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identity as it tracks two pairs of identical twins, while
Above, from top: -AUDE !DELAIDE #LEMENS IN Rabbit;
0OLLY !LICE &OULCHER NEXT TO A BILLBOARD SHOWING HER
FAMOUS TWIN SISTER IN A SCENE FROM That’s Not Me
36 • Metro Magazine 195 | © ATOM
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2SNKDM +HED (Curtis Bernhardt, 1946).
While identical twins are utilised as a trope in a range
of genres, they are particularly resonant in works of hor
ror, in which their physical doubling is used to heighten
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tween twins (known as ‘cryptophasia’), which instantly
creates outsiders of everyone beyond the closed circle of
the siblings’ preternatural relationship. In this way, twins
are portrayed as fundamentally transgressive, thereby
making them perfect subjects for horror – a genre con
cerned with creating ‘safe’ spaces within which to enact
and eventually dispel sociocultural anxieties. At the same
time, however, the identity confusion that identical twins
embody tends to also work well with the comedy genre,
in which humour ‘can result from a sense of things being
out of place, mixed up or not quite right’. 4
Dark doubling: Rabbit
The Australian horror/thriller 1@AAHS /XNH 6KDQDKDQ
2017) opens with an intriguing narrative hook. Maude
(Adelaide Clemens) is convinced her identical twin – Cleo
(also played by Clemens), who has been missing for over
a year – is still alive. Having a recurring dream in which
her sister is locked up in a small room, Maude intuits
this as a subconscious message from Cleo, a transfer
ence of lived experience from one twin to another. It is
this perturbing overlay of self and Other that provides the
central premise of 1@AAHS D ĺOP WKDW SOD\V ZLWK DXGLHQFH
expectations by incorporating tropes and conventions
from multiple genres.
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ory of genre, which emphasises that genre works are not
static but rather characterised by a process of repetition
and variance:
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neric repertoire, 1@AAHS R foregrounding of twins’ unique
psychical connection adds a metaphysical element to the
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Maude captured and subjected to invasive experiments
in the service of an enigmatic endgame.
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twin is retained, with Maude simultaneously inhabiting
the positions of both subject and object. In philosophi
cal terms, her role as hero – the sensing ‘I’ – is col
lapsed with that of experiment/object. Within the logic
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