"Taking back the night": Hospitality in The Changeling on Film

Abstract

Arguing that paranoiac society is experiencing a 'crisis of hospitality', this essay examines the extent to which Beatrice-Joanna 'takes back the night' in three filmed Changelings - using Derrida's separation of hospitality into 'traditional' (conditional, contractual, patriarchal) and 'absolute' (unconditional, radical; a devil's bargain) categories, and Jan Patočka's conception of 'Night' as a means of reclaiming the self from the circumscribed values of the day. Marcus Thompson's Middleton's Changeling (1998) removes any sign of Beatrice-Joanna's consent to De Flores, submitting her wholly to patriarchal 'hospitality' and ultimately causing her disassociation from the self. Jay Stern's The Changeling (2007) does the opposite, creating a consensual romance that subverts the class and gender norms of traditional hospitality - Beatrice-Joanna does not so much take back the night as take it on. Sarah Harding's Compulsion combines Thompson's risqué sexuality and Stern's love story to form a complex picture of rape, consent and female agency, in which its Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores (Anjika and Flowers) occupy the frontiers between traditional and absolute hospitality, alternating between the roles of host, guest and hostage.