Many thoughts and questions come to mind to the audience. The audience views a frightening situation of Rosemary’s body being violated, then dealing with the pangs of pregnancy, to the birth of a monster. Polanski places the audience amidst Rosemary’s mind and perspective, to bond the audience to her. For example, when Rosemary looks at her sick reflection in a shop window or when she is running away from the doctor and her husband trying to escape. This subjective camera makes things very personal. We are invited to identify with her and to provoke our fear on her behalf (Valerius). Rosemary is violated physically and even in her privacy. She becomes entrapped, and the audience cannot help her even though we are feeling the same feelings, especially when she is between reality and a dream-like state. When being raped, she finally comes out of a dream-like state and realizes that it was not a dream: “This is no dream! This is really happening!” (Rosemary’s Baby). The camera angles during this experience alternate which “produce the effect of shifts in perspective” (Valerius). Rosemary protests and acknowledges the distinction between reality and fantasy and delivers this protest into the camera and makes a direct address to the audience. This implicates the audience as voyeurs, warns the audience that the situation is not fantasy, and seeks the audience as witness of her rape/potential allies (Valerius). Unfortunately, she later fails to differentiate her experience as real. 
The audience is scared for Rosemary and wants her to escape from such patriarchal dominance and deception. Everything happening to her is not right! So if this is not right, then this brings back to the question and idea of abortion. Is that right? Should that be legal? That is really the backbone of this film—the historical context of the current events of the 1960’s. This issue is still argued over today, and I do not think there will ever be a clear answer.
I agree with your post abortion seems to be the key in this horror film. Abortion obviously is always going to be a touchy subject for many people. Views about it will always be different, but I feel this movie almost made people agree with the view that its the women's choice to have an abortion especially if the baby is going to have problems such as being the devils child. Rosemary obviously was sick and looked like she was dying if she wasn't so isolated from her friends and stuck in that apartment they may have recommended abortion. Her life was in danger and abortion would save it. Your post really shows how abortion was a big subject in the 1960's and this movie brought it into the light even farther.
ReplyDeleteAbortion/anti abortion arguements will never end. It's a touchy subject and like so many other issues, there are too many different belief systems and views on life to fully agree on this subject. I agree this movie put people in a position they had never been in before; the shoes of a woman carrying a child that she didn't want. They can argue that she intended to get pregnant and it just didn't turn out the way she wanted. Well, getting raped by Satan and then told she was taken by her husband while she was unconscious sounds to me like she didn't get pregnant the way she wanted to. This is a right that should be respected.
ReplyDeleteI agree, this does have a lot to do with a sort of feminism during the 1960s. Rosemary was an unwitting victim of this dark craft. Her body was used through no choice of her own. Polanski was very good at invoking the fear into the audience. He had Rosemary learning more and more as she went, but in very small doses. Guy was trying to keep her from finding out, a woman's body is not her own decision, she is to remain in the dark. Rosemary was being dominated and we sympathized and wanted her out.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's the historical context that forms a background to the issues you describe. Not the issue of abortion directly, but the way the issue was discussed, and the arguments by which abortions were eventually legalized under Roe V Wade, and with a sizable margin. Do remember that the debate was very different then than now. A woman's right to have some control over her own body was considered a crucial social freedom--much more then than now. Keep in mind that the debate now, to take away that right, is not the same as the debate then, even though the topic is the same. In any case, yes. I like how you connect the subjective camera to the personal level of our empathy for Rosemary, and focus on the larger themes on a woman who is being completely controlled by her husband, neighbors, doctor--all the people she's supposed to trust.
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