Whose Baby is it Anyway? 

Princess Carolyn: [A]nything that makes women feel unsafe might actually help our box office.

Todd: But you don’t want women to feel unsafe.

Turteltaub: Nobody wants that, nobody’s saying that.

P.C.: But… if they already do feel unsafe, there’s no reason not to capitalize on that.

Turteltaub: Right if they feel unsafe already…

P.C.: Exactly, we’re not making them feel unsafe. We’re just profiting, albeit indirectly…

“Thoughts and Prayers,” Bojack Horseman

The horror of Rosemary’s Baby lies in the banality with which its supernatural world is built, so where most academics and critics read the film through a psychoanalytic and/or feminist lens of paranoia and delusion, they overlook an equally key vantage point of dis/possession in relation to the contemporary political discourses concerning reproductive rights and surveillance, critical cinematic discourses on subjectivity and objectification, and of course the horror genre itself. With the boundaries elided between subject/object for Rosemary- women, housewives, but especially mothers and their unborn- possession in both the literal and supernatural senses must assume whole new meanings. When she is finally able to resume self-possession- ultimately “choosing” motherhood- she has already become dispossessed by the occult, much like Wanda had already become dispossessed by the patriarchal capitalist superstructure, before she can lay claim to her body and her choices. Thus, the supposed sanctity of pregnancy-cum-motherhood marks the site the most extreme intercourses of dis/possession, not simply because of prengnancy itself- a process in which, as Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni elucidates, the maternal body objectifies and others itself- but also because of the patriarchal values ascribed to maternal and sexual labor. 

This is what the narrative so masterfully encapsulates, but Sharon Marcus’ and other critics’ frustration arises from their primary analytic lens of “feminist ‘paranoia’” (a byproduct of a primarily Gothic/thriller analysis) rather than dis/possession (a potentiality through a primarily horror analysis) (148). In the American Gothic psychological thriller, especially with one so clearly hearkening Cukor’s Gaslight (1944), the female protagonist’s paranoia (hysteria) must be assuaged by the film’s denouement, and it is, but the expectation for this to be achieved via Rosemary’s denunciation of her gaslighters (so not simply a rejection of sexual labor for her husband (Paula sending George to prison in Gaslight, just not for rape), the coven, and the devil but also maternal labor for her child) betrays the realism of this “skewed  ‘documentary’ of the societal and personal turmoil that has regularly attended female reproduction.” (Fischer 4) In this way, both Polanski and Loden- through the mainstream and independence respectively- sought to document the reality of this systematic and cyclical abuse under patriarchy, but unfortunately within a decade of their respective films, their lives would reflect just how true their works were: Loden becoming a feminist martyr of sorts and Polanski…

This is no dream! This is really happening!

A crucial difference between Marcus’ and Karyn Valerius’ analyses- the latter in part a response to the former- are their interactions (or lack thereof) with Polanski’s dream/drugged sequences, particularly the Maculate Conception. Marcus does not even investigate these scenes whereas Valerius includes them in her wider analysis of Polanski’s conjugation of fantasy and reality, wherein Rosemary’s titular outburst “simultaneously asserts a distinction between fantasy and reality and acknowledges how closely intertwined they are.” (Valerius 122) This is the air and style of the entire film, from set design and costume to Fraker’s cinematography, “crafted with” what Fischer calls “conventional cinematic verisimilitude: long-shot/long-take format, standard lenses, location shooting, continuity editing, credible costume and decor.” (13) All of these versimilar formal elements are entangled with the fantastic and preternatural conflict- which is exposed within the first hour but repressed by Rosemary- so that the audience can most closely identify with her, albeit with the dramatic irony that only we remember that this is no dream, this is indeed really happening. All of our knowledge- specifically what we see- is limited to Rosemary’s knowledge and sight, with the caveat of being certain that her misgivings about her husband- indeed all her surroundings- are true and justified.

While the bizarre aspects of the dream sequence have been scrutinized by critics ad nauseaum- the yacht and bikini, the Sistine chapel, the coven and conception, etc.- Minnie’s mispronunciation of mousse is the key red herring. After such a long and overstimulating scene that jars the visual banality of the film so far, Minnie’s line- delivered so fast and smoothly- “Shedon’tsee. Aslongassheatethemouseshecan’tseenorhear.She’slikedead.Nowsing,” (00:46:55) emphasizes what Marcus identifies as the pure New York moral, “trust no one,” (149), that Polanski is supposedly communicating to his female audience through the pure terror of not simply a dream but a drug-induced nightmare. The pure New York of it all is simply “feminist” paranoia- the fast-talking, shifty (because satanic), nosey neighbor mispronouncing food she made to drug her neighbor, making Rosemary imagine she’s been bitten by a mouse, another symbol of New York- working perfectly with the dream-like state to misdirect the clear reality of the scene: as long as she ate the mousse, signs of consciousness, of resistance, of self-possession, are false. This one confession indicts Guy with the coven in this literal deal with the devil to dispossess Rosemary’s ownership of her body and mind. 

So rarely does the audience experience the protagonist’s possession from a first-hand point-of-view while also knowing the identity of the possessors from the onset, and in this case Polanski is revolutionary in the most tragically ironic of manners. Even Marcus points out- in her only mention of the dream sequences- that during these sequences are some of the few shots from Rosemary’s pov, so even though she supposedly could not resist, the shots from her perspective on the mattress still expose what very limited consciousness she could experience. After Guy and Minnie expose themselves, Rosemary slips back into hallucination as she imagines her feet are tied down to a hospital bed because of some disease or illness she caught from the mouse, and this very comforting woman induces her submission in a way that parallels Minnie orchestrating the devil’s rape. Valerius’ mistake, though, is assuming that Rosemary’s outburst was delivered into the camera; she never looks into the camera except when looking into the devil’s eyes, her rapist’s eyes. His eyes return after she sees her child’s eyes. This protest does not acknowledge the presence of the audience, especially because this is a quote from the novel in which this was an internal revelation for her. If Polanski and Fraker wanted to transform her thought into something that acknowledges and addresses the audience, then Farrow would have looked directly into the camera and not where her satanic assaulter’s body would have been. Rather, this triangulates a synchronous, penetrating gaze shared by her husband (her rapist), her progeny, and the coven/onlookers: the gaze of the dispossessed.

Rosemary’s (and Wanda’s) Dispossession

Much of the cinematography is voyeuristic, especially of Farrow’s naked body, but to fully investigate the plot on the first watch is to assume the gaze of the dispossessed rather than the voyeur who observes the possession. This is not only because the audience is meant to assume Rosemary’s perspective, but because the narrative is so couched in misogynistic reality. Although we assume Rosemary’s pov on the mattress and witness the devil’s rape, we are also deceived the next morning to believe that this was only a manifestation of Guy actually raping a drunk Rosemary. Even by her language and reaction following his fake confession- I dreamed someone was raping me- she does not consider this a serious assault, as marital rape and “sex” with an intoxicated person were taken even less seriously in the 60s than they are now. The offhanded joke about necrophilia is the nail in the coffin of his dispossession/objectification of his wife. According to Kristeva, corpses and childbirth are the two most abject sights; Levin succinctly exposes how the conditions for motherhood under patriarchal capitalism writ large- even if here relating only the microcosm of middle-class white women- are not conducive to the mother’s autonomy, privacy, or subjectivity, which is already compounded by the minimization of these things when hosting a genetic parasite.

The denouement thus offers no solution to such an easily recognizable allegory because Levin and Polanski have none. It is easy to appropriate the gaze of the dispossessed when one is the possessor- as easy as it is for women to assume the male gaze- but the ability to deconstruct the conditions constructiing such a dejected gaze is another conversation entirely. Wanda’s film profffers a documenta-reality that both men did not even consider, Levin assuming only suicide as motherhood’s escape. While this is most likely a dramatistic choice to emphasize Rosemary’s (dispossessed) postpartum state of mind- suicide and infanticide the only escapes- Marcus is ultimately (partially) right: it’s a cheap ending. It represents the reality that these men knew, of middle-class white women who did succumb. When not accounting for the expensive specifics, the hesitant denouement does indeed represent a reality that most people and most mothers know, but Wanda and Loden prove there are indeed other realities out there. Other choices.

“Wanda has no direction. She's just passing through life, mainly from man to man. But it's not a woman's film or a woman's problem. Wanda is an object, something handled, dropped. That's the story.” (Gorfinkel 34)

Works Cited

Fischer, Lucy. “Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’” Cinema Journal, vol. 31, no. 3, 1992, pp. 3–18. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1225505. 

Gorfinkel, Elena. “Wanda’s Slowness: Enduring Insignificance.” On Women’s Films: Across Worlds and Generations, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, New York, 2019, pp. 27–48. 

Marcus, Sharon. “Placing Rosemary’s Baby.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 1 Nov. 1993, pp. 121–153, https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-5-3-121.  

Valerius, Karyn. "Rosemary's Baby, Gothic Pregnancy, and Fetal Subjects." College Literature, vol. 32 no. 3, 2005, p. 116-135. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2005.0048.