Reproductive Justice – Bitch Flicks

‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ ‘Prevenge,’ and the Evils of the Trump Administration

Alice Lowe’s ‘Prevenge’ is in some ways a modernized version of ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ … Throughout the course of history, and especially in Trump’s America, baby always comes first. Our government cares more about fetuses than it does about living, breathing women. This chills me to the core more than a scary movie ever could.

This guest post written by Lindsay Pugh appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault]

Whether completely alone or with a partner standing by, pregnancy is one of the most terrifying and bizarre events to happen in real life. Of course, women are expected to handle it with aplomb and joy. “Oh, you mean my entire body is going to change and then if all goes well, another human being is going to rip through my vagina, hopefully only causing minimal tearing? Fantastic! Sign me up!”

As a woman in 2017, there’s plenty to be afraid of: increased attacks on abortion, unrelenting attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, rape culture and the normalization of sexual assault (“Grab ‘em by the pussy.”), etc. The litany of bullshit is horrific and interminable. How can anyone make a horror film that will scare women when real life has turned into a waking nightmare? Easy. Throw pregnancy into the mix; take all those standard fears and concerns and amplify them. Two films that do a great job portraying these atrocities are Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Alice Lowe’s Prevenge (2016).

I hate to give Polanski, creepy Keebler Elf and sexual predator extraordinaire, credit, but Rosemary’s Baby is one of my all-time favorite horror films and feminist as fuck. It makes me feel a little better to know that his screenplay is nearly identical to Ira Levin’s novel, so it’s not like Polanski is responsible for any of the genius plotting or characterizations.

In order to truly grasp the brilliance of Rosemary’s Baby, let’s quickly review the atrocities Rosemary (Mia Farrow) has to endure, from the sex before conception to her post-birth satanic cult discovery. First, it’s important to note that Rosemary’s pregnancy is the product of rape. Even though she’s been drugged c/o Minnie’s (Ruth Gordon) chocolate mousse, Rosemary is cognizant enough to realize, “This is no dream! This is really happening.” (Although even if she wasn’t cognizant, the fact is she was unable to consent.) The morning after her rape, Guy (John Cassavetes) tries to gaslight Rosemary by apologizing for the scratches on her body and telling her they only had sex when she was blacked out because he didn’t want to miss “baby night.” Rosemary is tense and suspicious for days, but those feelings are eventually eclipsed when a phone call from her doctor confirms her pregnancy. Instead of focusing on the traumatic conception, Rosemary diverts her attention to scheduling doctor’s appointments and spreading the joyous news.

Unfortunately, Rosemary’s happiness wanes when her body begins to change. In order to combat her feelings of unease, Guy, Minnie, and Roman (Sidney Blackmer) concoct a plan to ensure that no matter how bad her symptoms become, Rosemary never believes they’re abnormal. Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) tells Rosemary not to ask any questions or listen to advice from friends or books. Instead of taking vitamins, she’s to drink one of Minnie’s herbal concoctions every day. Rosemary wants what’s best for her baby, so she listens to the doctor, even as she becomes scarily gaunt. She knows something is wrong, but the people closest to her have done a great job of convincing her she’s paranoid and can’t trust her own instincts.

Throughout the film, Rosemary vacillates between trusting her intuition and dismissing it because she wants what’s best for the baby and doesn’t always trust herself to provide it. At several points, she tries to take control of her situation, but external forces usually convince her she’s made the wrong call. By effectively gaslighting her, Guy and the Castevets have ensured that Rosemary no longer trusts her own body or motherly intuition. At the end of the film, when Rosemary decides to embrace her role even though her child is a fucking demon, it’s a total act of rebellion. These people have taken away her sanity, her health, and nine months of her life, but they won’t take away her baby. Even though this situation isn’t what she signed up for, she’s on board for lack of a better option.

Even with a wanted baby, pregnancy can be a terrifying situation full of unknown elements. Alice Lowe had this in mind, that “pregnancy is an alien experience,” while making Prevenge. Without the power to ask questions and make informed decisions, a beautiful, exciting life event could easily turn into a waking nightmare full of anxiety and dread. The Trump administration wants to make Rosemary’s Baby a reality. Something is wrong with your pregnancy and you need to terminate it in order to avoid a lifetime of pain for yourself and your child? Too bad. You must carry the pregnancy to term and deal with the ramifications alone. Your pregnancy is the result of rape and you’re unable to deal with the psychological trauma? Or you simply don’t want to be pregnant? I hope you have the time, money, patience, and strength to deal with abortion restrictions like mandatory waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, TRAP laws, personhood laws, insurance and funding limitations, 20-week bans, forced counseling, and ideological shaming that you’re likely to encounter depending your state. And restrictions to abortion access disproportionately impact women in poverty, women of color, and women living in rural areas.

Rosemary’s Baby is as relevant today as it was forty-nine years ago. Like Guy Woodhouse, the Trump administration uses women as pawns and attempts to stave off rebellion by gaslighting, discrediting, isolating, and emotionally manipulating them.

Prevenge is in some ways a modernized version of Rosemary’s Baby. Ruth (Alice Lowe) is a widow, convinced something is wrong with her pregnancy but told by her midwife (Jo Hartley) that she needs to stay positive and listen to her instincts. The midwife tells Ruth, “Baby knows what to do. Baby will tell you what to do.” The only problem is that Ruth’s baby tells her to kill people, not to relax and eat some Cheetos dipped in clam chowder. With influences ranging from the Greek Furies, to American Psycho and Taxi Driver, Lowe “wanted to show a powerful pregnant woman,” which counters how pregnant women are traditionally depicted or viewed as frail.

During her pregnancy, Ruth is even more isolated than Rosemary. She lives out of hotel rooms, has no friends, and only interacts with her midwife and people she plans on killing. The bond with her unborn baby is the sole one we’re privy to and it’s obviously very twisted. Even when we finally see a flashback of her deceased husband, it’s of his death and not their time together.

While we often hear the midwife voice concern for the baby, we never hear her ask Ruth how she’s doing. Even after she looks through Ruth’s paperwork and realizes that her partner is dead, she doesn’t feign sympathy. She essentially tells Ruth to suck it up and remain positive because her negative energy won’t do anything to help the baby. This is the conversation she has with Ruth after realizing she’s a single mother:

Midwife: It’s very important to let the past stay in the past. It’s just nature’s way.
Ruth: I think nature’s a bit of a cunt, though, don’t you?
Midwife: Oh, negativity’s not good for the baby’s spirit, really.
Ruth: Do you think?
Midwife: Yes. I think it’s good to try to stay positive.

Ruth is clearly struggling with mental health issues and needs someone to step in and help her, but no one gives a shit about her problems; her job is to serve the baby and as long as she’s following through, there’s no cause for concern. As soon as Ruth becomes a mother, her grief and depression are non-issues to those around her because the baby comes first. Throughout the course of history, and especially in Trump’s America, baby always comes first. Our government cares more about fetuses than it does about living, breathing women. This chills me to the core more than a scary movie ever could.

Ruth and Rosemary both try to do what they think is best, but are swayed by outside influence. Ruth’s midwife tells her to listen to the baby; Dr. Sapirstein tells Rosemary to listen to him. No one tells either of these women to listen to themselves — to trust their bodies, experience, or intuition. Women are not to be trusted in any capacity, in any situation. Ruth knows that something isn’t right, that her pregnancy and mental state are abnormal. But she squashes these feelings, listens to her “baby,” and continues to kill people. Rosemary fights like hell at the end of the movie and tries to tell anyone who will listen that there’s a conspiracy against her, but she’s branded as “crazy” and immediately dismissed.

This Halloween, what’s keeping me up at night isn’t fiction; it’s real life. It’s the possibility of a 20-week abortion ban and the knowledge that I live in a country where women aren’t valued or trusted — where a majority of white women would rather have Donald Trump represent their interests than Hillary Clinton. I watch films like Prevenge and Rosemary’s Baby because I want to remind myself to stay vigilant. In 1979, Loretta Lynn said, “We’ve come a long way, baby,” but these films remind me we haven’t come far enough.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Rosemary’s Baby: Marriage Can Be Terrifying

The “Blurred Lines” of Body Horror and Rape Culture

Rosemary’s Baby: Who Possesses the Pregnant Woman’s Body

Recommended Reading:

Woman in Revolt on Prevenge

Refinery29’s Interview with Alice Lowe: The Pregnant Serial Killer Movie Taking a Knife to Stereotypes on Film

The Most Cursed Hit Movie Ever Made by Rosemary Counter

Lindsay Pugh runs Woman in Revolt, an intersectional feminist film blog that focuses on female directors in television and film. She is a self-described militant feminist and can be found wandering the streets of Ann Arbor wearing a leather jacket adorned with “Fuck Paul Ryan” pins and shaking her fist at the patriarchy.

Why ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Visuals Should Carry the TV Series to Emmy Victory

‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ which stars Elisabeth Moss as June/Offred, is a hard watch in terms of emotional drama. But the TV series, which is the first prestige drama to focus intimately on a woman’s perspective of a dystopian world, rivals ‘Game of Thrones’ in terms of visual splendor.

Guest post written by Ani Bundel.

When the Emmy nominations for the 2016-2017 television season arrived, for the first time since 2011, there was a huge opening for new “prestige TV shows” to make their mark. For years, the “Drama” category, as well as the myriad of technical awards that are pushed out of the main televised portion of the event, has been dominated by one show: Game of Thrones. But this year, due to a twist in scheduling, HBO’s mainstay is not eligible. In its stead, the opportunity for Best Drama, as well as wins for cinematography, production design, and costumes, should go to The Handmaid’s Tale. In addition to these categories, the series also received Emmy nominations for acting (Elisabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, Ann Down, and Alexis Bledel), directing (Reed Morano and Kate Dennis), writing (Bruce Miller), casting, and visual effects.

The Handmaid’s Tale, which stars Elisabeth Moss as June/Offred, is a hard watch in terms of emotional drama. But the TV series, which is the first prestige drama to focus intimately on a woman’s perspective of a dystopian world, rivals Game of Thrones in terms of visual splendor. Some of the more chilling aspects of the show are drawn directly from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel: the blood red of the Handmaids’ garb, the blue of the Wives. In addition to evoking a sanguine shade, Atwood chose red for the Handmaids to symbolize Mary Magdalene. She also chose the color because prisoners of war were forced to wear red in Canada during WWII “because it shows up so very well in the snow.” In the novel and the series, the Wives wear blue to symbolize the Virgin Mary and feminine religious piety. The particular shades of red and peacock blue used were inspire by nature: a red maple leaf against a teal sky, used to contrast the two groups of women but still be aesthetically appealing visually. The show’s choices with lighting enhance this already striking visual stratification of society. Regarding the costumes’ color symbolism, costume designer Ane Crabtree told Vanity Fair:

“We wanted the Handmaids, as they are the fertile women’s tribe of the story, to flow down the streets of Gilead, leaving a long line of red in the midst of the gray of Gilead. Beyond this, the red is the color of a womb, of a wanton woman, a scarlet kind of mark upon a pious world of dark tones in the visual landscape, and also in a tiny intimate space.”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Crabtree said that it was “intense” finding the right shade of red that would look like “liquid blood” as well as look striking on camera on women of all races. Just as the wardrobes stratify the women, the lighting and production design work in tandem to convey the Handmaids’ oppression as well. Director of photography Colin Watkinson told Indiewire: “I want you to feel the light coming from the outside, so it’s based in a reality, but it’s a hyperreality.” Production designer Julie Berghoff told Curbed that visually, June/Offred “should feel like a mouse in a cage.”

Before the series even aired on Hulu, the red of the Handmaids’ costumes along with their bonnets (which work like human versions of horse blinders) had already made an impact. Cosplayers showed up to events (and to political rallies) dressed in costumes taken from the show’s promotional materials, unnerving those passing by and security guards alike. But on-screen, the stark red of their outfits becomes more pronounced with the warm, pink tinged lighting tones.

In scenes like the birthing room, and other moments when all the Handmaids are gathered together with Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), the show turns up the pink highlights. The TV series “uses vaguely Nazi brown for the Aunts.” The skin of the actresses become rosier, more flushed, as if to remind us these women who are forced to serve are alive, full of life, in fact the only ones so alive, they can breed new life.

Contrast that against the green filters used on the wives like Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski). Much like the pink tinged filters, the most obvious moment comes during the birthing scene, with the wives downstairs playacting at labor while upstairs the handmaid Ofwarren (Madeline Brewer) actually feels the pain.

But it is all the more jarring when these green women suddenly invade the birthing room at the end of the sequence, and their green is suddenly lit by the pink filters – a little borrowing of the Handmaid’s inner life while stealing their inner ability to make it. The opposite happens during the afterbirth, when Offred is forced to sit in the green tinged living rooms of the Wives cooing over the baby. The green filters drain Moss of the pink we’ve seen her look previously, as these vampires around her drain it for their own masquerades.

Interestingly, there are two other moments when Offred looks less lifelike. The first is with Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes). He too is lit with a green wash to match his wife. It’s a subtle signaling by the show that he is just as barren as the woman he married, and that in fact, there is no chance he can get Offred any more pregnant than he can Serena Joy. Both Waterfords are always lit in green tones — even during the “before” flashbacks of the Serena Joy episode. Not only are they sterile people — although we don’t actually know if Serena is infertile, as women are the ones blamed for infertility, despite at least the doctor Offred visits knowing it’s men who could be sterile — they are sickly ones who would oppress others and take their happiness.

The other times Offred looks more pallid are whenever she’s down in the kitchen with the Martha character Rita (Amanda Brugel). The Marthas, per the book, are dressed in drab greens, as if to help them fade into the walls. The lighting enhances this, and Wilkinson said for the lighting they “opted for grey diffusion and unbleached muslin bounce.” But the lighting on the Marthas is always unnaturally dim and shadowed, as if to hide them. No wonder they are the servants in Gilead with the most effective network.

There is one time in Gilead that these stratifications are thrown to the side – the trip to the world of the Jezebels where Offred sees Moira (Samira Wiley) for the first time since being assigned to the Waterfords. Those sequences have a golden tinge to them, a deliberate call back to all of the sequences “before” Gilead happened. This is also the time when we see people wearing the colors of pre-Gilead life. It’s noteworthy that these sequences eschew red, greenish blue, and grayish green for browns, oranges, yellows, and blues.

Book readers could have predicted this about the Jezebels sequence – after all, that, like the rest of the world building, is pulled straight from the novel. But what was striking is how much it recalled the flashbacks (which don’t exist quite in the same fashion on the page), as well as our Canadian episode with June’s husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle).

On first watch, this was my least favorite episode. In a show that had focused on the oppression of women and their stories, why were we forced to sit for an hour to watch a man who escaped this world? (Other than the obviousness that this was helping build out space for a second season?) But upon closer inspection, this episode turned out to be the cruelest cut of all, and it was all in the lighting of Luke’s memories.

All the memories of June with their daughter were gold hued and backlit, creating golden halos around June’s silhouette. Now, I understand that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and for Luke to hold on to the past to rescue his wife requires he remember his family as sweeter than perhaps they were in his pre-Gilead life. But this “Mother Mary” image of his wife (second wife, as we should recall) also recalls the scene in the early episodes when the rights of women were first taken away. Luke’s response to June, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

Though he might not be the one trying to take her rights away, it doesn’t bother him that much when those rights are taken. This sexist condescension, which both June and Moira challenge, makes it seem like June was never fully equal or human to him – even a good man, like Luke, has these patriarchal beliefs inside him. No wonder Gilead succeeded. Who is to say that Luke wouldn’t stop bothering to rescue his wife if he was offered a house like the Commander’s, and a Handmaid of his own? Although, Luke would never be offered these luxuries as the government considered him a criminal for marrying a second time.

All this worldbuilding, shown with just a few visual cues. So much said about where our society could head, if we don’t stay vigilant against those who would oppress us. Yet, our society (and others) already headed this way historically with slavery in the U.S. and the rape and forced breeding of Black women. Stealing children occurred in Argentina and to Indigenous people in Canada and Australia. Every oppressive tactic by Gilead in both the novel and the TV series has occurred in real life. Echoing this, director and executive producer Reed Morano told Indiewire:

“I didn’t want it feel like a period piece. That was my fear with the costumes and everything. I pushed very hard that all the uniforms in Gilead had modern elements to them. Period would defeat the purpose. There are women in the world who experience these things today, and this story is a warning it could happen here just like that. It needed to be and feel other.”

The TCAs have already heaped nominations upon The Handmaid’s Tale (along with This Is Us), the first bellwether of how this year’s awards will lean. Let’s hope that the Emmys follow suit and The Handmaid’s Tale wins the awards it rightfully deserves.

Ani Bundel is a TV writer with EliteDaily and Tellyvisions. You can find her on the internet at Anibundel.com, or on Twitter @anibundel. An anglophilic pop culture fashion junkie with a penchant for snark. All posts are approved by her cats.