Female Representation of Grief and Tragedy in House and Margaret

By Quinn Jennings, Edited by Anne Tilley

At its core, genre serves as a classification for audiences to better approach and engage with art, under the guise that a mere identification of this classification will allow them to have a better understanding of the art they encounter. When film intends for genres to meld and create new groupings for films to exist under, it is intentional work by the filmmaker to serve their larger purpose. House (1977) and Margaret (2011) both follow ensembles grappling with grief, despite the films presenting drastically different forms and levels of tragedies. Understandably, both films are classified as horror, but they heighten their comedic and dramatic aspects respectively as a vehicle to bend their genres and generate commentary on the situations of their ensembles. The films portray the healing journey of their characters through tragedy and grief in stylistically distinct and opposite ways. While House has elements of magical realism, surrealist horror, and absurdist editing, Margaret remains grounded in reality and drama, which highlights the difference in maturity of the protagonists. Although utilizing different auxiliary genre styles, both House and Margaret examine the hazards of separating oneself from trauma as a strategy to heal. These films play upon the passivity of young women to make these attempts and cite familial relationships as having reparative power. 

Elements of horror existed in storytelling before it was even classified as its own genre. In her piece  “Exploring the Evolution of the Horror Genre,” India Marriott explains how many folklore tales contain “dark underbellies” that allow historians to trace gothic elements back to oral traditions of storytelling (Marriott). Film began adapting horror and gothic literature at the end of the early twentieth century, with figures such as Dracula and the Hunchback of Notre Dame finding new life on the screen. Over time, horror has evolved to the point where filmmakers do not require a ghoulish figure to scare their audience. Nandini Likki writes about the “childlike absurdism” director Nobuhiko Obayashi employs in the horror elements of House in “The Cine-Files,” injecting ridiculous, bright, and flashy visuals into chaotic sequences throughout the film (Likki). Ordinary parts of the young girls’ lives turn against them as unassuming objects such as a piano and the household cat become violent, causing hysteria. The tension builds and heightens the viewing anxiety from the nonsensical elements that are presented as the ensemble’s unfortunate reality. 

Obayashi was a child in Hiroshima, Japan at the time of the atomic bombing in 1945. The tragedy is referenced in House when Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) learns that her aunt’s husband never returned from World War II. Her aunt comments that Gorgeous and her friends live unaware of how “precious” peace is (Obayashi). They are distantly separated from the tragedy; they visualize the explosion as resembling “cotton candy” and do not grieve Gorgeous’ relatives in the same way (Obayashi). Obayashi comments on the desensitization of youth to violence through the flippant nature of the girls and their eventual demise. The house itself serves as a capsule of remembrance and repressed trauma, and the girls are unable to live in harmony with it. 

The tragedy of Margaret cannot be compared to the scale or culturally defining impact as the events discussed in House. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima killed hundreds of thousands of people, resulting in direct trauma of families and friends as well as instilling guilt, trauma, and remembrance in Japanese cultures for decades to come. However, similar to House, the horror in Margaret does not stem from a supernatural monster terrorizing a town. Instead, the film follows a young woman named Lisa (Anna Paquin), as she witnesses a horrific traffic accident that results in the death of a pedestrian. The tragedy is the violent, avoidable death of one person, and shock and stress associated with the event ripples out from Lisa as a witness. Lisa cannot articulate how she feels about her role in the accident; she can only verbalize the strong feelings that overwhelm her. As she searches for a way to relieve her guilt, Lisa confronts the bus driver who killed the pedestrian in an attempt to rationalize the events and find some form of justice. She also calls the family of the victim to try and express her remorse and guilt for the situation. These strategies of dumping her feelings onto others for them to remedy fails to assist her healing. In fact, it only generates more stress, as well as creating an aversion to Lisa and the event itself. Her impulsive and brash decision making allows the devastation to linger and seep into the actions of the people around her. Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan derives horror from the feelings of dread and guilt experienced by Lisa while she is coping with distress and the ways in which she projects her intense emotions outward to everyone she encounters in her life. The ensemble of characters experience the tragedy through Lisa’s perspective and create new meaning for themselves when confronted with her questions of morality. 

The dark subject matters of House and Margaret establish both films as horror in their characters’ struggle to survive despite their conditions. The editing of both films works to build tension throughout moments of conflict, but the films take distinct and opposing approaches to fitting the films into the horror genre. House is playful in its editing: there are quick cuts, cartoonish details drawn over shots, and obvious green screen technology used. Moments of fear for the young girls are intensified by the absurdist elements of their new reality taking place inside the house. For instance, a piano eating a teenager is an abstract image that does not read immediately as scary; however, House constructs the action in such a way that it is unsettling and disturbing to the viewer. There is no denying the premise is still silly, and the editing embraces this notion, melding the genres of comedy and horror. The comedic elements of the film do not take away from Obayashi’s commentary on trauma. Instead, the playful editing creates physical manifestations of childlike wonder and perspective taking over. It can be easy to feel resentment towards the young girls for their ignorance to the trauma that lives in the house and their lack of comprehension around the atomic bombing–as Gorgeous’ aunt experiences towards them–but Obayashi’s editing places the viewer in the same mindset and prompts them to reflect on the way they view tragedy and the aftermath of war. 

In Margaret, the editing also forces the viewer to live with Lisa and the other characters in uncomfortable ways, although accomplished with contrary editing practices. After the accident, Lisa experiences all aspects of life in a heightened state. She tries to intentionally separate herself from the tragedy, seeking help from adults in her life and finding distractions in sex and drugs, lending to an abrasive personality switch. The film utilizes many long takes throughout its runtime to allow the audience to sit with Lisa’s discontent and guilt. The camera refuses to cut away from multiple scenes of crying and uncomfortable, long conversations. In the extended cut, many of the exterior scenes include overlapping dialogue to round out the realism of the New York City street setting. Lisa hears these conversations while trying to sort out her own thoughts, and the viewer is left trying to separate and rationalize the two. The overwhelming nature of Margaret’s editing is unnerving. Both films utilize somewhat experimental editing as they work to establish their notions of the surreal and the real within the horror genre. 

In their explorations of trauma, House and Margaret question what is the “appropriate” response to coping with and moving on from a traumatic experience. Both films follow young women directly wrestling with the horrors of traumatic events that linger in their daily lives. Female hysteria is historically a diagnosis. In “The Hysterical Woman: An Analysis of Trauma in Gothic Women’s Literature and Modern Horror Film,” Molly Holdway writes about the evolution of this diagnosis into a “weaponized term meant to keep women facing isolation and grief in a continuous state of oppression” (Holdway). Horror as a genre explores dark themes in the human mind, but many horror stories employ trauma as a plot device to define women by their negative experiences. Audiences are encouraged to accept female insanity at face value. House and Margaret consider the aftershocks of violence beyond these female horror cliches. The films are built on the foundational groundwork of the genre, but they refuse to shy away from the consuming nature of trauma for their characters. They are careful not to indulge in the dangers of sensationalism and instead examine the logical, although not always comfortable, responses to trauma. Margaret is careful not to credit Lisa’s angst as solely as adolescent rebellion while House yields realism to the immaturity of Gorgeous and her friends. 

The split of horror and comedy genres reflect the generational divide between the children, and the vengeful ghost as the bitterness of the latter turns into evil. Amit Pinchevski considers “alternative perceptions” of trauma that can develop through the “witnessing of distant suffering” in “Screen Trauma: Visual Media and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder” (Pinchevski 70). Gorgeous still cannot process the cultural trauma that haunts her surroundings, so she ends up passing on violence when she confides in her step mother after the chaos, only to cause her to burst into flames. House ends with a passage of text that includes the claim that “one can live on in the hearts of others,” and that the “story of love must be told many times” to keep their memory alive (Obayashi). This call to action is directly reflected in the ending of Margaret when Lisa breaks down in a moment of emotional vulnerability with her mother and seemingly begins to enjoy an opera performance. Lisa moves on carrying a memory, but the tragedy no longer defines her. Both films deal with haunted pasts and attempts to separate oneself from tragedy, ultimately crediting acknowledgement of the tragedy and embracing familial relations with reparative power.

Different magnitudes of trauma cannot be appropriately compared or contrasted. House (1977) and Margaret (2011)obviously require different approaches because they examine different tragedies. They are stylistically distinguishable and unique within the same genre of psychological horror. Collective remembrance drifts away and warps throughout the passing down of generations, but even in the direct absence of trauma, it remains as a destabilizing force for the most detached generations. Situating the spreading of violence through young women who are encouraged to forget and ignore their trauma serves as an effective cautionary tale.

Works Cited

Holdway, Molly. “The Hysterical Woman: An Analysis of Trauma in Gothic Women’s Literature and Modern Horror Film.” Digital Commons at East Tennessee State University, East Tennessee State University, 2023, dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5719&context=etd. 

House. Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977.

Likki, Nandini. “The Cine-Files: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 Horror Film ‘House.’” The Miscellany News, Vassar College, 11 Nov. 2021, miscellanynews.org/2021/11/10/arts/the-cine-files-nobuhiko-obayashis-1977-horror-film-house/. 

Margaret. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan, 2011. 

Marriott, India. “Exploring the Evolution of the Horror Genre.” The Gale Review, Gale International, 2 Feb. 2023, review.gale.com/2023/02/02/the-evolution-of-the-horror-genre/. 

Pinchevski, Amit. “Screen Trauma: Visual Media and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 33, no. 4, 11 Dec. 2015, pp. 51–75, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276415619220.