The Uncanny Otherness in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy

Introduction

The Apartment Trilogy comprises Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976). In the films, the characters live in an apartment building, as the name of the trilogy suggests. The apartment is a living space belonging to cities that represent the modern era. It is also a micro-representation of society, as it brings together people from different walks of life.

Polanski's films contain the dark spaces of the city and modernism (Orr & Ostrowska, 2006). Contrary to what we think, the phenomenon of home in movies is not safe; it is a place where mental problems occur. Because home and apartment represent the country, they do not represent the places where these characters, who are identifiably foreign, find peace. There are intrusive and surveillance-minded neighbors in the apartment building who represent the dominant culture.

The social characteristics of the period in which the films were shot are important in understanding the films. The influence of social movements in the 1960s and 1970s can be seen in Polanski's trilogy. The 60s were a period in which significant changes took place in the world. While the crowding of cities increased loneliness, it enabled people to unite for common interests and begin to defend their rights. For this reason, after the Second World War, anti-war movements, black movements, and women's and gay movements attracted attention in this generation. These movements appear as counterculture. When the Cold War, economic crises, and the collapse of modernism caused movements in the social sphere, identity movements began. In this context, it should be added that the Apartment Trilogy coincides with the “anti-psychiatry” movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The characters in the film also have schizophrenic conditions. Important representatives of the anti-psychiatry movement are Franco Basaglia, Ronald Laing, David Cooper, Michel Foucault, and Thomas Szasz. The fact that medicine is open to abuse, especially due to the relationship between capitalism and the medical sector in America, shows the importance of this movement (see Szasz 1977, 2001; Cooper, 2001). There is even a criticism of psychiatry in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975) during this period (Caputo, 2012, pp. 84–85).

The Apartment Trilogy was shot in a Freudian unheimliche (1919) environment of the 60s and 70s when modern values and institutions collapsed, many old traditions were criticized, identity and civil rights movements rose, and people became alienated in the cities. A Freudian uncanny and a Kristevan abject define the otherness of the characters in Polanski's films. Individuals who become isolated within the values of modernism appear as examples of uncanny and abject within different cultures with their other identities. This state of in-betweenness is one of the biggest handicaps of modern identities. As a director who experiences this alienation in modern culture with his Jewish identity, Polanski deals with the phenomena of uncanny and abject in the context of the identity of other.

In the trilogy that begins with Repulsion, we encounter a Kristevan abject. Kristeva has shown that the modern individual has become an individual as much as he is disgusted. The second movie, Rosemary's Baby, shows that the devil within us is the social order that invades individuals. The female character struggles to become an individual. The Tenant, on the other hand, is the representation of people's increasing deterritorialization and identity crisis in the social sphere. The common motif of these films is the uncanniness in the urban environment. The uncanniness of the modern period causes the characters to live with mental problems. Following this theoretical framework, these three films were examined using Freudian uncanny theory. Thus, in the films, the isolation and identity crises of the characters in the urban environment and modern values are discussed on an individual and social basis.