Exploring Depression and Suicide in The Cat Lady

The Cat Lady begins and ends with suicide. Video games have continued to mature as a storytelling medium over the years. We have seen an increasing number of titles sincerely grapple with the tougher aspects of the human experience. The Cat Lady, released in 2012, is a game with depression and suicide at the core of its narrative. The player takes part in a story whose characters struggle with their depressive demons, stepping into the shoes of a woman who is healing from her own depressive and suicidal experiences.

You play as Susan Ashworth. The game opens with you committing suicide. You appear in some sort of afterlife. Meeting an entity who refers to herself as the Queen of Maggots, she tells you she is sending you back to kill five people, who she refers to as Parasites. She is also sending you back as an immortal.

After your exchange with the Queen of Maggots you are sent back to the living world and you wake up in the hospital. Working to get out of the hospital you face off against the first Parasite, a deranged doctor that tortures people for artistic pleasure. Returning home you are greeted by a young woman, Mitzi, who wants to become your roommate. As you continue to play out the story, it is revealed Susan used to be married and had a daughter. Her daughter died and her husband drank himself to death. It is revealed that Mitzi is dying from cancer and is tracking down someone called The Eye of Adam. The Eye of Adam convinced Mitzi’s boyfriend to commit suicide. And Mitzi wants to confront him for her own closure. Susan agrees to help. In your quest to hunt down The Eye of Adam you confront the remaining Parasites until you are face to face with the last one, The Eye of Adam. The game can end a few different ways depending on your choices.

One of the interesting things about The Cat Lady is it establishes a legitimate afterlife and at least one supernatural entity. This creates an interesting discussion around the themes explored in the game, especially suicide. The afterlife space presented in the game is more of a limbo space belonging to the Queen of Maggots. It is never made entirely clear who the Queen of Maggots is. She is old and claims to go by many names. Her role and motives are left up to interpretation. We don’t know why she tasks Susan with hunting down the Parasites, though there are lines later in the game that might provide some hints.

Towards the end of the game the Queen of Maggots suggests she is a part of Susan. This implies she may be a personification of something that exists in everyone. Remember this bit because I’ll bring it back up when I discuss suicide in the game. This also explains the Queen of Maggots’ mission to kill the Parasites. The Parasites are humans who could be said to have no souls. They kill and torture with no empathy. They often draw people in with a false sense of security. The Queen of Maggots wants them dead because in a way they feed off of that part the Queen of Maggots represents.

The player is greeted with the full weight of Susan’s depression from the very beginning. As she experiences what she thinks are her final moments she laments that all she has are the stray cats she has cared for. But they will understand. They always have. When she finds herself in the realm of the Queen of Maggots she can only express weariness. She just wanted it to be over but the Queen of Maggots pushes her back to the land of the living. The Cat Lady is in part a journey of acceptance.

The game for the most part makes no attempts to provide a cure for Susan’s depression. It isn’t something that can cured. It can be treated. It can be coped with. A wheezing beast living in your mind. Some days you can sit peacefully with it in an uneasy alliance and other days it runs rampant taking away the energy you were saving to deal with anything but it. The Queen of Maggots promises happiness at the beginning of the game. At first this seems like a promise for a cure. But it isn’t. Susan is in a better place by the end of the game but she isn’t cured. She herself says that she will always have the “invisible illness” with her but her opening up and friendship with Mitzi has allowed her to better cope with it.

After Susan wakes up in the hospital she has to go through a session in order to assess the risk to herself. Here the player is allowed to choose some of Susan’s history. The player is able to choose whether Susan grew up with both of her parents or neither. The player is able to choose what kind of parents they are. Later in the game Mitzi asks Susan what depression feels like. After Susan answers Mitzi describes what it feels like for her. Each describes their depression in a different way. There is an underlying message that regardless of circumstances depression can infest your mind and that each person’s experience with it is different.

Mitzi and Susan standing in an empty room

Your time at the hospital presents perspectives on how those who need help view treatment. Susan is pretty hostile towards drugs and therapy. The game doesn’t delve deep into society’s view of drug treatment for mental illness but Susan’s own attitude does reflect a stigma people have of drug treatments. Admitting you need drugs is an admission of defeat. You weren’t strong enough. There is also the unwanted side-effects that often come with drugs. The game at one point tries to portray the lethargy and skewed perceptions caused by drugs. And society doesn’t try hard to dispel these unhealthy antagonistic attitudes towards drugs. When you’re on the edge of a mental knife though those drugs can be a life saver. In the end Susan moves on without any drugs but this doesn’t mean this is the right choice for everyone.

Returning home introduces an interesting mechanic for one chapter in the game. You are given two meters. A red one that fills up when something upsets Susan and a green one that fills up when something makes Susan happy. Neither cancels the other out. If the green meter fills up Susan can sleep peacefully, if the red one fills up she suffers a breakdown. Things that cheer Susan up are things like having coffee or a burger cooked just right. Things that can upset her are things like being startled in the dark or seeing unpaid bills. This conveys the fact that what may seem small to other people can make or break the day of someone suffering from depression.

The day after Susan gets home Mitzi enters her life. At first Susan is distrustful. But over the course of the game they open up to each other and form a friendship. Mitzi tells her story to Susan and over time Susan reciprocates. Susan tells Mitzi about her daughter and husband. Mitzi may not be a professional but she’s the only person who Susan makes a connection with. When it comes to depression being able to open up and connect with someone is one of the most important things. Mitzi is able to help her in way no one else had due to that connection.

Regardless of which ending you get, in the final scene of the game Susan expresses how she has learned to cope with her depression through her friendship with Mitzi. Susan admits she will never be rid of her “invisible illness”. Depression isn’t something that can be cured. It can be managed or lessened through drugs, therapy, or other lifestyle choices. But the ghost of that melancholic beast will always hang over you waiting to get you when you least expect it. In two of the endings, where Mitzi dies, Susan is able to meet new people. She goes out with them every once and a while. She allows herself enough of life to not be completely boxed in and alone.

I can’t think of too many games that deal with suicide as directly as The Cat Lady. It isn’t a single plot point that just sets off the events of the game. It is a continual thread that appears again and again. Susan encounters a ghost that wants to commit suicide. Mitzi’s boyfriend committed suicide. Susan commits suicide at least one more time, and possibly another after that. The final antagonist of the game, The Eye of Adam, is a man who encourages and helps people commit suicide online. The climax of the game is a choice between letting your friend commit suicide for revenge or convincing her to move on and living the rest of her days with Susan.

Susan’s relationship with suicide mostly takes place in the first half of the game. The beginning of the game starts with her suicide. To her horror she finds herself in the realm of the Queen of Maggots, faced with the prospect of continuing to live. On replaying The Cat Lady I was caught off guard because the Queen of Maggots implies Susan will be punished for committing suicide. It was jarring in a game that seemed nonjudgmental of people who commit suicide. While the game explores the emotions around suicide it didn’t seem to blame those who attempt or succeed in suicide.

Later dialogue though can be interpreted to mean Susan would be punished because she thought she ought to be punished. The Queen of Maggots is a part Susan. A part that understands her self-loathing. At the beginning of the game Susan believes she is worthless. Suicide just signifies another failure. One she should be punished for. This isn’t an uncommon attitude. Many do feel a sense of guilt for even thinking about it. And again society doesn’t exactly help. Several religious traditions have declared suicide as wrong. A crime against the body. One which can earn you an eternal punishment. Even from a secular viewpoint suicide is often viewed as somehow wrong. It’s a struggle to change these attitudes. To convince others that trying to commit suicide isn’t a moral crime. There is real suffering taking place. And that individual sees suicide as their only option.

The Eye of Adam is a unique antagonist that is hard to read. As a character he is inspired by real people online who encourage and provide ways to commit suicide. There are real forums out there that resemble those described in the game. Places where a pro-suicide message can be expressed. The Eye of Adam is a crippled man who can only communicate with the world through his eye movements. He encourages others to commit suicide, including Mitzi’s boyfriend. He kills his father and tries to goad Mitzi, or Susan if the player lets Mitzi die in an earlier scene, into killing him. A final grand act. We don’t actually learn much about The Eye of Adam. How his physical disabilities have affected his mental health or nuanced explorations of his motives for encouraging and helping other commit suicide. The player gets to choose how things end. You can let Mitzi shoot The Eye of Adam which will kill her also because of the oxygen tanks in the room. You can also talk Mitzi out of it and deprive The Eye of Adam his final wish. If Susan confronts The Eye of Adam alone, due to Mitzi’s death earlier, she fulfills his wish and kills him.

The Cat Lady presents several contexts for suicide. Susan’s suicide at the beginning of the game is linked to her depression. An action she survives and comes to regret. Mitzi’s boyfriend commits suicide. He can’t bear to think about his life without Mitzi or deal with his own emotions around Mitzi’s cancer. Mitzi is willing to commit suicide for revenge. She is going to die of cancer anyway so why not die killing the person who convinced her love to kill himself? The Eye of Adam is willing to commit suicide as a grand last gesture.

The Cat Lady never endorses suicide but also never portrays those who are suicidal or commit suicide as inherently bad. While the game shows you the emotional reaction of those around you it never moves into blaming territory. It sincerely tries to portray what everyone goes through, those that try to commit suicide and those that care for them. Emotions can be complicated for those who survive their suicide attempt. Like many, Susan feels regret. She regrets making the attempt and in the end she’s glad she survived. At the beginning of the game the Queen of Maggots tells Susan death fixes nothing. In the world of The Cat Lady the afterlife is real. Suffering doesn’t end simply because you died. We don’t have that guarantee in the real world. Suicide may end the suffering of the individual who commits it but it does leave emotional damage behind. Coming to embrace life through her relationship with Mitzi helped Susan. This isn’t always easy. Embracing life is a bitch. And sadly some people are never going to be able to do it. While many are able to recover from their suicide attempts there are many who will go on to attempt again and again until they succeed. There are no clear or easy answers when it comes to suicide.

The Cat Lady is a horror game with fantastic and disturbing imagery. It has supernatural elements and its villains are some of the most demented individuals I have ever come across in a video game. Despite all of this the game is extremely well grounded. The fantastical elements help to enhance the exploration of themes such as suicide and depression, not distract from them. The Cat Lady is an example of game that can sincerely explore these issues without using them as a simple plot crutch. The game tries its best to express these experiences to the player. It is a game that presents depression and suicide without judging. A game that hopefully when finished has allowed the player to better understand these experiences.

The Yulin Dog Meat Festival, Eating Dog, and the Dog Meat Trade

For almost a decade now, every year in Yulin, China a festival is held. It is held for ten days over the summer solstice and involves the consumption of dog meat. The festival gets a lot of media every year for the horrendous way dogs are treated during the festival. The conversation around the festival raises questions about cultural practices, animal rights, health, and hypocrisy. I am against the festival and many of the practices around it but have found the festival is a small part of a much larger problem. A problem we should not be afraid to challenge or criticize.

In the East dogs have had a different relationship to humans than they have had in the West. In the West dogs have almost always been seen as man’s best friend. Not just companions to keeps us company but partners in survival. Eating dogs in the West is usually the last resort before we start eating each other. While dogs have also served a companion role in the East they have had a more uneven relationship with humans and it has rarely been taboo to consume dog. Dog is seen as a nutritious meat and is believed to provide seasonal health benefits.

Dogs were domesticated in China thousands of years ago. Many breeds had a place in the Imperial Palace and alongside the Emperor. Dogs were prized and cherished. They were also associated with the higher classes of society. This doesn’t mean that dogs were not eaten. They were. But dog meat was a delicacy for the higher classes. Though over time this changed. Dog meat became cheaper and became associated with the lower classes. During the Cultural Revolution the association between pet dogs and high class doomed them. The food shortage at the time exasperated the issue. Tens of thousands of dogs were killed.

Jump to present day we still have a horrendous dog meat trade, which the Yulin Dog Meat Festival is a part of. I was surprised to learn the festival is a recent event. Most sources I looked at stated 2009 or 2010 for the year it started. One source said it started in the 90s and one source defending the festival claimed it is based on a much older tradition. The festival isn’t officially recognized and the government states that it is simply a gathering of likeminded people.

Selling dogs during the festival makes you money. And in an area of China that has economic issues that can mean another day of surviving. Many of the locals who profit from the festival are simply trying to provide for their family. But this doesn’t change the fact that the festival is a small part of the larger meat trade problem in Asia. Many have tried to defend themselves by saying only dogs raised for meat are killed. And that there is a difference between pet dogs and meat dogs. While I was watching the Vice documentary I was struck by how people would say this but then turn around and not live by that maximum. They would treat dogs as if the role between food and pet could change every other minute.

I am not going to argue that dogs cannot be eaten as food. I think that argument is impossible to make, considering all the other animals we eat. And I am not going to argue against eating meat. That argument is beyond the scope of this article and I don’t think I could present a solid enough argument for no meat consumption at the moment. But what I am going to argue is that the Yulin Dog Meat Festival and the larger dog meat trade it is connected to is wrong.

The dog meat trade exists in several Asian countries. In many of the countries, including China there are no bans on consuming dog meat. Though there has been a growing push both within and outside the countries to ban the consumption of dog meat. Worse is the fact that are almost no laws regulating the dog meat trade. No regulations about the treatment or health of the dogs. No quality control. No transparency about where the dogs are coming from.

Because of the lack of regulations there are many health concerns surrounding dog slaughter in the dog meat trade. Slaughters usually take place in unsanitary conditions. Meat can be left out in the open or left on unclean surfaces. There is also no concern for a dog’s health. Many dogs that are slaughtered may have health issues that go on to affect human consumers.

Probably one of the more nefarious aspects of the dog meat trade is despite the claims of those in the dog meat trade there is little to no evidence of large scale farms where dogs are specifically raised for consumption. There are small farms but not enough to cover the majority of dog meat in the trade. The majority of the dogs seem to be kidnapped or strays rounded up. Regardless of where the dogs come from they are treated like shit. They are shoved into confined and unsanitary spaces. Many dogs die of illness during transport. From the moment they are taken they are in an environment of fear. They are often physically neglected and beaten. They can be tortured due to a belief that the adrenaline will make the meat taster better.

I want to underscore the suffering here because the suffering is the problem. It is wrong. One of the biggest push backs whenever criticisms of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival or the dog meat trade comes up is that it’s a different culture and we have no right to judge. My answer is no. The suffering of another creature, human or otherwise, is not up to cultural whims. Causing unnecessary and excessive suffering is wrong.

Many of the dogs are ripped from familiar environments, taken away from their human companions and spend the rest of their days in emotional distress and physical torture before they are brutally killed. It’s not just dog’s lives that are destroyed. Humans lose a companion and if they are in a rural area they also just lost a sense of security. The kidnapping and abuse for the meat trade causes suffering all around.

There is another point I want to address. Every time this issue comes up there is always someone who says, “Well how about the way we treat animals in the West?” Oh the hypocrisy! This sort of comment doesn’t actually achieve anything. I think you would be hard pressed to find among the activists someone who wants to just ignore the way we treat cattle or chickens in the West. The same could be said of those who say we have more human centric issues to worry about. There are a lot of issues in this world. The entirety of the human race doesn’t need to be focused on only one issue at a time. We can fight issues on many fronts. The way we treat other species is a global issue.

The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is a small event. Eating dog meat in China is not common. And some are surprised to learn that some people in their country eat dogs and that there are festivals for the consumption of dog meat. There has been a large push back within the country to fight the dog meat trade. This includes fighting against the Yulin Dog Meat Festival and other festivals that help keep the dog meat trade alive. There is no kindness in the dog meat trade. Only cruelty. There has been a tradition of eating dog but that does not mean we should tolerate a tradition of suffering.

I focused on the dog meat trade because that is what the Yulin Dog Meat Festival is about but there is also a cat meat trade with the same issues as the dog meat trade. If you want to help combat the dog and cat meat trades their are several organizations in different countries working to rescue these abused animals and pushing legislation to ban dog and cat meat. Find one you agree with/find reputable and donate or volunteer if you can.

Works Consulted (Sources Contain Graphic Imagery)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfaZeIxHFUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjbWQAASPcs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lychee_and_Dog_Meat_Festival
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/06/21/the-yulin-dog-meat-festival-is-no-cultural-pillar-why-it-needs-to-stop-now/#60c2dafc3862
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cfthomas/2016/06/23/5-things-to-know-about-chinas-yulin-dog-meat-festival/#4a35827f141b
https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/chinese-dog-meat-trade-uncovered.html
http://gbtimes.com/life/chinas-love-hate-history-dogs
http://time.com/4363824/yulin-dog-meat-festival-china-petition/
https://cpianalysis.org/2016/07/09/the-food-politics-of-dog-eating/
https://cpianalysis.org/2016/07/28/what-you-dont-see-doesnt-exist-the-edible-dog-in-china/

My Life With Food – Growing Up

I love food. Not just stuffing my face with it. Food and food culture are a foundational part of the human experience. Sit two groups of people down, who don’t speak the same language or know anything about the other. Have them trade meals and they would gain just as much as having a conversation. Food is a language in of itself. Over the years I have developed a better understanding of food and food culture and what it means to people and their identity. How they live and their relationship to the rest of the world. From time to time I’ll do an article about my experiences, thoughts, or philosophy of food. Here I’ll start at the beginning of my relationship with food.

I grew up in a family that knew its food. My grandparents on my dad’s side ran a farm. My grandpa raised cows and chickens. Once in a while he would bring my dad those big blocks of cheese. Or pounds of meat from a slaughter. My dad moved into the city and I really only ever ended up on the farm during the holidays. But I always got to experience the fruits of their labor.

My dad’s family always did these traditional mid-western family meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving belonged to my aunt and Christmas belonged to my grandparents. I’m going to focus on Christmas because my emotions involving food are more associated with Christmas than Thanksgiving. The main dish for Thanksgiving and Christmas had always been turkey. But at some point I said we should have fried chicken for Christmas. I don’t remember how old or how serious I was but my grandma obliged. Every Christmas forward we would have fried chicken.

When I got the chance I enjoyed watching my grandma cook. One year she showed me you could keep a pot of boiling water from boiling over with a wooden spoon. It’s a simple piece of knowledge but it’s one that means so much because it’s wrapped in an emotional blanket.

My grandma passed away a few years ago. I still miss her. I wasn’t there the last couple of Christmases she hosted. I had moved further away and retail is a bitch when it comes to taking time off for the holidays. But she carried on making that fried chicken. I’m a bit stoic with my emotions and I don’t know if I ever let her know how much a simple Christmas dinner meant to me. She changed the way we ate simply because her grandson asked her to. She didn’t have to. I don’t know why but that meant a lot to me. Christmas for me the last few years has had a melancholy aftertaste. I think about the days we sat around the table digging into the food she made. Pouring out the candy in our stockings stuck to the wall.

I still haven’t joined my dad’s family for Christmas. Things move forward, things change. I have had the pleasure of joining them for Thanksgiving but the last couple of Christmases I’ve spent with my fiancé’s family. Christmas isn’t the same but it doesn’t need to be. Thanksgiving dinner isn’t even the same. That too has evolved over the years. But there is still great tasting food all around so it’s all good.

As I write this I realize just how much I associate food with my grandparents. When I was young my grandparents owned a bar. Apparently I called it the “free food place”. If my brother and I came in the morning my grandma would be in the kitchen making us breakfast. Sometimes grandpa would let us have a bag chips from the selection hanging over the bar. If we came at night I would always get chicken drummies. Days weren’t always easy. My parents struggled for financial survival and their own personal demons. Things that flew over my head at that age. But there were always these moments food could comfort.

One final note on this set of grandparents and food. I don’t remember when it became a ritual but every time my brother and I visited our dad, my grandparents would come on Sundays with a box of doughnuts. We would sit there chowing down on doughnuts while they drank coffee. We would catch up. My brother and I would be ourselves. These days too disappeared. I stopped visiting my dad during high school. The only times when I would see my grandparents after this would be during holidays or if they decided to visit the local Perkins where I lived.

I generally think of my mom’s side of the family more as sweet makers. My grandma made cakes for a living. She can cook other things too, but cakes or other baked sweets is what I’ve always associated with her. I think the other food thing I associate with my grandma, besides cake, is the family reunions she would take me to. Her extended family would gather every year at a lake. There would be food and summer activities. There was a lake to swim in. One year I got a tick that refused to drink my blood or drop off. The food was your standard mid-western potluck food. Various forms of fruit salads. Noodle or slow cooker dishes.

I don’t remember much about the food my great-grandmother made but there are a couple of food related things that have stuck with me. She lived in a small mid-western town. She canned a lot of her own vegetables. She also had a rhubarb patch. And I love rhubarb. And apples. She also had an apple tree.

Now for the food I grew up with day to day. I don’t remember much about the food my mom would regularly make. I have memories of hamburger helper and tuna noodle casserole. We were lower middle-class and didn’t have the money for anything too expensive. But we had what we needed.

One food ritual I remember fondly is every two weeks we would order Godfathers pizza. These were the weeks my mom got paid and we would treat ourselves. Godfathers has always remained my favorite fast food pizza. I also worked there my senior year of high school. I say it’s because I think it really does taste better than all the others but maybe it’s just an emotional attachment to those moments. Nothing beats chowing down on pizza and watching Red Dwarf and Doctor Who on Iowa Public Television.

Another food ritual we had might explain my preference for Burger King over McDonalds. Every other weekend my mom would take me to spend the weekend with my dad. On the way there we would drive through Burger King. It became a ritual treat in the same way Godfathers was.

Until my senior year in college it was just my mom and I. She tried dating and had a partner or two but they never worked out. It’s not easy being a single mother, especially in your 20s. But she worked hard to make sure I had a roof over my head and food in my belly. She was usually gone in the morning before I left for school and didn’t get home until a couple hours after I did. I learned to fend for myself food wise as early as I could.

And my mom gave me the freedom to experiment with food, even when it resulted in a destroyed kitchen. In one of my earliest attempts at fried chicken I coated the chicken in powdered sugar instead of flour. I thought the flour was a little funny but didn’t think too much about it. My mom got home as I was frying and pointed out my mistake. We finished frying what we had, with uneven results. Some of the pieces we were able to cook all the way through. The skin ended up with a nice BBQ taste but sometimes the meat wouldn’t cook all the way before the skin started getting burnt crispy.

In high school I stopped eating school lunch. I played it off with others as not needing it but it wasn’t something we couldn’t afford at the time. I could have probably gone back on school lunch at some point but I had gotten used to not eating lunch. Instead when I got home from school I would load up on sandwiches. Or other foods I could readily make. Like hot dogs or macaroni and cheese.

My dad would almost always make the food when I went to visit him. He would make fried chicken a lot, much to annoyance of my brother who grew to hate it for a while. My dad would make other staples, like sloppy joes. I do have one negative memory when it comes to my dad and food.

I wanted to make something for the pastor of the church we went to. I decided I wanted to serve tuna noodle casserole. My mom had prepped some stuff so I could just combine things and put it in the oven. But I didn’t get the chance. I was off doing something else and my dad took it upon himself to make the tuna noodle casserole. He didn’t think it was a big deal. I was pissed and upset. I tried holding it in. I’m still annoyed about it to this day.

It’s hard to recount my entire journey with food. I think most people would struggle to. I’ve tried to cover the major beats I had with food while growing up. My ties with food were deeply personal and familial but I didn’t associate food with a cultural aspect. It wouldn’t be until later in life I would understand the cultural dimension food. I recognize the food I grew up with was part of a particular culture. And while I have branched out there is a certain comfort in those foods I grew up with.

Bloody Mary

You’re young. You’re at a sleepover and the party has moved into the middle of the night. It’s that time of the night when the urge to tell a scary story begins to rise. A story or two is told then someone says, “Have you guys heard about Bloody Mary?” Among the giggles and looks everyone agrees to give it a try. Everyone gathers in the bathroom, huddled together in your pajamas. Starring into the mirror someone turns the lights out. After a moment of hesitation someone starts saying “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.” Nothing happens. But someone twitches. Someone screams they see something. Now everyone is screaming and frantically trying to open the door. It opens, everyone runs out. The screaming stops once everyone is out. In the end everyone laughs it off.

Bloody Mary is an urban legend that has been around for at least forty years. The above narrative is a typical narrative of those that try to act out the Bloody Mary ritual. I was really young when I was exposed to this urban legend. The version I knew said that if you stood in a dark bathroom, in front of the mirror, and said “Bloody Mary” three times her bloodied face would appear in the mirror.

I don’t know where I originally heard it from. I was that odd kid who liked scary stories and spooked out others with them. There were a couple of times the kids at my daycare went into the bathroom and tried it out. When I was a little older I found myself in the bathroom with some friends, we were looking at a glow in the dark puzzle. One of the older ones started saying “Bloody Mary.” I was the one closest to the mirror. They bolted out of the bathroom and held the door shut, leaving me in a panic. I don’t know if I saw anything, I tried my best to not look in the direction of the mirror.

The common elements of the legend are that you stand in front of a mirror in the dark and perform some sort of ritual. Once the ritual is performed the apparition known as Bloody Mary is supposed to appear. There are many variations of these core elements.

In some versions the ritual can only be performed at certain times otherwise she does not appear. You can either do it alone or in a group. The ritual itself is also varied. Sometimes it is performed with candles. There are a varying amount of times you should say “Bloody Mary,” sometimes you say something different such as Mary Worth which is a popular alternative. And what appears and happens also varies. In some versions you will only see a bloodied face in others she is supposed to lunge out of the mirror and try to harm you.

So where did this urban legend come from and who is Mary? In some versions she remains nameless. She has also been linked to historical figures like Queen Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, the Virgin Mary, or Mary Magdalene. She has also been said to have been a burned witch or a child killer. Among the many many versions of the legend that is passed around by teenagers there are many more explanations of who Mary is supposed to be.

The origins of the Bloody Marry legend are hard to trace. One of the earliest academic recordings of the myth comes from 1976. In this version the name that is chanted is “Mary Worth” which should be chanted forty-seven times. When she appears she is supposed to appear with a wart on her nose and a knife in her hand. When this version was recorded Bloody Mary was already an urban legend being passed among school children. Some of the versions of the Bloody Mary legend do have some overlap with other folklore such as banshees or some versions of the disappearing passenger legend. These overlaps though do not make it any easier to find where what we know of as the Bloody Mary legend started.

It should be noted that the mirror element of the legend has links to divination. Using reflective surfaces such as mirrors or pools of water has long been a method of summoning/communing or foretelling the future in folklore and occult traditions.

Does the Bloody Mary legend mean anything? Is it a reflection of subconscious fears we carry in our youth? Dundes argues that the Bloody Mary myth is a reflection of pre-pubescent girls’ fears about womanhood and menstruation. He basses this conclusion on the blood imagery that often appears in the legend and the fact that the ritual is more often performed by pre-pubescent girls at parties or sleepovers. He also draws upon certain versions of the myth such as one where blood is actually drawn from the participants during the ritual. And another one where instead of looking at the mirror you should look at the water in the toilet or some versions that suggest flushing the toilet as a way of banishing Mary. He suggests this focus on the toilet parallels the flushing away of menstruation.

Norder offers alternative meanings behind the legend. He suggests that the legend might be an attempt to scare children away from occult practices by religious leaders or to warn people away from calling upon the Virgin Mary outside of proper ritual. He also suggests it could be a reaction from Protestant leaders to scare people away from calling on Mary instead of Jesus.

There is another interpretation of the Bloody Mary legend. It could just be a good scary story that kids tell each other. It is a scary story that has the participants act it out, adding to the tension. While it is true that ritual is often performed by pre-pubescent girls it is also sometimes performed by boys or those well into their teens. Given the age of the legend this disproportion can be explained others ways. At the time that this legend started to bud gatherings of boys or girls would have had different expectations.

It would have been normal for girls to have sleep overs and easy access to a bathroom in order to perform the ritual. Coupled with the generalization girls or young women travel to bathroom in herds no one would question the gathering for the ritual. Boys would have had different gatherings such as camping trips where they would have had their own stories to better suite the setting. A gathering of boys for a ritual around the bathroom might have raised some eyebrows.

Another explanation for the ritual being mostly performed by girls is it might have some continuity with another folklore tradition that was performed by young women. A woman was supposed to walk backwards up a flight of stairs while holding a candle in one hand and a mirror in the other. While gazing into the mirror they were supposed to glimpse the face of the future husband. But they could also see a skull which meant they were going to die before getting to marry. If parts of the Bloody Mary legend did grow out of this piece of folklore it might help explain why it exists predominantly among girls and young women.

Scary stories often contain bloody imagery so it is not out of the ordinary. A bloodied face is probably also a close description of what people might actually see as their mind plays tricks on them as they stare into the mirror. There is also another explanation for the toilet elements within some versions of the legend. As I already mentioned, pools of water were also used to commune with spirits. The toilet contains its own pool of water to summon Bloody Mary. Flowing water is also associated with banishing negative or evil spirits. Flushing the toilet in a way creates a source of flowing water in order to banish Bloody Mary.

Bloody Mary is not an obscure legend. It continues to be passed to each new generation. It has entered into entertainment. It has inspired several movies, episodes of The X-Files, Supernatural, Charmed, and Ghost Whisperer. It has been mentioned on Warehouse 13 and parodied in an episode of South Park. The legend has even spawned a horror comedy web series called The Bloody Mary show. The urban legend is thriving and its haunting apparition is going nowhere soon. Bloody Mary will be waiting to grab us from our mirrors for generations to come.

Works Consulted

Dundes, Alan. “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety.” Western Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 2/3 (Spring – Summer, 1998), pp. 119-135. – An interesting article that tries to interpret the Bloody Mary legend as being about the anxiety young girls feel about menstruation. I already argued against his conclusion but the article also sidetracks sometimes into berating other folklorists for not reading meaning into urban legends and folklore. He also relies upon Freudian analysis to make some of the connections that forms his conclusion.
Norder, Dan. “The Face in the Mirror: Looking at Bloody Mary, Mary Worth and Other Variants of a Modern Legend.” 2003. – A pretty good article that surveys the Bloody Mary legend including its overlap with other folklore. I originally found the article online but the site that it was hosted at no longer seems to be up. I searched but it looks like the article has not been uploaded to a new home. Thankfully I had printed off a copy of the article when I originally stumbled across it. It is unfortunate that it is no longer available as I feel it is an interesting and valuable piece in studying Bloody Mary.
Schwartz, Alvin. “A Ghost in the Mirror.” More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. 1984.
Tucker, Elizabeth. “Ghosts in Mirrors: Reflections of the Self.” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 118, No. 468, Emerging Legends in Contemporary Society (Spring 2005), pp. 186-203.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_%28folklore%29

Studying History

Personally I feel like everyone should study history. It is one of those topics that is taken for granted. Many people disregard history but don’t realize how much history shapes and defines the world we live. Many conflicts are based on certain interpretations of history and many cultures define their identity on a certain view of history. But what goes into studying history? What difficulties do we face when we construct our historical narratives?

The Sources

Unfortunately we do not have a perfect recording of the past. We have to piece together a picture from what little scraps history has decided to leave us. We have to reconstruct the kind of world our ancestors lived in and we have to grasp at the motivations and thoughts of those long gone.

There are many sources we rely on to reconstruct the past from excavated villages or cities to written works. All sources are up to certain amount of interpretation and several often have to be used in conjunction with each other.

The trouble with certain sources such as written ones is how much scrutiny are we supposed to treat them with? Often we have sources that talk about one period of time but were written much latter. The gospels were written 30-50 years after the estimated death of Jesus. Are certain elements of the gospels reflective of the time of Jesus or the time they were written? The war involving Troy mentioned in the Iliad was thought to be a myth but then archaeological evidence showed that there might be a grain of truth to the story. But how much of the Iliad could actually be trusted as a historical source?

Even if we decide to trust a certain source we have to take into account biases or misinformation present in the source. How much of the descriptions about the Germanic people can we trust from the Romans or from Christian missionaries? Or descriptions of the Native populations from early European colonizers to the Americas?

Archaeological evidence can also be difficult to work with especially if you have no other sources to work with it. Collaboration is important when it comes to reconstructing the past. Using several sources together can help create a clearer picture of a certain moment in the past while helping us to see what biases might exist in certain sources. With the use of several sources we can piece together a picture that is rarely ever completed.

The Many vs The Individual

One question that arises from studying history is the question of whether the social-political currents of a time or the individual is of greater influence. Would have the Reformation still have taken place without Martin Luther? Would the Second World War still have happened without Hitler? Both the Reformation and World War 2 are intimately tied with these individuals but they were riding on social-political currents that had been bubbling to a point for a while.

During Luther’s time the populace was fed up with the Catholic Church and its abuses. Some individuals tried to break away but such movements often failed. There was outcry for reform. Was Luther simply the first one to pop that bubble or was there something about his character or place in society to push for what became the Reformation? Luther’s actions led to the formation of other denominations that were able to survive and reforms within the Catholic Church. Some have argued that if Luther did not start the Reformation others would have simply filled his role; the social-political climate was there it just needed someone, anyone to pop that bubble.

Europe was still tense after the end of the First World War. Germany resented its treatment under the Treaty of Versailles. Economically it was in shambles. And the efforts of those in power to maintain a stable Germany was failing. Some debate has been had on what a Europe without Hitler would have looked like. Some have argued, due to other factors in Europe, war would have broken out. But that this war would have been a vastly different war than what we ended up with. Others have argued that it was Hitler’s charisma and ambition that drove Europe to war, that without him Germany might have still have flexed some military muscle but it would have been on a much smaller scale.

One of the issues with examining what is more of driving force in history is it always makes us play the what if game. In the end all we have is what have. History played out the way it did. By trying to figure out what might have happened if certain factors were different we toe the line of speculative fiction. What is likely is that some moments are driven more by a con-flux of factors and other times are driven by individuals.

What does history mean to us?

Everyone has their own history. This becomes apparent when history enters public discourse and we see how everyone uses history to craft a part of their identity. In the 1990s the Smithsonian tried to create a display to remember the bombing of Hiroshima. There was a proposed 300 page script that was supposed to go along with this display. Those that crafted it tried to be balanced and unbiased but when it was revealed there was a backlash. Some felt the script sympathized with the Japanese too much and that the valor and courage of U.S. soldiers wasn’t explored enough. Those that crafted the narrative for the display were accused of rewriting history and trying to make it more politically correct. In the end the original exhibit that was envisioned was done away and replaced with a smaller more low key exhibit.

More recently there was debate over changes the Texas State Board of Education wanted to make to its text book standards. There was a lot of argument of what elements of American History should be focused on and how should somethings be presented. Why should country music be talked about but not hip-hop? How do we handle unsavory topics of American History such as the abuse of Native American cultures and slavery? There is a certain interpretation of history that is the correct American view. To interpret it a different way is to rewrite it and to dishonor our heritage.

People tend to think that their view of history is the only correct view before realizing it can be perceived differently by different people. A white man will perceive the history of slavery differently than a black man. Even if the white man understands and is disgusted by that history and views it as an atrocity he will not have to live under its shadow like the black man. The black man has to struggle against the effects that slavery and its attitudes have left behind.

History also tends to age. As we move further away from a certain point in history our concept of that time becomes distorted. People are remembered differently. The founding fathers become idolized versions of what they really were. Golden ages that never existed are remembered. People long for the 1950s that never existed. Wars and battles become myth. The war that involved Troy becomes immortalized in the Iliad.

History can help us to avoid repeating the same mistakes. But this rarely is the case. The human race continues to play out its depravity in war, subjugation, political, social and economic abuses. But we should continue to study history in case we are able to avoid those horrors again. We also need it. There is a need in the human spirit to try and understand were we came from and to try to place ourselves in the fabric of human history. But we must be careful to not tie ourselves down too much with one interpretation of history. If we can learn to see history from different perspective we might be able to better understand other people, other cultures better. We can become a more unified people through history and maybe one day avoid the horrors that we continue to repeat over and over again.