The Shadow Self

By Becky Sands

God, I love October. Every September, I begin to feel a sadness tinged with dread, as sunrise and sunset start greedily swallowing the daylight hours. It’s as if I can hear Summer’s anguished cries as his life is steadily snuffed out. Then October hits and the scents of Autumn arrive. Woodsmoke, leaf mulch, and cold, crisp morning air remind me of the expansive possibilities of welcoming in the dark. And at October’s zenith comes the ultimate opportunity: Halloween! Every year, I dress as a witch, carve a pumpkin, and settle in for a horror marathon. And I truly believe it does me the world of good.

I’ve been reading about Jungian theory recently. Did you know he invented the concept of synchronicity? And archetypes? And introverts and extraverts? Well, if Spring-Summer is the season of (stereotypically masculine) extraversion – being outside, socialising, exploring (RIP, Summer 2020), then Autumn-Winter is its introverted (and ‘feminine’) reflection; a time for turning inwards, back into the cave, lighting a fire, and watching the shadows dance on the walls. Also, cardigans.

Jung frequently spoke of the unexplored ‘shadow self’ of man. For every aspect of ourselves that we think of as our ‘identity’ (e.g. confidence, grace, humour, enthusiasm) there exists in our unconscious its exact opposite, like a reflection in a mirror, which we are often unaware of, but which communicates to us through dreams, emotions, and intuition. This ‘shadow self’ also gets lumbered with the thoughts, fears, and emotions that scare us and disrupt our sense of ourselves, as we suppress them into a ‘sunken place’: our unconscious. Jung believed that the process of individuation (self-fulfilment) required us to turn and look into the mirror, acknowledge this shadow self, and embrace our wholeness. He also held this to be true for society at large, which has its own ‘collective unconscious’. In conclusion, in order to self-actualise and overcome repression, you must watch horror movies! They speak to our unconscious, the things we don’t dare face. But when we boldly step into the darkness, we find those things that lurk have a lot to teach us. 

Take, for example, the long over-indulged jump scare. Its power is not in the shock, but the anticipation. Nothing can spring from around that corner that is more fearsome than what we have conjured in our mind’s eye. This is why movies that rely on repeated jump scares, rather than atmosphere and tension, lose their power, and become like cheap fairground rides. (How many is too many? Personally, once I get past three, I lose my patience, especially if two of them were cats.) The unknown, however, speaks directly to our shadow self, playing upon each viewer’s individual worst nightmares. I love the teen road horror, Jeepers Creepers (2001), but its most powerful section is its first half, when the sibling heroes are terrorised by an unseen driver. Once his identity is unveiled, the tone shifts into over-the-top, campy violence. Fun, but less frightening (I once heard someone make a compelling case for the film’s tonal shift being a twisted metaphor for coming out.)

Spielberg’s thriller, Duel (1971), also depicts a traveller being tormented by a faceless trucker, but he is never seen, always hidden behind the dark windscreen, and the atmosphere remains taut throughout. Spielberg used this powerful trope again, to legendary effect, in Jaws (1975). Brody’s shark remains submerged beneath dark waters for most of the film, only glimpsed in flashes, leaving a trail of blood and grief in its wake, unearthing the toxic power dynamic in the town’s community.  In a sense, the shark is Brody’s shadow, bringing his fears and resentments to the surface, leading to an inevitable confrontation. Smile, you son of a bitch.

There are various subgenres and tropes within horror that will speak to your shadow self, exposing the archetypal fears that lurk in our collective unconscious. Here are a few of my favourites…  

Masks, doubles, and impostors.

We often wear masks to appease societal expectations – but sometimes our other persona needs an outlet.  Sometimes we don masks to let the true self out. Halloween allows us to explore versions of ourselves we hadn’t considered before. In film, the tropes of the doppelganger, evil twin, and alternate personality can take many forms, and serve many purposes.  Some are supernatural shapeshifters (Cat People, 1942 and 1982). Some, performers who get lost in a role (Black Swan, 2010), or would-be enactors of vigilante justice who are changed forever by their new persona (Darkman, 1990). Sometimes impostors reveal the antipathy and mistrust that already exist among us (The Thing, 1982, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978, Possession, 1981). Seeming innocents are possessed by ‘evil spirits’ which spew rage and vulgarity from their vessel’s lips (The Exorcist, 1973). An uncanny double may pay a visit to remind us of a part of ourselves we’d rather conveniently forget. 

In Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is the matriarch of a comfortable middle-class Black family, holidaying with a vapid white couple and their brattish offspring, playing the game of status, ignoring their ‘friends’’ casual micro-aggressions. But Adelaide can’t quite seem to get comfortable; she is always looking over her shoulder. When four sinister doppelgangers of her family appear, silhouetted on their lake-house driveway, there is a horrible sense of inevitability in her eyes, and a tone of recognition as she stiffly repeats, “Uh-uh. Uh-uh.” Layered with symbolism and metaphor that contend with the individual and collective subconscious, Us explores the shadow self as a woman’s shiny, but empty reflection. 

In Annihilation (2018), Lena (Natalie Portman) is a medical academic who joins an all-female military expedition into a mysterious realm known as ‘the shimmer’, from which her traumatised husband has recently returned in a much-altered condition. The shimmer dissolves the barriers between all organisms inside it, cannibalising the pre-existing forms of things and generating monstrous hybrids, such as a horrific skull-headed bear-beast, which stalks the group, emitting chillingly human cries. As the shimmer takes effect on the women, they are each faced with the same choice; of resisting and likely meeting violent destruction (like the male team that went before them), or softening to it, and being transformed into something new. It’s a gruesome and unsettling tale, exploring the mercilessness of nature, our base fear of death, and the mercurial and contradictory notion of ‘the self’. In focusing on an all-female cast for much of its run-time, the film also alludes to archetypical feminine identity being more fluid, malleable, and perhaps, therefore, resilient, than its masculine counterpart. 

See also: Dead Ringers (1988), American Psycho (2000), Sisters (1972), The Double (2013), Vertigo (1958), The Faculty (1998), That episode of Buffy where they all turn into their Halloween costumes, and the Goosebumps book about the haunted mask. 

Female power, female rage. 

Okay, it’s getting a little bleak up in here, so let’s do the fun one. Women! Traditionally associated with the moon, as opposed to the male sun, women have long been suspected of conspiracy with evil forces, (See: Eve, Salem Witch Trials, all of bloody history). And I’m here to confess: it’s all true!  In the light of day, women are held back by the implicit threat of male physical dominance, but when night falls, we open our spell books, cast our hexes, and fly with our sisters through the night, cackling over our deadly secrets. Horror is awash with black magic women, empowered by their choice to embrace the dark side and enact vengeance on their oppressors. Please note, these femme fatales are always the most intriguing characters, regardless of whether they are ostensibly painted as ‘villains’. In The Witches (1990), Hocus Pocus (1993) and Death Becomes Her (1992), stylish and dastardly women team up to antagonise insipid, milquetoast men, and have wicked fun while they do it. Amoral and loving it, they flout societal norms that expect women to be maternal, submissive, and modest. And while they often wind up defeated, they burn bright, and have way more fun than anyone else involved, and the viewer rarely welcomes their departure from the screen, (can I join Meryl, Goldie and Isabella’s gang in DBH please? PLEASE? Isabella has three male model housemaids called Tom, Dick, and Harry, for chrissakes).

When women are isolated in these films, their rage and sorrow often manifest in a destructive power that ultimately consumes even themselves. Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) is probably the most iconic use of the trope of female sexual maturation coinciding with a discovery of dark inner strength that can tear down enemies. Ginger Snaps (2000), a deliciously bitter, low-budget Canadian flick, successfully depicts the werewolf myth from a female perspective, as Katherine Isabelle’s beautiful outsider, Ginger, gets ‘the curse’ in more ways than one, and soon finds her hormonal mood-swings have a body-count. Some lone-wolfs do buck the trend though, or should I say, ‘lone-cats’? Michelle Pfeiffer’s never-bested performance as Catwoman in Batman Returns (1992) sees her go from simpering, put-upon secretary, Selena Kyle, to delirious feline troublemaker, playing both sides of the villain/hero diptych to exact her revenge, and rejecting the hero’s moral code and offer of romantic rescue along the way. Mmm, fierce.

But if you’re looking for female trouble with a higher success-rate, you’re gonna need a girl-gang. When angry women unite, their power intensifies, and they’re often unstoppable, terrifying, and sexy as hell. In The Craft (1996), Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney) and her friends form a coven, fulfilling their teenage desires with spells, glamour, and hexes, upsetting the social food-chain at their school, and triggering a late ‘90s surge in wiccan conversions amongst thirteen-year-old girls. Yes, I too had a pentacle necklace, a collection of gems left on the windowsill to ‘charge’ under a full-moon, and severe eye-strain from trying to make a pencil stand on its tip with my mind. In Halloween cult classic, Trick ‘r Treat (2007), virginal Laura (Anna Paquin) is encouraged by her peers to find ‘the one’ on Samhain night, and unleashes a fearsome dark side in the process. In The Witch (2015), Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) finally tires of being made the scapegoat of her fearfully religious family and wanders into the woods to seek out a new sisterhood that will celebrate her true nature. 

See also: Addams Family Values (1993), Suspiria (1977).

The Adults Aren’t Alright

In the words of Ally Sheedy’s character Allison Reynolds in The Breakfast Club (1985), “When you grow up, your heart dies.” And you also might very well sell your soul to Satan so you can afford that loft conversion and keep up with Mike and Helen across the road. These are the tales of suburbia’s dark underbelly, the conspiracy of the establishment, and the sins of the father, which bubble to the surface and trigger a terrible reckoning, often on the unsuspecting offspring of the guilty. In these twisted coming-of-age stories, urban legends and cautionary tales haunt the seeming idyllic lives of the protagonists, until they turn the wrong corner and are confronted with the ugly complexity of adult life. The haunted house on the edge of town, the face on the milk carton, the whispers in the walls at night, are all symbols of another world beneath the façade of normality. We are living a lie. The truth will come out. 

In Blue Velvet (1986), childhood illusion is punctured by the jarring image of a severed ear on a lush front lawn, sending Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) on a nightmarish descent into a world of violence, exploitation, and sexual perversion. In A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the traumatic past has been so deeply suppressed that it must express itself at several steps removed, in the dreamworlds of the guilty parents’ children. This is a powerful illustration of Jung’s claim that, “Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the human environment, and especially upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived.” (Collected Works, volume 15). 

Sometimes, full-grown adults need to have their innocence shattered, so they can recognise the corruption and betrayal that has built their comfortable lives. In Poltergeist (1982), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Shining (1980), ambitious men strike toxic deals, and take space and opportunities that are not rightfully theirs, whilst doe-eyed mothers scream in abject terror as their children suffer the consequences. Get out, for God’s sake, just do as Peele says and Get Out (2017).  

See also: Scream (1996), Cherry Falls (2000), What Lies Beneath (2000), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Urban Legend (1998), Donnie Darko (2001).

Inescapable death. 

Life on earth is violent, chaotic, and bloody. Western society tries at every turn to repress this fact. Sex, commerce, politics, and TikTok all serve as tools of distraction, so we can temporarily forget the core truth of all human existence: Every Living Creature on This Earth Dies Alone (Grandma Death, Donnie Darko, 2001). This fact haunts western society in particular because so little of our culture encourages behaviour that is congruous with a knowledge of death. (Implicit in the consideration of death is a realisation of its levelling effect, and the ultimate importance of our connection with our fellow man. Capitalism no likey.) In horror, the phantom of death takes physical form, and haunts the protagonist as a motive-less, unstoppable force, which no matter how far they run, or how well they hide, stalks them relentlessly until they finally choose to turn around and acknowledge it. In Halloween (1978), death looms behind the empty black eyes of Michael Myers (Tony Moran), originally credited simply as ‘The Shape’. The film does not rush the inexorable ramping of tension, as we watch the emotionless figure appear in the back of shots, patiently following, or see from his POV, silently observing victims in their lively, cosy homes, whilst we linger in the cold darkness, like ghosts. The stalking killer was given a new twist in the excellent It Follows (2014), in which an ancient curse works its way through a list of victims with simple, singular focus: simply walking towards them, continually, until they can run no more. The genius of this monster is that it always assumes the forms of others, be it past victims, or people the current target is close to, so that the sense of unease is permanent. The only relief? Sex! It passes the curse on to your partner, and, as in life, provides a briefly effective distraction from our awareness of our own mortality and past mistakes. 

Other classics of the Unstoppable Death-Curse genre include: Ringu (1998), Final Destination (2000), The Hitcher (1986), Evil Dead (1987), Funny Games (1997, 2007), Carnival of Souls (1962, 1998). 

The bleak despair of grief.

Yay! This fun sub-category of the death-curse genre is a real crowd-pleaser. Okay, no. But it has produced some incredibly striking and memorable cinema. Once again, it’s about coming to terms, or not, with the fact of death, but this time, it’s through the experience of losing a loved one. These films masterfully portray the surreal and disorienting nightmare that grief plunges us into. The safe and familiar becomes charged with horror, as it reminds us of what we have lost. The home is no longer a sanctuary, but a tomb, in which the present is suffused with the past, and our denial and sorrow ferment, our faith in goodness fails, and obsessions form, often culminating in further trauma and loss, an endless cycle of suffering. Very, very often, the inciting incident is the loss of a child – the height of unthinkable cruelty. In Hereditary (2018) – Annie’s (Toni Colette) grief over the shocking loss of her daughter is too painful for her to bear, and it forms a mask of anger that separates her from her remaining family. She cannot forgive her son, whose carelessness caused the fatal accident, or find understanding from her tired husband. Instead, she is pulled into a macabre mystery surrounding her recently deceased mother. Charged with savage bitterness and misery, this film is basically a loose adaptation of Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse (1971). Its final stanza reads,

Man hands on misery to man.  

It deepens like a coastal shelf. 

Get out as early as you can, 

And don’t have any kids yourself.

Again and again, we see parents trying to comprehend the scale of their loss, and the impact it has had on their whole outlook on life. In Nicolas Roeg’s masterpiece, Don’t Look Now (1973), John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) head to Venice following the drowning of their young daughter, escaping the home and its endless reminders of loss. But, spoiler alert, Venice is full of water! And what is already proving a bad choice for forgetting a tragic drowning becomes a nightmare when they discover a murderer is on the loose: a small figure clad in a red raincoat,  who resembles their lost daughter. Venice’s maze of canals becomes a metaphor for the labyrinthine prison of grief, which John struggles to navigate at every turn, one moment ignoring symbols of hope and omens of doom, and the next chasing after red herrings. It doesn’t end well, folks. In Pet Sematary (1989), grieving parents get stuck in the denial stage and try to exploit a seeming loophole in the law of death, summoning twisted perversions into reality in the process. In The Others (2001), grief is a fog that descends over Grace’s (Nicole Kidman) home, blinding her to reality and trapping her in the past. Do you get the message yet guys? Process your grief! Talk to the dead! Or they’ll talk to you!

See also: The Vanishing (1988, 1993), The Changeling (1980), Rebecca (1940), The Babadook (2014).

When you gather round the campfire this hallow’s eve with your intrepid social bubble, relish the shiver down your spine, and the electricity in the air. When death is close, you value life all the more. When mystery is welcomed, precious knowledge can be acquired. And when you embrace your dark side, you might just discover you have powers beyond your wildest dreams...or nightmares. Mwahahahaha. Mwahahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAAAA. 

Becky is a film fan who works in a cinema box office and often leaves troll dolls on public transport.

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