Bitch Flicks – Page 172 – The radical notion that women like good movies

In ‘Game of Thrones’ the Mother of Dragons Is Taking Down the Patriarchy

While many women orchestrate machinations behind the scenes, no woman is openly a leader, boldly challenging patriarchy to rule. Except for one. Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen.

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys in Game of Thrones

Written by Megan Kearns for our Infertility, Miscarriage and Infant Loss Week. | Warning: Spoilers ahead!

When I first wrote about Game of Thrones two years ago, I wrote about its vacillation between showcasing strong, intelligent female characters and its sexist objectification and misogynistic rape culture.

I received an exorbitant amount of comments on my criticism of the show — even though I simultaneously lauded its brilliant acting and interesting characters and dialogue. Some told me I didn’t understand anything about the show. Others told me to wait, just wait as it would get better. While the show suffers serious problems, particularly in its sexposition and depiction of graphic female nudity, as the show has progressed, it has indeed become more and more feminist.

We witness more of the women expressing their disdain for their lot in life due to their gender. We see women buck gender norms (Arya, Brienne, Yara Greyjoy) and we see women scheme to surreptitiously assert their power (Margaery Tyrell, Cersei Lannister, Olenna Redwyne) or even just to better their lot in life (Shae, Ros, Sansa).

While many women orchestrate machinations behind the scenes, no woman is openly a leader, boldly challenging patriarchy to rule. Except for one. Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen.

When I first wrote about Dany (Emilia Clarke), I was captivated by her. She drew me in immediately and became my favorite character. I loved watching her transformation from meek and timid, bullied by her creepy brother Viserys, to a powerful yet kind-hearted Khaleesi (Queen). Each episode she grows more bold and assertive. Yet she continually strives to be fair and just. Watching her growth has been the most enjoyable aspect of the series.

Daenerys marries Khal Drogo in an arranged marriage in order to secure Viserys, rightful heir to the Iron Throne after the murder of their father the king, an army so he can claim the throne. Viserys uses Dany, telling her he would have all 40,000 Dothraki rape her if it garnered him an army. Nice guy.

After a rapey wedding night (Sorrynotsorry, fans. It is), Daenerys and Drogo eventually form a bond and fall in love with one another. (I know, I know, but bare with me). Dany grows more confident and assertive both with her sexuality and her authoritativeness in giving the khalasar (clan or tribe) commands. Months later, when Viserys hits her, she hits him back and tells him if he strikes her again, she will have his hands cut off.

When Dany becomes pregnant with a son, she eventually convinces her husband to cross the sea, something the Dothraki fear, in order to claim the Iron Throne and rule. Both Daenerys and Drogo believe their son Rhaego will be the heir to the throne, calling him the “Stallion Who Mounts the World,” because according to a Dothraki prophecy he will be a great khal (king) of khals, uniting the Dothraki as one khalasar (clan or tribe) and conquer the world.

Game of Thrones

After Khal Drogo’s khalasar conquer a village, Daenerys — growing more confident and outspoken — prevents the men from raping the enslaved women. When challenged by her husband, she boldly defends her decision, trying to advocate for the women’s rights. Rather than crediting his wife’s penchant for advocacy, Drogo tells her she grows fierce as their son grows in her womb, “filling her with fire.”

But after her husband has a wound, Mirri Maz Duur an enslaved shaman whose life Dany spares, treats his injury. Yet he falls deathly ill. Mirri tells Dany how to save him, by using blood magic, something forbidden by the Dothraki. Dany follows her instructions. Yet she goes into labor and passes out. When Dany awakens, her advisor Jorah tells her that her son was born dead and deformed with scales. She’s been “rewarded” by having Drogo a shell of his former self in a catatonic state. When Dany confronts the shaman, asking when she will be reunited with her husband, Mirri replies:

“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”

Mirri’s spell took the life of Daenerys’ unborn son as revenge for the Dothraki attack on her village. Also inherent is an infertility curse, that Dany will not have any of her own children. She loses the lives of both her husband and her unborn child.

With nothing left to lose, Daenerys resolves to make a bold and drastic decision which showcases her resolve and empowerment. As Angela Smith wrote on bereaved mothers at Bitch Flicks:

“It’s not uncommon for women to feel empowered to make drastic changes after losing a child. They may, understandably, become far less tolerant of others due to the realization nobody at all can break them down any further than they’ve already been broken.”

Dany has one of her Khalasaar place 3 dragon eggs she was given as a wedding present on the pyre. As the fire burns, she steps into the flames, despite the protestations of Jorah. In the morning, a new day has dawned. Dany emerges from the ashes unharmed, and the eggs have hatched with the 3 dragons perched on her body.

Daenerys becomes the Mother of Dragons

But now that she has lost her son, Daenerys decides she will take the Iron Throne herself and rule the Seven Kingdoms. After all the men in her life — her husband, son and brother — have died, she claims the throne for her own.

Dany becomes the metaphorical phoenix rising from the ashes, purging the last vestiges of her former timidity to transition into her life as a powerful leader.

At the end of season one, I’ll admit I worried that her magical powers were somehow explaining away her awesomeness. But now I see that no, it’s merely to highlight the importance of her role in Game of Thrones — as a woman leader challenging sexism.

Daenerys is continually called the Mother of Dragons, spoken with awe and reverence. In many cases, women are allowed to lead or be ruthless as lioness mothers. And while Dany lost her son, and she may be cursed with infertility by Mirri, she still remains a mother figure. She envisions herself as the mother to her 3 dragons. In the second season’s episode “Prince of Winterfell,” Dany’s dragons are kidnapped in the city of Qarth. When Jorah tells her to abandon them, that they are not her children, and escape, Dany replies:

“A mother does not flee without her children…They are my children, and they are the only children I will everhave.”

Daenerys risks her life to save her dragons, and they save her life and free her when she’s captured as well. The mysterious masked woman Quaithe tells Jorah that “dragons are fire made flesh…and fire is power.” Daenerys has given birth to power. Power contains a duality – it can subjugate and torment or it can crush oppression and yield justice.

Speaking with confident assuredness, Daenerys tells those that doubt her:

“When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who have wronged me! We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground!…I will take what is mine, with fire and blood!”

In season 3, after having survived the treacheries in the city of Qarth, Daenerys looks to procure an army in the city of Astapor in order to take the Iron Throne. Despite her steeliness, she has not lost her kindness. She tries to give water to a dying slave. She doesn’t hide her horror and disgust during negotiations when she hears that murdering a newborn in front of the infant’s mother is a component of the training for the highly skilled slave warriors, the Unsullied. To her advisors, she expresses her unease over buying slaves for an army. She doesn’t want the “blood of innocents” on her hands.

Daenerys with advisors Ser Jorah Mormont and Ser Barristan Selmy

In last week’s episode “And Now His Watch Is Ended,” Game of Thrones turned a corner in perhaps the most feminist episode of the series.

Daenerys makes a trade for all 8,000 Unsullied warriors, appearing as if she’s going to give up her dragon Drogon to make the exchange. But it’s all a ruse. When the brutal slaver Kraznys — who has insulted Dany with sexist, slut-shaming insults, erroneously thinking she didn’t understand the Valeryian language — is irritated that her dragon doesn’t obey him, she retorts that of course he doesn’t, “a dragon is a not a slave.” Dany then orders the Unsullied, now in her command, to murder the slavers and break the chains off the slaves. She frees the enslaved warriors, asking them to fight for her as free men. Daenerys then drops the whip equating ownership of the slaves. In essence, she drops the symbolic weapon of tyranny and oppression, heralding rebellion.

If there was ever any question, Daenerys is clearly here to dismantle the patriarchy.

Not only is she a woman leader, her very existence challenging the status quo. But Daenerys openly questions and challenges patriarchal norms. She refuses to abide by societal gender limitations mandating men must rule. She’s determined to forge a different path. Rather than follow in the footsteps of leaders embodying toxic masculinity, she’s determined to rule through respect, kindness and fairness — not through intimidation or fear. Daenerys refuses to enslave people. She wants to emancipate them.

The Mother of Dragons cares for the dragons as if they were her own babies. Could it be that Daenerys will become the archetypal mother of humanity? Perhaps. She’s wielding justice, crushing oppression and protecting the weak. Yet it is the loss of her son that enables Daenerys to envision herself in the role of leader. No longer is she supporting a man to be a great leader. She has become that leader.

The princess has become a queen.

Dany being a badass. Boom.

Empty Wombs and Blank Screens: The Absence of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss in Media

Written by Leigh Kolb for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

The students in my African American Literature class read Audre Lorde’s “Now That I Am Forever With Child” this week. I pointed out that although none of us had given birth, we could feel and understand the poem, and as a result even understand the experience on a deeper level.

I asked the one young man in the class his reaction to reading a poem about pregnancy and childbirth. He said that when he first read it, it seemed like something very foreign that he couldn’t imagine, but after reading it again and discussing it, “it felt familiar.” Familiar.

I write and talk often about how women’s stories are marginalized if they’re even told at all, and how that continuously degrades our experiences. I kept thinking about the word familiar, and how powerful it is when others’ lives and experiences are familiar to us. The role of media, in large part, is to familiarize us with life. Feature films and television series serve to entertain, but they play a larger role in normalizing and informing audiences of life–confirming our own lives and introducing us to the lives of others, even if those lives are fictional.

Representations of infertility and pregnancy loss in film and on television are greatly lacking. Neither of these life experiences is familiar to us, unless we go through it ourselves.

I try to rationalize why portrayals of infertility and pregnancy loss are so rare. Where is the action, a scriptwriting professor scribbled in my margins when I had too much internal dialogue or a conversation between female friends. There’s not much action in infertility. The struggle is literally and figuratively inside.

But then I realize I’m just making excuses for Hollywood. Infertility and pregnancy loss are rich with story-line possibilities. The very nature of these tragedies is in lock-step with literary conflicts and archetypes. (Wo)man vs. self? Check. (Wo)man vs. nature? Check. Journey/quest? Check. Unhealable wound? Check.

Hollywood has had some success recently with clips portraying the pain of infertility and pregnancy loss (Up and Julie and Julia, most notably). Why can’t an entire film take up the subject? (And by that I mean a film that doesn’t “solve” infertility through highly problematic magic.)

As a feminist, I’m glad that there isn’t an influx of films that focus solely on a woman’s desire to have a baby, reducing her role in life to just centered on motherhood. But as a feminist struggling with infertility and pregnancy loss, I desperately want to see this struggle faithfully mirrored back to me, both for myself and for everyone, so it becomes familiar.

According to the CDC, almost 11 percent of women have impaired fertility, and 6 percent are infertile. RESOLVE reports that 1 in 8 couples struggles with infertility. The miscarriage rate of known pregnancies is between 15 and 20 percent.

These experiences aren’t rare. So we shouldn’t be made to feel like they are and that we are so alone.

Journalist Mona Eltahawy wrote,

“Women’s stories are too often dismissed. A male editor I once worked with tried to dissuade me from the personal: ‘Who cares about what happened to you?’ The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really mattered.
It does.”

Our lives do matter. Seeing women’s stories reflected faithfully on-screen cannot only serve us emotionally, but it can practically affect men’s and women’s lives by making the lives of over half of our population familiar. The galvanizing effect of this familiarity is more conversation. For infertility and pregnancy loss, the conversation could lead to more medical studies, legislation regarding insurance coverage and defeating so-called “personhood” measures.

Infertility and pregnancy loss are still far too taboo in our culture, and that has very real consequences. Couples are faced with mental health challenges (certainly feeling as if one’s problems aren’t even on the radar of “real” problems due to lack of representation, and conversation affects people emotionally and mentally), and the majority of states’ insurance plans offer no coverage for anything to do with fertility.

It is human nature to look for ourselves and our own stories reflected back to us in media and in others’ stories. In the case of infertility and pregnancy loss, those representations are almost nonexistent. An already lonely struggle is made to feel even more so without those representations.

Women’s lives have drama. They have journeys and conflicts and tragic struggles. Hollywood should take note.

A moving still from Up.

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She wrote “How Not to Be a Dick to Your Infertile Friend” and “It Happened to Me: I Had an Ectopic Pregnancy” at xoJane.

When Life Gives You Infertility, Make Your House Fly: Found Family in ‘UP’

Carl and Ellie in their home

This is a guest post written by Talia Liben Yarmush for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Pixar’s UP begins with young Carl, an adventure-admiring, imaginative boy meeting his match in young Ellie. The two hit it off instantly with their shared interest in everything adventure, and the first eleven and a half minutes are an ode to their lifelong mutual devotion to each other. They become fast friends; they fall in love, marry, and build a life together. The only thing missing? After Ellie suffers a miscarriage, the two are immeasurably saddened by the loss of this baby. In an attempt to fill the void, Carl establishes an “Adventure Fund,” so that together they may one day be able to live what they always dreamed. However, with each passing year comes a new obstacle, requiring them to deplete their funds over and over again. Until one day, Ellie, old and weak, dies. And Carl is left alone with sadness and regret at not giving Ellie her big adventure. When I saw UP in the theater, I was sitting next to my husband, a man I met when I was 14, became best friends with, married, and was now going through infertility treatments with. So, this intro hit pretty close to home.

As I see it, the two infertility themes in this story are miscarriage and living childfree. Despite my vast experience with infertility, I am not personally familiar with either of these. I have, thankfully, never had a miscarriage (although during one very painful episode of endometrial bleeding, my husband and I were sure that I was in the midst of one), and thanks to IVF, I now have two sons. I can tell you that the first theme, miscarriage, is shown in only seconds, and it is a scene that will remain with you throughout the entire film. In thirty seconds, this animated family film is able to portray the loss in such a visceral way that even if you have never had an experience like it, you will be brought to tears. And I can tell you that the second theme, living childfree, is complicated and filled with mixed emotions. Carl, tormented by his inability to give his wife what she wanted, finally realizes by the end of the film that Ellie’s life with him was her adventure, and that she was happy with it. Many couples must make the difficult decision whether to keep trying, to continue fertility treatments, to hope that the next cycle works, that the next pregnancy sticks, to attempt adoption, or to somehow find a way to come to terms with a life without children. Some couples make this decision. But for some, the decision is made for them.

Carl and Ellie prepare the nursery for their baby

The question is what to do once that decision has been made. Once an infertile couple mourns the loss of a life without children and finds peace with their new reality, can the void ever be filled by something or someone else? Ellie, as we learn, was happy and satisfied with the life she lived with Carl. But once Ellie died, Carl was left alone. No children. Just memories and unfounded regret. Until he meets Russell. Russell reminds Carl of the boy he once was, and of the girl he married. He reminds him of the family he wanted with Ellie, and of the adventures they’d hoped to go on. Some view Russell as the child that Carl never had. In fact, we find out that Russell himself has an absent father, so Russell was searching for a father just as much as Carl was searching for a son. But I don’t see it in those terms. Russell is a friend, he is a companion, he is a playmate. Russell is Carl’s family. Because we don’t always get to live the life that we had planned. But we do get to choose a great many things. We can choose to keep on fighting for what we want. Or we can choose to make peace with the lives that we have. And, most importantly, we can choose our family, even if we can’t create them ourselves.

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Talia Liben Yarmush is a freelance writer and editor. She is also an infertile mother who writes her own blog, The Accidental Typist.

‘Away We Go’: Infertility and the Indie Film

Movie poster for Away We Go

This is a guest post by LD Anderson and appears as part of our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Away We Go (2009) was part of a spate movies a few years ago that were marketed as “Indie”—with hand-drawn title cards and twee soundtracks—regardless of the film’s studio or budget or anything else. When I finally watched it on DVD, having missed it in the theater, I was disappointed. One of the main reasons was how it treated the issues of infertility and miscarriage, but I’ll get to that.

John Krasinski (The Office) and Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live) play Burt and Verona, a struggling thirty-something couple who unexpectedly find themselves pregnant. Verona’s parents are dead, so when Burt’s parents announce that they’re leaving the country, Burt and Verona hit the road to visit friends in search of a chosen family for their child.

Burt and Verona

There are a few things that I like a lot about this movie, and I want to address those first. I liked the fact that Burt and Verona are an interracial couple. I appreciate the way that the movie takes the idea of chosen family so seriously. I liked the relationship between Burt and Verona, and the approach to parenting that they formulate, both informed by and different from everyone around them.

It’s everyone around them that bugs me.

In an early scene, Burt’s father—the one who’s about to bail on his first grandchild—talks to Verona about a sculpture he bought of a Native American woman. He’s not sure whether it’s Pocahontas or not, but he wants to honor indigenous people—even if he can’t pronounce “indigenous.” Later on, Burt and Verona spend time with Burt’s childhood friend, “LN,” and her husband, who practice Continuum parenting, which is a thinly veiled reference to Attachment Parenting. I’m not going to weigh in on Attachment Parenting here, but suffice it to say that it’s not portrayed positively in Away We Go. LN, however, also quotes from Alice Walker and Simone de Beauvoir.

Roderick, LN, and Bailey

Between the two scenes, the message seems to be that only the ignorant, the insincere and the hopelessly flakey would take an interest in people of different cultures, or the words of women.

I understand that LN and her husband were meant to be a counterpoint to the comically crude couple visited before them, who were not involved enough with their children instead of too involved. For me, though, the most problematic moment came with the third family that Burt and Verona visited, which was supposed to be the most balanced.

Burt and Verona’s friends, Tom and Munch, seem to have it all—a happy, loving home with three adoptive kids. When the adults go out without the kids, they end up at amateur night at a local strip club. Munch, clad in a black dress, begins to dance for her husband to a slow song, and Tom confides to Burt that she had her fifth miscarriage earlier that week. He then waxes philosophical, wondering aloud if they’ve been “selfish” for waiting so long to start their family.

Tom and Burt

There are so many problems with this scene, I don’t know where to begin. Whatever you believe about abortion, you can’t “owe” anything to someone who hasn’t been conceived yet. Also, women miscarry for many reasons not related to age. Infertile couples (meaning, for my purposes, couples who can’t carry a pregnancy to term as well as those who can’t conceive) suffer enough without movies telling them to second-guess themselves.

More importantly though, Tom and Munch already have a family. They are contributing the act of parenting to the world. But naturally, the subtext says, the three non-White and/or non-American kids they have at home are not enough to make them happy.

I found Tom and Munch to be hurtful caricatures of infertile couples. I understand that the desire to have children of one’s own loins is very natural, and that the inability to do so can be extremely painful. However, I would dare say that society’s insistence on considering adoption second-rate, and its complete failure to recognize childless couples as families, makes it far more painful than it has to be.

Verona and Burt

I understand, too, that in the story, Munch’s pain was fresh, and she had another woman’s pregnant belly in her face. That only makes it more insulting that Tom barely watches her dirge-like dance, but is more engaged in whining to Burt. The message is, infertile women aren’t sexy. They’re sad.

In the end, Burt and Verona move into her childhood home, although they don’t have any chosen family nearby that I can recall. She faces the demons of her parents’ death. Whatever. By that point I didn’t even care. Burt and Verona were the only characters in the movie that I really liked. Users on IMDB described the others as “overwritten,” and the movie itself as pretentious, and I have to agree. The fail was the most memorable thing for me about Away We Go. When it comes to movies where a couple deals with infertility, I’d rather re-watch Juno. You know—the one that ends with an adoption.

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LD Anderson is a health insurance industry professional living in Nashville, Tennessee. She has been writing professionally about popular culture since high school and currently contributes to Popshifter.com. You can follow her (intermittently) on Twitter at @LDA_writes.

‘Days of Our Lives’: Punishing Nicole’s Fetus

Days of Our Lives, one of four surviving daytime soap operas on television.

Written by Janyce Denise Glasper for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Since 1998, Nicole Walker, played by the very talented Arianne Zucker, has been the scheming, manipulative, alcohol twirling villainess of fictional Salem, Illinois on Days of Our Lives. Always fully equipped with funny one liners from sharp-edged tongue, the former porn star was a golden afternoon escape to laugh along with as she carried out an arsenal of twisted scheme upon scheme, each one more bizarre and hilariously entertaining than the last.

Of course, as is always the case with a female soap opera character, pregnancy enters her womb, even when she doesn’t want it to, but for Nicole, this is no grand blessing of joy and glowing retribution. Years ago, Nicole had been shot and told that she would never carry a child to term, but in these two shockingly “miraculous” pregnancies occurring in 2009 and 2012-2013, the writers have both rewarded and severely punished her, creating and taking away a motherhood that wasn’t supposed to happen in the first place.

In turn, these two miscarriages would altar the character.

Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker) is one of the resident bad girls on Days of Our Lives.

Now I’ve watched soap operas with my mom for a long time, viewing them since around age four and almost always the biggest stories revolved around babies. A woman holds onto a man who doesn’t love her by using a baby (usually revealing this “secret” at large publicly attended events like weddings and galas for stun factor); a woman hides her baby for protective purposes; or a baby brings lovers together (rarely). Not a female character alive in the soap opera kingdom is immune to Baby Fever (unless under the age of sixteen or written off), and Nicole is no exception.

In 2009, when Nicole has her first miraculous pregnancy, she is elated and overjoyed, but unfortunately she is having a baby with a man who loves another woman, longtime nemesis, Samantha Brady.

Many Nicole fans were upset by this turn of events, that she could come back into town after a brief hiatus, get pregnant from an elevator ride with EJ Dimera, and become interloping fodder to break a potential couple apart with typical baby dynamite.

It is likely difficult in the soap opera business to continue bringing sharp and innovative stories to the forefront, especially with many of these daytime serials getting the boot for not being hard-edged enough to retain a modest amount of dedicated viewership, but must Nicole be strapped down with a baby? It was far easier imagining her holding little dog Pookie and a cocktail than a blue or pink bowed bouncing baby and rattling pacifier. Her antics and nonsensical plots were stuff of legends–from moneying up, planning murders, and having some of the best fantasy sequences ever. This new found bundle of joy was meant to “soften” brash personality, mature character, and settle her into that domestic place.

Nicole (Arianne Zucker) in the throes of a heartbreaking miscarriage.

The first miscarriage turned Nicole into a stark raving tearful mess and in turn, garnered very emotional scenes of raw poignancy that gave Arianne Zucker her first Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Mourning the loss with on and off again lover/friend, Brady Black, amongst sobbing agony, it wasn’t just losing the baby that demolished Nicole’s spirits, it was losing EJ whom she knew was only marrying her for the “miracle” pregnancy alone.

But that quickly evaporated into a scheme, especially when she learned that Samantha was also pregnant with EJ’s child. Taking matters into jealous and scarily obsessive hands, she found another pregnant woman and switched her baby with Samantha’s so as to have EJ raise his own child underneath the Dimera Mansion’s opulent rooftop. It was one hell of a warped story, and Nicole had masterminded the whole ludicrous charade all while wearing a false padded belly.

Nicole passes off stolen Sydney as daughter to her and EJ Dimera (James Scott).

Now a primary reason Nicole stole Samantha’s baby was because Sydney had been Samantha’s fourth birthed child, and Nicole figured that since Samantha had so “many” children, she wouldn’t miss one. Though these two women had been pitted each other through shared loves and public catfights, it was quite disheartening that Nicole’s underlying envy factor lie in Samantha’s fertility. After Nicole had undergone such a traumatic loss, her sudden aspirations for child rearing and baby cribs seemed to have been murdered by foe “flaunting” her healthy offspring like trophies, leaving a vengeful Nicole with the sinking “I Got Pregnant and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt” depression.

Nicole’s state of traumatic empathy and grief served as catalyst to her anger directed at ripening Samantha who was about to birth EJ’s child, unbeknownst to him. But Nicole all angry, spiteful, and hurt, instead of normally mourning the loss together with her fiance and telling him of her discovery, blames Samantha and seeks to punish her enemy’s productiveness by stealing a baby as though it were money or a car, not an innocent life.

The soap opera scenario of baby switching is nothing new, but it questions the state of female ethics. Are we really so shallow and vain to be upset over a woman with an abundance of children and look down at our own empty bellies as a statement of unworthy shame? It doesn’t make us less healthy or less happy if we’re found to be barren, but Nicole saw her miscarriage meaning the end of her dreams–of a joy some viewers didn’t realize she wanted.

Nicole and Samantha became “friends” in the midst of Samantha grieving the death of a baby she thought was hers while Nicole greedily held onto Sydney, not wishing to let go of her marriage “security” and motherhood. I felt torn in this agonizing situation because, despite several traits these former enemies shared (such as sexual abuse and family disapproval), a friendship built on lies won’t last.

Samantha (Alison Sweeney) and Nicole (Arianne Zucker) are back to their public displays of violent affection.

Again in 2012, Nicole finds herself pregnant with another EJ baby, but out of spite, she decides to let another man play father–Rafe Hernandez, Samantha’s soon-to-be-ex-husband (spot a pattern here?). Nicole is farther along in this pregnancy when it’s gruesomely discovered that the baby has been dead inside her womb for weeks. Hit by another emotional bullet, devastation cuts painfully as the torturous dangling of motherhood waving in front of her like a piece of fish bait cruelly floats away. But she keeps this secret all to herself, curled up and bottled into a rage that she hurls against another woman–Jennifer Horton, mother of two and object of Nicole’s latest obsession, Dr. Daniel Jonas.

Nicole (Arianne Zucker) is about to receive devastating news on fate of second “miracle” baby.

Once the truth comes out about Nicole’s second miscarriage, embarrassed and guilt-ridden, she relives the agonizing suffering of losing another chance at motherhood. Coming to terms with barrenness, she is ultimately driven to suicidal infliction too painful to watch.

Days of Our Lives writers appeared to be Nicole’s biggest adversaries, judgmentally weaving a “how can we top that last terrible heartbreak for this evil woman who committed paltry crimes at best?” Horrific enough that she went through the tragedy of losing a baby once, but to push her into repeating that trauma in an astonishingly grotesque manner seemed much uncalled for and heinous. They made an example of out this Mary Magdalene pariah, promising miraculous motherhood twice and ripping it from her grasp, a condemnation for her tumultuously stormy past.

Nicole had changed an independent streak of fine drinks, men, and expense into fantasies of picket fences, mounted family picture frames, and false love–that is the fairy tale life every woman truly wants at the end of the day, right?

No. That cannot be farther from the truth.

There was always something amazingly addictive about spirited Nicole. She reveled in her own world, cared little for how others viewed her, and wasn’t hung up on family life until those two pregnancies came and went. Sure, she had been intimate with men she didn’t love, but it was hard swallowing her need to be an instant Kodak moment package deal to someone.

In one o’clock hourglass hour, Nicole is a cold, calculating vixen that viewers love to hate, but Zucker plays Nicole so ruthlessly, with so much fire and passion that it is virtually impossible to despise her forever.

Under God’s “roof,” Nicole (Arianne Zucker) is on her best behavior.

However, nowadays, Nicole Walker is a little different. Not quite a shell of her former self, she still has that witty humor and vivacious spark, but those two pregnancies, especially the last, have robbed her of a certain edgy caliber and transformed her into a woman attempting to be a good heroine for her latest desire–Father Eric Brady, Samantha’s twin brother (pattern? yes!). Underneath the surface of this seemingly reformed church secretary lie buried schemes, nasty wordplay, and wicked fantasies, but she has turned over a whole new leaf.

For now.

How a ‘Flatliners’ Ad During a Movie Showing Made This Woman Walk Out

Myrna Waldron, my oldest daughter (a regular contributor to Bitch Flicks), baby Rhiannon Roxane Waldron, and the author, their mother, Pandora Diane MacMillan.

This is a guest post by Pandora Diane MacMillan and appears as part of our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

It was March 1997. I was at a movie theatre revival showing of the Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. This is, admittedly, a very dark film in the first place, the darkest of the Star Wars trilogy. It is the film where Luke finds out his true parentage, in a scene that has become notorious. I’m not going to get into that in any depth because I’m assuming you’re all more or less familiar with the plot of the original Star Wars trilogy.

I think this was one of the very first film showings that included a special, movie-only commercial meant to promote a new line of Levi’s jeans. The new line was apparently to be called “Flatliners,” yes, a promotional tie-in with that film, with the association that Flatliner Jeans would make the wearer look slim and “flat.” They also apparently thought it would be cute, hip, and hilarious to display the young male wearer of said jeans as DEAD and FLATLINED and to have someone jumpstart the person’s heart with defibrillators(!)

So I am part of a captive audience in the theatre at the time when this commercial comes on, in the intermission of The Empire Strikes Back showing. When I heard the flatline sound and saw the picture of the hospital monitor with the flatline showing on its screen, I stood right up and started swearing loudly. I didn’t even know where I was, I was so shattered. The tears were streaming down my face, and I didn’t even feel it. Once I finished swearing, my husband and daughter escorted me out to the lobby. They were equally upset and horrified by the commercial. They didn’t need to ask why I erupted like that.

Only the week before, I had buried my beloved one-month-old baby daughter Rhiannon Roxane, my second daughter. She stopped breathing in my arms when I was burping her, about 3:00 AM on March 4, 1997. It was diagnosed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – SIDS. Because my husband and I were awake and aware when little Rhiannon stopped breathing, we called 911, the paramedics came, and they resuscitated our baby. Then they rushed her to the hospital emergency.

I was in despair at the time but nursed a desperate hope. I knew she had probably stopped breathing for at least 5 minutes before I became aware she hadn’t fallen asleep against my shoulder. I had just taken the St John’s Ambulance course at my office so I could give first aid to my co-workers if needed. The course had taught me one important thing: if the brain is deprived of oxygen for more than 5 minutes, that person is likely brain dead. So I was crying and not hoping for very much as we joined the paramedics at the emergency ward.

They spent a long time at the hospital trying to revive my baby girl. I was sitting in a dazed, surreal state, looking down the hallway at the room where baby Rhiannon Roxane lay, our little Rhi-Rox. Then I saw the green line going level across the hospital monitor, no twitches in its movement, straight along, over and over. And I heard that long loud beeeeeeeeeeeep. The flatline sound. The sound of no hope at all when it’s someone you love who is hooked up to it. There will be no defibrillators hooked up to this baby. She is brain dead.

Soon we are called one by one to the telephone in the emergency department. It is the consultant pediatrician on the hotline from Sick Kids Hospital downtown. She has a request for each of us, my husband and me. “Do I have your permission to disconnect life support?” Her voice is cold, clipped, and empty of emotion. I say yes, with a heavy heart. She asks it again. This time she adds, “You do realize she will be a VEGETABLE if I leave her connected to life support?” Oh God, did she have to say that? Feeling punched in the stomach, I say yes again. She asks the question yet a third time. Yes.

I say to my husband, you talk to her. What I hoped for, I don’t know. Anything, but that merciless clinically cold voice. Does she make this call every day? I wondered. Is she dead to all feeling now? Then I hear my husband saying Yes, Yes, Yes three times, and I realize she has asked him the same terrible question.

Now they have official permission to pull the plug. There is nothing for the hospital staff to discuss anymore, except do we want an autopsy. We do. Then we follow the rest of the routine in these circumstances, of which I will spare you the details.

Back to the movie theatre. I am standing in the lobby next to the snack bar. I ask for the theatre manager, to complain about that heartless, insensitive jeans commercial we have just endured. The one where they think the sound and the appearance of a hospital monitor going flatline is terribly funny, and a great way to market a new line of jeans. Why bother with sex as a motivation for buying clothing when you can promise virtual resurrection from the dead if you just put on these “Flatliner” jeans!

But no manager is on duty right now. I’m reduced to talking to the only theatre staff member there, a young man who is sweeping the floor in the lobby. No one else is there, not even the snack bar staff. He is the target audience for this commercial, because he’s barely out of his teens. I talk to him about the commercial. In a sad, resigned voice, he replies, “I didn’t like it either.” His head is down and he looks nearly as bereft of hope that things will ever get better as I feel at that point. Nobody cares anymore. Not that pediatrician on the emergency department hotline. Certainly not the marketing department at Levi’s jeans, I could only conclude.

I give it some thought and realize I need to phone the head office of the jeans company and make a complaint there. I did so the next day. I couldn’t get hold of any top management there, but I was asked by their public relations guy to leave a voice mail for the CEO. I don’t remember everything I said, except that we had just lost our infant daughter the week before. “No one,” I said in my voice mail, “who had lost someone they loved while in hospital and heard again that awful flatline sound, would think that was funny.” But the Flatliners movie, replied the PR guy. Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you get the joke? No, I said. I was 100% certain that at this point I didn’t want to see that movie, ever. Finally, I said with a voice of rage that the commercial had offended me so deeply, that I felt the company had spat on my baby daughter’s grave!

All I wanted was for the commercial to stop, to stop right away, before some other bereaved family had to hear it, had to watch it. But apparently, when they played the voice mail for the Levi’s CEO, and he heard my remarks, he said, “That’s it. We pull the whole campaign. The Flatliners jeans line is cancelled as of now.” I wouldn’t have known about this, except the PR guy phoned me back and told me that this happened. Incidentally, Levi’s sent us two T-shirts by way of apology. I hadn’t expected they would decide to actually stop production of the jeans with that offensive name. I just hoped they would pull the commercial. Obviously, I am relieved that once I brought the issue to their attention, Levi’s immediately did the right thing.

So here’s a case study in how death as a concept was initially handled insensitively by the ad men (who may not even have been employed by Levi’s), and the outcome of that – with an outraged, bereaved mother: me. I can never bring my baby girl back. But I wanted to spare other families who’d lost someone they loved some small portion of the heartache that my family and I had gone through.

———-

Pandora Diane MacMillan holds a BA in English from York University in Toronto Canada. She retired in 2008 after more than 30 years working for the Ontario government in driver and vehicle licensing administration. Pandora has known she wanted to be a writer since Grade 2. She was fortunate enough to have writing as part of her job although it was writing related to licensing questions. She has also written some popular poetry and fan fiction for the Internet and continues to pursue writing as a hobby.

‘Yerma’: The Pain, Heartbreak and Destruction of Infertility and Patriarchy

Movie poster for Yerma

Written by Leigh Kolb for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

My womb is opening / without fear or dread /
and on white sheets / I sketch my dream.

Let us sing / let us sing / let us sing.

For life is woven in the early morn,

For the silvery moon an infant will bring.

In 1934, Spanish writer Federico García Lorca wrote the play Yerma, and it has been performed regularly since its opening that year. In 1999, a Spanish film was released, directed by Pilar Távora.

English translation of the play, which the film closely follows.

Yerma, the title character, has been married to Juan for two years and she has not been able to get pregnant. (Yerma means “barren” in Spanish.) As the film opens to folk songs with poetic lyrics that weave throughout the entire film, Yerma is taking care of him, trying to get him to drink milk and exercise more. It’s clear his work drives him–he works hard, and is tenacious in his work in the field, but not in love.

Juan and Yerma appear happy on their wedding night

Yerma seems to just be starting to devolve into an incredibly unhappy mental and emotional place in regard to their inability to conceive.

Her friend Maria visits, and she’s brought lace, ribbon and fabric. “It’s happened!” she says, and Yerma is excited for Maria’s pregnancy, asking her how she feels, and giving her loving advice. Yerma seems to have a deep understanding of pregnancy and motherhood, and displays wisdom with Maria.

Maria asks about the fact that Yerma has no children, but assures her that she’s had friends who took longer to conceive. “Two years and 20 days is too long,” asserts Yerma. “It isn’t fair that I’m wasting away here.”

Before she leaves, Maria pulls out her new fabric and lace and asks Yerma to sew little dresses for her, since she “sews so well.” Yerma graciously complies.

Yerma has tried for years to become pregnant, and her friend announces she’s gotten pregnant after just a few months of marriage.

The first scenes are familiar ones to infertile women–trying to watch after the health of her partner, tension over the desire to conceive, a friend getting pregnant after just a few months and the pain of knowing more about pregnancy than the pregnant friend herself.

Sorrow wide as a field / a door closed on beauty

I beg the suffering of a child

But the wind gives me dahlias / from under the sleeping moon

Sorrow wide as a field / I beg the suffering of a child

As time passes, it becomes clearer that Yerma’s marriage is an unhappy one. Her father arranged her marriage to Juan, but her true match seems to be Victor (who Juan runs off after he’s concerned that he and Yerma have been speaking too much). Indeed, Juan doesn’t even like Yerma going outside of the home at all.

Yerma meets an old woman on the path to the field, and she clings to her, begging her to answer questions about her childlessness since she assumes an older woman would have wisdom. Yerma says she’s been thinking about children since the moment she was engaged. “I was just the opposite,” the old woman says. “Maybe you’re thinking too much.”

Yerma says she still remains empty, but she’s “filling up with hate.”

The old woman alludes to the fact that God has no part in this, and if there was one, there should be a god who “sends lightning bolts to men with spoiled seed.” This is the first real indication that perhaps Juan is the problem (the old woman tells Yerma later that it is Juan, and he’s from a long line of men with the same problem).

Yerma goes back home and meets other women on the road who are hurrying to take their husbands lunch. One left her baby home alone, and the other talks about adamantly not wanting children and being bitter about spending her whole life cooking and washing–things that she doesn’t want to do. Yerma reacts harshly to the young mother who’s left her child at home, again reinforcing that sadness in infertile women of seeing others take parenting for granted.

Yerma changes after these encounters–Juan’s coldness and lack of desire for her or for children has become clearer to her, and the older woman’s warnings and sharp words start sinking in. When we see her again, she’s rocking back and forth in the dark, while we hear women gossip about her.

It’s a pity of the childless wife / It’s a pity of the woman whose breasts are dry

Time has passed, and a group of women is doing laundry and talking about Yerma.

“They don’t like to make lace or jam,” one woman says about barren women. “They like walking barefoot on the river.”

“It isn’t her fault she doesn’t have children,” her friend interjects.

“Whoever wants children has them,” another says.

“It’s all his fault.”

“It’s all her fault.”

The women have largely turned against Yerma as she has turned inward and become increasingly full of grief over her desire to and inability to conceive.

She and Juan lash out at one another. He says, “You keep beating your head against a wall. I feel uneasy living with you, anxious. You have to resign yourself.”

She responds, “I want to drink water, and there’s no glade and no water. I want to climb a mountain and I’ve got no feet. I want to trim my petticoats and I can’t find the thread.”

Yerma’s words about the deep, miserable feelings surrounding infertility are poignant and heartbreakingly accurate. While much is going on in this film worth discussing–the patriarchal culture that arranges marriages and ties a woman’s worth solely to her ability to have children, obviously, and the immediate blame of the woman when a couple can’t conceive–Yerma’s struggle with infertility is one of the most accurate portrayals of that grief that I’ve ever seen.

Yerma slips deeper into an obsessive depression as time goes on.

Yerma sees Maria walking quickly by her house, and asks her to stop. She wonders why she’s rushing by and Maria says, “Because you always cry.” Yerma holds the baby and kisses it.

“Women who’ve had children cannot imagine not having them,” she says. “My longing grows stronger and my hopes are fading.”

Yerma visits a group of older women who chant over her, praying to Sainte Anne, performing a ceremony in the cemetery in the middle of the night. Afterward, the older women gently criticize Yerma for “fretting” too much about not having a child and not taking shelter in her husband’s love. Yerma becomes defiant, and finally exclaims that she doesn’t love him. “But he’s my only hope,” she says. “For my honor and my family. My only hope.”

She seems relieved. “I needed to talk,” she tells the women. The female conversations in the film are both destructive and nourishing, but they are clearly good for Yerma when she is able to be a part of them.

Yerma continues to decline, though. Juan finally confronts her and tells her that he doesn’t like the idea, but he’s willing to take her himself to a pilgrimage where childless women go to be blessed with children.

At the ceremony, the old woman finds Yerma and tells her she should leave Juan and marry her son, instead, who could give her children. “What about my honor?” Yerma says, and tells her to go away. Yerma’s inability to conceive and her miserable marriage seem to fall squarely on the shoulders of Juan, but she cannot escape due to the strict morality of her culture.

“My pain has gone far beyond my body,” Yerma says.

The old woman calls her barren and Yerma repeats the word. “Since I’ve been married that word has been going around in my head,” she says, but “this is the first time I’ve said it out loud.”

Yerma runs through the woods and settles at her campsite, where Juan is drinking. She tells him to leave her alone, but he says he wants to speak.

“I won’t put up any longer for continual lament for things that aren’t real,” he says. “For things that haven’t happened, and that we can’t control. For things I don’t care about. I care about what I have in my hands.”

She says that’s what she’s been waiting to hear: that he doesn’t care.

Yerma speaks of a son, and says, “You never thought of him when you saw me long for him?”

Juan coldly says, “Never.”

After a few minutes, Juan moves over and tries to seduce Yerma. He’s forceful and rough. She starts to kiss him back, but she’s crying, and she snaps. She strangles him violently and kills him.

“Barren,” she says. “Barren for certain. Barren. And alone. Now I can rest without wakening in fright to see if my blood will tell me of new blood. My body is dry forever.” She begins to repeat, “My son.”

Maria walks up to her in horror, and Yerma keeps repeating that she has killed her son. “I’ve killed my own son. My son… my baby, my baby, my child.”

The film ends, with the dedication “to my children” as a post script.

Yerma is a beautiful film, and Yerma’s descent into grief-stricken madness is haunting and powerful. We so rarely see female protagonists, and for a female protagonist to have such a visceral struggle with such a common, yet underrepresented, issue as infertility is moving and incredibly important.

Yerma killing Juan at the end of the film is symbolic of her overcoming not only the patriarchal culture that has defined her by her inability to mother, but also her infertility. She doesn’t see killing Juan as a way to marry someone else and try to have children; she sees killing him as freeing herself from the disappointment of not getting pregnant. Extinguishing him extinguishes her hopes.

Infertility when one desperately wants to conceive is grief, obsession, emptiness and feeling completely powerless. Yerma lives in a time and place where she has nothing else except being a wife and a mother to define her, so the added pressure of being unable to conceive a child drives her to the breaking point. Juan has repeatedly kept Yerma inside of their house and away from the outside world. When he admits he doesn’t care about having a child and then tries to assault her, it’s all too much. She has to end the physical manifestation of her grief and disappointment.

Yerma proves that a film about a woman’s struggles can work, even if those struggles don’t produce the kind of action that Hollywood seems to think it needs. Yerma’s inner turmoil is palpable, and good writing and directing make her story real and compelling. The power of Yerma rests not only in its treatment of infertility, but also its larger commentary on what a culture that stifles women can lead to. Yerma’s infertility is tragic, and so is her world.

Oh woman, how great is your sorrow

A sorrow so piteous

Your tears are like lemon juice

Sour as your hope and your lips

———-

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

The Characterization of Bereaved Mothers: Are We Getting It Right?

This guest post by Angela Smith previously appeared at Smack in the Face and is cross-posted with permission. It appears as part of our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Tackling the sensitive issue of child loss isn’t easy. Some screenwriters excel at it, while others take the easy option of sending their central female character spiralling into the abyss of depression. In reality this is sometimes the case, but not all audiences are entirely comfortable witnessing a demented mother grieving in a way that’s more sensational than true to life.

Are these women ever portrayed correctly? Is there even a correct way to characterize women who have suffered miscarriage, stillbirth, or cot death (SIDS)? Are audiences brainwashed into thinking all bereaved mothers behave in a specific way?

It’s true there’s a need to educate people by showing such tragedies on screen, but are we getting it right? If so…how? If not…why?

Using British soap Eastenders as an example, there have been various storylines involving infant deaths, be they before or after birth. The grieving mothers have been portrayed in different ways, which is a good thing as no parent who has suffered child loss will react in exactly the same way as another.

Eastenders is set in a fictitious borough in East London called Walford, and the storylines focus on the inhabitants of a specific area called Albert Square. The soap has come under fire many times for its controversial storylines which are generally described as a constant stream of doom and gloom, punctuated by repetitive and predictable sub-plots.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more bizarre representation of real life and, fairly recently, many soap addicts were up in arms about the tragic cot death of James, a newborn baby boy, and his frantic mother Ronnie’s deranged way of dealing with it.

Their anger was fueled by the sight of Ronnie taking her dead baby to the home of another couple and swapping him for their healthy newborn son, Tommy. This led Tommy’s parents to believe it was their baby who had died instead of Ronnie’s. The storyline was set to run for many months, but it was cut short to only four months due to constant criticism.

Ronnie holds her baby, James, for the last time before swapping him for Tommy

The problem with soaps is that they can run any storyline they want without worrying too much that their audiences will cease to watch. Sadly, this meant Eastenders failed miserably to portray the tragic plight of Ronnie (Samantha Janus) as she spent four hard months being branded a complete nutter by most of the other characters…including her own husband.

When considering young audience members alone, you have to ask yourself if their already limited understanding of the world could prompt them to not only conclude from Eastenders that all bereaved mothers are lunatics, but behave similarly toward them in future.

Many adults are also unaware of the actual implications of the real life loss of an infant, and any misconceptions they already have could easily be reinforced by an exaggerated storyline such as Ronnie’s.

Sadly, many mothers will resist talking about their losses to new acquaintances just to avoid such adverse pre-judgement or an opposite reaction of forced sympathy.

Samantha Janus is a well-respected actress in the UK whose character, Ronnie, was first portrayed as a shrewd, strong, witty, no-nonsense woman. So it’s very sad that she was forced to lead Ronnie into a succession of disasters, which ultimately led to her downfall. The writers ran riot with her character, crushing her personality to a point where it was unrecoverable.

Ronnie’s grasp of reality loosens as she becomes more mentally unstable

Ironically, script submissions are often invited by TV and film producers with the emphasis on creating strong female characters. However, soap writers seem all too eager to completely and utterly smash these women down to the point of no return. It’s one thing to cleverly show different sides to their personality, but to completely destroy a useful and inspirational character is unnecessary and sadistic.

Parallel to Ronnie’s breakdown was the devastation of Kat (Jessie Wallace), the mother of Tommy, the boy who was taken from his cot by Ronnie and swapped for James. So, not only did we have one grieving mother running around with a kidnapped baby, we also had another mother who had no idea her baby was still alive. She and her husband even buried Ronnie’s baby thinking he was theirs.

Thankfully, Kat was portrayed very differently. Her character had always been feisty and aggressive, and she didn’t hold back with her frustration during the four months her baby was thought to be dead. Of the two women, Kat’s behaviour was far more believable, and her determination to get through her ordeal was refreshing to see.

Kat and husband, Alfie, believe they are burying their own son, Tommy

Jessie Wallace played her part with incredible plausibility, and Samantha Janus, regardless of her personal disapproval of the plot, did an amazing job as well. However, I’m without a single doubt that the storyline as a whole should never have been written in the first place.

As much as I appreciate that soaps want to shock and surprise us, using infant loss and the pain of a grieving mother as part of a badly-conceived storyline does nothing but trivialize the emotions and obstacles that would be faced by her in reality.

As a mother who has suffered three stillbirths and several miscarriages, I welcome storylines involving infant loss, and just because I can’t relate to the extreme behaviour that some women present doesn’t mean their story shouldn’t be told.

However, I’m very disappointed in the way a lot of writers will either reduce their character to a quivering mess or send them completely round the twist. If you’re broadcasting to millions of adults and children alike, there really has to be some kind of responsibility taken for the sort of messages being repeatedly sent out.

The creators of Eastenders defended the storyline by arguing that Ronnie would have behaved as she did given the knock-on effect of previous traumas she’d suffered. They also said they were in no way suggesting all grieving mothers would behave similarly. However, the insinuation was there for all to see. Let’s face it…since when did intentions have any bearing on what is ultimately perceived? Perception is a personal thing, unique to every individual.

I hope fewer writers will be tempted to infer that a mother’s loss invokes the need to possess another woman’s child. Knowing she will never hold her own child again is hard enough to deal with. Being portrayed as a psychopath on screen is just adding insult to injury.

Also, suggesting that grieving fathers are better able to muster the strength to support their wives or girlfriends, further implies that women are generally less mentally equipped.

Hopelessness and depression are often paths along which a writer will take a grief-stricken mother. So imagine my joy when I came across Marc Forster’s very thought-provoking film, Everything Put Together. Even thirteen years on, it’s still as poignant as it was when he first directed it in 2000.

In this film, Angie (Radha Mitchell) and two of her friends, Barbie and Judith, are expecting babies. At the beginning of the film, we see Angie help Judith deliver a healthy baby boy, and many of the first few scenes show Angie being embraced by what appears to be a very tight network of friends. Angie is even asked to be Godmother to Judith’s baby.

Initially, Angie appears to be surrounded by a close network of friends

Sadly, Angie’s own baby, Gabriel, is born perfectly healthy but dies as a result of SIDS while they are both still in hospital. Unbelievably, and without Angie’s permission, her friends immediately go to her house to help pack away the nursery furniture and clothing. We see them loading it all into a lorry in the black of night as if it’s something to be ashamed of and get rid of as soon as possible.

Not only do Angie and her husband lose their baby, their friends begin to desert them. Angie is even more alone because she’s not very close to her own mother and cannot even bring herself to reveal the sad news of Gabriel’s death during a phone call.

Angie is still eager to make a fuss of Judith’s baby, but Judith recoils at her advances, and when Angie visits Judith and finds her way to her baby’s bedroom, she shares a very special moment with him. However, Judith is openly alarmed and throws her out of the house.

Angie shares a special private moment with Judith’s newborn son

Similarly, when a heavily pregnant Barbie spots Angie shopping in a baby store, she’s very unresponsive, especially when one of her little boys asks about Gabriel. Angie is happy to show him a picture and talk about him, but Barbie sends her children out of the shop and apologizes to Angie for the questions.

Angie is more than happy to discuss Gabriel with Barbie’s children

Yet another example of the breakdown of Angie’s friendships is when Judith throws away Angie’s invitation to her baby’s Christening. However, the maid finds it in the bin and sends it anyway. It’s very sad to watch Angie walk alone towards the altar after the Godparents are asked to step forward only to realize she’s no longer needed.

Angie has no idea she is no longer Godmother to Judith’s baby

What I love about this film is, unlike some other stories of infant death, we’re not forced to watch a long scene after the death occurs. Straight away, Angie is trying to carry on with her life. She’s obviously torn apart by the death of her baby, but she tries to hold it together in an attempt to retain her identity as the person she was before he died.

I’m so glad the writers afforded her the strength to do this because, in reality, a recently bereaved mother will often behave in such a way that nobody around her would even know what she’s suffered. This is highlighted in the film when a mother at the local park is happy for Angie to hold her baby boy while she attends to another of her children. Angie is glad of the opportunity to feel “normal” in someone else’s eyes.

Some may find it disturbing to watch Angie ask to see her son’s body before calmly announcing to the morgue attendant, “That’s not my baby.” However, I’m completely satisfied with this; it shows us how much she wants her son to still be alive. That’s not disturbing…it’s just very sad.

On seeing Gabriel at the morgue, Angie denies he is her baby

This film also doesn’t waste time on a lengthy funeral scene with lamenting on-lookers or over-the-top wailing. What we witness is a very quiet minute’s worth of an almost silhouetted couple waiting to bury their child. No dialogue and no gratuitous crying…just a scene I myself can completely identify with.

Gradually, we see Angie and her husband appreciating that they still have each other and accepting that their so-called friends are more concerned with how Gabriel’s death might affect their own perfect lives than being the supportive friends we first thought them to be.

Finally, we see Angie surprised by a phone call from Judith, who quickly and bluntly admits she misdialled while trying to phone Barbie. This is bad enough, but then Angie feels she needs to tell Judith and Barbie she’s pregnant again before they will allow her back into their lives.

Angie lies to them both, amid congratulations during a three-way call, and we’re in no doubt she now realizes how shallow and untrustworthy they are. The closing shot of her face tells us Angie has learned a harsh lesson about friendship–one she will never forget.

A three-way call with Judith and Barbie reinforces Angie’s opinion of them

It’s not uncommon for women to feel empowered to make drastic changes after losing a child. They may, understandably, become far less tolerant of others due to the realization nobody at all can break them down any further than they’ve already been broken.

Fortunately for soap and serial drama producers, they already have the luxury of knowing millions of people will tune in to watch, no matter what is presented during each half-hourly or hourly slot. However, a filmmaker has only a short space of time to create something believable and watchable. Also, a film is not automatically guaranteed a loyal audience and relies heavily on its credibility as an individual piece.

Researching personal stories of loss is important, but I wonder how much is ignored because it would be too difficult to translate to film or television. It’s not easy to expose the darker, hidden thoughts that can really bring a broken heart to the surface–and to the screen–and writers often make the mistake of allowing their characters to disclose their heartbreak at every opportunity through unnecessary dialogue.

In reality a mother is likely to want to keep her darker or more painful thoughts to herself so she can at least feel in control of what she does and doesn’t share. Your innermost feelings are a very strong reminder of your love for your baby, so it’s comforting to hold them close and keep them safe for as long as possible.

When some writers get it wrong…it’s often due to their inability to get it totally right given the limitations. I, therefore, applaud the writers who strive to get it as right as they possibly can and trust in an actress’s ability to give her role the depth of emotion it merits and, in so doing, the credibility it will bring to her character.

———-

Angela Smith is a 45-year-old mother living in Kent, UK with her partner and four lovely children. She enjoys writing plays, short stories, TV/film reviews, and articles for satirical web sites.

The Power of Portrayal: Infertility, Reproductive Choice and Reproduction in ‘We Want a Child’

Movie poster for We Want a Child

Written by Leigh Kolb for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

The 1949 Danish film We Want a Child (Vi vil ha’ et barn) deals with abortion, failed adoption, infertility, detailed fertility and prenatal care and childbirth.

Depictions of any of these subjects are few and far between in modern film and television, so the fact that a feature film was made so long ago is remarkable in itself. We Want a Child offers a frank portrayal of the emotions involved in trying to build a family.

The film opens with Else and Lief’s wedding. The audience is introduced to a happy bride (who is just doing the church wedding–“veil and everything”–because her mother wants her to) and her playful new husband.

At the celebratory dinner reception, Else’s Uncle Hans toasts the new couple and the unity of the family “up through a new generation.”

Next the audience sees Uncle Hans–a bit of a buffoon–riding his bike over to Else’s house to check on her. “No news?” he says. “No news,” she says. “I don’t want you asking me each week.”

Clearly, the family is waiting for an announcement of Else and Lief’s pregnancy, and Else is already tiring of the requests.

“Two years have gone by…” is superimposed on the screen, and the uncle walks in again. Else is polishing silver, visibly upset, and Hans notes that it’s their two-year anniversary. A puppy walks into the room, and he’s shocked: “You got a dog?”

“I know perfectly well you don’t like to discuss it,” he says, “but why don’t you have kids?”

Else says she wants to enjoy their youth, and that they don’t want children right now. She quickly breaks down, though, and says, “I’m beginning to think I can’t have a child.” Uncle Hans, without judgment, encourages her to see a doctor.

Later Else asks Lief if he wants a baby. “Doesn’t every man?” he says, playfully. She cries and hugs him, saying “What if we can’t have a baby? Maybe I can’t have any.”

Their relationship is portrayed as equitable and loving; they joke and laugh and seem to be deeply in love. When she expresses her fears, he doesn’t belittle her or act uncomfortable. Since the threat of infertility often wreaks havoc in relationships, the depiction of Lief and Else’s relationship throughout the film is refreshing.

Else does visit the doctor, and tells him she’s afraid she can’t have any babies. He asks about her menstruation and rattles off a list of other health questions. He says, “I suppose we don’t have to consider abortion.” Else answers, “Yes, we have to.”

Else confides in the doctor that she’s had an abortion. He judges, but quickly moves on to helping her.

The doctor takes his glasses off and pauses. She says that it had been an operation a few years ago, and he notes that it was “a criminal abortion.” (Abortion in Denmark was legalized in 1973.)

He stands up, and Else pleads with him, saying she knew it was wrong, but it was during the war and her fiance (now husband) had to go underground. The doctor is judgmental (saying that she “preferred to kill her child” instead of looking for help), but it’s not nearly as damning as one would expect from the time. He goes on to tell her that it might be the reason she hasn’t conceived, and that sometimes abortion causes scar tissue in the fallopian tubes. He tells her they will take x-rays and run some tests.

As Else is leaving the doctor’s office, her friend Jytte is coming in. She’s become pregnant by the married man she’s having an affair with, and he wants nothing to do with her or a baby. Jytte goes in to talk to the doctor, and is clearly upset and unsure of what she wants to do. The doctor urges her to not have an abortion, lest she “deny motherhood” and ruin her chances to have a child in the future after going to a “quack” to have her “body mutilated.” He promises her it’s not as hopeless as she thinks, and she promises to think over it–but not before snapping that a woman should be able to make her own decisions.

After these scenes, the harsh judgment surrounding abortion–which at the time was a criminal act and wouldn’t have been a safe medical procedure, so conversations about it in a feature film could only go so far–ends.

As Else leaves the doctor’s office, a mother is struggling and Else offers to hold her baby for her. The way she looks at the child is full of love and deep longing.

Jytte decides against having an abortion (even though her lover wants her to).

The doctor shows Else her x-rays–one of her tubes is blocked, but the other side is open. “You have a chance, you can become pregnant,” he says. “You must hope.” He encourages her to tell her husband.

While Else is at the doctor, Lief has befriended a neighbor child, and their interactions are sweet. The bond shows that when a couple wants children but cannot have them, they often still “parent” in other ways, whether it’s a neighbor child, or a dog, or both, in their case.

Else comes home, resolved to tell Lief about her abortion.

“Lief, can you forgive me?” she cries.

He says it’s his fault, but she responds,

“It’s what we wanted, both of us. I should have told you long ago.”

“Don’t worry, darling, we’re together,” he says.

When Lief speaks with Uncle Hans about the fact that “we’ll have to get used to the idea that it’ll be only two” of them, alone, he adds that “the doctor gave her hope, but what else can he say?”

“It’s completely idiotic in a world like ours to want my own children… yet I want them,” Lief says.

Else soothes herself by thinking that they are enjoying their youth. They get a puppy. Lief befriends and mentors the neighbor child. Lief grapples with the fact that it feels selfish to desire biological children, but acknowledges the deep urge. The way the couple deals with and speaks about their infertility is truthful and realistic.

Uncle Hans sees an opportunity, and tells Jytte he knows of a young couple who would like to adopt a baby, and that she can stay with him (since if she becomes visibly pregnant she’ll lose her job and room).

Things seem to be falling in place. The next scene is Lief and the neighbor boy carrying a bassinet upstairs to the nursery. Else’s mother visits, and is rude and dismissive when Lief tells her that Else is visiting their new daughter. “Why on earth are you adopting?” she asks, and he tries to explain that they can’t have one themselves.

Lief goes to the clinic, flowers in hand, to see Jytte and his new daughter. Else steps out of the room, visibly upset. “She said she couldn’t do it,” she says. “She can’t go through with the adoption.”

While she’s upset, Else tells him that they shouldn’t be angry. Lief gives the flowers to the nurse to give Jytte.

At this moment, we see the most tension between Else and Lief. He says he needs to go back to work, and he coldly leaves after saying goodbye. Else is left alone. The scene is harshly realistic.

Back at home, Else’s mother is condemning adoption and Jytte, but Else softly tells her, “You can’t blame her for not wanting to give up her baby.” She quickly runs from the room and gets sick.

Her mother smiles, knowing what the nausea signifies.

Else is excited when she puts the pieces together, but nervous: “I’m more afraid that it isn’t true, or if it is true, it won’t be a healthy child.” Her mother assures her that worrying is part of being a mother. The fear involved with becoming pregnant after infertility is palpable.

Else goes back to the doctor, and he confirms her pregnancy. He asks her about rickets, scarlet fever, hereditary diseases, venereal diseases and he listens to her heart and checks her back.

Else weeps with joy when the doctor confirms her pregnancy.

“We have to be careful now that we have a responsibility for a new little citizen,” he says. When she asks if he thinks it’s a girl, he says, “Male? Female? It’s a human.”

This segment of the film feels a bit like an educational video for prenatal care–he explains all of the blood tests he’s taking (including testing her rhesus type so they can take care of her properly if it’s negative). Her scenes with the doctor are clearly meant to be instructional to viewers.

Else goes home, and coyly tells Lief that she is “expecting something.” They are both elated.

Else and Lief celebrate the news.

Her pregnancy progresses normally, and Else wakes up in the middle of the night feeling pain. (The dog, not forgotten, is fully grown in a bed by Else and Lief’s bed.) She and Lief rush to the clinic, and the midwife tells Lief, “Kiss your wife goodbye, we’ll call you when it’s over.” He begs to stay, but the midwife assures him that they’ve “no need” for him. They walk away, and Lief stands alone, staring. He walks home (where he continues to pace and call the clinic for updates).

Else is given anesthesia via inhalation, and the doctor tells her that she’ll “go to sleep, wake up and it will be over and done with.” This is most likely ether, as the drugs that induced Twilight Sleep were intravenous.

She wakes up, and a nurse hands her a beautiful girl, while Lief stands beside her. “Well, we made it,” he says. They are both beaming.

The baby sneezes (baby human and baby animal sneezes are certainly evolution’s way of causing women to spontaneously ovulate), and the film is over.

While there are a couple of moments in the film that will undoubtedly make a pro-choice feminist cringe, the fact that Else is still fertile even though she had an abortion is what’s important. If the film had truly been wholly anti-abortion, she would not have been able to go on and conceive and have a happy ending. Aside from the doctor’s comments (and of course he was acting as a medical and moral authority of the time), Else and Lief are united–and both recognize that an abortion is what they both wanted at the time–and she is not punished. At the time the film was celebrated in some circles for its clear anti-abortion message, but the fact remains that Else is not infertile. Her husband isn’t angry that she had an abortion. Everything turns out just fine.

Jytte isn’t punished for her decisions, either. She seems to have a mutually beneficial life at Uncle Hans’s house. Else’s forgiving response to the adoption falling through assures the audience that we are not to be angry with Jytte, either.

Lief visits Else and their new daughter at the clinic.

The frank discussion about infertility, abortion, prenatal care and adoption make this film noteworthy. It feels quite remarkable to watch characters discuss the range of emotions surrounding these subjects. The film isn’t a masterpiece, and it moves quickly and relies on some common tropes surrounding the topic of infertility and adoption, but some of the dialogue is striking in its honesty and timelessness.

The struggles that infertile couples face in 2013–the fear and guilt that you’ve done something wrong, the desire to have a biological child, the risk of adoption falling through, facing a marriage without children–are no different than they were almost 75 years ago. These struggles, however, are rarely represented on screen. The experience of viewing characters who deal with these life events feels meaningful and important. We shouldn’t have to dig so far and so hard to find them.

* * *

One of the reasons this film dealt so well with these subjects was no doubt its director, Alice O’Fredericks (she directed it with Lau Lauritzen). O’Fredericks was a prolific writer and producer–she wrote 38 screenplays and directed 72 films. Many of her films focused on women’s stories and women’s rights. The Copenhagen International Film Festival annually awards a female director with the Alice Award, named after O’Fredericks.

Alice O’Fredericks, Danish writer, director and actor

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Vanessa Loring: Pathetic or Plausible? A Matter of Perception

Juno meets Vanessa and Mark Loring

This guest post by Talia Liben Yarmush previously appeared at The Accidental Typist and is cross-posted with permission. It appears as part of our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

The first few times that I saw Juno, I was unaware of any of my fertility problems. It wasn’t until April 2010, in between IVF cycles and laparoscopies, that I re-watched the film with some friends, and I viewed it through a new lens. It is a strange phenomenon how a changed circumstance in life can create an entirely different vision of the world. Or, more simply, of a film. The obvious themes of teen pregnancy – the ease and cavalier nature of it, so unplanned, so unexpected, so unwanted – resonated with me again while re-watching Juno. But I felt oddly that the characters were treated with respect. It was acknowledged that however intelligent a typical teenaged girl thinks she is; however witty and wise; however smart-assed and independent; she is never quite as smart as she thinks she is. There is still a big world, and she’s just one small person. And in this movie, at least the title character is wise enough to know that while she may not be ready to be a mother, there are those out there who would suffer unimaginable things to trade positions with her.

What really hit me was Jennifer Garner’s character, Vanessa. In past viewings of the movie, the hopeful adoptive mother seemed somewhat desperate. Her overly enthusiastic smile. The fact that Juno’s snarky remarks would fly past her with barely any recognition. Her obsessive questioning and controlling perfectionism. When saying goodbye after meeting for the first time, Vanessa asks Juno how likely she is to go through with the adoption, and Juno says, nonchalantly, that she is going to do it. “How sure would you say you are? Like, would you say you’re 80% sure, or 90% sure?” Vanessa pushes. She was more than desperate, really. She was pathetic. She seemed to be written for the purpose of added comic relief. But as my friends laughed at her on screen, I felt sad, and angry. Maybe she is desperate, but anyone who has even considered adoption knows that it goes wrong far more often than it goes right. That Vanessa’s pushing wasn’t pathetic, but rather telling the story of a woman who had already been hurt so much. And wouldn’t you be desperate if you dreamed of being a mother your whole life, and then after trying for years to conceive were finally told that it was an impossibility? If you came so close to adopting a child, only for the birth mother to change her mind?

Vanessa touches Juno’s stomach

Earlier in the same scene, when Juno first meets Vanessa, Juno expresses that she’s concerned about when she will have to add elastics to her pants. Vanessa says, “I think pregnancy is beautiful.” And Juno responds, “You’re lucky it’s not you.” And I twinged right along with Vanessa. I knew exactly how she felt – we would take elastic pants for the rest of our lives in exchange for that pregnancy. I knew completely this character and suddenly wondered if she was written to be laughed at, or if the writer too had a deep understanding of the heartbreak of infertility. This character was written beautifully – because she was real. Perhaps she was written so the audience would have these two vastly different interpretations. One for those who don’t understand, and one for those who do.

Well, that last time around, I felt her heartbreak. I knew what it was like to alter my personality in an attempt to deal with my new reality. To dream and have those dreams crushed. But to keep on dreaming anyway. I understood. I only wish my pre-infertile self – the naïve and happy, baby-dreaming me – would also have known Vanessa for who she was, and not have seen her as a pathetic and comical character.

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Talia Liben Yarmush is a freelance writer and editor. She is also an infertile mother who writes her own blog, The Accidental Typist.

The Exploitation of Women in Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Children of Men’

Movie poster for Children of Men

Written by Amanda Rodriguez for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

I like Alfonso Cuarón’s bleak, dystopian cinematic interpretation of Children of Men (based on the PD James novel) wherein the world collapses after an infertility pandemic strikes, causing there to be no human births for over 18 years. It poses remarkable questions like, “What do we value about life?” and “What do children mean to humanity’s sense of longevity and continuity?” and “Does the future exist if humans won’t be around for it?” Though this film appeals to my sci-fi post-apocalyptic proclivities, its treatment of women, children, and reproduction leaves much to be desired.

Children of Men immediately draws critical attention to this futuristic declining world’s tendency to turn women and children into symbols. The opening scene shows droves of people mourning the death of the youngest person in much the same way that celebrity deaths are mourned, setting up the 18-year-old man as a symbol of youth and a reminder of humanity’s impending extinction. The activist immigrant rights group, the Fishes, sees young pregnant Kee (portrayed by Clare-Hope Ashitey) as a symbol. She is not only a West African immigrant, but also the only woman to become pregnant in 18 years. She is a symbol of the humanity of immigrants, the salvation of the human race itself, and of a coming revolution. It is also made clear that women are forced to submit to fertility tests or face imprisonment, rendering these survivors little more than failed symbols of reproduction and shamed symbols of infertility. Though the film overtly critiques this desire to turn human beings into symbols, it indulges in it quite a bit.

The scene in the abandoned school is pregnant (pun intended) with symbolism.

“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in.” – Miriam

As the young Kee sits alone on a rickety swing set, the camera pans the dilapidated building and Miriam recounts her experiences as a medical midwife at the beginning of the pandemic. The scene mourns imaginary children who never existed along with an imaginary future that proves likewise illusory. The empty school reinforces the crushing absence of children, which in turn represents the absence of a future.

The film apparently resists turning pregnant Kee into a symbol by showing that the only sane response to her pregnancy is that of Theo’s overwhelming desire to get her to a doctor so that she can receive necessary medical attention. However, when Kee reveals the fullness of her pregnant stomach to Theo, it is nothing but indulgent symbolism. She takes her shirt off in the middle of a barn full of cows, her posture of one hand covering her breasts and the other cupping her belly simultaneously one of modesty and fecundity.

Kee is dehumanized and symbolized

This image of the pregnant black woman amongst livestock paired with the swelling music that evokes apotheosis is particularly offensive to me. Her humanity is transcended into grotesque female-coded symbols like earth, goddess, fertility, and nature. Her blackness is racistly used to reinforce the nature symbolism as well as the birth and beginning of mankind. The deliberateness of these symbols is even more apparent when the original PD James text The Children of Men is considered in which Julian (played by middle-aged white Julianne Moore) was the character with the mystical pregnancy. Though it is impossible to not read some symbolism into Kee’s pregnancy, her “revelation” scene is exploitative and is done dramatically and specifically to benefit the male viewer in the form of Theo.

Which leads us to the next issue I had with Children of Men: Most of the female characters are peripheral or marginalized. The midwife Miriam is portrayed as a religious nutcase who does some kind of spiritual Tai Chi, chants over Kee’s pregnant belly instead of using the hard science she learned in medical school, and believes in UFOs. Janice, the wife of Jasper (played by Michael Caine) is catatonic. Marichka is a Romanian woman who doesn’t speak English, babbles a lot, and has a bizarre relationship with her dog.

The unsavory Marichka driving Theo & Kee to a filthy room for the night

Julian, though a strong woman, is too often shown from Theo’s perspective as the beautiful, unattainable bitter ex-wife and forever mourning ex-mother. Not only that, but she dies suddenly very early on in the film. Her death itself is the most important thing about her because it’s an inside job, showing that the so-called immigrant rights activist group has questionable morality and can be trusted no more than the oppressive government regime. Therefore, Julian’s death is highly symbolic and paradigm shifting.

The Fishes scorn Julian’s non-violent methodology and murder her in order to exploit Kee’s baby as a symbol for revolution.

Not only were there few representations of non-symbolic women, but the entire film, a film about fertility, motherhood, and childbirth, is told from the perspective of a man. The most flagrant example of a marginalized female character is Kee. She is a child herself with no true agency, who knows nothing of pregnancy and motherhood, who must rely on the experience and protection of Theo. Kee’s lack of agency and complete reliance on Theo set up yet another patriarchal iteration of genesis wherein the rebirth of the human race isn’t due to Kee and her baby girl, Dylan; it’s due to the perseverance of a lone man whose ideals may be jaded, but he feels compelled to “do the right thing” no matter what noble sacrifices it might require.

Theo sacrifices his own life to protect Kee and her baby, ensuring they make it to safety first

Not only is Theo the martyr and savior of this film, but he knows more about motherhood than Kee does. He delivers the baby, coaching Kee on how to breathe and push, motivating her when she is overcome. He then delivers Kee and her baby to the so-called safety of The Human Project (a secretive group purporting to be searching for an infertility cure).

I ask you, why is this story told from Theo’s perspective? Why isn’t Kee our heroine? She’s the one with messianic qualities and an epic quest who undergoes a mystical pregnancy, sneaks her way out of West Africa only to become a hunted “fugee” in Britain, before traversing war-torn areas only to give birth in a filthy flophouse before escaping via rowboat to the elusive, mythical Human Project. Why is her tale told once removed in the form of Theo? Her femaleness along with her Otherness as a black woman and her status (in our current day culture) as a pregnant woman apparently give Cuarón license to strip her of real humanity and complexity. Her lack of agency in her own story and the way that she’s relegated to supporting-character land make it easy to inscribe meaning upon her, to turn her into a symbol in a way that Theo and his friend Jasper aren’t really because they’re men…children of men.

Kee’s pregnant body is turned into an icon.

In the novel version, it is the male sperm that becomes nonviable, causing the infertility pandemic. In the movie version, it’s the women who are suddenly infertile after repeated miscarriages. This puts the blame on women for the pandemic while identifying men (i.e. Theo) as the solution to the problem. It even makes me wonder if the way that the film depicts infertility as full of despair (as if civilization must collapse if we can’t make babies) is some sort of derailment of a masculine ideal, wherein reproduction and the passing on of one’s genes is a vital component of manhood. Yes, it would suck if humanity’s extinction was imminent, but the implosion of cultures and societies does not necessarily logically follow. Even now, we destroy our environment and use up our resources at an unsustainable rate, and first world countries do not fail because of it. The slow march toward extinction is one we’re increasingly familiar with as war over oil spreads across the globe and our climate Hades-heats up.

Children of Men‘s depiction of women as props, tools, symbols, or cardboard underscores the notion that women’s true purpose is reproduction, and when women can’t reproduce, they’re not only useless, but society itself collapses under the burden of their neglect of duty. Despite many of the intriguing themes this film explores (including a scathing denouncement of the treatment of immigrants), Children of Men ends up falling in line with its mainstream contemporaries to assert that women are merely bodies, that a woman’s value lies in her ability to reproduce, and that she has and should have no control over that body or that ability to reproduce.

Infertility and Miscarriage in HBO’s ‘Tell Me You Love Me’

Tell Me You Love Me poster

Written by Stephanie Rogers as part of our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Before Lena Duhman burst onto the HBO scene and started ruining lives with her depictions of graphic and awkward sex on screen, a show existed called Tell Me You Love Me. Created by Cynthia Mort, and airing on HBO for only one season, the show centered around four upper middle-class white couples in different stages of their lives, trying to keep their shit together and their relationships functional. I tend to enjoy watching people on screen struggle with interpersonal conflict, fail miserably at resolving it, and then end up in intensive psychoanalysis and sex therapy where they experience embarrassing emotional breakdowns. YOLO, right?

Dave and Katie in Tell Me You Love Me

David (Tim DeKay) and Katie (Ally Walker) represent the typical married couple in their 40s: busy with work, busy with children, who’ve lost the “fire” in their marriage. The sex fire. They manage to talk about it openly with each other, but they eventually end up seeing a therapist to help them work through that year-long lovemaking lull. Carolyn (Sonya Walger) and Palek (Adam Scott), both in their 30s, want a baby but struggle with infertility issues, which also sends them to therapy. The not-yet-married Jamie (Michelle Borth) and Hugo (Luke Farrell Kirby), the youngest members of the ensemble, seem to have the exact opposite problem—they sex it up so much in public, in private, wherever the fuck, that they’re each convinced the other will eventually cheat. Similar to HBO’s In Treatment, the show connects these storylines together by sending all three couples to the same therapist—Dr. May Foster (Jane Alexander), whose own relationship struggles with her partner Arthur (David Selby) occasionally surface.

Dr. Foster and Arthur in Tell Me You Love Me

The show raised all kinds of eyebrows in 2007 because of the very real sex scenes. The show creators countered any arguments that a cast fuckfest had ensued with “IT’S SIMULATED,” but I distinctly remember seeing penetration. That was six years ago, so, like, Lena Dunham ain’t got nothin’ on Cynthia Mort.

Of all the couples on Tell Me You Love Me, Palek and Carolyn—and their struggles with infertility—enthralled me the most.

Jamie and Hugo in Tell Me You Love Me

Sidenote: I love Parks and Recreation, especially Ben and Leslie’s adorable relationship. But before Adam Scott landed the role of Ben Wyatt and became part of the most wonderful couple on TV, he got super naked a million times on Tell Me You Love Me. (According to an interview with Scott, that penis was hardcore prosthetic. Still, sometimes, when I look at Ben Wyatt, I accidentally think about Palek’s fake penis.)

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the show since it first aired, but I remember finding Palek and Carolyn so compelling. I was 28 years old at the time, but for some reason, I found less interesting the couple in their 20s fucking in cars every five minutes and more interesting the professionally successful couple in their 30s, who deeply loved each other but for whom sex had become a means to an end. They wanted a baby. And each time Carolyn failed to become pregnant—and both Carolyn and Palek viewed their potential infertility as an individual failure—their relationship suffered.

Palek and Carolyn in Tell Me You Love Me

Perhaps what I found interesting, and even important, especially as a woman starting to understand how feminism fit into my life in a practical way, were the gender dynamics at play in Palek and Carolyn’s pregnancy struggles. Throughout the ten-episode arc, Carolyn basically treats Palek as a sperm donor, and his complaints about the lack of intimacy in their relationship stem from that—he wants feeling and emotion attached to making love with his wife; yet Carolyn sees that as unimportant, often demanding that he provide her with sex whenever she asks for it.

In one pivotal scene, after an argument about their sex life and possible infertility, Palek and Carolyn get rough on the couch, with Palek saying, “I’ll get you pregnant,” every time he thrusts inside her. I remember feeling sick to my stomach as I watched that scene. The anger Palek felt toward his wife, accompanied by his own feelings of inadequacy as a man unable to perform an exclusively male function, manifested as a borderline violent sex scene that, frankly, scared me a little.

Palek and Carolyn in Tell Me You Love Me

At the same time, I found the on screen gender dynamics fascinating between them: Carolyn becomes the stereotypical man demanding sex from his wife; Palek becomes the stereotypical woman who desires emotional intimacy with her husband; they end up in therapy as a result, and they’re both sympathetic characters. I like that the show flips this conventional portrayal of married couples, and, while I know this either/or, Mars/Venus shit ain’t true, and that we’re all complex fucking human beings with a spectrum of similar physical and emotional needs, it’s necessary to see a man on screen who’s up in arms about the lack of emotional intimacy in his relationship with his wife. Somehow, it’s still a rarity to see nuanced portrayals of sensitive men.

I don’t want to give anything else away about this show, particularly about this couple. It ended after only one ten-episode season, and I think people need to revisit it. The best teaser I can give you is the fan vid below. That is all.