For this week's blog post, I decided to look up the suggested term, "uncanny", and try to relate them to Let the Right One In.
The first thing that I noticed about the term "uncanny" was that it doesn't seem to be very well-defined. Rather than finding a set definition for the word, Google led me to sites with articles explaining the somewhat indefinable nature of the word. Wikipedia seemed to break it apart in a way that way pretty easy to understand, though, so I mostly stuck to that.
The Wikipedia article defines the term as a "Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange." In all honestly, that's pretty much all I got from the article. The rest of it spent a lot of time going into the theories of different psychologists and their definitions of the concept.
The first thing that the definition made me think of was Eli. The definition seemed to almost pinpoint that weird uneasiness that associated with her character. It seemed to stem from the idea that she was not what she seemed; an innocent young girl on the outside, but something so much more dark and complicated on the inside.
While I at first found it hard to relate the term "uncanny" to Calhoun's article, I suppose that some of the things that he said about the relationship between children and adults could be related to the concept of the "uncanny". The passage stated that “Parents and other adults are supposed to protect children, and their potential failure to do so can be a potent source of horror: for both children and adults” (27). I felt as though that uneasy feeling of horror in Let the Right One In could have come from the fact that the role of the protector and protected change; it isn't Eli who needs protection from adults, but they who need protection from her, in a way.
(While I'm not sure if this comparison is legitimate, it was about all I could manage with the limited amount that I could understand regarding the concept of the "uncanny".)
I liked your attempt to pick apart this word. From what you've said it seems like a pretty weird/hard word to describe and relate but I do like the comparison you make between the role reversal for child and adult. I also think that you are right about the term mainly refering to Eli.
ReplyDeleteOne thought that came to me when considering this word when reading Calhoun is that he talks about the fear of the unknown in the child. I feel like the main reason for this fear is because adults were once children so we should understand, but in some cases we don't. So to sum it up the child could be considered uncanny, or recognizable to the adult but not understandable. I think most would agree with me that this is both a frustrating and uncomfortable situation.
I made the same comparisons to the book and the word uncanny. On the surface Eli seems to be a normal child so there is the element of the familiar but add the fact that she is a vampire and she preys on the people in the town adds the scary fact
ReplyDelete