http://www.metromagazine.com.au | © ATOM | Metro Magazine 195• 37commodity, one that outsiders want to analyse and eventu
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gies, and the suffering that we watch Maude undergo, it is
the possibility of her psychical connection with Cleo that most
effectively elicits our sympathies, generating both allure and
revulsion, emotion and intellectual engagement.
1@AAHS’s denouement – which proffers more questions than
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consistent with the register of uncertainty that twins bring to
the darker edges of genre cinema.
Likeness and levity: That’s Not Me
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which follows Polly (Alice Foulcher) on her quest to become
a famous actor. Unfortunately for Polly, her identical twin,
Amy (Foulcher, again), has made it big in Hollywood and has
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agent even decides to drop her because she’s ‘too confus
ing’ for casting personnel.
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misapprehension: the sentence ‘That’s
not me!’ signals the anxiety that sur
rounds being mistaken for somebody
else. It speaks to the terror of being
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be recognised. It conjures the ego at its
battlements, demanding recognition. In
light of these concerns, it’s no wonder
that narcissism is a recurring concern
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can’t really say why she wants to act.
We’re made to assume that it’s because
she doesn’t want her twin to be more
successful than she is, and that she
hasn’t mapped out her own trajectory
beyond competing with her sister.
But3G@SR -NS ,Dgoes further, magnifying the reach of
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celebrity that has pervaded popular screen culture. Polly’s
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cession of YouTube celebrities and reality TV personalities
that are trotted out each year. Here, the specular is collapsed
with the narcissistic idealisation of a self that is mediated by
technology, invoking cultural anxieties about the democrati
sation of the visual image: if anyone can transmit themselves
onto a screen, who polices what is rejected and what is
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means that Polly embodies both sides of this tension: the
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with albinism is respectful and captivating, Polly is incensed
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but also, perhaps even more so, by the sneaking validation
afforded by the ‘low’ artform that is the soap opera.
There are several amusing scenes in which Polly visually
apprehends her ideal ego via screens, billboards, posters
and even childhood photographs. As she waits for a train, an
enormous billboard advertising Amy’s breakout Hollywood
performance in3GD !DKK )@Qdwarfs the surroundings.
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recognises herself, then apprehend her envy regarding
acelebrity status that she desires, but which has been
claimed by another.
Here, the notion of doubling encapsulated by identical
twins invokes the Freudian notion of the uncanny, ‘that spe
cies of the frightening that goes back to what was once well
known and had long been familiar’.^7 There is an immediate
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once appealing and somewhat perverse. When Polly starts
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What starts out as amusing is eventually undercut by Polly’s
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veers into troubling territory, the trope of the twin enabling
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canny sensibility that identical twins bring
to the screen. Whether in a horror, thriller
or comedy, these cinematic twins lead us
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hilarity ultimately lies in the distant trace
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one that set restlessness and dissatisfac
tion in motion forevermore.Gabrielle O’Brien is a freelance writer and
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@MC HR @ QDFTK@Q BNMSQHATSNQ SNMetro.An
unrepentant cinephile, she likes it best
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o-DFTXHV /DFDQpStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013,
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(^2) -DFTXHV /DFDQÉcrits: The First Complete Edition in English,
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horror! DFFHVVHG 1RYHPEHU
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social fabric.
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While identical twins
are utilised as a trope
in a range of genres,
they are particularly
resonant in works of
horror, in which their
physical doubling
is used to heighten
tension and magnify a
climate of uncertainty.