The Evil of Banality in “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)

On the surface, “Rosemary’s Baby” is a horror film about a woman who gets taken advantage of by a satanic cult and impregnated by the Devil. In the end, it seems to be a satire on the competing entrapments of domesticity and ambition, and the boring conventionality of people who hope that opposition to convention will allow them to retrieve their lost youth. Wes & Erin discuss Roman Polanski’s 1968 classic, and why it is that Satanic evil, when confronted with life’s very frightening realities—including pregnancy itself—turns out to be so banal. Upcoming Episodes: Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Leda and the Swan,” “An Indian to His Love.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: On the surface, Rosemary's Baby is a horror film about a woman who gets taken advantage of by a satanic cult and impregnated by the devil in the end. It seems to be a satire on the competing entrapments of domesticity and ambition and the boring conventionality of people who hope that opposition to convention will allow them to retrieve their lost youth. Today we discuss Roman Polanski's 1968 classic and why it is that satanic evil, when confronted with life's very frightening realities, including pregnancy itself, turns out to be so banal. This is Wes Alwan. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. So I think I first saw this film in 2016, and I hadn't watched it before, even though it was a classic, because I'm not into horror films. And then I watched it and I realized, well, it's not really a horror film. It's kind of satire masquerading as horror. And I found it really delightful. I'd say it's one of my favorites. Yeah. So the question is, if it's not really about getting knocked up by the devil, then what is it really about? 1:46 Erin: Good question. 1:47 Wes: Yeah. What's your history with this movie? 1:49 Erin: I saw it in maybe high school or college first, so I must have seen it earlier than. Than you, which makes me happy that I saw a 60s movie before you did. You know, my attraction to the film was, I guess, what you might call the satanic attraction, because I love all the actors in it, the old actors and John Cassavetes, of course. But, you know, Ruth Gordon is. 2:12 Wes: She's great. 2:13 Erin: She's my style icon. 2:14 Wes: And then Ralph Bellamy, I thought, oh, Ralph Bellamy. 2:18 Erin: There's even a Ralph Bellamy joke, what I interpret as a Ralph Bellamy joke in the film. Do you know what I'm saying? Referring to. This is such a deep cut. 2:26 Wes: They have a few of these jokes in the film. What is the Bellamy joke? 2:31 Erin: I take the Victoria Vetri. You look like that actress Victoria Vetri, and she really is played by that actress. 2:37 Wes: Okay, well, that's the one that I was aware of. 2:39 Erin: Yeah. 2:40 Wes: Yeah. 2:41 Erin: I was like, you can't Have a movie with Ralph Bellamy in it and do that joke and not have it be sort of in. 2:47 Wes: Of course. 2:47 Erin: Yeah. 2:48 Wes: What's the movie in which that happens? 2:51 Erin: His Girl Friday. 2:52 Wes: Yeah. Yeah. 2:53 Erin: Which is itself sort of referencing the fact that he was in the Awful Truth, also with Cary Grant. 2:59 Wes: So the familiarity, layers upon layers upon layers. 3:06 Erin: Yeah. So I saw it in maybe late high school or college, and I've watched it. I think I watched it on Halloween maybe five, seven years ago, something like that. And now for this. And I had forgotten how much I loved it. So I. I'm really excited to talk about. It's hilarious. It's so funny. 3:23 Wes: It is really funny. 3:24 Erin: Ruth Gordon is. This is maybe like one of my favorite best Supporting actor Oscar wins or actress, I should say. Oscar wins. Yeah. So what do I think it's about? I kind of think it's about acting. Hmm. 3:35 Wes: Okay. 3:36 Erin: Partially. It's also about the story of a woman who finds faith in the most unexpected way. Just a story of religious conversion. It's beautiful. 3:48 Wes: To Satanism. 3:50 Erin: That's a religion. She was a lapsed Catholic. Now she's practicing. 3:59 Wes: Oh, the bar is so low these days. 4:01 Erin: Well, I know. It's like, is God dead? No, but he's very old, and he desperately needs new blood to come into the congregation. The other side's old too, and they just need new recruits. It's like, you know. 4:12 Wes: Well, they're supposed to be against organized religion, but they are quite organized, aren't they? 4:16 Erin: Yeah. I take that to be a mask or an act. I don't know. I suppose it could be taken both ways. Right. Because they would have to be pretty anti. Anti Catholic. So perhaps they're against that organized religion. But they seem to be otherwise pretty. Pretty devout. They're all in. They're fanatics. 4:37 Wes: Is it worse to be a Satanist or a nihilist? Sounds like it's worse to be a nihilist. 4:44 Erin: I think so. I might be, you know, one of the. 4:47 Wes: In. 4:48 Erin: In CCD or one of these things. You know, you're. You're always told as a little kid that every religion has some truth in it. Right. And so there's always the kid that goes, oh, yeah, what about Satanism? And then the priest goes, no, there's. There's like they believe in the devil and they have to have the Eucharist for their. For their rituals or else it doesn't work. So they actually believe in the true presence. But. Yeah, so Satanism is probably, as a religion, is probably truer than nihilism. 5:18 Wes: Yeah. I love that. What you get out of this movie is a vindication of religion. It's not. Not something that occurred to me. Yep. So the way I always took it, and I wrote like, a little mini review in 2016 when I saw it. Well, I took them to be newlyweds, which I'm not, I guess. Are they newlyweds? 5:38 Erin: I don't know. 5:39 Wes: Or are they just moving? Maybe they're. 5:40 Erin: I don't think so. They're just moving because Hutch is their landlord. 5:45 Wes: But before they've had children. So early. Early on, I guess, in the marriage. And she's so young to get a divorce from Frank Sinatra. And apparently this movie was one of the factors. He didn't want her to work, and he had her. He served divorce papers on set. I'm sure you know all this stuff, but, yeah, pretty nasty. 6:04 Erin: This ended up being the subject of conversation last night among friends. We were talking about Rosemary's Baby, and it ended up just talking about Frank Sinatra's absurd sexual history. But anyway. Yeah. 6:14 Wes: Yeah. So I. I took this to be about, well, I call it nascent marital life early on in the marriage, where things are still getting going, and this kind of ordinary conflict between domesticity and ambition. So he has ambitions as an actor, and she will complain at a certain point about not getting attention from him. And ultimately, she wants a family. So you get very. You get subtle hints of that, even from the very. In the first three minutes. There's so much subtle exposition that happens so brilliantly, so masterfully. Right. So he's asked the guy showing them in the apartment, asks him if he's a doctor, and he lies and says, yes, and she says, no, he's an actor. And then he lies about what he's been in. It turns out he hasn't been in much, and he's kind of sold out for commercials, but it looks like he's not making a bunch of money. The movie seems to try to sell that apartment as decrepit and small or something. It's huge in the Dakota building, but whatever. So it seems to be that he's sold out. He's not as successful as he wants to be. And so it sets us up for this Faustian bargain that he makes. And then you get this intrusion into this beginning of an ordinary marital conflict. You get this intrusion of eccentric neighbors. And this kind of reminded me of the Graduate in a way, where you have older people glomming on to the optimism and possibility of youth. And then there's pregnancy and everything that comes with that. And then how bizarre that is when you think about it, the way human beings reproduce. And then I thought of alien there and how you. You could always turn pregnancy and birth into a kind of horror show of some sort. You can always pivot off of that. But in the end, I thought isn't interesting. It kind of captures the conventionality of people trying to be unconventional. I thought it's like, okay, it's almost like a satire on swingers. Right. You show up to the swingers party and it's not a bunch of young, beautiful people. It's just a bunch of old people who are trying. Not that I've ever been to a swingers party, by the way. 8:28 Erin: Come on. 8:30 Wes: They wouldn't let me in. But from what I've heard, or that's 8:35 Erin: what they say about nude beaches. People on the nude beach that are nude are never the ones you want to be nude. 8:41 Wes: Exactly. So, yeah, it's people having a midlife crisis or after midlife crisis, wanting to recapture their youth and wanting to be unconventional, which is really, in a way, what Satanism ultimately represents. Right. The kind of rebellion against boring convention. But then they just become. They're, in a way, it just becomes another form of conventionality and ordinariness. There's no escape, I guess, in a sense, from age. And that's partly, I guess, what Satanism is supposed to be as well. Right. An escape from mortality. 9:16 Erin: I love that. I think that's great. Yeah. Because of the parodic nature of so much of Satanism you have built in this idea that it's only ever just a reflection. Right. So Satan or the Antichrist still needs to come into the world in the same way that Christ came in. You know, Antichrist itself obviously has that implication. So I need not say more, but. Yeah. The mundanity of Satanism and of this arrangement that they have, I think is just an excellent point. Yeah. You know, you go into the Castevet's apartment and it's dark versus Rosemary lightening up her apartment. And then at the end, you know, you have the bassinet that's covered with black instead of white. You know, you have the upside down cross. Yeah. It's quite boring. It's just this one to one ratio or this color scheme of white versus black. Just, you know, there are no like rainbow colors in between. I mean, the only rainbow colors really come From like the 60s wardrobes, which are awesome. But so you think that they're. Yeah. That they're really eccentric and fascinating people and Ultimately, it's sort of reductive or reducible to this kind of binary. I like that a lot. I was thinking about what the implications for this might be as, say, a parable of new Hollywood. One of the acting angles that I thought of, you know, you have to. If you're a young up and coming actor or a director like Roman Polanski, then, you know, you have to make deals with these crotchety old people that have been running things for a long time who are all connected, right? Who are all insiders. And you have to do unpleasant things in order to get in with them, maybe. Or you have to pay homage to them in some way, which we could talk a little bit more about later. But, you know, I'm on this rewatch. I was really fascinated by Guy and by Cassavetes performance, which is when you watch him in the background, you realize kind of how uncomfortable he is. And that opening scene that you, that you were talking about when the Guy's showing them their apartment, who is from the Maltese Falcon and the Big Sleep and a bunch of other. He's a veteran actor from a bunch of 40s film noir. When he asks him if he's a doctor and then Rosemary has to correct him and say he's an actor. He asks Guy if he's seen him in anything. And then the second joke is that he's Richard Burton. He says, well, I did Hamlet a while back, didn't I, Liz? And then the Sandpiper. So the joke is that he's Richard Burton and she's Elizabeth Taylor. And I had never picked up on that before. 11:47 Wes: He calls her Liz. Okay? 11:49 Erin: He calls her Liz. And so it's a Burton Taylor joke. But that became the cipher through which I read their relationship. Actually. I wondered if there was actually a significant amount of jealousy on his side of the relationship. You know, we see Rosemary being quite. I don't know that we could call her jealous, but she certainly. She's not getting, as you, as you point out, she's not getting attention from him and she's not being treated well by him and he has to keep apologizing to her. So it seems on the one hand that she is the needy one, the grasping one, the one without the career, the one who stays at home, the one who's quite vulnerable versus, you know, Cassavetes to me is quite. He's very handsome. He has this like rugged quality to him. It's not self sufficient though, because there's this anxiety at the base of his personality ultimately as an actor, which Makes him really interesting. But, you know, the more I thought about this Burton Taylor thing, the more that that kind of started to reverse for me. He says, I did Hamlet a while back and then the Sandpiper. That represents a pretty significant fall from grace for Richard Burton, who of course famously, you know, hooks up with Elizabeth Taylor and ends up spending all of his time being a jet setter with her, abandoning his dreams of becoming the next Olivier. You know, it's exactly the Antony and Cleopatra parallel. And I think that even at this point it would have been well known that that was the, that the trajectory of his career was one of disappointment, one of maybe having sold out a little bit. You know, I wouldn't want to paint that, the whole dynamic of their relationship as being one of his jealousy of her. But I think there was a problem. I think there was a streak of that through their relationship. What I'm wary of in applying this reading to Rosemary and Guy is something reducible to just, you know, he's an actor, he wants to come up with all of these personae. He wants to be able to, you know, to create new lives inside his own. So of course he would be jealous of a woman and of course pregnancy would be the sort of like bone of contention. And that seems like relatively boring to me. What I'm more interested in is the glimpses that we get of his acting, which seems to me to be pretty bad. He's kind of a bad actor. I mean, he's a great actor in life. He's a great actor when it comes to deceiving Rosemary. But when we see him rehearsing for the play, when we see him in the Yamaha commercial, he's awful. You know, it's very, very bad versus Rosemary. Those moments when she talks to herself or she has these kinds of self aware moments in the mirror, you know, when she holds up the charm and says, tannis anyone? And it's quite an imaginative. To me. It's, you know, it's a very charming moment. And so there seems to be something. I don't know, I just, I just. Sorry, I'm throwing a lot at you, but basically I'm trying to find a way that this reading works that isn't the conventional sort of like man jealous of woman because woman can get pregnant. Which seems to me to be pretty boring. 14:45 Wes: Yeah, you've preempted the point that I was going to make and. 14:48 Erin: Oh, I'm sorry. 14:49 Wes: Thought that was profound. 14:52 Erin: No, no, no, make it. 14:54 Wes: You're right that it is an. We've Talked about this many times on this podcast. Right. So male creative ambition is always suspect. We can always direct at it the suspicion that it is imbued, at least with some envy of female procreativity. See, there's a fancy way to say it that makes it sound less boring and ordinary, but. And then just to drill down on that a little bit, creativity is about replications, right? So there's. There's procreativity, which is creativity in its most primal sense, except perhaps for God's creativity and creating the world. But art typically involves mimesis of one sort or another, which is a kind of replication. And the same thing with acting. Right. He's creating another person when he acts. So that detail, you know, of a. Was something I hadn't thought about before you talked about acting. And I think the point about Guy's discomfort is a good one. I noticed this, too. So he often will have. When he's not talking, when something else is going on, he'll have a preoccupied or disturbed look on his face, and then he'll come out of that and make a joke and sometimes trying to act like he's reassuring Rosemary about something. If you're not paying attention, you might just think, oh, he's a jokey, fun guy. But you get, repeatedly get this contrast in the movie between him being. Yeah. Quite moody in the background and then being jokey on the surface. Where's Cassavetes, by the way, in his career at this point? And why is there. This seems to be another inside joke where the couple, Roman and Minnie are cast the Cassavetes. 16:36 Erin: Right. And Roman. Yeah, it's early for him still. He hasn't gotten to, say A Woman under the influence, which was 74. And that was, I think, the most commercial and critical success that he had had up to that point because of its accidental fame. I think I told this story on our. On our podcast episode on that film. It ended up actually getting nominated for Oscars and actually getting some attention paid to it, which was unusual. So that I think, would probably be considered the apex of his career. But, of course, prior to this, he was in the Dirty Dozen. He's a, you know, he's a regular working actor in order to be able to fund his own projects. And he's been a director for quite a while up to this point. So that's one of the. I was going to say, you know, with the many documented cases of his butting heads with Roman Polanski, it's kind of like how doctors make the worst patients. So it's funny that the whole thing begins with a doctor joke. But anyway, it's also a matter of, 17:34 Wes: well, why was he butting heads with Polanski? 17:36 Erin: They're directorial styles. Polanski is extremely. I mean, there's no word for it, but anal compared to Cassavetes style, which is, you know, he wanted to improvise and just go with the flow of a scene. And he was, I guess, pretty uncomfortable in the part. Didn't like Polanski's method of acting. And then there was this anecdote, which has since become quite famous that Mia Farrow wrote in her autobiography where Polanski and Cassavetes were talking about, I don't know, maybe the marriage, the context, I don't remember. Maybe it's never supplied. But Polanski says something like, oh, of course, you know, any monogamous relationship is doomed to fail because men can't be sexually attracted to a woman for any extended length of time. And Cassavetes flew into a rage over this and basically said, like, you know nothing about women. You know nothing about relationships. Like, if anything, I'm more attracted to my wife as time goes on. And it's one of the many reasons why. Why we. We love John Cassavetes. Cassavetes may have been the villain in the film on screen, but certainly not behind the scenes. 18:41 Wes: It's interesting. Yeah. From what I read, Polanski could do as many as 50 takes or often was doing something like 50 takes, which is just crazy, right? 18:51 Erin: That's totally nuts. Yeah. Going over budget, almost delaying Kubrick levels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 18:58 Wes: Did you have a theory? Do we know? I guess I could have tried to look this up, but I didn't. Do we know why? If there's an inside joke on Cassavetes and what that means. 19:06 Erin: Yeah. I mean, it's in the novel. 19:08 Wes: Oh, it is. So it's just a coincidence, then? 19:11 Erin: It's a coincidence. But it's one of those things that is so creepy. The Victoria Vetri joke is in the novel. 19:18 Wes: That's hilarious. 19:19 Erin: And then they got her to put it. But it's Piper Laurie. It's Piper Laurie. So it's a different type entirely. And then when they cast it, I think they added in, you know, so the joke isn't that she's really Piper Laurie, of course, but there is an element of identifying the woman with an actress, and I think that's important. And so they carry that through and then make it even more meta, which is great. There's a meta element that's baked into the book, it seems, before it even comes on screen. Like it's sort of meant to be a film and the film is supposed to be. So I've never read the book. I should. But the film is supposed to be one of the most faithful film adaptations of a novel ever. They took so many pains to even recreate color schemes I read, and just crazy stuff like they're even. I think there's even a. I read this last night and I didn't double check, but Cassavetes at one point is holding a radio or a tape recorder or something like that in one scene. And it's because a scene which was not in the film but which was in the novel with a going away party. He gets this as a present from Roman. When Roman and his wife are leaving for Europe, they have a going away party. They give a guy this, whatever it is, and he's holding it in the following scene when they say goodbye. So even though that wasn't in the film, like they take pains to reproduce everything that goes on even interstitially in the novel. So it's extremely meticulous. 20:41 Wes: Yeah. Apparently Polanski, he read the book in one night and then had the screenplay done three weeks later. It's pretty impressive. What a work ethic. Another thing I think I thought of when I saw it years ago was that there's something in here about the concept of character. And I think I was thinking at first about Minnie and Ruth Gordon and her. Yeah, such an interesting, quirky kind of character. But then I thought, well, there's something paranormal about character in general, in the sense that it's kind of a window into the unconscious. Well, let's put it this way. A lot of it reflects early formative forces, that's the theory. And defensive structures against the instinctual. So what's hidden in an instinctual comes out and character is revealed in a. In a different way. And sometimes. And it can look odd, it could look perverse or, you know, that would be a more obvious example. Or it comes out in these sorts of quirks that you notice, say, in Minnie. And in a way, you know, you could. You can read Satanism as a attempt to liberate those forces. In other words, it's anti civilizational. This is about civilization and its discontents. And so instinct and the instinctual get covered up by character and repression and all that stuff. The Satanist project is to liberate them. But of course, if we didn't have character, then there'd be no point in making films and Having all these great actors, there'd be no Minnie in all her quirkiness because the instinct would just radiate out like light from the sun. It wouldn't get caught up in anything any more interesting structure. It'd just be dissipated. 22:28 Erin: So you're saying that. Let me just make sure I understand this, that Satanism would liberate us to be free to express those forces. And that these character actors who are famously quirky and stuff like that, that this is an expression of this kind of force being unleashed. No, or, or the opposite. 22:46 Wes: We can read, we can read Satanism as, you know, a form of discontent with civilization. 22:53 Erin: Yeah, right. 22:53 Wes: So they complain about organized religion. They're complaining about. The complaint is ultimately about the concept of the good and the way it binds us or the law and the way it binds us. It by it inhibits us and prevents us from doing everything we might want to do. Or it creates dependency. So speaking of envy, like in a way, I think this is the problem of Milton's Satan. It's played up for a lot of laughs because Satan just doesn't, doesn't want to be second in line. He doesn't want to be God's right hand man. And he recognizes, hopefully we'll do Paradise Lost one day. But he recognizes that he's dependent on God as any creature is dependent on the Creator. And it's a fixed relationship. It's like an ontological relationship like property being dependent on substance. And so fighting God is as ridiculous as a property fighting substance because it's the very thing you depend on. If the substance disappears, the property disappears. If you defeat God, you defeat existence and you defeat yourself. So I think the same thing with the good in general. People are often self destructive because they don't want to be dependent on something good outside of them. So they destroy it. That dependency is just too unbearable and anxiety producing. So my point was that if you read Satanism as in a way this disaffection with all the forces that run counter to instinct, then in a way it's ironically anti character as well. Because character is a. Is in many ways an expression of all those formative forces. Whether it's civilization or what's transferred through parenting or any other environmental stuff, it kind of accrues and sediments in our psyche and makes us who we are. So just as right, Milton's Satan is rebelling against the concept of a formative force. So on my reading are these Satanists. And to do so is to rebel against the very concept of character. And I think you can read, you know, Oedipus in this way. You can. You can. Like, this would run through a lot of different texts. I think you mentioning acting made me think of that, because in a way, acting is all about character and the replication of character. Right. So guy wants. He's a bad actor, and he wants to take a shortcut by doing the Faustian bargain, which involves, I guess, sickening people who are competing for parts with you rather than just becoming a better actor. Better at character. 25:33 Erin: Yeah. Why not just. Just become a better actor. 25:39 Wes: It's so simple. 25:40 Erin: Yeah. 25:41 Wes: It's practice. 25:42 Erin: This is the principle that 21st century America is based on. You're saying that it's ironic that Ruth Gordon is a Satanist because God is what has made her Ruth Gordon. I love that. 25:53 Wes: Okay, that's. Yeah, that's a more succinct. Much more succinct way of putting it. 25:57 Erin: No, I'm trying to. I'm trying to understand. 25:59 Wes: That's good. 25:59 Erin: Well, you know, one of the. Well, you know, one of the things that you're revealing to me, I thought. I wondered about the Victoria Vetri, whatever her name is, Terry, character, why she was their first choice, why Rosemary is their second choice. I think it's because they're both lapsed Catholics, and this is part of this satanic rebellion or this rebellion against the thing that forms you. I mean, they both have to be lapsed Catholics. We know Rosemary is. We can infer that Terry is. Because much is made of her being Italian. So that's why it has to be Victoria Vetri and not Piper Laurie. Right. So we know that she's Italian, and we know that she's somehow become a dope addict who had to be literally picked up off the sidewalk. It's a short trip. 26:42 Wes: I love that. 26:43 Erin: To and from the sidewalk. 26:44 Wes: Once you know what's gonna happen to her. That. 26:47 Erin: Yes, exactly. 26:48 Wes: On a second watching that, that joke becomes very funny. 26:50 Erin: Right, right. 26:51 Wes: They picked me up right off the sidewalk. 26:53 Erin: What's dope again? Which one is that? Is that cocaine or. 26:56 Wes: I think it's anything. 26:58 Erin: It's anything. Oh, okay. Yeah. 26:59 Wes: Wow. You really are of a different generation. 27:03 Erin: Well, dope people. Oh, God. Isn't that a Liz Lemon thing? And when Carrie Fisher is going, oh, we did blow in Joe Garagiola's office. And she's like, which one is blow again? That's right. Okay. I was like, where am I getting that? 27:17 Wes: Maybe it's more specific. I always thought of it as just 27:19 Erin: drugs, but just drugs in general. Okay. Well, anyway, so she's a drug addict of some kind. 27:25 Wes: A slang word. I'm looking it up for cocaine, cannabis, heroin, opioid. All right, I'm gonna take that as a vindication. 27:31 Erin: But a dope fiend is the expression. And fiendishness seems so. Oh, specific. Right. You'd have to be a fiend about one particular drug. 27:40 Wes: Yeah. 27:41 Erin: You'd be a fiend about everything. 27:42 Wes: Hopefully. You just choose one, you know, maybe. 27:45 Erin: Oh, okay. 27:46 Wes: You could choose a few, but then just have one would be your main one. It's not monogamy, but it is polyamory, I guess. 27:56 Erin: Right. Yeah. So it seems to me that they then have to choose lapsed Catholics. But unfortunately for them, what they don't realize is that once a Catholic, always a Catholic. The very structure of your dreams will betray the influence of these formative forces. If we're going to take character, what you're describing as character, to include the very things that make Catholicism such a popular subject in horror films because they have so much. Because Catholicism has so much character, because it has all the smells and bells and the outfits and the props. You know, it has all the props. So these things I don't know if I'm wrong to associate with character, but I am. And I think that that's the. That's like the key here is that, you know, arguably, like, the very theatricality of Catholicism and its materiality and then the rebellion from that, or, say, lapsing from that, which is a soft rebellion, would seem to mark both of these women as potentially good Satanists. Catholicism seems to me to be the thing that you get the most purchase out of rebelling against. Because if your problem is rebelling against the formative forces and what you're describing as character is part of that, that's the juiciest place to rebel against. Like, if you rebel against some religion that's like, iconoclastic, then what are you rebelling against? You know, just going to a different white room, you know, like, you have to be able to tear things down. Right. And there's nothing to tear down with some other religion. Yeah. 29:33 Wes: And Catholicism is more connected to, you know, ancient history as well, which is scarier. It's earlier. And of course, form, you know, also has a significance as formative historically. So we are the heirs of that tradition, whether we like it or not, whether we're Catholics or not. Catholicism has imprinted itself on Western civilization. 29:56 Erin: Sure. I think of it as being relatively young, actually, in the grand scheme of things. But, yes, you're right. Really. 30:03 Wes: It's not that. 30:04 Erin: Yeah, I mean, Judaism is so much older and, you know. Well, that's true paganism and Hinduism. But I just want to check that I'm right to associate what you're describing as character with these elements of the church. 30:18 Wes: Yeah, I think so. 30:19 Erin: Okay. And so this seems to be what Minnie and Roman are talking about when they're talking about the Pope. That it's all about appearance, that it's all about, I don't know, making money or acting. It's all about acting, actually is. You know, they accuse the Pope of being an actor, basically. I don't remember exactly what they say, 30:38 Wes: but that's a very good point because it reflects the fact that they don't appreciate character and the significance of character and its depth. Right, yeah. It's all just superficial. Very good point. 30:49 Erin: He says that's showbiz. Roman says this. That's exactly what it is. All the costumes, rituals, all religions. Yeah. But especially. Especially the one with all the costumes. Right. Then Rosemary actually is uncomfortable. Right. At many points. This out. Oh, that he pretends he's holy. You know, what do they spend on robes and jewels? This is an. This is another thing that, you know, it's all just this money. If they spent all their money that they spend on all these robes and jewels that, you know, there's very, very familiar criticisms. And it's right after this that there's a very, very quick turn to guy and to acting. Right. A good picture of the hypocrisy behind organized religion was given in Luther. Did you ever get to play that leading part? Guys, of course, they're fans of Luther, 31:40 Wes: you know, so Luther is like one. I don't want to get in trouble. What? I mean, he accuses the Pope of being a Satanist, essentially, but. 31:49 Erin: Right, right. But it's the same. The exact same critique. They're making a Luther esque critique here. And then we hear, my father was a theatrical producer. So it's like, pick a lane, you know, are you anti Catholicism? Are you pro Catholicism? Your father was a theatrical producer and you hate theatrics anyway. Yeah. So there's a sort of inherent contradiction, I think, going on there. But. Yeah, but the criticism of religion and then the acting go hand in hand. And of course, Mia Farrow has this, you know, vestigial attachment where she said, well, he is the Pope. You know, she has this respect that she can't get rid of because, of course, it's Catholicism changes your brain. You dream about nuns for the rest of your Life, whether you're Catholic or not. 32:32 Wes: Yeah, I just. Yeah. I like this point about acting and religion in their minds going hand in hand and being something superficial and. But it's interesting, right? So they're criticizing the concept of ritual as well. But the Satanists are very into rituals. 32:48 Erin: Yes. Yeah. And that's what makes this so confusing because I don't think they're, you know, I think that they have a great 32:53 Wes: respect for acting too and they're such great characters. So. Yeah, I think it's just gonna be. They don't know themselves very well. 33:03 Erin: Right. 33:03 Wes: And this may be part of the point that you're making when you, you know, when you see it just as a vindication of their religious impulses. You know, they are fulfilling their religious impulses even as they act out this supposedly anti religious sentiment and they are indulging character even as they act out this anti character sentiment. 33:25 Erin: Hmm. I wonder too if you know, Ruth Gordon's line readings, as Minnie are just this flood of words and this idea that they don't know themselves very well seems to me to be related to that. Like she's a very. Maybe something that gives people character is this kind of not knowing themselves thing because they, they're not aware of any oddities in their behavior or they're sort of distracted by their own behavior. Right. If they, if they were more aware of their behavior, they might eliminate certain, you know, they might train themselves out of certain things in order to be more. What, regular? More closer to some sort of mean that they, that they believe to be a behavioral ideal. 34:06 Wes: Well, you might, yeah, you might see her as a very. Not repressed kind of person. Right. Minnie. She's. She's impulsive in a way. And yeah, the way she reads her lines, I'd like this image of a flood of words. It's like run on sentences almost. Yeah. I don't know what's, what's the word for this type of character in a person? I mean, she's disinhibited. She's. It's almost childlike. Right. The way, the way her labile, that's another fancy word. Her. Any change of, you know, fluctuating mood or emotion from minute, from second to second gets conveyed. And it can be conveyed in a single speech. No single line where, you know, you could see, see fluctuations and valence just, just within, you know, a few, A few sentences. 35:02 Erin: So she's sort of a force of nature. A pint sized force of nature. 35:08 Wes: And it's very charming, of course. And so there's a lot of, you know, I guess there's a lot of room in that for the sublimation of instinct. And, you know, maybe I'm. The way I've painted characters a little bit simplistic as all these kind of static defensive structures that keep instinct at bay, you know, really, really. It's a way of satisfying instinct as well. And then someone like her, I think the point you're getting at is very unrefined. Certainly she's not a repressed person at all. 35:39 Erin: Right. She's reacting openly to everything all the time. But at the same time, you get the sense because of the speed and the quick darts and everything, she's not, like, listening to herself. You know, it's just coming out, but she's not listening. And yet at the same time, I mean, that's what we think. Right. In fact, there's a great deal of calculation in what she says. I mean, first of all, this very delivery is designed to steamroll Rosemary. 36:05 Wes: Yeah. And we see her do a lot of calculating things, and she's nosy and she's. Yeah, she's constantly. 36:12 Erin: She gets the info she needs investigating. 36:14 Wes: Yeah. 36:15 Erin: Right. And so it sounds as though it's just this stream of consciousness thing, but in fact, she's asking questions that are designed to pinpoint exactly what she needs to know. 36:25 Wes: And that, you know, it occurs to me now that none of these Satanists are very dark. Right. They are super, super ordinary. And when Guy and Rosemary first get to the apartment, we hear them bickering through the walls like any old couple. I mean, ultimately, a lot of the bickering is going to be about, you know, the project of Satanism, how it's going. You know, I guess they bicker about Terry. You know, we kind of learn that. Is that the way that we learned that Terry was. Yeah. That she was going to be the. The birth mother for Satan? I think we learned that through the wall, right, with the bickering. 37:02 Erin: Yes. 37:02 Wes: Yeah. 37:03 Erin: Only in hindsight. Of course. 37:04 Wes: Yeah, only in hindsight. 37:06 Erin: Yeah. 37:06 Wes: Yeah. 37:07 Erin: On a second watch, when Terry says that they. That she thought at first that they wanted her for some kind of sex thing, I was like, oh, yeah, they did. Yeah, exactly. They are sickos. 37:19 Wes: But they don't. Yeah. Again, and this is my whole swinger. The point of my whole swingers comment is that none of them are. Seem to have any element of, like, diabolical evil or they're not. Right. There's no dark backstory as there would be in, say, a. For a super villain. In a comic book movie, you know, there's no, oh, didn't the Joker have had a bad life? And he was teased and now he's full of resentment and angst. They're not angst ridden people. They belong to the cult, it seems, in the way that most people would just belong to some congregation because it's there and they. It's, you know, it's what they do. It's maybe a family tradition or whatever. 38:03 Erin: That's right. Yeah, they're born into it. My parents were Satanists, so I am too. 38:07 Wes: Yeah, I think they're not. They're not born into it, but it seems somehow an ordinary extension of a mundane existence. 38:15 Erin: But they are born into it. His father is the. 38:18 Wes: Yeah, they are born into it. 38:19 Erin: The hope of Satanism or whatever. 38:21 Wes: Well, who knows the backstory for all the other congregants, but like Laura, what's her name? Laura? 38:27 Erin: Laura Louise. 38:28 Wes: Lara. Laura Louise, yeah. She should be working in a DMV somewhere, making people's lives hell. Not. 38:42 Erin: Oh, man. Yeah. Patsy Kelly, great actress. What they're arguing about through the wall, I took a note up on this and I found it. It's Minnie reprimanding Roman for not doing what she said to do. So she argued for not telling Terry. She knew that she wouldn't be open minded, she says, and she wonders how Roman is the leader of anything. And so. Yeah, so you think that it's going to be. Yeah, it could be that they're bickering about, I told you not to do that and you went and did it, you know, but it's actually about this. It's about, I guess, revealing to Terry, which is why she kills herself, I guess, that they are Satanists. You know, we could connect this to, as we already are, ordinary marital bickering. But there's also about how to play the scene. Roman's choices as a director were not the right ones. Minnie was rebelling against his directorship and saying, this is not how the scene should go. The information should not be revealed in this act or something like that. So there is something, I think, quite actory about. About the whole thing. And I just want to point out too, because otherwise I'll forget that. Also in the basement, when Terry talks about the Castevets and how wonderful they are, Rosemary responds by saying that she's glad that there are people like that. When you hear so much about apathy and people that are afraid of getting involved, and I love that because of course, they're not. They're devout, they're not apathetic at all. Right. So, like, somehow the opposite of devotion isn't apathy here. It's devotion in the. It's devotion in support of a cause that's the opposite of the cause that you're supporting. Right? Yeah. So it's Terry and Rosemary that then seem to mark themselves as the apathetic ones that are going to be converted. It's like they have to choose an apathetic host who's not going to have a devout opinion one way or the other and be transformed. 40:27 Wes: Yeah, we can talk about that in the. In the second part, Rosemary's apathy and her passivity and all that, her waifishness, even though they were gonna go a different direction initially, you're reminding me of how much in the movie is only evident in hindsight or on a second watching. And I think when I first watched this, I didn't. I think it was unclear to me until the very end. I hadn't made a decision about whether all this was all in her head or not. And then I wondered on second viewing. Well, isn't it obvious it's not in her head. But anyway, maybe we can lead with that in the second part. 41:03 Erin: That's great. 41:04 Wes: Get your thoughts on that. All right. You can listen to that second part right away. patreon.com subtextpodcast 41:16 Erin: thank you, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast Please send your questions, feedback, and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.