Mary also observed on Twitter that her camera’s batteries never seem to run out, and that her wardrobe offers forth whatever she needs, whenever she needs it.
Mary establishes in “hello” and its successor, July 24’s “dislikeness,” that the house in which she’s found herself does not behave the way a house should: The doors don’t open (although whether they’re locked or simply inoperable remains to be seen), the windows can’t break, and food Mary eats regenerates all on its own. Something that is unheimlich feels… off, somehow. To be unheimlich, therefore, is to be un-home-like, lacking in warmth and comfort. To be heimlich is to have all of these home-like qualities. The fact that heimlich deals specifically with the word “home” means it brings to mind something more: A place of comfort, familiarity, warmth, and love. Heimlich can mean a great many things (one of which we’ll return to later on), but one of its primary definitions, Freud points out, is “home-like.” Heimlich doesn’t mean a house the word “house” simply refers to the building itself. Unheimlich is the word for “uncanny” - but its root makes for some interesting analysis, particularly in Mary’s context. In “The Uncanny,” Freud spends a great deal of time discussing the German words heimlich and unheimlich. So: How does the uncanny fit in with all of this? Un-Home-Like As she learns to adjust to this new normal. As she meets - and runs from - four different entities who only come out at night: A woman with a black cloth covering her face and head, a masked woman, a creature made of darkness, and the long fingers of disembodied, sentient shadows. They track her as she learns to live in this isolated house. She posts a new video roughly every one to two months, the majority of which are three or four minutes long (although there are some exceptions, like the 14-and-a-half-minute epic “DO NOT TOUCH”). At the time of this writing, the channel holds 10 more videos, making a total of 11 more, however, are almost certainly to come. There might not be any people, but she doesn’t think she’s alone. But she can’t see anyone else online - she says it’s “like completely alone on the internet.”Įverything in the house is normal during the day at night, however, she says that “things are very different.” The computers in the house work, and she can connect to the internet.
She doesn’t typically show her full face in the videos because, as she puts it, she’s shy. She started filming things “to keep occupied.” It’s a Canon, for the curious. There don’t seem to be any other people around. She can’t break the windows, either she’s tried (unsuccessfully). It’s not clear whether they’re locked or if they… just don’t open. She also doesn’t remember much about who she is. She woke up here a week prior to the video’s date with no memory of how she arrived. She thinks it’s possible that she might be in a copy of her parents’ house. “My name is Mary.” She doesn’t know much, but here is what she does know: The text and the footage both occasionally glitch out, although it’s unclear if the glitching is caused by something otherworldly or whether it’s simply Mary’s aesthetic. Instead, she communicates through text that she’s overlaid on top of the footage. It consists of clips of Mary herself wandering around an affluent-looking suburban house. Called “hello,” the video is short it’s just two minutes and 44 seconds long. Mary uploaded her first video to YouTube on July 9, 2016.
Hi I’m Mary Mary is awash with the uncanny - and ultimately, that’s also what reveals what the whole story is actually about. It is, in short, something familiar that’s been made strange. Something that’s uncanny often retains its original appearance (or something close to it, at least) however, it no longer feels right. In his 1919 essay on the subject, (called, fittingly, “The Uncanny”) Freud defines the uncanny as “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar” - that is, what makes something feel uncanny to us is when we’re familiar with it, but it’s been twisted in some way, shape or form. I’m not always a big proponent of Freud, but there is one concept of his that I keep coming back to again and again: That of the uncanny.
Everything is off - and if she’s not careful, it could end up costing her life.
For a young woman known only as Mary, that’s what every day is like - but when it comes to what the web series Hi I’m Mary Mary is really about, there’s much, much more at play than just a feeling that something is off. Have you ever woken up one day and felt that your surroundings… weren’t quite right? They may have looked the same as always - but something about them seemed… different. Previously: ‘In The Dark’ & The Louise Paxton Mystery.