The murderous child of horror cinema today creates fear and revulsion with as much relevance as the archetype produced in Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed (1956). The murderous child has the ability to carry the temporal baggage of a culture affected by trauma by allowing an apolitical outlet for memorializing the violence or the motive behind traumatic events that resist a narrative frame. Trauma is not the story of what bad things happened to someone, but the effect that persists both in individuals and cultures. As new traumas occur in a culture, the depiction of the murderous child may change to embody the trauma, thus constantly revitalizing this frequently used horror trope.
Trauma has both personal and social components. When traumatic events occur, the effects resonate through a population, changing the social and personal landscapes of those in its wake. In World War II, soldiers faced the trauma of being attacked by or attacking the enemy, but at home, the removal of the men from relationships, families, communities, and jobs required that those left behind reform the social landscape left in ruin. The Bad Seed performs a drama of separation; in her father’s absence due to a military posting, a little girl becomes overly competitive and amoral, eventually developing into a remorseless murderer. In Gregory Wilson’s contemporary film The Girl Next Door (2008), a single mother corrupts the normal curiosities of children, turning them into militaristic torturers and rapists in a time when an exposé of American troops surfaces, developing both a civic and personal trauma of identity.