brightwalldarkroom:
“Rosemary’s exposure to the dark plot unraveling around her comes not from the black alleyways of the occult but from simple parlor manners. The darkness is let into her life by a desire to be accommodating and sweet, to be perceived as polite. She would never risk making or taking offense, and it is only behind closed doors that she mocks her neighbors, and quiets her husband when he is laughing too loudly at their expense. The terror of the plot is rooted in modern times, in a cosmopolitan apartment building. The villains blend-in seamlessly with little effort and little suspicion from others, rendered practically harmless by their elderly stature and setting.
The new horror of the age lay not in the obvious gruesome monster or the known dangers of the past, but rather in the smallness of everyday modern life, hidden just barely out of sight in suburban homes and apartment houses, in linen closets covered with heavy furniture. It’s not about wondering what’s happening deep in the woods in the middle of the night, but instead obsessing about what’s happening in the building across the street, how deep the blackness of a soul can be, and what it is capable of doing for fame or money or some bizarre fulfillment of itself that we struggle to understand. It’s a type of fear that acts as a precursor to some of the strangest truths of today, all those endless newscasts filled with bewildered neighbors, chanting in unison: “This is a nice, quiet street” or “Never in a million years would I have suspected them”.”
—Bebe Ballroom on Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
(Bright Wall/Dark Room, October 2013)
I wrote this ya’ll.
