Tag: Infertility

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

———-

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

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. 

Stillbirth. Still Ignored.

Serious Trigger Warning for discussion and images of stillbirth and infant loss. 

Publicity photograph used for Peekaboo

Guest post written by Debbie Howard for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.
Google “stillbirth in film,” and you will see next to nothing come up about this subject matter. What does come up is very current, as people are starting to look at this a little more just now. I know of two or three films happening worldwide about this subject matter at the moment. At long last. There is a feature film called Return to Zero being made in the USA, and there was a documentary called Capturing a Short Life made in 2008 in Canada. I also saw a documentary a few years ago called Limbo Babies, very late at night on TV, and have never been able to find anything else about this since. There is little else other than my work.

I completed my short drama Peekaboo nearly two years ago, but I started writing it about three years before that. I had two friends who had experienced baby loss, one to miscarriage and one who had given her baby up for adoption. I had a dream one night that merged these two stories together; this was the beginning of Peekaboo, which is about a couple who has lost three babies to stillbirth. I wrote a first draft of the script then started researching in great detail as I developed the script. I was shocked to discover that hardly anything had been made about this subject before.

Because I had no funding to make Peekaboo, I had to crowdfund, asking for donations to help me raise the money I needed for the film. This was a blessing in disguise, because as well as raising the money, I met a great number of parents via social media who had lost babies, and I got to know some of them well. With their help, I was able to complete the film to a high standard and use two of the UK’s finest actors in the lead roles.

“A wonderfully tender and compassionate articulation of love and loss. Peekaboo unwraps the layers of grief and emotional reconciliation with heartbreaking precision and sensitivity.” –Caroline Cooper Charles, Creative England
You can watch the Peekaboo trailer here: https://vimeo.com/42260999.

I was very happy with Peekaboo when it was completed, and it was met with great acclaim from those who saw it. However, I was very disappointed with the lack of film festivals that programmed it. Compared to my previous films, this screened at far fewer festivals. The subject matter was seen as too depressing. This was very frustrating as I made the film to show people who hadn’t been through losing a baby what really happened. It told me audiences still aren’t ready to look at this. There is such a silence around baby loss. While I was in the process of making the film, many people asked me, “Why are you making a film about that?” On top of the grief that the parents have been through, there is another burden for them–to keep quiet and not upset people by mentioning their baby.

Not being one who’s put off easily, this fueled me to want to look at the subject matter again, and I felt a documentary would be more powerful. There is no one better equipped to tell stories of baby loss than the parents themselves. Due to the fantastic contacts I’d already made on Peekaboo, I had a pool of parents all very keen to take part in the film, and I started selecting the right characters and stories for Still Born, Still Loved.

Mel Scott with her son Finley
Still Born, Still Loved: The Life Within Us

Synopsis:

How do you survive when the baby you’ve been expecting for months dies before you have the chance to ever really know them? When on the day you were supposed to be bringing your baby home, you have to carry a tiny coffin and see them buried in the cold, hard ground? What happens to all the love you feel for your child? How do you move forward with your life with a heavy heart and empty arms?

This documentary goes right to the heart of the human suffering caused by the loss of a tiny life. There is no greater suffering for any parent to bear than the death of their child.

Our film is special because each of the stories within it has a powerful, life-affirming message, as the parents involved work through their suffering to accomplish something really spectacular in memory of their baby. The outcome will be uplifting and inspiring and will highlight how even the most vulnerable people can triumph in the face of adversity.

Still Born, Still Loved is a feature-length documentary, and I want it to get seen by a wide audience in cinemas and on television. I went back to our main sponsors on Peekaboo and asked if they wanted to help us get started. Through the great generosity of three women, all of whom have suffered stillbirth firsthand, and some more crowdfunding, we raised the money needed to film a very powerful pilot, which we have now completed. You can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/61217978.
Nicola Harding with her daughter Emily
An interesting question for me, when someone loses their first child, is “Can you call yourself a parent if you don’t have any children?” This is one of the questions we attempt to answer. If you ask someone what a parent is, they think of someone with one or more children, bringing up a child, caring for their needs, organising their birthday party, and tucking them into bed at night. But when you have carried a baby, spent months planning and imagining their future, gone through labour and childbirth, held your son or daughter in your arms, felt overwhelming love for your child and miss them every single day, you are definitely a parent, too. You find creative and interesting ways to spend time with your child, celebrate, and remember them.

In our film, we also use parents’ own photographs and video footage of their time spent with their babies when they were stillborn. This, of course, is both very powerful and greatly upsetting, but I feel it is important for people to really see this firsthand. It certainly makes a huge impact and shows that these babies were a real-life son or daughter to these parents who love them dearly and always will.

Christmas decorations in memory of Harriet and Felicity Morris
For more information, and to support the film or buy a copy of Peekaboo (all proceeds to Still Born, Still Loved), please contact me at debbie@bigbuddhafilms.co.uk or see our website at http://www.bigbuddhafilms.co.uk/films/documentary/still-born-still-loved/.

I’m really proud of the work we’re doing around stillbirth and baby loss, and I’m very grateful to all those who are supporting us. Together we will break the silence. 

Finley Scott in his coffin
Debbie Howard is a writer/director. She set up Big Buddha Films eight years ago and specialises in making films with a strong female voice that tackle human dilemmas and show the vulnerabilities of human existence. She is a single mum and lives in Sheffield with her two teenage children.

‘Buffy’ Season 9: Sci-Fi Pregnancies and the Story That Almost Was

Buffy talks to Spike about her pregnancy in the Season 9 comic

Guest post written by Pauline Holdsworth for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss. 

Nikki Wood—New York punk slayer and the mother of ex-Sunnydale High principal Robin Wood—had been absent from the Buffyverse for a long time. So it’s a bit of a surprise when she shows up in the opening scenes of “On Your Own,” the second volume of the Season 9 Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books. She’s being held off the edge of a tall building by the throat, pumped full of sedatives that have taken away her powers for a Council-mandated rite of passage. She’s pregnant.

The vampire in question mocks her, saying he can smell the sedatives, he can smell the baby, and it’s going to be easy to kill them both. Cue vampire dust, and Nikki’s Watcher Crowley rushing over to make sure she’s alright. Crowley thinks it’s unbelievable that the Council made her go through with rite of passage, given that she’s in such a “delicate condition.” Nikki brushes it off, telling him that the job doesn’t stop because her life got in the way. “In the meanwhile, can you at least tell me…who the father is?” says Crowley.

Cut to Buffy, present day, who’s just been asked the same question by Dawn. “I have no idea,” she says.

When the end of the first volume of Season 9 ended with Buffy’s positive pregnancy test, my faith in the comic book extension of Buffy came rushing back. After the TV show ended in Season 7, Joss Whedon and a group of other writers returned to the story in comic book form, but Season 8 bit off more than it could chew. Taking advantage of the unlimited scope (and reduced production costs) this new medium gave them, the comic book writers dreamed up alternate realities to their hearts’ content, and Season 8, while intriguing, was often hard to follow.

Dawn comforts Buffy in Season 9

So far, Season 9 has had a much smaller, more intimate focus. The world lost its connection to magic at the end of the previous season, something Buffy is responsible for. She’s living in San Francisco, trying to make ends meet by making coffee. As far as tone goes, it’s very reminiscent of Season 6—it’s about dealing with fallout, navigating uncertainty, and trying to figure out what survival means when you`re talking about the everyday instead of slaying monsters.

Buffy’s relationship to her pregnancy was a trigger that had the potential to change the story and the characters’ world fundamentally. The only parallel I can think of that comes close is the way Buffy`s life changed after her mother died, and she sacrificed herself to save Dawn at the end of Season 5. In the same way that those events set up Season 6, which was an incredibly compelling engagement with loss, depression, addiction, and responsibility, Buffy`s pregnancy opened up a storyline that looked like it would be a smart and painful discussion of reproductive choices, motherhood, agency, and trying to understand the future.

But here’s the thing: Buffy’s not actually pregnant.

Instead (in a bizarre, inexplicable, and incredibly frustrating plot twist) her consciousness has been transplanted to the Buffybot by Andrew, who’s taken it upon himself to give her a “normal” life by hiding her body away in a 50s-esque suburban paradise while an assassin hunts her robot replacement—without checking in with her or letting her know someone’s hunting for her, of course. The positive pregnancy test was apparently a by-product of the robot technology, but that’s an explanation that’s still lost on me. And though this leads to some really interesting explorations of “normalcy,” it reads to me like a missed opportunity of massive proportions.

The book had opened with a Buffy who had no idea how she felt about her pregnancy. She blacked out at a party, and she has no idea what happened or what might have been done to her (this, it turns out, was when Andrew’s body-switching hijinks ensued). She was beginning to undertake the difficult work of deciding what she wanted to do with her future and her body, and trying to reconcile her long-standing desire for normalcy with her anxiety about the uncertain circumstances under which her pregnancy occurred and her identity as a Slayer—which she realizes isn’t just a duty, it’s a drive.

Buffy asks Robin Wood about having a Slayer for a mother

Buffy asks Robin Wood to give her his perspective on growing up with the Slayer for a mother. “If you want an easy answer, you won’t get it from me,” he tells her; his childhood was raw and painful, and he grew up knowing that his mother could have walked away from him, but she never could have walked away from the job. He tells her about learning about vampires and demons before he heard about the Tooth Fairy and about lying awake waiting for his mother to come home, about how he got more support and family from Nikki’s Watcher than he did from her. He’s not sure what to tell her. It’s fascinating watching Robin try to vocalize what he thinks his mother should have done—would he rather have had her put him up for adoption? Not try to have a family at all? He’s still harboring resentment toward his mother for the choices she made throughout his childhood, but he’s also not sure Buffy would be repeating history if she chose to keep her child—and he’s also deeply cognizant of the context in which his mother made the choices she did.

The difference between Nikki and Buffy, he explains, is that Buffy is willing to let people in. She’s spent years making the kind of collective, “chosen” family that’s so important to Whedon’s work and the Buffyverse’s larger thematic structure. The title of this volume is “On Your Own,” but Buffy’s not—she has Dawn and Xander and Spike, and they’ve been trying to figure out what their family looks like since Joyce died. This scene with Robin also suggests that reproductive choices don’t end with the decision to have or not have a child—for him, the painful aspects of his childhood didn’t necessarily come from her choice to keep him, but from the choices she made after he was born, about what her priorities were, what kind of family she wanted (or was able) to have, and what kind of relationship she would have with her son.

I loved this moment because it broadened the scope of the conversations we have about reproductive decisions to include the complexities of life after birth. For Nikki, and for Buffy, it’s not just about this do-or-die moment where you choose the kind of future you’re going to have. Reproductive choice is something that’s repeated and remade and takes on new weight throughout the years, and it’s just as applicable to questions about raising your child and choosing your family as it is to questions about adoption and abortion.

This is the line of questioning that drives Buffy’s reproductive decision. She’s been thinking about what kind of mother she could be, and whether she could turn away from her identity as the Slayer to pursue a different kind of future. That’s the decision that Nikki made when Robin was born, but her life away from slaying didn’t last long. “She got an itch before I was even a year old. And we ended up right back where Crowley didn’t want us,” Robin says. “Patrolling while I waited for the night she didn’t come home. It took me a long time to realize why. She was chosen, Buffy. Just like you. No matter where she went, no matter how much she wanted to be with me. She wasn’t strong enough to ignore it. She had to be a Slayer.”

A depiction of Buffy’s confusing universe in the Season 9 comic

Buffy decides she could navigate the dual responsibilities of slaying and motherhood, but she also realizes that it wasn’t the only thing on her mind. Her decision also had to be about where she is in her own life, and about the fallout and tense relationships and financial responsibility she’s still trying to understand. She takes stock of where she is, and she’s not sure she’s ready to expand her chosen family to one that includes a child.

“It’s not the slaying. It’s me,” she says, sitting on the side of an abandoned pool with Spike. She’s going to have an abortion, and she asks Spike to come with her when she does it. Spike stands up and reaches for her hand. “Yeah,” he says, and nothing more. It’s a lovely, simple scene that speaks volumes to both of their characters and to how Buffy’s life and support system has changed since the TV show ended.

What I don’t understand is why after doing all of this heavy lifting and complex narrative development the writers chose to walk away. I loved this storyline, and I wanted to see them follow through with it. I wanted to see how Buffy’s relationship to her choices would evolve. I wanted to hear more from Robin Wood about how the choices he and his mother made complicate his continued involvement in this world. Though we do get to see an interesting exploration of Buffy’s loss and confusion after she realizes she was never pregnant, the weird fake-robot-pregnancy explanation feels far too convenient—and it points to some of my larger frustrations with sci-fi pregnancy storylines.

In the world of science fiction, a pregnancy is much more likely to be a flimsy excuse for deus ex machina than the beginning of a complex and nuanced exploration. Pregnancies happen and gestate overnight, and they lead to spiders that claw their way out of stomachs and babies whose blood is the cure for specific kinds of cancer or which opens portals. More often than not, these stories skip over any kind of emotional exploration of pregnancy, choice, or loss and fail to recognize that pregnancy often involves a difficult engagement with people’s own families, pasts, and fears.

There are some notable exceptions. But pregnancy should not be treated as a one-episode storyline, and reproductive decisions shouldn’t be introduced as monster-of-the-week plot twists.

What’s more, there are a lot of parallels between the 24-hour sci-fi pregnancy and the Convenient Miscarriage trope, in which characters who don’t want to have a child but don’t want to have an abortion miscarry at an opportune moment in the plot so they don’t have to make a decision. It’s a cop-out of a plot device, and the fact that it’s one of the dominant representations of miscarriage in pop culture is deeply problematic. Convenient Miscarriages gloss over an event many people experience as deeply traumatic and have a complicated relationship with, even if they’d been considering having an abortion.

Buffy tells Spike she’s having an abortion

The rest of the comic wavers back and forth between this kind of Convenient Fake Pregnancy and a continued exploration of what this experience means for Buffy. She’s struggling to understand the loss of her pregnancy, and the writers’ exploration of what it means to lose a child you’d made the decision not to keep is compelling. She’s also sure this is one more piece of proof that she’s a failure at anything to do with the “real world,” and her coming to terms with the fact that what she thought was a real-world decision with real-world implications was just “more bizarre Slayer crap” is really moving.

And though I’m not wild about Buffy’s pregnancy being framed as a “fake problem,” I’m intrigued by this continued exploration of what she went through, even if it’s only happening in a partial and underdeveloped way. I just hope it has consequences for the story as a whole. This was a smart, complicated discussion of reproductive justice and what it means to make a family—until it wasn’t. I’m frustrated that in a plotline where Buffy was asked to make a decision about her body, she wasn’t even in her body, and the choice wasn’t actually hers to make. I wanted to see the scene where Buffy went to the clinic with Spike. I wanted to see if she chose something else. However interesting this exploration of normalcy and loss was, I wanted to see the writers commit to the way her pregnancy would have changed her fictional world, to follow through and show Buffy negotiating the trauma of her history and the uncertainty of her future. More than anything, I really, really wanted to read the story they just walked away from. 

———-
Pauline Holdsworth is a fourth-year English student at the University of Toronto, where she is the Editor-in-Chief of The Strand. She also covers women’s issues for Campus Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @holdswo.

‘How I Met Your Mother’ One of the Few TV Shows to Explore a Childfree Life for Women

Written by Megan Kearns as part of our Infertility, Miscarriage and Infant Loss Week. Originally published at The Opinioness of the World. Cross-posted with permission.

I was ready. Poised to be pissed. For the first half of last season’s How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) episode “Symphony of Illumination,” I sat on the couch, scowling perpetually.
In the previous episode “The Rebound Girl,” we learn journalist Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) and playboy Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris)’s adulterous one night stand (although is it really a one night stand if you’ve slept together and dated before?? But I digress…), resulted in Robin telling Barney she was pregnant.
Throughout the entire series, Robin has proudly declared she never wanted kids. In all 7 seasons of Ted’s monologues to his children about how he met their mother, Ted has never once mentioned Robin having children. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
Would Robin have an abortion? Would her pregnancy be a false alarm? As abortions are a common medical procedure yet rarely seen in movies or TV shows, I was hoping for an abortion storyline. But I knew that if Robin was in fact pregnant, the writers would give her a child. So when Monday’s episode opened with Robin narrating to her future kids, I was bullshit.
Why the fuck does EVERY woman in movies and TV series want children?! Ugh.
As an unmarried woman in her 30s with no children, I’ve chosen to not get married and not have children. I’ve never really wanted them. Yet I’ve been told repeatedly (I cannot stress repeatedly enough) that I will eventually change my mind and have children. As if my choice is some cute and trendy passing phase. It’s the same bullshit response I’ve received from ignorant peeps when they find out I’m vegan. Oh, you’ll start eating meat or at least dairy some day. Oh, you’ll start having babies one day. Gee, thanks for enlightening me about MY life choices, asshole.
Now, I’ll admit that as I creep ever so closely to 35, my biological clock (god I hate that term but it does fit here) has been softly ticking. I know the statistics. My chances of having children drop substantially after age 35. In last week’s episode”Symphony of Illumination,” Robin struggles with this very same dilemma when she discovers not only is she not pregnant, she can’t have children. At first she’s relieved. But then she starts to mourn her infertility.
Instead of telling her friends the truth, Robin tells them she just learned she can’t be an Olympic pole vaulter. Later, when best friend Lily asks if she’s alright, Robin tells her she’s taking the news harder than she thought. Lily asks her if she ever even wanted to be a “pole vaulter.” Robin explains:

“No, I was always adamantly against having a pole vaulting career, even though it’s what most women want…In Canada, it’s very big up there. You know, it’s meet a nice guy, get married, vault some poles. But I never wanted that.

Of course it’s one thing not to want something. It’s another to be told you can’t have it. I guess it’s just nice knowing that you could someday do it if you changed your mind. But now, all of a sudden that door is closed.”

Later, Robin reveals:

“So I can’t have kids. Big deal. Now there’s no one to hold me back in life. No one to keep me from traveling where I want to travel. No one getting in the way of my career. If you want to know the truth of it, I’m glad you guys don’t exist. Really glad.”

Robin had been telling her story to imaginary kids. At the end of the bittersweet episode, Ted narrates that Robin never did become a “pole vaulter.” She became “a famous journalist, a successful businesswoman, a world traveler” and briefly a bull fighter…”but she was never alone.”
These scenes broke my heart. Tears streamed down my face (yes, I’m a weeper). I was sad Robin couldn’t have children. But a wave of relief washed over me. FINALLY, a TV series depicted a female character choosing a different path.
The HIMYM writers could have had Robin become a parent through adoption instead like Monica and Chandler on Friends and Carrie and Doug on King of Queens. Robin laments her infertility not because she wanted children. But because her choice, the choice to change her mind, was taken away. It’s one thing to not want something. But it’s quite another when the possibility of that thing that you didn’t even want is gone. Robin’s dialogue – her worries, her hopes, her fears – eerily echoed my own.
What if I wake up one day and regret my decision? What if I want a daughter or son to read to, cook vegan food for, play games with, take to museums, teach feminism to (hey, it could happen)? But what if I don’t? Do I want to uproot my entire life? Wouldn’t my life be just as complete if I never have kids? Yep. It would. And therein lies my problem with the media.
Through movies, TV series and ads, the media perpetually tells us all women want children. If they don’t, they must be damaged, deluding themselves or they just haven’t found the right man yet. Because you know silly ladies, our lives revolve around men. Tabloid magazines repeatedly report on female actors’ baby bumps. As Susan J. Douglas argues in Enlightened Sexism, “bump patrols” reduce women to their reproductive organs, reinforcing the stereotype that women aren’t real women unless they procreate.
Now, please don’t mistake me. If you’re a woman (or man) who wants kids or has kids, congrats. Mazel Tov. Seriously. I love my friends’ children. I love seeing their cute pics online. I love playing with them…and giving them back at the end of the day. Children are adorbs (sometimes) with their rambunctious spirits, incessant questions and inquisitive natures. But not everyone wants kids. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t.
Choosing to be childfree is on the rise as 1 in 5 women (up from 1 in 10 in the 70s) in their 40s doesn’t have a child. But you wouldn’t know it from watching TV. The only TV shows that come to mind where a female character questions whether or not to have children and chooses not to are Samantha on Sex and the City, Elaine on Seinfeld, Emily on The Bob Newhart Show, Jane Timony on Prime Suspect (the original with Helen Mirren) and Christina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy.
Jessica Grose at Slate points out Whitney differs from HIMYM in its portrayal of a woman questioning her child-free choice. Independent Whitney doesn’t want to get married or have children. But in the episode “Up All Night,” she completely reverses her position and concedes once she discovers having no kids is a deal-breaker for her boyfriend Alex. The message is that Whitney “has to agree to consider all the trappings of traditional womanhood” to be considered “a person.”
HIMYM suffers many gender problems. Yes, it infuriated me Lily received so much backlash when she went to LA to pursue her dream of an art career. Almost everything Barney says or does – his sexist stereotypes, objectification of women, and fat-shaming – pisses me off. And yes, it bugs me that Robin’s unconventional female personality of Scotch drinking, hockey loving, cigar smoking and gun ownership has been pinned on her father raising her as a boy…even going so far as to name her Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Jr. But the show hasn’t fallen into the sexist trap that a woman isn’t a “real” woman without a baby.
When Ted shares with his kids (and us the audience) that Robin never had children, he highlights the full life she led. Her life wasn’t empty because she didn’t become a mother. Women are socialized to want to get married and have babies. But what if you don’t want babies? Is something wrong with you? Or is something wrong with the system reinforcing the notion that all women want to be moms?
Ladies, you’re not broken, incomplete, unfeminine or any other nonsensical bullshit if you choose not to have children. Whatever you decide, whatever is right for you…well, that’s just fabulous. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

‘Inside’: French Pregnant Body Horror At Its Finest


Guest post written by Deirdre Crimmins for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Content note: Discussion of violence directed at women and violent images ahead. Spoiler alert.

Horror films have a unique way of showcasing exactly what we fear, but they often do so in a subtle way. While is it goes without saying that ax-wielding maniacs are to be feared, these films often slyly expose the issues that our society is too shy to deal with head on. In the 2007 French horror film Inside (directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury), fertility, reproduction, and infant loss are dealt with in a refreshingly direct and uncompromisingly bloody outcome, with no room for subtlety.
The film takes place during the course of Sarah’s last night alone before having her child’s delivery induced the next morning. Sarah (Alysson Paradis) lost her husband in a terrible car accident just a few weeks earlier. The crash is shown multiple times through the film, which illustrates the haunting presence of the loss in every moment of her day-to-day life. We see the crash from the perspective of her child in utero as well, which also frames this unborn child as a character in the film.
With the circumstances of Sarah’s pregnancy she is denied the typical rituals of birthing. She has no partner to help her pick out the child’s name. The birth date is decided by her doctor in a cold and clinical office, removing the excitement and surprise of delivery. Rather than spending the night before the birth readying the nursery and enjoying their last night together as a childless couple, Sarah is all alone.
That is, Sarah is alone until she is stalked by a mysterious stranger who appears at her door. The stranger is a woman (played by Béatrice Dalle) dressed all in black who tries everything she can to get Sarah to open the door. After an initial creepy stand-off, the woman forces her way in to the home, and the horror begins. This nameless woman wants Sarah’s child, and she is not waiting around for the birth.
The next hour of the film is a bloody cat and mouse chase between Sarah and this woman. The film is smart, and incredibly gory. Neither of these women hold back on violent acts to get, or keep, what they want.

Sarah

To begin to examine a horror film, there are several questions that can aid in the dissection of its purpose. When looking at Inside it can be helpful to pose this question: Where is the horror? By looking at the source of horror in the film, we can better understand what we are to fear.

Clearly the first level of horror in Inside is in the intruder. Her bloodlust for Sarah’s unborn child drives her violence. Initially, it is this desire for the child that is problematic. We find out later in the film that not only was this woman pregnant recently, but that she lost her child in the same car accident that killed Sarah’s husband. This unveiling in the plot is what shows the complicated relationship that Inside has with infant loss.
With this we see that another dimension of the horror in the film lies in the intruder’s loss of her pregnancy. She was nearly full term, and we see the car accident from inside her womb. The well-developed, though unborn, child is distressed by the jolt the crash delivered, and reacts as the amniotic fluid clouds up with blood. One can only imagine the pain suffered by the loss of a pregnancy at this stage, however the emotional havoc she sustains cannot justify her attack on Sarah, can it? Sarah was driving the car, after all. Is it too much of a stretch to demand from Sarah what Sarah took from her? It obviously is too much to ask, however the logical leap is not a far one to make.
Outside of the blame for the lost child lies a classic example of body horror. Films that contain plenty of gore are often, though not exclusively, “body horror” films. Here it is the body itself that is the source of the horror. The pain, blood, dismemberment, and other organic fluids in the film are definite sources of horror in Inside. The fact that the intruder is treating Sarah like merely a vessel that holds a child, and treats Sarah’s body with so little respect that this is clear, is horrific. Sarah is chased, tortured, and ultimately given a non-consensual cesarean, all to the horror of the audience. This treatment of Sarah and the fact that her body, and in particular her pregnant body, is the source of much of the horror in the film, that makes this a body horror film.
Despite the horror of two women battling one another for an unborn child, the film is quite feminist. Both of these women are smart (deranged and depressed respectively, but both make choices to further their own agendas in constructive ways). Sarah does have men who show up to attempt to rescue her, but with each effort these rescuers are outsmarted and brutally killed by the woman in black. Also, neither Sarah nor the intruder are ever shown as weak due to their womanhood. Both are shown as strong, self-sufficient people who just so happen to disagree over who should get to keep Sarah’s child.
Woman in Black

Though Inside deals with the horrors of the body, and the emotional response to losing a child, it does not treat pregnancy with romanticism or nostalgia. Sarah and the intruder are treated as believable characters that are each reacting to the extreme situations that they have found themselves in. It is this even-handed treatment of pregnant women as still functioning members of society, and not dainty figurines that have no autonomy, which makes the film a horror that you can empathize with. By putting well rounded, relatable characters in (hopefully) unrelatable situations you can just sit back and watch the blood flow.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.

The “Plague” of Infertility in Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Children of Men’

Dire times in Children of Men as “The World Has Collapsed”

Guest post written by Carleen Tibbetts for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Women can’t get pregnant anymore and nobody knows why. This the central lamentation in Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 dystopian film Children of Men, based on P.D. James’s novel. Set in England in the year 2027, this is the story of the human race entering its final phase. Cuaron brings us into Orwellian territory in which nations worldwide have fallen as a result of war, disease, and famine. Britain remains a sort of lucrative last bastion in these end times and people across the globe are scrambling to get in. Foreign immigrants are referred to as “fugees,” and, borrowing from Hitler’s playbook, the British government rounds them up, cages them, and sends them to zoned and policed ghettos and camps. To hire, sell to, or even feed fugees is a crime. Avoiding fertility tests when the human race is dying out is also a crime. There are no more sounds of children laughing. There are sirens. There are bombs. There is gunfire. There are government-provided suicide kits. There is the wailing and gnashing of teeth, especially since an eighteen year old, the youngest human on the planet, has just died.
The film opens with the main character, Theo (Clive Owen), getting coffee at a local café. Café patrons look on inconsolably as the news program on the café’s TV breaks the story that “Baby Diego,” the world’s youngest person, was shot because he refused to sign an autograph. The title of “world’s youngest person” now passes to a woman older than Diego by a matter of months. Theo exits the coffee shop and within seconds, it blows up. He makes his way to his government job though, ears ringing, completely accustomed to daily violence at this level.
All the workers in Theo’s office are glued to their computer screens, weeping as Diego “in memoriam” slideshows are played. Theo plays the grief card to skip out on work and visit his longtime liberal activist friend, Jasper (Michael Caine), and his wife, who MI-5 tortured into a state of catatonia for her radical photojournalism. It is here we learn that Theo is a former radical who was married to another radical, Julian (Julianne Moore), yet the death of their young son years ago wedged them apart.

Theo, his former spouse, Julian, and their son.

Jasper begins telling Theo about “The Human Project,” a seemingly mythic organization aimed at getting to the root problem of the infertility pandemic. Theo remains apathetic and unmoved by Jasper’s enthusiasm for this cause. He’s unconvinced they exist and claims that even if they do find a cure for infertility, it’s too late, because the world “went to shit” already. There is always blame associated with infertility, and it’s usually placed on the woman, as if somehow she is not doing her part, as if her “defunct” biology renders her useless, as if her sole purpose is procreation. These future scientists don’t know if it’s due to pollution, radiation, pesticides, global warming, or even low-sperm count (lest we forget that men are not always completely virile), and the fanatical religious right element views the infertility pandemic as a righteous punishment handed down from God. For them, it’s just another pit stop on the road to Armageddon.

Julian has her activists kidnap Theo and she persuades him to use his governmental connections to sneak a fugee past checkpoints and out of the country. It’s obvious that he’s still in love with her, and although she’s keeping him in the dark as to her motives, he agrees to do it. Theo asks Julian how she got over their son’s death so quickly, to which she abruptly and angrily replies, “You don’t have a monopoly on grief,” and that Dylan’s death is something that haunts her on a daily basis. They meet up with fellow activists, including former gynecologic nurse, Miriam (Pam Ferris) to transport Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) past British borders and into the hands of The Human Project. En route to a supposedly safe location, they are accosted, and Julian is killed. Miriam, Theo, and Kee stay the night in a remote English farmhouse with the other activists who have rallied to ensure Kee’s safe departure. 
Theo has absolutely no idea what’s going on. He doesn’t completely trust these people and wonders why everyone is risking their lives for this young woman. Sensing Theo needs convincing, Kee disrobes and we see that she is extremely pregnant. Now Theo has a purpose. Something to live for. Now the entire human race has something to live for. Once skeptical about The Human Project, he realizes what’s at stake, playing a sort of Joseph figure to Kee’s Mary. Although this isn’t his baby, it’s sort of everyone’s baby. Kee admits she doesn’t know who got her pregnant, but she’s definitely portrayed in a pure sort of light. The scene where she reveals her pregnancy to Theo takes place in a barn surrounded by hay and cows—heavy with Biblical overtones.

Kee reveals her pregnancy
Kee wants to have the baby at the farm, but Theo overhears the radicals plotting to execute him as soon as he gets Kee past the checkpoints, and he realizes they want to use her baby as a political bargaining chip to advocate for illegal immigrants’ rights. Theo, Miriam, and Kee escape to Jasper’s, where he tells them his old friend in the army can get them into a refugee camp. Once inside, they can get a boat out to sea where The Human Project ship, The Tomorrow, will take Kee to safety. 
Kee had never seen a pregnant woman, had no idea what was happening to her, and felt “like a freak” when she saw her body change. When she felt the baby kick, she knew it was alive, and that she was, too. Jasper tells Kee about Dylan’s death, and that Theo’s fate lost out to chance. But isn’t this what conception is all about? Chance? Isn’t life itself a game of chance? Is parenthood an obligation? A choice? Is a child a blessing or a burden? With all the atrocities we’ve carried out and all the violence we’ve enacted on one another, do we deserve to exist? Do we need to bring new life into this mess? And suppose Kee had not wanted this baby?
Other than being presented with where she would like to have her baby, nobody asks Kee if she wanted any of this to begin with. Perhaps the fate of the human race resting on Kee’s shoulders, or, more appropriately, in her uterus, and perhaps the key to fertility being something unique to her genetic makeup is motivation enough for her to unquestioningly continue her pregnancy. Jasper’s fate vs. chance statement brings up a great deal of unanswered existential questions, not only as they pertain to the film’s characters, but for us living in a world where, for example, China has a one-child-per family limit, or where a friend jokingly told me that I’d get a better income tax refund if I got knocked up. 
Theo, Kee, and Miriam escape Jasper’s just as the authorities arrive and kill him. The three of them plan to rendezvous with Jasper’s military connection at one of many now-defunct elementary schools —how bizarrely apropos! A In a haunting scene, Theo walks the school’s hallways and a lone deer runs down a corridor. Earlier in the movie, there were dogs all over the farmhouse property. Kee stood in pen of young cows when she showed Theo her stomach. Animals are able to procreate, so why is infertility only affecting the human population? This isn’t brought up at any point during the film. Shouldn’t all species be on their last legs? Miriam says, “As the sounds of the playground faded, the despair set in.” She reminisces how women at her clinic were miscarrying sooner and sooner until pregnancies just stopped occurring altogether.
Jasper’s connection “arrests” them for being “foreigners” (how can anyone mistake Clive Owen for anything other than British????), and on the bus ride into the camp, Kee’s water breaks. In order to avoid the authorities catching on to Kee’s labor pains, Miriam distracts them and the guards remove her from the bus and execute her.

Theo delivers baby Dylan

Once in the camp, Theo and Kee find sheltered room. Kee lies on a squalid mattress and Theo pours alcohol on his hands to deliver her daughter in a matter of minutes. The slightly premature (and horribly CGI-enhanced) baby Dylan (named after Theo and Julian’s son) is presumably healthy. Like most birth scenes, this one is completely ludicrous. Why do most directors hold back when depicting birth scenes? We see so much senseless violence (and this film is violent from beginning to end) and so much life leaving the world, so what’s wrong with showing the realistic way in which life enters the world? Kee is surprisingly light on her feet when she and Theo find out they have to evacuate STAT because the government is planning to wipe that camp off the map. Granted, her legs are caked in blood and afterbirth from the delivery. That was believable. Although it’s hard to nurse in a war-torn ghetto, there are no shots of Kee feeding Dylan—kind of central to the baby’s survival and mother-child bonding. 

A mortally wounded Theo manages to escort Kee and Dylan to safety, and as Dylan begins to cry amid all the rockets and gunfire, everything comes to a halt. Angelic music begins to play. Other fugees break into tears at the sight of the baby and reach out to try to touch her. Soldiers who had entered the tenement housing with guns aimed at all the fugees immediately lower their weapons, drop to their knees, and make the sign of the cross. Theo and Kee get into their boat and make it to sea right before the camp is obliterated. Adrift on the open water, the dying Theo shows Kee how to hold Dylan to soothe her and stop her crying. He bleeds out and slumps over just as The Tomorrow sails toward them. The Human Project does exist. Yet, what is in store for Kee, Dylan, and the human race remains a mystery as the screen abruptly goes black.

Kee and baby Dylan

I did not read James’s novel, and therefore, don’t know how closely Cuaron’s version followed the book. Perhaps the book delved into more of the science or other global issues that occurred at the onset of the mass infertility. One of the main issues for me was that it was unclear whether women were unable to get pregnant, whether men were unable to get them pregnant, or if there was just complete reproductive failure for both sexes. The fact that infertility was limited strictly to humans also didn’t make sense. The fact that outspoken female activists like Julian and Jasper’s wife were brutally hunted and tortured for their resistance was sort of glossed over, as was the strain that Dylan’s death had on Julian and her marriage to Theo. I’d have liked more backstory there.

When I sat down to write this review, I vowed not to use the words “belly,” “bump,” “baby bump,” “preggo,” or “preggers.” I only used “knocked up” because I was quoting a friend of mine when she made the joke about children as tax deductions. I’ve just entered my thirties, and the majority of the women I went to high school with are mothers now. I shouldn’t internalize that there’s something wrong with me because I’m not a mother, but every time I see a picture of a pregnant stomach or a sonogram on Facebook, a little twinge goes through me. Should I want this? Why? Why does fertility turn into yet another unhealthy competition for women? Nobody should be “blamed” for infertility, regardless of gender. It does not make anyone less a woman or a man if they cannot make babies. Instead of obsessing over own biological clocks running down (yes, there are even iPhone apps for that!) or our “completeness” via parenthood, we should focus on shaping the kind of world we want to bring children into.
Carleen Tibbetts lives in Oakland. Her poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Metazen, Monkeybicycle, Coconut, H_NGM_N, The Rumpus, and other journals.

Feminist Flashback: ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

Written by Megan Kearns.

When I was young, my mom raised me on classic films: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Great Escape, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I fondly remember watching Elizabeth Taylor on-screen. Hollywood royalty, we often think of her arresting beauty, numerous marriages, struggle with alcohol, philanthropy and perfume commercials. It’s easy to forget she was an amazing actor; a stellar artist who fluidly exuded strength, sensuality, vitality, passion and pain.Starring in over 50 films, Taylor often chose feminist roles.  In National Velvet, she plays a young girl disguising herself as a male jockey to compete. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, she’s a fiery survivor embracing her sexuality. And in the Texas saga Giant, she plays an educated and outspoken woman, challenging sexism. So after years of my mother urging me, I finally watched Taylor’s legendary performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Based on Edward Albee’s Tony Award-winning play (it also won the Pulitzer although it wasn’t awarded it due to its vulgarity and sexual themes), the 1966 film follows Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and George (Richard Burton), a middle-aged married couple. He’s an assistant professor at a New England college and she’s his wife who happens to be the college president’s daughter. Through their vitriolic and bitter alcohol-fueled feuding, they lash out at each other. When a young couple, new professor Nick (George Segal) and his wife Honey (Sandy Dennis), visit their house after a late-night party, Martha and George continue their battle of wits, interchangeably attacking their guests and using them as ammunition, to further lash out at one another.
Director Mike Nichols wanted to have real-life married couple Taylor and Burton star in the film, a celebrity couple famous for their off-screen turbulent relationship. Known for its acerbic dialogue, Martha and George sling verbal barbs throughout the movie. Martha continually insults George calling him a “dumbbell,” saying he makes her want to “puke.” Critics often focus on Martha’s vicious verbal attacks but George equals her venom. He says she makes him “sick” and equates her voice to “animal noises.” Their guests Nick and Honey initially appear to be the quintessential couple, contrasting Martha and George in appearance, age and demeanor.  But as the night wears on and more alcohol is consumed, the problems both couples face come to the surface.
I’ve read that Who’s Afraid of a Virginia Woolf? is a feminist film.  But when I started watching, I initially thought, what the hell? There’s no way this is feminist as it’s mired in misogyny!  The film follows George’s perspective as there are scenes with just George and Martha, George and Nick, or George and Honey.  George is almost omnipresent. Also, there a few violent scenes in which George attempts to strangle Martha, pushes her, shoves her against a car and pretends to shoot her with a gun (an umbrella pops out instead of a bullet).  But when you begin to peel back the layers, you realize that while it might not be an overtly feminist film, feminist tendencies emerge nonetheless.
In the 1960s, the domesticity paradigm for women reigned.  In the beginning of the film, Martha tells George about a Bette Davis movie she’s trying to remember the name of.  She says, “She [Bette Davis] comes home from a hard day at the grocery store.”  George snidely and skeptically replies, “At the grocery store?” to which she retorts, “Yes, the grocery store. She’s a housewife, she buys things.”  Women were expected to be docile, obedient wives and mothers tending the home. Yet this revealing exchange shows the disdain for domestic duties women in the 60s faced.

Policing of sexuality also appears.  When Martha calls George a floozy in one scene, Honey jovially and drunkenly retorts,  

“He can’t be a floozy.  You’re a floozy!”

The film makes a subtle commentary of the double standard in sexual conduct between women and men.  Men could sleep with whomever they pleased while women who did the same were branded as “sluts.”

A role that earned Taylor her second Oscar, she considered the role of Martha her “personal best.”  A bravura performance, Taylor seamlessly sinks into the part; it’s difficult to ascertain where she begins and the character ends.  A college-educated woman, Martha perpetually humiliates her husband for his lack of ambition and professional failures:

Martha: I hope that was an empty bottle, George! You can’t afford to waste good liquor, not on your salary, not on an associate professor’s salary!

She pushed George to be the head of the History Department and the head of the university.  But why couldn’t she do those things herself?  In an exchange with Nick:

Nick: To you, everybody’s a flop. Your husband’s a flop, I’m a flop.
Martha: You’re all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops.

In a time when women weren’t supposed to have jobs beyond wife and mother, perhaps Martha wanted her own career.  As she came from a wealthy family, Martha had money so she didn’t need George to succeed for fiscal security. It seems as if Martha lived vicariously through her husband and his capacity for success which would explain why his lack of ambition was such a blow.
While the play was written a year before the publication of feminist Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking The Feminine Mystique, the play explores the same issues Friedan railed against.  Friedan writes about the “feminine mystique,” where the highest value for women is embracing and maintaining their femininity, and the “problem that has no name,” the unhappiness women faced in the 50s and 60s and their yearning for fulfillment beyond being a housewife and a mother.  Friedan argues:
“They [women] learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights – the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for…All they had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children.” (58)

“Self-esteem in woman, as well as in man, can only be based on real capacity, competence, and achievement; on deserved respect from others rather than unwarranted adulation. Despite the glorification of “Occupation: housewife,” if that occupation does not demand, or permit, realization of women’s full abilities, it cannot provide adequate self-esteem, much less pave the way to a higher level of self-realization…But women in America are no encouraged, or expected, to use their full capacities. In the name of femininity, they are encouraged to evade human growth.” (435-437)

[Warning: Spoilers ahead!!] Motherhood, a reoccurring theme in the film, comprised one of the few ways society allowed fulfillment for women. Both women don’t have children, Martha is unable to and Honey, whose “hysterical pregnancy” led to her marriage with Nick, takes pills to eliminate any pregnancies as she’s scared to conceive. As women were supposed to be good wives and mothers, society viewed reproduction as one of their vital duties.  If a woman didn’t have children, ultimately she was a failure.  Friedan writes:

“Over and over again, stories in women’s magazines insist that woman can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child…In the feminine mystique, there is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children’s mother, her husband’s wife.” (115)
As someone in their 30s who doesn’t have children (and isn’t even sure I ever want them), even in this day and age, people often act as if there’s something fundamentally wrong with you if you don’t have or want children. Martha invented the story of a son probably because she genuinely wanted one.  But I think she also did it to make it easier for her to fit into society. As a woman, I often feel I don’t fit the stereotypical mold of what a woman “should” be. Perhaps Martha, with her abrasive, obnoxious persona, wanted at least one component of her life to fit. While I genuinely believe Martha wanted a child, her yearning may be tempered by the fact that society views her as an inadequate woman. It’s as if she can handle being a non-conformist woman in every way possible except this one.
What makes Martha so interesting is that she’s not merely a bawdy, angry woman.  Taylor imbues the complicated character with fleeting moments of agony and vulnerability.  In a tender rather than simply rage-filled moment, Martha refutes George’s accusation that she’s a “monster.”  She asserts,

Martha: I’m loud and I’m vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody’s got to, but I am not a monster. I’m not.

George: You’re a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden…
Martha: SNAP! It went SNAP! I’m not gonna try to get through to you any more. There was a second back there, yeah, there was a second, just a second when I could have gotten through to you, when maybe we could have cut through all this, this CRAP. But it’s past, and I’m not gonna try.
To me, this is such a pivotal scene.  Women are supposed to be, especially during that era, docile, proper and well-mannered; the epitome of femininity.  Blond, thin, meek Honey appears to be the perfect wife while bawdy, brash, raven-haired, curvy Martha stands as the complete opposite.  In the equally ground-breaking The Second Sex published in 1949, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote about the treatment and oppression of women.  In her tome, she argues that society teaches us that passivity is “the essential characteristic of the ‘feminine’ woman.”  Society encourages men and boys to explore their freedom while women and girls are taught to embrace femininity, turning their back on what they themselves want. She asserts:

“In woman, on the contrary, there is from the beginning a conflict between her autonomous existence and her objective self, her “being-the-other;” she is taught that to please she must try to please, she must make herself object; she should therefore renounce her autonomy. She is treated like a live doll and is refused liberty.” (280)

 

Wives were supposed to support their husbands, echoing their desires.  While Martha eventually admits that George is the only man who has ever made her happy, she refuses to silence herself. She is loud, vulgar, shrewd, intelligent, assertive, sexual and outspoken; the antithesis to femininity. And in many ways, society punishes Martha and women like her for it. Yet she rails against constraints, struggling to navigate the sexist terrain on her own terms.

The title of the play and film comes from a riff of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” with the wordplay on Virginia Woolf.  It was a quote that playwright Albee saw scrawled on a bathroom mirror in a bar.  It’s also an allusion to show that people concoct imaginary scenarios and personas in order to cope with their lives, a theme that runs throughout the entire film.  The audience is never quite sure what is fact and what is fiction, the line often blurred.After the pivotal climax and shocking revelations, in the penultimate line of the film, George asks Martha, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to which she replies, “I am, George, I am.”  Some scholars assert that this alludes to being able to live without illusions, which both George and Martha, with their web of lies and treacherous games, clearly find difficult.  But the play/film’s title is also an accidental feminist reference as feminist author and writer Virginia Woolf famously advocated for women to be able to possess their own money and space to be creative and ultimately themselves.

Captivating yet uncomfortable to watch, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? depicts the brutal deterioration of a marriage and the crumbling of hopes, ambitions and illusions.  Through their cruel taunts and insults, the film exposes the illusory facades people create, while challenging stifling gender roles.In the 60s (and to a large extent still today), society demanded men act assertively and women behave passively. As men wield a disproportionate amount of power over women, people often fear female empowerment.  Despite her brazen outspokenness, Martha might be afraid too — afraid of her own power in a society that doesn’t embrace or accept powerful women.

———-
Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World.  In addition to Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly and A Safe World for Women. Megan earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She currently lives in Boston. She previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and Something Borrowed to Bitch Flicks.