46 - Scene indimenticabili 4 - REPULSION (1965) - Regia di Roman Polanski
Carol shuts herself in at home, doesn’t reply to messages, sees the walls closing in and the hands of ghosts coming out of the wall. In 2026, she would be called a mental wellness influencer and have two hundred thousand followers on Instagram watching her reels about authentic loneliness while the rabbit rots off-screen.
The system that pathologizes Carol is the same one that now produces mental health podcasts hosted by people who have never had a single uncomfortable thought in their lives, turning mental fractures into palatable and monetizable content. Peeping Tom today would be the cameraman for a reality show and no one would find it odd. Eleanor from Haunting would look for her haunted house on Airbnb and leave three stars because the nighttime noises were excessive.
The pre-established order that Polanski subverted still exists; it’s just shifted: it’s no longer the bourgeois morality of the Sixties but the contemporary therapeutic consensus, where everything must be processed, shared, resolved, and finally posted. Carol, who doesn’t talk, doesn’t process, and doesn’t share, is still the real disruptive element—not because she’s crazy, but because she’s impermeable to the system for managing collective anxiety. Poe would be banned for disturbing content. The tell-tale heart would become a true crime series on Netflix with eighties music and a reassuring ending. spostato: