Just saw it at a screening. I could be wrong, but I think the warts are meant to signify that she may have a little bit of her mom's Broodyism. I think the one on the end was tearing (think of them as eyes) as Candy was crying at the same time from the same side or "eye." It was a subtle juxtaposition, but was immediately what I got from it. So she may soon have the ability to spawn little creatures.
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nola's mother explained when nola was a girl, they had to take her to the hospital frequently due to "bumps" popping up on her that no one could explain. at the time i thought it was the mother's meager explanation for the abuse, and bumps were in fact injuries. but the scene at the end with the bumps on candace's arm to me indicates that the grandma was telling the truth, and candy had inherited whatever weird supernatural power/sickness her mother had.
There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with. Love shouldn't be one of them.
After everything Candy experienced in her brief life of just 5 years -the nasty split between her parents, her mom being away, seeing the dead bodies of two gruesomely murdered people, bundles of resentment turning her life into a nightmare- she was traumatized and her body gave psychosomatic reactions. Nothing 'supernatural' or 'hereditary' about it. Similar psychosomatic reactions happen in real life as well- heard of neurodermatitis?
sharePsychosomatic symptoms do occur from stress, but one must also realize that her symptoms match those her mother had when she was a child.
Therefore, it leads one to wonder whether Candy was so emotionally traumatized that she begins having physical pain, or whether she'll become like her mother.
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¡No hay la banda!
That's because her mother had quite a traumatic childhood herself with a troubled mother of her own.
Rather than trying to trace some hereditary link between the mom and Candy's warts, I see that Cronenberg's providing the audience with a subtle but hard critique of the institutions the society idealizes to a sickening extent. Medicine is one of them (particularly mental health), family is another (particularly the myth of happy nuclear family, happy childhood).
Actually it is a hereditary thing...well, sort of - it's a particularly vicious metaphor about learned behavior being passed down from parent to child. Cronenberg has gone on record as saying he wrote and directed The Brood in response to a vicious custody battle with his ex-wife over their daughter.
Knowing this, this scene in particular is recognizable as a jab at his ex. The daughter's bumps are supposed to represent the possible beginning of her own descent into an Echidnaesque state just like her mom's due to the experiences her mother put her through. However nothing is guaranteed because we only see the beginning stage, it really depends on the father. It's left for him to heal his child and the movie ends with you wondering if he'll be able to or if it's already too late and the child is too damaged.
Essentially, this scene was Cronenberg delivering a metaphorical backhand to his ex saying that her neuroses and her inability to deal with them has caused her to pass along these same problems to their daughter and that it's up to him to make sure she doesn't end up the same way and he doesn't know if he can do it. Now whether that's actually true or whether this was just a very angry man lashing out at someone who hurt him, I couldn't say as I don't know any of the people involved.
It does however lend a whole new level of flavor to the movie.
"hereditary: passing, or capable of passing, naturally from parent to offspring through the genes." (source: dictionary.reference.com)
The film gave no indications to or clues of a hereditary passing (read the dictionary definition above) of the warts from mother to daughter. It was a matter of nurture, familial environment and social institutions that the bumps appeared on the little girl's body, like they did on the mother's. The link is not arbitrary alright, but it isn't hereditary either. Children see children do (in the case of the mother-daughter relation between the grandmother and mother), which brought about a similar kind of trauma for the little girl. Besides, Cronenberg's cinema is infamous for taking body as a battle field of social politics, institutional power and dominating discourses on which the individual gets to be shaped.
Your definition is right, as far as it goes, but it's incomplete. I went to the source you gave and looked it up myself. I hope someone gave you that definition or looked it up for you because otherwise that was just intellectually dishonest.
Hereditary
–adjective
1. passing, or capable of passing, naturally from parent to offspring through the genes: Blue eyes are hereditary in our family. Compare congenital.
2. of or pertaining to inheritance or heredity: a hereditary title.
3. existing by reason of feeling, opinions, or prejudices held by predecessors: a hereditary enemy.
4. Law .
a. descending by inheritance.
b. transmitted or transmissible in the line of descent by force of law.
c. holding title, rights, etc., by inheritance: a hereditary proprietor.
5. Mathematics .
a. (of a collection of sets) signifying that each subset of a set in the collection is itself a set in the collection.
b. of or pertaining to a mathematical property, as containing a greatest integer, applicable to every subset of a set that has the property.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hereditary
You said "It was a matter of nurture, familial environment and social institutions that the bumps appeared on the little girl's body" and according to the 3rd definition given that would qualify as hereditary.
Furthermore, it falls under the 2nd definition of hereditary as well. The manifestation of the bumps on the child as they were on the mother establishes a line of succession thus qualifying it as an inheritance according to the 3rd definition given below.
Inheritance
–noun
1. something that is or may be inherited; property passing at the owner's death to the heir or those entitled to succeed; legacy.
2. the genetic characters transmitted from parent to offspring, taken collectively.
3. something, as a quality, characteristic, or other immaterial possession, received from progenitors or predecessors as if by succession: an inheritance of family pride.
4. the act or fact of inheriting by succession, as if by succession, or genetically: to receive property by inheritance.
5. portion; birthright; heritage: Absolute rule was considered the inheritance of kings.
6. Obsolete. right of possession; ownership.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inheritance (Scroll down past financial dictionary to the place where it gives the full definition)
Long live the New Flesh.
You need to be able to follow the context of the discussion and the semantics of the posts I had previously replied to, *before* you suggest misunderstanding or imply intellectual dishonesty on my part.
I disagreed and still do disagree with the interpretation that the warts have a hereditary quality, since the posts I had replied to (bscribe77's and lizzny2002's) refer to the warts situation as if a biological anomaly genetically transferred from one generation to the next and imply inheritance in that very specific sense ("[...] ability to spawn little creatures" and "[...]inherited whatever weird supernatural power/sickness her mother had"). For these point to only one and mind you, *the first* definition of the word hereditary, I had found it sufficient to stick with what is relevant for the points implied, and had given the dictionary definition applying specifically to those points as well as to what I find disagreeable. To be able to follow correctly what aspects of the previous hereditary argument I had found troublesome, pay attention also to the content of the following posts I made later, in which the nurture-related qualities of familial trauma and the frequent themes of Cronenberg's cinema were also mentioned.
This should help.
Late to reply to this, but I think the connection is quite clear, it doesn't take a degree in psychology to see the link, under immense stress and abuse her mother manifested strange bumps, Candy, after having undergone a horrifying ordeal, manifests the same strange bumps.
Quite clear, frankly.
zider is a lying pro-Uwe Boll douchebag - Note that.
I think you are completely missing out on the fact that Candy's mother was literally controlling the Brood with her emotions which is pretty supernatural and unrealistic IMO. You are trying to force a realistic, physical, scientific conclusion on the end of a film that was anything but realistic...not to mention, you're deducing this from a short frame at the end of a film and a couple other short parts, forming a seemingly arbitrary theory that the bumps are just due to stress. If that were the case, then SO WHAT? OOOH what an IMPACTFUL ENDING that now the girl is so emotionally damaged that she is producing BUMPS! UM NO. That being said, I think the theory that the bumps appearing on Candy's arm at the end DO signify that she has the same hereditary creature mutation that her mother had and that she will in fact brood in the future.
shareIt's pretty obvious the warts in the final shot signifies that the girl will start "Brooding" as time goes by. It's the money shot of a horror flick for goodness sake, it's not there for people to think "oh she's just upset"
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The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime
agree with above, but if were going with the whole deeper meaning
psychological trauma manifests in numerous ways. one person may present with hives, another may be in a coma state, you never know the way the body will respond.
i think the whole point is that one person can react completely unexepectedly to trauma. the mothers 'supernatural' ability is just an exaggeration of this. the daughter presenting with 'symptoms' is also following the common pattern for learned behaviour. the fact we dont see the result of her warts, leads me to think that like a previous poster suggested, that the daughter HAS inherited via observation or genetics certain traits from her mother, but the outcome is very much dependant on the situation.
i personally see this film very much as a statement to how the treatment and handling of mental illness/trauma can greatly alter the body and minds healing process dependent on the person, in particular how one persons reaction can result in drastic and unexpected actions.
or i may be looking way too much into it, and ignoring the fact its a horror movie and well, its not a likely situation now is it?
I agree completely. In fact, I took it to mean that that Eggar's mother at the beginning was telling the truth. That she had not abused her daughter, but that the daughter (Eggar) had some strange "illness" that caused the bumps.
This would also make sense that that Eggar was quite insane. Ruth Mayer and her father were killed with little or no "real" cause. I believe the mother was, then, killed for no cause either. That would explain the conversation she had with cavert when he dropped Candy off at her house. That things "happen" to children that later they blame their parents for, with no real cause.
"I wish I knew how to quit you!" (Brokeback Mountain)
They were warts? I Always thought they were puncture marks from fangs lol.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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i think the mom was some type of mutant. psychoplasmics plus having some mutation caused the freak babies. i dont think either one alone would have resulted in the freak babies. the daughter inherited whatever mutation it was, we know it because she has the same bumps as her mother.
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Presumably as long as she avoids Psychoplasmics or any similar ‘therapies’ she’ll be fine.
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