Sequence Analysis – Bad Boy Bubby (1993)

Bad Boy Bubby (1993) is a film about a boy named Bubby, who tragically gets locked up in a room with her mother, by her mother, for well over thirty years believing that the air outside is poisonous. When it comes to language Bubby only possesses ability to mimic what others say, and in addition to this he has no ‘common sense’ about society, manners, life or death.

The whole film is taken from an anti-Christ perspective, portraying the downfall of not only Christianity but of religion as a whole category. The mother keeps brainwashing Bubby that whenever she is not home, she tells Bubby ‘Don’t move, Jesus can see everything’. After killing his mother and father, who triggers to collapse the family, Bubby eventually escapes from the house. In fear and with anxiety of the unknown outside world, Bubby wonders off into the world. The chosen sequence begins here.

Looking over the town of Adelaide, Bubby is mesmerized by its size and the number of neon lights, when he overhears a hymn. The camera follows Bubby running fiercely through the demolished industrial area, which could be perceived to represent the collapse of the/his world. In a long-shot, Bubby is seen to be chasing the sign of the God in an open industrial field, to arrive at where the Salvation Army is singing a hymn. Here, the heavily reverberated hymn from the first scene sounds no longer soaring and holy to realistically display the choir as far from divine but as ordinary people. Still half believing that it was something holy, Bubby touches some of the members of the choir and without any knowledge of self-restriction, touches a woman’s breast – a sign of offense to the divine. After joining the line of the choir, he is taken to a local pizza restaurant by a young girl of the choir through the rainbow-colored curtain, which represents homosexuality. The group pays for their meal from the donation can. The sexual exchange of glances between Bubby and the girl is seen with close-ups of the two, with his gaze wondering off later to find Angel (who later becomes his wife) on another table. This immoral conduct is even more emphasized by Bubby going to the girl’s house. Ironically, the first frame in the house consists of the hat of the Salvation Army, whilst the girl is teaching Bubby how to give her oral sex. The two, while having sex, continuously sing hymns, with two significant objects of Christianity: a small Mary statue on her desk and another enormous one just outside the window next to the bed. The camera rolls around the bed with the two in focus on bed, but all the while there is always one of the two statues in the frame whilst they are having sex. A punchline by the girl blatantly express the undignified form of the religion – ‘when I want to feel close to my special friend, Jesus, I sing him a very special song.’

The whole sequence explicitly portrays the fall of religion, which keeps becoming more clear with various characters denying god; an organ player at a church telling Bubby that ‘it is our responsibility to think of God out of existence’ or Angel’s parents going through difficulties with diseases such as cancer and mercury poisoning. The sequence is merely an introduction to the denial of religion, which in return provides Bubby with a loving wife and mother, Angel and two children.

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