A letter signed by the leaders of eleven adoption and child-welfare groups stated

We are concerned that in addition to its intended entertainment value, this film will have the unintended effect of skewing public opinion against children awaiting families both in the United States and abroad...(and) may impede recruitment efforts by feeding into the unconscious fears of potential foster and adoptive families that orphaned children are psychotic and unable to heal from the wounds of abuse, neglect, and abandonment.

My first reaction was kind of summed up by one of the tipsters who emailed us about this story: "It's like claiming Rosemary's Baby would make people stop getting pregnant." Well, it probably did, but that's kind of the point: it would have been a major, irrational leap, and those few people shouldn't dicate our collective action. Are Psycho and The Shining discriminatory against hospitality industry employees? Are The Omen and The Exorcist arguments against having kids?

No. But at the same time, it's true that any good horror movie deals with issues that scare us as a culture, on a subconscious or conscious level. Godzilla dealt with topical issues of post-Hiroshima nuclear fallout. The Day the Earth Stood Still played into Cold War fears. And yes, part of the resonance of Rosemary's Baby comes from fact that pregnancy does involve an element of being taken over, of losing control, and of physical danger.

Those who object to this movie are concerned about just this: systematic portrayal of adopted kids as sinister. And while this may seem overly touchy, it's worth knowing that the movie's original tagline was actually "It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own," which besides being cruel, stupid, untrue, and insensitive, implies that an adopted kid isn't "your own" - by definition inaccurate. I'm not one to dismiss these objections out of hand, simply because it's true that letting little things go is what leads to larger societal attitudes. And those who object to the film worry that older adoptees already have a rough time, given the perception that such cases are usually "troubled" - although the statistics actually tell a very different story. They wish, one assumes, to challenge certain stereotypes we take for granted. But at the same time, while I see their point - The Bad Seed has probably lodged in a lot of our subconscious - I can think of at least as many portrayals of angelic orphans as sinister ones (Annie, Oliver, Night of the Hunter, Australia, hell, even Harry Potter.) At the end of the day, the villain is usually the devil, or some more amorphous form of Pure Evil that Satanists would, I suppose, be within their rights to object to. (Or are they proud of it? I'm confused.) The truth is, no one thoughtful - and, one really, really hopes, no one considering adopting an older child - is going to be swayed by a B horror movie. And if the controversy has got us talking and thinking and actually realizing consciously that this is merely a stupid cinematic trope - I'm for it.

Challenging The "Horrors" Of Adoption [NY Times]

Adoption Groups to Challenge Orphan [Babble]

The Bad Seed, The Good Son, The Omen, The Ring, The Exorcist, the Children of the Corn, The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane. Possessed, bewitched, or merely evil, these sinister, vacant-eyed tots are a horror-movie stock villain. And that's to say nothing of the creepy specters: The Innocents, The Others, anyone under 12 in The Shining.

This week, The Orphan joins the ranks, prompting Slate's Jonah Weiner to examine our fascination. As he points out, they are often used as a critique of the breakdown of traditional family structures. "In these movies, the eruption of evil often comes hand in hand with the disruption of traditional family order. Single moms don't have it easy in the evil-kiddie universe." There's the old chestnut of innocence corrupted, of course, and the fact that this corruption is doubtless the result of some adult original sin, be it societal (nuclear war) or personal (broken families!) All horror movies, if they are really scary, take on something fundamental, after all.

But the scary child genre is especially disturbing because of what it does to us as an audience, and perhaps especially as women. When a character is as unambiguously evil as Damien, or the Good Son, plain and simple it's the director's goal to make us want to hurt children, even kill them, reversing our natural protective instincts in a way that's deeply unsettling. Sometimes there's a sort of Blakeian faceoff between demon child and normal, innocent child (see: The Ring, The Good Son, The Orphanage) as if to show how delicate the balance is between normal and deranged. Usually in these movies the adults start out wanting to protect and care for the demon child, who takes advantage of their naivete. And to me, at least, this is probably what makes them scary: the idea of love and instinct and care unwanted, rejected, scorned - that's a lot darker than the standard issue virgin-hungry axe-wielder.

Minor Threat [Slate]