the uncanny

In the article “Silence as Symptom: A Psychoanalytic Reading of ‘Hush’”, scholar Kelly Kromer mentions the importance of Freudian psychology when critiquing the text – specifically, she references the idea of the uncanny, which is perfect, since it’s a super convenient way for me to bridge this class with my other Schwartz class.

When discussing the Gentlemen and their mental-patient cronies, Kromer explains that “the fears that these silent monsters access bring us back to Freud again: the ‘uncanny is what one calls everything that was meant to remain secret and hidden and has come into the open.’” This is partly accurate, but there’s more. Freud, being that he was Viennese, originally used the word “heimlich” in his treatise, which roughly translates to the English “homey.” Heimlich and unheimlich: homey and unhomey. But “homey” has two meanings: the first, having to do with one’s home, the known and familiar; and the second, having to do with the concealed, the hidden. Therefore, something that strikes us as “uncanny” is something that is both familiar and unfamiliar simultaneously. The best way I can explain it is this: you know that famous logic-bomb used on movie androids? “This statement is false”? The one that explodes the robot’s head because it can’t reconcile the two possible solutions to the question? (“If this statement is false, then it’s lying and the statement is really true; but if the statement is telling the truth, then it’s actually false, just like it said… but it’s also telling the truth, so it can’t be false, but that means it’s inherently false, so it must be true…” KABOOM!) Well, I think that what we tend to label as “uncanny” is the fundamental gut reaction to that ontological logic-bomb: “The Other is You!” …when some part of your (un)consciousness realizes (in not so many words, of course, for as Kromer explains, the uncanny is often more primitive than language can accurately describe): “holy crap, this thing that seems so different from me, so Other, hits wayyy closer to home than I would like.”

Kromer accurately describes the arrival of the Gentlemen in Sunnydale as an uncanny event; she explains that the inability to articulate the uncanny is symbolized in the loss of everyone’s voices. But, to me, the more interesting interpretation is the “return of the repressed” – that is, the return of infantile fears (considered “outgrown”) to the forefront of the adult mind. The Gentlemen are “fairy tale monsters,” the stuff of children’s folklore. Their impending arrival is sung by a little girl as a pseudo-nursery rhyme. They are, quite literally, boogeymen that get you while you’re in bed. (Indeed, it’s important that these Other-creatures “catch” you – and they are at their most violent – when they enter your home… yet another clash of the homey and the unhomey.)

Kromer goes on to explain that “when the town wakes up unable to speak, they regress to an infant-like position, and as such are more susceptible to the nightmare of ‘Hush.’” I think that this is really interesting: without their voices, the residents of Sunnydale become like helpless children against the tyranny of the Gentlemen – the authoritarians, the parents, the veritable dictators of the family unit. When we were small children, we were powerless against our parents’ demands; and something about that lack of control felt horrible. That same feeling, eventually buried as one grows up and achieves self-empowerment, is again unearthed from the unconscious of the characters (and of the viewers) when the Gentlemen arrive; the difficulty in reconciling our adult mind with our childhood fears effectively results in the uncanny.


Kromer, Kelly. "Silence as a Symptom: A Psychoanalytic Reading of "Hush". Nineteen: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. Web. 06 Oct. 2011.