recognize the complex and contingent discourses about contemporary parenting in which the film participates.

 The film's reception fails to account for its critique of the lack of social and institutional supports available to caregivers today. The Babadook ultimately proposes a shared and open acknowledgment of trauma in the mother-child dyad, and a renouncement of the need to keep up appearances for the sake of the larger social world.