Notkin on Madame Psychosis
the low-pH father had gotten creepy, seeming to behave as if Madame Psychosis were getting younger instead of older: taking her to increasingly child-rated films at the local Cineplex, refusing to acknowledge issues of menses or breasts, strongly discouraging dating, etc. […] Madame Psychosis’s father interdicted everything from brassieres to Pap smears, addressing the nubile Madame Psychosis in progressively puerile baby-talk and continuing to use her childhood diminutive like Pookie or Putti
Context
The dark completion of scene 104's rescuer-Daddy. Notkin spills the real shape of Joelle's father: a low-pH chemist who, as his daughter grew beautiful, "got creepy," behaving as if she were getting younger — child-rated films, baby-talk, the interdiction of "everything from brassieres to Pap smears," the refusal to let her body be adult. It's the predatory pole in its father-daughter variant, the possessive father who arrests his child's growth to keep her his. Per the plan, only the paternal angle is mined here; the Joelle-arc substance (the acid, the veil, the film) belongs to other themes. Set beside the belt-tourniquet Daddy of 104, this is the same man the daughter couldn't yet see.