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F5ve for 60Magazine [Tokyo, 2026]

ira levin was an jewish atheist who wrote a novel in 1967 about claustrophobic misogyny that’s startlingly empathetic towards women and which witchcraft and satanism really take a backseat to the horror of being gaslit and abused by your husband and your doctors who see you as property and how the role of wife and mother can be a socially constructed prison from which there is no escape and which everyone is a potential jailer.

the book (and movie) was very successful and influenced many other stories, some of which are much more about devilry and much less about isolation and abuse and the dehumanization of being psychiatrized, and which are often totally antithetical to the themes levin was exploring in rosemary’s baby.

it is one thing for ira levin to be aware of and distressed about his accidental role in influencing a terrible cultural zeitgeist. it’s another for “us” to condemn him as a bad guy who Got People Accused of murder and rape and witchcraft and who should have renounced his royalties about it. what would that have accomplished? this commentary was from 2002, when he had the gift of over three decades of hindsight. he did not meaningfully start a hate movement or a moral panic… he wrote a book about misogyny that knocked over one small domino which set off an extremely long chain reaction that was impossible to predict. he’s being flippant about the royalties because he knows that he is not actually culpable for what happened and it’s nuts to act like he should be.