WOMEN'S RITES:

REPRESENTATIONS OF CEiILDBEAIUNG LN FILM

Diane Phillips B.A. McGill University 1991

THESIS SUBMITED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts

in the Department of Communications Facuity of Applied Sciences

O Diane Phillips 1998 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY ~uly1998

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ABSTRACT

This thesis explores representations of childbirth in film. It focuses primarily on mainstream films and, as a foi1 to such films, a short seledion of independent films in the fast chapter. The work is based on the idea that understandings and expenences of childbirth are to some extent socially constructed. There are a variety of sites for the social construction of birh, one of which is the contemporary cinema. The analysis focuses specifically on the ways in wtiich films may work to construct meanings of childbirth in ways that sustain wrrent relations of domination. It does this by examining parücular social and historical contexts in which certain images are produced and diseminated. Thus, the first chapter discusses images in the film Look Who's Talking and sets them in the mntext of recent constructions of the fetus as a subject The second chapter looks at several recent cornedies which center around childbeanng in the context of rites of passage and the contemporary medicalkation of childbirth in North Amen'ca. The third chapter explores images of midwives and the implications of recent trends that symbolically associate midwives with witches. Finally, the fourth chapter attempts to highlight a few of the ways in which some independent films have constructed images of childbirth which are very diierent to those forrned in Hollywood films. The thesis takes the position that contemporary rnedicalized childbirth practices in North Arnerica do involve relations of power and domination and that many mainstream films consûuct images which further such relations. The relations of domination referred to indude specific relations between doctors and patients and between patriarchal society and women's bodies. However, the thesis argues that the issue extends to the ways in which childbirth practices can be both defined by, and supportive of, what Barbara Katz Rothman identifies as the ideologies of patriarchy, technology and capitalism. The thesis therefore identifies what these ideologies entail, Matare some of their implications for women in particular and people in general, and how some films help to further these ideologies. TABLE OF CONTENTS

.. *.. Abstrac L...... -...... -...... ,...il1

Table of Contents...... iv

Introduction ...... 2

Chapter One: Look Who's Talking and Look Who's Not:

examinhg the implications of fetal imagery...... 11

Chapter Two: Paternal Voices And Technocratic Dominance

In Amencan Birth Rites And Hollywood Cornedies...... -26

Chapter Three: Midwives, Witches And Hollywood:

fiom romanticization to demonization with little in between...... 46

Chapter Four: Resistance...... 60

Conclusion ...... ,...... 80

ListofCitedWorks...... 84 Women's Rites:

Representations of Childbearing in Film The deployment of technical media shouid nof be seen as a mere supplemenf to pre- exjsfing social relations: rafher, we should see this deployment as se~ngto create new social relations, new ways of acting and interacuilg, new ways of presenting oneself and of responding to the self-presenfafion of others. (Thompson, 16)

Understandings of childbirth In North America are heavily influenced by ideology. The term ideology has been interpreted in a varîety of ways.1 The terni as 1 use it is defined by John Thompson as "meaning in the service of power" (7). Thornpson writes that

symbolic forrns or symbolic systems are not ideological in themselves: whether they are ideological, and the extent to which they are, depends on the ways in Wich they are used and understood in specific social contexts. (8) Essenüally 1 will be arguing that in contemporary rnainstream film, images of pregnancy and childbirth work to establish and sustain relations of domination in a variety of ways. Barbara Katz Rothman has argued that

Arnerican motherhood now rests on three deeply rooted ideologies that shape what we see and what we experience, three central threads of motherhood: an ideology of patriarchy; an ideology of technology; and an ideology of capitalism (RothmanA 989, 139). Patriarchy, technology and capitalism are not ideologies simply because they compose cohesive philosophical frameworks. They are ideologies because they serve as conceptual pillars which support the cuvent social order. This thesis is an exercise in identifying some of the ways in which specific Hollywood films, as symbolic forms, are ideoiogical, and the ways in which selected non-Hollywood films are not. This thesis therefore works with Thompson's definition of ideology and his framework of interpretation. It also works with many of Rothrnan's theories. I want to clam that men 1 refer to the ideologies of patriarchy, technology and capifaltsm (or sim ply these ideologies), 1 am refemng specifically to Rothman's concepts. 1 would Iike now to sumrnanze what Rothman means by the ideologies of patriarchy, technology and capitalisrn.

Patriarchv:

the ideology of patmhy goes much deeper than male dominance. ... The ideology of patnarchy is a basic worïd view, and in a patriarchal society that view permea tes all our thinking. In our society, the ideology of patnarchy provides us

See Teny Eagleton's book ldeology for an introduction to the range of definitions this term can hold. wifh an understanding not only of the relations between men and women, but also of the relations between mothers and their children. (Rothman:1989,43) In patriarchal societies lines of descent are passed on through the father. This form of patnlineal social organization is usualiy based on some version of male seed theory. This theory states that the male is the generative force, while the female is the nurtunng environment lt is based on an agricultural mode1 wherein a seed is planted in the earth which nourishes and protects it as it grows. Al1 the life force is seen to be already in the seed prior to planting. Likewise, men were thought to plant their seed into the woman, who would nourish and protect it until such a tirne as it was ready to emerge. (Rothrnan:1989, Stonehouse 1994)

This theory, although incorrect, did not necessarily have to lead to a privileging of the male. So too, patrilineal descent does not have to Iead to patriarchy. People could have decided that the nurturing role performed by the female was equal to, or even more important than, the generative fundion performed by the male. This, however, did not happen in European societies or societies, such as North America, with dominantly European influences. Instead, these cultures valued the male over the female, generation over nurturing. The implications of this valuation are extensive. Rothrnan argues that with respect to rnotherhood, the ramifications have invoived domination over women, as mothers or potential mothers, by men as fathers or potential fathers:

Our society developed out of a patriarchal system in which patemity is a fundarnentally important relationship. ... To maintain the purity of the male kinship line, men had to control the sexuality of women, and ensure that no other man's seed entered fier body. They had to control her in pregnancy, so that she could not deswoy the seed of men. The "double standard" - the ideas about virginity for brides, abortion, "illegitimacy," about women's sexual and procreative freedom in al1 areas - reflects men's concem for maintaining paternity.(Rothman: 1989, 31)

Today, the seed theory has been proven incorrect, but its legacy remains ~Ïthus. Women are stilI fighting for sexual and reproductive freedom on a vaflety of Ievels. According to Rothrnan, the manasement of pregnant women by obstetricians and state institutions is a continuation of an atternpt to control women's reproduction. She points out that now that there are increasing nurnbers of female obstetricians, the issue becomes not only control over women's reproduction by men but also control over wornen by women. Likewise, Menit cornes to deterrnining the basis of parents' relationship to children, "the central concept of patriarchy, the importance of the seed, was retained by extending the concept fo women" (Rothman:1989, 36). The fernale is now recognized for her contribution of the egg, of half the genetic material of creation. Still, as Rothrnan discusses, the physical and nurturing work of growing a baby and the relafionship between the rnother and developing fetus rernains obscured and undervalued in scientific discourse and in many social policies and legal precedents. The major ways of regarding relationships in society, and the relative values that are ascribed to various forms of relationship, cany extensive implications. We could choose to value a relationship because it involves intimacy, commitment, tirne, energy, work and perseverance. We could choose to value a relationship because it is based on a genetic link. We could choose to value a relationship because it cames a particular social status with it. We could choose to value a relationship because it makes us feel powerful or because it makes us feel loved. The reasons for valuing a relationship are complex and almost endless. They are worth thinking about- On an individual basis, the values to wtiich we subscribe affect the decisions that we make about our lives. On a societal level, the values upon which we base our social and ewnomic policies impact the kind of world we live in.

The ideology of technology is more than this package of tools, gimmicks, know- how. If is a way of thinking about the world in mechanical, incfusfnal tenns. (Rothman:l989,49)

According to Robbie Davis-Floyd, the origins of the ideology of technology date back to the seventeenth century, to Descartes and the mind-body split. She writes that "[tlhe human body presents a profound conceptual paradox to ouf society, for it is simultaneously a creation of nature and the focal point of culture" (Davis-Floyd, 48). According to her, the mind-body dualism that developed in the 1600's sought to resolve this paradox. In this dualism, the rnind takes on the attributes of culture, the body of nature. At the same time, the argument goes, the metaphors used to describe nature and the body shifted from organic ones to mechanical ones. The rationai mind of Man could act in the interests of culture to cultivate both nature and the physical hurnan body. The body was seen in mechanical ternis and people no longer saw themselves (their minds) as being holistically, organically integrated with their bodies2

A mechanical world view in itself did not necessarily have to contribute to male domination over women. However, Davis-Floyd argues that elite European medical models, drawing on Greco- Roman medical canons, took the male body as normative and the female body as deviarit.

2 Davis-Floyd (in keeping with much academic history) is referrïng here to a shift in conceptual frameworks of nature. Such philosophical changes were ofien confined to the elite, or at least to the middle classes. Analyses of popular worid views at this time, and discrepancies between popular and elite views, ment books on their own. Nonetheless, this conceptual shift is significant and its impact has ultimately filtered across class and time to leave a dramatic legacy for a twenüeth century world. Women were seen to be at the mercy of their abnormal reproductive system, and as such, prone to hysfena and overwhelrning emotional chaos. Furthemore, women were not seen to possess the same rational capacity as men. This view dates back to ancient times when Anstotie declared that 'Wie female is, as it were, a mutilated male" (quoted in Davis-Floyd, 50) because she lacks a soul. According to seventeenth century thought, her inferi0ffi-y stemmed in part from her apparent lack of a rational mind. Davis-Floyd asserts that because the mechanical world view stressed the dominance of the mind and rationality, and women were thought to have less rational capacity than men, women were deemed infen'or.

Western women, in short, have expenenced a long-standing tradition of being viewed as deviant males, defined by their reproductive systems and not by any empirical measure. Within this tradition, it was men's task to use their reason to n'se above nature, to control it, tame it. dominate it, shape it, reconstmct it. Women, like nature, were in need of control by the rationality and technology of men. According to Rothman, the legacy of this philosophy is the ideology of technology, an ideology which "has as its consistent theme a connotation of order, produdvity, rationality and control" (Rothman:l989, 52). She goes on to Say that the ideology of technology has, like the ideology of patriarchy, opened up to wornen in some ways. Most North American women now use a variety of technologies in the workplace and at home. Wornen are involved in high-technology industries in significant nurnbers, including industries which work with reproductive technologie^.^ Women doctors often shaie the technological views of their male wunterparts, views wtiich are dominant in their traininge4 Women, too, cmnow participate in the restnicturing of nature and attempts to control the bodies of other women (and men).

On a physical levef, since the industrial revolution, Our capacity to use our technology to use and abuse nature has grown to the extent that we are daily devastating our own living environment. On a social level, 'We apply ideas about machines to people, asking them to be more efficient, productive, rational, and controlled" (Rothman: 1989,52). This request is problematic under any circumstance, and, as Rothman points out, it is particularly objedionable to think of human relations in such terrns, including the relationships between mothers and children.

Rothman also points out that the vaiuation of mind over body that came with this mechanical perspective has affected the valuation of the work of mothering. Mental work has been valued

3 See Margaret Honey's work on women and technology for an analysis of the 'maternai voice' found in wsrnen working within high-technology fields. See Robbie Davis-Floyd's chapter on obstetnc training as a rite of passage for elaboration on the ways in Aich particular technological views are inculcated in medical students. over physical work, and this value leads to viewing "the body as a resource for the use of the mind, and specifically, women's reproductive bodies as 'societal' resources" (Ibid, 61). The impact of this on mothers is a devaluation of the physical work of rnothenng, both the physical production of children and the physical tending to children's needs. Rothman also argues that this mode1 allows society to view women's bodies as social resources to be used in the physical labor of reproduction, apparently in service of the rationally calculated needs of society:

So if the factories or the amies need fodder, women's bodies are the resources from which the young are produced. And if there are too many mouths to feed, then the bodies are to be idle, Iike factories closed until inventories are reduced (1 bid).=

Capitalism:

in the United States the essential fluids of life - blood, milk' and semen - are ail for sale (Rothman: 1989,65).

Capitalism has grown into its contemporary form in conjunction with the attendant concepts of cornmodification, consumption and unfettered individualism. By cornmodification, I mean a process whereby everything is wnverted into an article of commerce, something that can be bought, sold or traded. The terni consumption refers to the actual using or purchasing of these commodities. Selling babies is not a legal activity. Selling ,or perhaps more accurately renting, women's bodies under the terms of surrogacy is legal in many countries. including the United States (RothmanA 989). Distinctions between buying babies and renting bodies can become very bluny. Even distinctions between buying babies and paying for expensive high technology reproductive practices are not clear-cut. ln both instances, wornen with money may have access to a baby through either paying for a surrogacy agreement or paying for medical technology. As Rothman notes, both such scenarios are unavailable to poor women, while treatments aimed at preventing infertility in poor women, such as ensunng access to nutntious food, continue to go unfunded. ln any event, trends which encourage viewing either babies or women as purchasable items deserve wreful and critical in~pection.~

See Margaret Atwood's distopian novel The Handmaids Tale for a perspective on this phenomenon. I believe that the 'work' of reproducing and of mothen'ng should be recognized and accounted for in our social and economic policies- However, I believe this should be done through social structures aimed at supporting women in their reproductive labors, and supporting any care giver in their nurtunng roles. I do not believe that paying women as individuais to have babies for other women is demonstrative of financially acknowfedging reproductive labor. Health care, preventative and prescriptive, under capitalist medical systems is also commodified, tumed into a thing that can be purchased. Doctors, midwives, herbafists, homeopaths, acupuncturists and massage therapists al1 charge for their services. Pharmaceutical medication, vitamins, herbs and nuiMous food al1 cost money. Some of these products and se~*cesare funded by medical insurance and others are not, or may be cuvered in extended benefits packages only. Private health insurance can be expensive or sometimes only becomes available under particular employment conditions, Furthermore, having the time and resources to prioritize heafth, to educate oneself on health issues, to prepare nutritious meals and to exercise regulariy is a luxury in itself.

Cornmodification of pregnancy and parenting can be seen in the range of industries producing and marketing products which often claim to be indispensable. Pregnant women need to buy an entire new wardrobe of maternity clothes and possibly a new house that can accommodate the baby. Once the baby is bom, they will need everything from breast pumps to educational computer software, from how-to-mother manuals to toys. There appears to be a growing conviction that al1 of these commodities are indispensable to modem parenting or, at least, ttiat the more of these commodities you consume, the better parent you are and the better baby you will have.

Unfeffered individualism has become another integral part of capitalism. Stephanie Coontz notes that Enlightenment philosophy and Protestant religion went hand in hand with the development of this individualism.

Enlightenment philosophy held that humans were rational beings whose self- interest could lead them to civic virtue without coercion or religious mystification by nrlers. (There was serious question, though, as to whether slaves, women, the lower classes, Native Americans, and the Irish were fully human.) Protestant ideology made individual conscience the final arbiter of moral behavior (Coonk, 48).' Leiss, Kline and Jhally note the contribution of advertising to the individualist ethos. They argue that the industrialization of the means of production was accompanied by a growth in advertising, which was needed to market the ever increasing volume of products being produced. As advertising increased, it also developed its format and altered its strategies. They identify one profound strategic alteration as the switch from selling a product to selling an image. The idea was that individuak could be defined in part by what they consume, by the things they om. As a result the individual subject became increasingly constructed by his or her patterns of

7 Note Coontz seems to be refemng to the 'world view' conception of ideology. Also, it should be noted that Protestant religion took different forms and camed different significance accordingly. The 17th Century Puritans, for example, did not make individual conscience the 'final arbiter'. consurnption, and these patterns of consumption could be influenced and manipulated by advertising. The emphasis by advertisers on individual identity accelerated trends toward unfettered individualism whilst setving the needs of capitalist economic systems.

1 do not want to delve into a detailed debate about the various factors leading to the nse of individualisrn. It is enough to note that industnal capitalist means of production, and attendant marketing practices, did contribute significantly to the rïse of unfettered individualism, The growth of individualism in tum impacted social relations considerably. For example, Stephanie Coonb writes that the development of industrial capitalism in North Amenca led to the rise of the individualized nuclear farnily, a family mode1 which replaced earlier forms of social organization involving more extensive community-based networks of social obligation. She also claims that the gender-based division of labor minthe farnily was profoundly altered with the growth of individualism. She quotes sociologist Robert Bellah as saying "[tlhe ethic of achievement arüculated by men was sustained by a moral ecology shaped by women" (1992. 53).8 These new family models and gender roles altered the role of motherhood and increased the social expectations placed on mothers by both their husbands and society in general. furthemore, individualism was accompanied by the growth of "rights language" and a reliance on legal rnediation:

the focus on individual rights raised the possibility thai contract negotiations would penetrate every corner of persona1 life and reduce al1 obligations to those that could be codified in "objective" bargains - a tendency we have certainly seen in recent decades, even within our most intimate personal relations" (Coontr.52). The "intimate persona1 relations" Coontz talks about include the relations between mothers and fathers and their children. Rothman notes that custody disputes and surrogacy agreements demonstrate such a contractual privileging. She delves into the notions of rights and ownership and discusses some of the ways these principles impact motherhood and parental relationships. Under the prinuples of Iiberal philosophy, the body might even be thought of in terms of property rights and private ownership. 'There are two directions in which property rights have extended that are directly relevant to motherhood: n'ghts of ownership of one's own body, and rights to one's own child" (Rothman:1989, 67).

8 By "moral ecology" Bellah is refening to a division of labor that allocated most of the responsibility for morality to women. As Coontz puts it, "Self-reliance worked for men because women took care of dependence and obligation. ... Emotion and compassion could be disregarded in the political and ewnomic realrns only if women were assigned these traits in the personal realm" (Coontz, 53). With regard to "rights to one's own body," Rothman points out that nghts language and liberal philosophy have been extremely valuable to feminists in some ways. Liberal philosophy had already outlined certain basic entitlements for "al1 people," Feminists just had (have) to do the (challenging and intensive) work of convincing society that women are people too, equally entitled to their basic rights. At this tirne, Rothman Wtes that "it would be dangerous to argue against the body as privately, individualiy owned" (Ibid, 71). Mer ail, "[iln the name of ownership, women have dernanded access to contraception, sterilization, and a botiion" (1 bid, 72).9 Nonetheless, this model does have its limitations. First of aII, mile it may be politically useful at times, it is also "far from the essential experience of being embodied people" (Ibid, 69). In other words, this rights orîented view is somewhat materialistic and reductionist, to the extent that it does not forrnally take into account spiritual, emotional, sensual and persona1 expenences. Secondly, "given the prevailing liberal philosophy , we've gotten those rights to control our fertility - although given the capitalist class system, we have fared less well with access to the necessary means" (Ibid, 72). Unfortunately, our governments (especially the US.) may be reasonabIy willing to grant rights, but usually do not deem thernselves primarily responsible for ensunng their citizens have the means to secure them. Finally, although under this model "[olur bodies may be ours, ... given the ideology of patriarchy, the bodies of mothers are not highly valued" (1 bid, 73).1°

According fo Rothman, rights language is in many ways less useful in terms of conceiving of a woman's (or man's) relationship with a child. Viewing children in such terms cornmodifies and objecüfies children. It also tends to focus on parents' right to have their own child rather than on the child's right to adequate nurture. ln the narne of a right to a child, people demand access to high-tech or exploitative fertility solutions. In the narne of nghts to a child, people wage intense custody suits, which can be quite traumatic for the child.

Furthetmore, genuine longing on the part of couples who are not yet parents leaves them wlnerable to an onslaught of marketing from industries that do not necessarily have their best interests at heart. For example, refemng to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), Rothman writes that "[tlhe felt desperation of infertile couples is used to sel1 a high-nsk, high-cost, low-success treatment" (Ibid, 78). Opposing such trends, she argues that the "need is far more pressing to extend the responsibility ethic than the n'ghts ethic to the care of children in Amenca" (81).

-- -- These rights are thernselves being threatened by the development of 'fetal rights,' a subjed discussed in chapter one. IoSee also Marilyn Wanng, IfWomen Counted. for an analysis of the ways in which capitalism continues to undervalue and ignore 'Women's work." Today, Rothman is one of the rnost prominent theorists on issues of motherhood and childbirth- Her work is wïdelyreferred to by other writers in the field, and her analysis of patriarchy, technology and capitalism as the cornerstones of American motherhood has been developed in a variety of directions by other theorists. ldeas such as those expressed by Rothman and other participants in feminist motherhood and childbirth discourses do not make it through the workings of the "cinematic apparat~s"'~and into representations in HolIywood film,

In this thesis 1 aim to examine sorne of the ways in which Hollywood films serve to reproduce rather than refute these three ideologies. The most significant and consistent feature of al1 the Hollywood films I look at is the absence of the childbearing wornan's voice. None of the films are told from the wornan's perspective. The first chapter works with the film Look Who's Talking and examines the displacernent of the woman's voice by the fetus. The second chapter looks at three films vvith extrernely similar plots in which the focus is entirely on the expecting fathers rather than the expecting rnothers- Afmost al1 Hollywood films set in contemporary North Arnerica depict births that occurr in the hospital and in accordance wïth medical procedures. Homebirths and midwife assisted births are not represented as a viable option. For this reason, 1 chose to focus in chapter three on the ways in which births occurring outside the hospital are depicted as frightening and unsafe. In particular I note a connection between the figure of the midwife and the figure of the witch. In chapter four l shifî the tone and direction a biot to note sorne of the ways in wfiich some recent independent films do address and challenge these dominant ideologies.

l1Refers to the systems of production and distribution whicki govem Hollywood film, and which are closely Iinked to econornic 1 political forces. See Teresa De Lauretis and Stephan Heath's The Cinematic Apparatus . CHAPTER ONE

LOOK WHO'S TALKING . ..AND LOOK WHO'S NOT: EWINING THE IMPLlCATlONS OF FETAL IMAGERY

The mother herself is no longer important: it is what she cames that matters. In other words, the mothefs own body, and along with if her s~bjectivity~are sidelined to make the fetus central. Mile the mothefs body still bears the burdens if did before, these burdens are not the central focus. Fetal interpellation, thus, displaces the mother even furfher from the center. (Kaplan 7 994a,734)

Ferninists have long decried the absence of fernale voices in cultural representations. According to some ferninists, this silence is particularly loud Menit cornes to matemal voices:

Racism, sex discrimination, and homophobia often disproportionately affect mothers. Nevertheless, in the larger cuIturels debates on these topics, mother's voices continue to be ignored. Even in women's accounts of rnotherhood, matemal perspectives are strangely absent. We most ofien hear daughters' voices in both literary and theoretical texts about mothers, mothering and motherhood, even in those written by feminists who are rnothers. (Daly and Reddy, 1) The absence of matemal perspective has recently begun to change, and a number of theorists have published works in this area over the course of the 90's. In popular representation, however, this trend continues mostly unabated, Mainstream portrayals of childbearing, in particular, frequently involve patriarchal marginalization of the maternal. Considering that women are the key players involved in the process of childbearing, it is in some ways incredible that the maternal voie is so absent in the telling of birthing tales. However, there is nothing new about such marginalization.

Patriarchal conceptions of reproduction have for centuries tned to claim a male leading role in the process. Stonehouse writes that seed theory, in al1 its forrns, has ascribed the creative generative force to the male and painted the female as a passive vesse1 that serves only nounshing and nurturing functions. In the West, male dominated institutions have attempted claimed the power to regulate reproduction. The Catholic Church has attempted to regulate reproduction through deciding which babies would be spiritually Iegitimate, and which would not.12 Over the past few centuries, states have increasingly granted medical doctors the right to regulate reproduction

l2For example, those babies bom out of wedlock were not legitirnized in the eyes of the Catholic Church. through the processes of monitoring and manipulating women's bodies. Much of the population of North America has participated in the shift toward the medicalization of birth. Indeed, many have sought out medical births and eagerly embraced new scienMc methods.I3 There may. then. be nothing new about the marginalking of matemal voices, but there are new ways of doing it- For exarnple, Ann Kaplan states that "[wlhat really is new in our own period is, first, the role that fathers are made to play in child rearing and, second, the focus on the fetus and the baby" (Bassin et al, 267).

Amy Heckerling's series, Look Who's Talking , is exemplary of recent focus on the fetus and the baby. All three films in this senes give voice and cinematic perspective to unusual candidates. In the first two films, this voice is given to the fetus. In the third the dog takes center stage. It is the first two films that are of interest to me here. The first film begins with the heroine, Molly (Kirstie Allie), in the throes of an illicit affair with her boss. She soon finds herseIf pregnant with his child. She decides to keep the baby. He promises her he leave his wïfe, marry her and be a participating father. Of course, this scenario does not rnaterialize. Toward the end of her pregnancy she catches him with yet a third woman. Presumably it is the shock of this encounter that sends her irnmediately into labor. She wanders away from the scene of confrontation clutching her stomach and proceeds to hail a cab. Thus begins a car chase sequence through the streets of New York to get her to the hospital on time; and thus begins the connection between Molly and the cab driver, James (John Travolta). When she leaves her purse in his car, he shows up at her house to retum it. One thing leads to another, and he agrees to baby-sit for her. The remainder of the film involves Molly auditioning men to find the perfect father to complete her new farnily unit. Predictably the film concludes menshe finaliy dates James and realizes he's the one.

The second film begins when Molly again becomes pregnant. This time it is with her partner James. As the film progresses, she and James begin to fight with one another and eventually they split up. The cnoc of their arguments is that he is a cab driver and she is an accountant. In short, there is a class and gender disparity in which the wornan has a higher income and status than the man. Over the course of the film, he completes his pilot's training and gets a job as a pilot. The film concludes with their reunion. 60th their relationship and the unacceptable class and gender disparities have been successfulty resolved. The Look Who's Talking series begins wïth a career woman having an illicit affair. By the end of the senes, she is settled comfortably into a suitable relationship with a professional husband (Mo is a rnodel fafher), two kids (a girl l3For histories of the medicalization of birth see Oakley (1984), Komelsen (1998), Ehrenreich and English (1 973), Donnison (1977). and a boy) and even a dog. Any threat to the nuclear family posed by career or the prospect of single mothering has been neatly removed and replaced by a stable, functional rniddle-class farnily. This type of symbolic affirmation of the nuclear family is typical of Hollywood film, as I shall discuss in chapter two. My focus in this chapter is not, however, on the ways in which the nuclear farnily is reproduced. What l do want to focus on is the way in which this film series constructs the fetus as a person - as a subject wfio is capable of displacing the matemal subject,

The first two films open with scenes showing the inside of a woman's body. We hear noises of a couple making love and, simultaneously, the dialogue of sperm and an egg as they enact a Woody-Alanesq~e'~batüe for conquest. 'The sperrn are given male voices, which sound like men chasing, and cornpeting for, women in a dance hall. The '"winner" is seen diving into the egg, uthile tones of satisfaction fiIl the soundtrack" (Kaplan, 205). As the fertilized egg grows into an embryo, a fetus and finally a baby, it continues to talk to the audience. It makes demands for beverages, comments on its mother's behavior and reflects on its own growth and development. In short, it takes on patterns of behavior and thought that are distinctly adult. The symbolic construction of a fetus as a person has profound and problematic implications. As Ann Kaplan points out, "[wlhife this rnakes for good comedy, the undertying significance of displacing the rnoüter-as-subject and of assigning to foetus and baby thoughts and perceptions of adulthood should not be taken Iightly" (205).

The construction of the fetus-as-person as it is done in the Look Who's Talking films is not a cornmon pattern in film. Hcwever, as Kaplan writes, "Heckerling's film cames to a ludicrous extreme - it externalizes and Iiteralizes - mat is implicit in other foetal imagery" (205). The "other foetal imagery" she refers to exists in a van'ety of social sites - medical texts, magazine articles, sonograms, advertisements, etc.. By widening rny horizons to look beyond the cinematic realm, 1 can see that there is a "fetal discourse" in which to situate Heckerling's fetal irnagery.

According to Barbara Duden, the fetus has never before been granted the status of subject in the way it has today.15 She argues that the evolution of fetal personhood, acmmpanied by fetal rights, has proceeded in leaps and bounds ~Ïththe development of new technologies in recent

l4See his film Everything You Wanted lo Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask) . l5The naturai person whose integrity and freedorn Gan be protected by a legal systern appears only in modem times, and it took centuries before this kind of person was first placed within the womb" (Duden, 59). years. Technologies which affect fetal viability16 have inevitably impacted understandings of Iife. Yet she asserts that technologies involving fetal imagery have had an even greater impact, at least on popular percepfions of life- Some of these technologies are related directly to reproduction, and others are merely related to developments of the image in general.

Duden notes that technologies from telescopes to microscopes have enabled us to extend our visual abilities, allowing us to see beyond our natural capacities, Technologies from photographs to digital imaging have enabted us to record and reproduce images as separate from the things they represent. In terms of fetal imagery, Duden asserts, new technologies have rendered visible an entity that has historically dwelt in the realrn of the invisible. A fetus was once something that could be felt and sensed but not seen. Now, ~Aththe aid of technologies such as fetoscopy and sonograrns, we can actuaily see the fetus - or, more properly, a visual representation of the fetus.

Accornpanying the development of such visuat extensions, Barbara Duden argues, there has increasingly been a privileging of sight over other senses. She claims that a

powerful trend toward misplaced concreteness [whichl is the result of intensive, albeit informal, training. Our culture leads us into the habit of indiscrirninately bestowing the status of reality on the visual appearances ... while touch, taste, proprio-ception, srnell, and hetero-ception are lumped together as impressions . tncreasingly, modem images sufice to establish the other's existence, even his presence (20). With regard to the fetus, there is a tendency to feel assured of its existence, based first on a urine test and then on a sonogram image, well before feeling its movement. As Maynard-Moody writes, "[~Jonogramstum the abstraction of pregnancy into a real image of the fetus. Prior to the sonogram the early fetus was imagined, or it was felt but not seen" (89). Accurding to Duden, the traditional affirmation of pregnancy was known as quickening and was based on a wornan's announcement that she had felt the fetus rnove. mile quickening was a persona1 experience, wnfined initialiy only to a pregnant wornan herself, visual representations now have the ability to place the fetus in the public realm.

The fetus made its public debut in 1965 on the cover of Me magazine in a photographic sequence by Lennart Nilsson. Some years later, the fetus starred in the Right-to-Life film The

This is the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, with the aid of medical technology. This point therefore changes with the development of new technologies. Presently, it is the standard of fetal viability that is used in the medical and legal establishments to determine the beginning of Iife. ViabiCity right now begins at about 22 weeks, or the weight of about 500 grams. "The current standard of medical viabitity is, therefore, set not at the point wtiere fetal long-term sunival is rare, but at the point where it is considered medically impossible" (Maynard- Moady, 79). Silent Scream , "Based largely on sonogram images, this movie purports to show a fetus panic and #en scream before an impending abortion. According to its critics, the film is skillful propaganda, edited to coordinate random fetal movements with the abortion" (Maynard Moody, 89). The fetus now makes more insidious appearances in advertisements linking the image with the concepts of life, hope, Mure and family.17 Parents may cany sonograms of their own fetus in their wallets, paste hem on the fridge and in photo albums or tum them into Christmas cards (Maynard-Moody, 89; ~uden).'~

The results of this publicization of the fetus are extensive. On one level, as the fetus has moved from the realrn of the invisible to the visible, women's bodies have moved from the visible toward the invisible. Medical discussions that center around the fetus use language that objectifies or ignores the women's bodies they are integratly linked to.19 Many images of fetuses, from ads to medical texts, do not show the women's bodies that surround them. On a more literal level, Duden asserts that women's bodies, which once formed an opaque barrier between a fetus and the outside world, have now seemingly become invisible , allowing the fetus to be seen - if not by the eye, at least by technology that creates images equated ~Ïthsight. In the Look Who's Talking films, Mollys body is repeatedly stn'pped away and her innards are visually exposed to the public.20

On another level, both Duden and Kaplan argue that by bnnging the fetus into the public's view we make it a public concem. Making the fetus a public, rather than a pnvate, concem promotes public intervention in women's pregnancies. This may take the fonn of legal or medical l7 See Kaplan's analysis of a Volvo ad, for example. The ad shows a large black-and-white fetus and the caption reads "is something inside you telling you to buy a Volvo?" in bold capitais. Below this is a small picture of a gray Volvo and the caption "a car you can believe in" written in small letters (Glenn et al., 131). l8The power of fetal imagery to convince people of its aliveness and subjecthood can be seen in a 1973 manslaughter trial. The case was made against Doctor Kenneth Edelin for performing an abortion of a 20-24 week fetus by hysterotomy (surgery similar to a cesarean). AIthough abortion was legal at the tirne, the daim was that 'the fetus was alive after it was separated from the placenta and that Dr. Edelin had suffocated it before removing it from the mother" (Maynard- Moody, 67). A jury found him guifty affer seeing a picture of the fetus, wtiich they claimed 'looked like a baby.' AIthough their decision was ultimately overturned, the fact rernains that the "Edelin jury based this decision less on the conflicting expert testimony and medical arguments than on their image of the fetus" (ibid.). j9 See Deborah Steinberg's (1997) analysis of legal and medical texts relating to NF; also see Rowland. 20 VVhat we see. of course, is not a 'real', or even particulariy accurate, rendition of a woman's womb. Our innards are not really red - there is no light in there to reflect color. In these images, the fetus itself looks like a doll (made to resemble a post-natal baby) and does not reflect the developmentaf stages of fetuses/embryos etc.. Yet such imaging of the fetus as already complete contributes to the syrnbolic construction of fetal personhood. interventions on behalf of the state or moral interventions such as strangers' approaching pregnant wornen and irnploring them not to ~rnoke.~~In any event, as the fetus increasingly bemmes a figure of legitimate public concem, so too do pregnant wornen. As the fetus gains publicly accepted rights, women rnay very well [ose rights. As Duden points out, "[qeminist research shows that the public proliferation of fetuses has strengthened the demand for administrative control of pregnant women and the extension of legal protection of the fetus against its mother" (52). Such issues surrounding fetal rights, legal and public intervention in women's pregnancies and the symbotic and political use of the fetus are powerfully raised, and wittily critiqued, by the 1997 film Cifrien Ruth .

This film stars Laura Dern as Ruth Stoop, an indigent, drug-addicted woman. The opening scenes establish Ruth's character and portray her very non-middle-class life. She is show passively being matone might cal1 'concensually raped,' apparently in exchange for a place to stay. When the guy she is sleeping with kicks her out, she irnmediately smashes the windows of his car in retafiation, cursing al1 the Mile. She then proceeds to get dmnk and sniff enough paint fumes, via a brown paper bag, to pass out. She is arrested and taken first to the hospital and then to jai!. The doctors and police al1 seem to know her, and it is immediately apparent that this is a regutar procedure for her. At the hospital she is told she is pregnant - also not an uncornmon event we soon leam, as she has already had four kids. At her trial, the judge gives her a moral lecture on her social irresponsibility: not only is she darnaging her own body, but she is threatening t!e health of her fetus (by putting drugs into her body) and of society (by bringing another poor and unwanted baby into the worid). The judge announces that he doesn't care if he is setting a precedent, he is going to convict her of willfuIly violating the rights of her fetus. Soon afterwards, speaking to her in the privacy of his office, he tells her that if she would "just do us al1 a favor and go to the hospital to have the situation taken care of (if you get my drift)," she may just get a lighter sentence.

This scene is interesting in a few respects. We see the contempt that the judge expresses for Ruth as welf as his coercive atternpt to prevent such a wornan from reproducing. This attitude

21 'The rnother's body is increasingly regulated. and pubic signs proliferate waming against pregnant women drinking, smoking, or taking drugs of any kind. No longer is the womb the safe, idyilic sanctuary it has long kenrnythically celebrated for. On the contrary, following a change in medical thought, the womb is constituted as a dangerous place for the fetus. The placenta's membrane is no longer conceived as an imperneable bamer to harmful substances; now the mother's toxins (drugs, alcohol, viruses) rnay infect the fetus. As a result, the mother becomes a slave to her fetus, wtiile her body becomes the site for suweillance by the social apparatus. Obviously, as I and others have noted, poor, minority, and working-dass women are the prime targets of the most virulent forrns of suweillance and control during pregnancy. Such women are routinely accused of placing the fetuses they cany at risk" (Kaplan 1994b, 132). mirrors many rniddle-dass and goveming notions about who is fit to parent and who is not- Poor wornen in general are not considered fit rnothers since they do not have the resources or the education rnothering is thought to require. This attitude becomes even stronger when it comes to women of color (wtiich Ruth is not). Children removed frorn their homes by social workers are usually poor and often ethnic minorities. The last several decades have seen nurnerous attempts to sterilize wornen in the third world and even more campaigns to encourage contraception and abortion there- When it cornes to drug-addicted wornen having babies, the level of social disapprovai jurnps stiil another octave or two. As Ann Kaplan notes,

In the late 19801s,the abusive mother takes the fonn of the cocaïne addict producing afready darnaged children, mistreating her child, or using it to finance her habit. ... These are the predominant representations about, and addressed to, the poor that usualfy speak from an implicit, judgmental, middle-class position (Kaplan 1994b, 192). In the case of Cifizen Ruth , Ruth is not portrayed as a coke addict (an image wfiich can almost be glarnorized and made melodramatic by association with all the actionldrug films and gangster imagery), but a glue and paint fume addict. The judge is willing to morally condemn Ruth for "reckless endangerment" of her fetus. His moral judgments and appraisals of the situation lead him to believe that the best solution for "everybody" in such a case is abortion, and he strongly encourages her to abort the fetus. Yet, failing aborting it, he seeks to "protect" it. The judge invokes the concept of fetal rights in order to control Ruth's behavior during her pregnancy. This type of legal protection of the fetus from its rriother is evidenced by a variety of court cases in recent years.

Rowland and Maynard-Moody cite legal cases which have sought court orders to control women during pregnancy and other attempts that are sometimes made to retroactively sue them for their actions during pregnancy. The suing trend started with Thalidomide babies, Mogrew up and sued the pharmaceutical Company. More recentIy, a "Michigan court even allowed a child to sue his mother for discoloration of his teeth caused by her taking tetracycline during pregnancy" (Maynard-Moody, 90). On a slightly different track, people have been convicted of manslaughter for killing fetuses - accidentally and intenti~nally.~Court cases like the one depicted in Citizen Ruth, which seek to incarcerate women on the basis of protecting the fetus in-utero, have been

'Third parties are increasingly being held liable for damage to the fetus; for example, in many jurisdictions if a woman pregnant with a viable fetus dies in an auto accident, the person responsible is charged with two counts of manslaughter" (Maynard-Moody, 90). Also see Rowland for a case in which a man destroyed his wife's fetus by shoving his hand up her vagina and ramming the fetus (of 28 - 29 weeks) up through the uten'ne wall, which split open. The man 'bas charged with murder - but not with assault on his wife" (125). The case was ultimately lost at the Kentucky Supreme Court. tried several times in the past few years. Verdicts in these cases have gone both ~ays.~~In other instances, court orders have been used to force women to undergo specific medical procedures. The most common of these are enforced cesareans. Between 1982 and 1987, at least twenty-one cases went to trial in the United States in which doctors were seeking court orders to force cesarean sections. Eighteen of them were awarded in favor of the doctor. Several of these cases were deemed unnecessary after the fact AI1 of the above legal cases work towards setting a precedent that establishes the fetus as a subject in the eyes of the law, a subject entitled to legal rights. Many of these cases also work to establish medical authority over pregnant women, and the establishment of the fetus, not ûnly as a person, but as a patient.

Throughout medical discourse on fetal treatments, fetuses are referred to as "patients." in contrast, wornen are referred to as "pregnancies" and "uteruses" and the language is "once again defining women merely as mechanisms, as a laboratory" (Rowland, 142). Viewïngthe fetus as a patient involves seeing it as separate from the mother. Yet it is not separate. Treating a fetus involves going fhrough the rnother. This rnay mean determining substances that a mother does or does not put into her own body, or it may involve the use of intrusive technology on pregnant women - from fetoscopy for viewing and monitoring purposes to surgery. It may, in other words, mean literally slicing through a woman's body to perform a cesarean section or for fetal surgery. When it cornes to fetal surgery, Rowland comments that

The most important point, however, and one which is often lost, is that this work is expen'mentation on women. Discussions of fetal surgery proceed as if the woman's body is not involved, but, in fact, the interventions are quite drastic (141). Moreover, as previously mentioned, the medical establishment and the state have collaborated to force women to undergo some types of surgery (cesarems) "protect the fetus." Thus, "[bly giving the fetus rights, rnedicine ends up by giving it greater rights than a woman" (Rowfand, 122). 24

23 See Maynard-Moody, 90,and Rowland, 129, for details. Note also the case in which a "judge in Indiana ordered that a mother would have her twenty-year sentence for child abuse reduced if she agreed to sterilization" (Rowland, 129). This is the type of case that is depicted in Citizen Ruth when the judge promises to reduce Ruth's sentence if she agrees to an abortion. In Canada, a Supreme Court verdict denied the courts the right to incarcerate pregnant women on the grounds of fetal protection in 1997. 24 One more arena in which women's rights and fetal rights have recently come into confIict is the work force. During pregnancy, doctors and lawyers have 'suggested' that women be constrained from work that muld ham the fetus. Such work ranges from work in toxic environments to physical labor, from any 'stressful' work to any work at all. Debates on employment and fetal protection policies tend to Yreat al1 fertile women as potentially pregnant and therefore vulnerable, tying women's destiny as chiid bearers into employment rights. The rights of women for employment and the rights of the fetus become 'diametiically opposed'. ... These kinds of practices also do nothing to ensure that hazardous workplaces are cleared up for al1 workers - including men. (Fetuses anequally suffer darnage through their fathers' sperrn)" (RowiandJ 32). The court scene in Cifiren Ruth represents exady this supercedence of fetal rights over matemal rights. However, in this film the court order heralds only the beginning of the story. Milethe judge advocates abortion as serving the best interests of both society and the fetus, others are of a different persuasion. Fetal n'ghts provide a premise for control over women's reproductive functions. In tum, the necessary prernise for fetal nghts is fetal life. Advocates of the fetus' most fundamental right - its tight fo life - have been a powerful political force over the fast few decades. Through their campaigns, these activists have also been instrumenta[ in symbolic constructions of fetal personhood. lt is these so-called "pro-life" activists, in their most extreme incarnations, that discover Ruth's plight and decide to adopt her as a political symbol.

Once she has been convicted of recklessly endangering her fetus, Ruth ends up in a jail cell suffering through a detox period, While she is on the floor moaning in pain and imploring God to help her, new inmates amve to share her ceII. These inmates tum out to be pro-Iife activists arrested on some type of public nuisance charge. They are Christians on a mission to protect ail "God's children." They instantly recognize Ruth as a sou1 to be saved, canying a child to be saved. Once they are released, they proceed to pay Ruth's bail. Over the course of the next few days, Ruth is taken to a pro-Iife "cfinic" where a nurse and a doctor "counsel" her on abortion. This counseling involves showing her a pro-life propaganda film which draws analogies between abortion and the holocaust and other atrocities. They show her a tiny doll that looks just like a miniature baby that is meant to represent her fetus at ten weeks, aIready equipped with "little fingers and little toes and everything." At one point, she is asked Matshe would narne the baby and whether she would Iike a boy or a girl - if she were going to keep it. At this point her reply is that she does not want to keep it, but she speculates that if she did, she might want a girl, and she rnight name it Tanya. Through this process, they constnict an individual subject out of her fetus. Throughout the rest of the film, her fetus is referred to by these adivists as "Baby Tanya." At the beginning of the "counseling" session, Ruth is adamant that she wznts an abortion. By the end of the session she has been converted and feels wide eyed and homfied by the propaganda film she has just seen.

This victory is short Iived. Before long, she is back to sniffing model glue. When she is caught doing this by her hosts' pre-teen son, she punches him in the stornach in an effort to shut him up. His parents are irate. AI their prejudices emerge in a verbal confrontation, and they decide to kick

One particulariy outrageous case involved the Amencan Cyanamid Company. They gave wornen employees the 'choice' of job loss or sterilization. Five women actually chose sterilization, only to lose their jobs a year later when the plant closed. This debate demonstrates some of the ways in wtiich fetal rights can impact not only pregnant wornen and mothers, but al1 women. her out of their home, Another activist offers to take Ruth home with her instead. As it tums out this adivist is a "spy" for a pro-choice group. It is not long before a large-scafe propaganda war has begun between pro-choice and pro-life forces. The press get involved and people amve from al1 over the country, apparentiy to support either Ruth's nghts or those of her fetus. Aithough Cifrzen Ruth is a spoof that exaggerates al1 angles of this 'hr" over abortion as part of its stylistic device, it nonetheless highlights a political climate that is very real.

Mileopposition to abortion has long been a powerful social force, the anti-abortion movernent began to acquire its present form immediately after abortion became a legal practice. Since then the movement has become an extremely powerful political force in the United States- Steven Maynard-Moody writes that

[b]y g~ngconsütutional legitimacy to a woman's decision to have an abortion, Roe vs. Wade solidified the antiabortion or Right-to-Life rnovement. Their loss in the Supreme Court began their search for new tactics and fresh battlegrounds to express their antiabortion views. ... In the years that followed Roe vs. Wade , activists transfomed antiabortion views from a minor electoral issue to a political absolute: as the power of the antiabortion movement grew, strong Right-to-Life stands were required of anyone seeking conservative support for either elective or appointed office. The antiabortion movement built the? political influence by erasing any middle ground; regardless of their views on other issues, antiabortion groups either supported or denounced candidates for govemment office on this basis alone. The absolutist strategy of single-issue moral politics proved highly successful (21). AIthough they have not succeeded in reversing the decision on abortion, the anti-abortion movernent has had a profound effect on related policy issues.25 As Maynard-Moody puts it, "Metal research became a srnaIl skirrnish in the larger battle over abortion; a battle, Iike al1 political batües, fought as much over syrnbols and images as substance" (21). Furthermore, the imagery csed by the anti-abortion movernent has made a key contribution to the evolution of the symbol of the fetus-as-life. This syrnbol works hand in hand with the establishment of the fetus-as-person and ultimately has a profound effect on how pregnancy, birth, fetuses and women are understood, treated and experienced.

Fetal personhood implies fetal life. Yet, as Maynard-Moody points out, there are no absolute definitions, biological or social, of the point at wtiich life begins, or, for that matter, of what "life" rneans. On a rnedical scientific level, the terms life and death are closely connected. If death refers to an absence of He, it means that there must be some understanding of Matlife consists of in the first place. Furthermore, death refers to an absence of life that follows nfe. What then, is

25 For example, a ban on federal funding for fetal research was instituted throughout the Reagan and Bush administrations, based largely on political cornpliance with anti-abortion stands on the issue. an absence of life that precedes life? The fetus occupies uncertain terrain, poised on the threshold between life and non-Iife, but not necessariiy able to approach death. Refemng to standards of determining death, Steven Maynard-Moody writes that

[wlhile depending on rnedical or biological evidence, definitions of death are infused with social meaning , . . Dedaring death assumes agreement on the features humans must have that distinguish living frorn dead persons, as well as in cultural and religious concepts of death and personhood. These definitions change with the times, often as a result of scientific advances (70). The same can be said of life: definitions of life are in many ways culturally constructed and variable over tirne. With regard to fetal status, definitional waters become particularly murky. Can a fetus be defined as dead if it was never defined as alive? If it were ever defined as alive, at what point did that life begin - at a pre-conception cetlular level? At conception? At the point of brain- aikeness (itself a disputable point)? At viabil@@6 At birth? It goes well beyond the parameters of this paper to delve into the medicai debates on the beginning or ending of life. It must, however, be noted that even on a purely biological level, and even within the mainstream scientific community, there is no absolutely clear-cut definition of the tem life. The edges are blurred. The edges are blurred partly because the center is unclear - there is no completely agreed upon set of biological critena whose presence absolutely implies Iife and whose absence absolutely implies death. Furthemore, Maynard-Moody points out that technological developrnents regulariy throw tentative definitions into question.

On a social plane, definitions of Iife are even more problematic. Barbara Duden, in the book Disembodying Women , maps a historical evolution of the term "Iife" as it appears in the dominant discourses of Europe and North America. She writes that the term Iife has becume "a polymorph, full of connotations but impotent for denotation. The word has become a jack-of-al1 trades with disparate, almost random usages" (104). Amongst the connotations of the term is an associated sanctity. Life in abstract terrns has not always been sacred. A look at ancient Western Iiterature, from Horner to the Bible, will reveal that even human life was only contextually valued. Duden credits the Catholic Church with originally moving the value of life out of the personal, contextual sphere and into the impersonal generatized one:

The uniquely Western public concem for the sick, the hungry, and the destitute has grown out of the belief that Christians can recognize the Son of God made man. It was not the Enlightenment that introduced the unrealizable idea of institutionalking and depersonalizing Christian love of neighbor by transforrning Ït

26 It should be noted that viability is the present standard for the point at which life begins in both medical and legal definitions. As Maynard-Moody points out, viability is more tban a medical concept, IR is also a legai milestone" (82) - Roe vs. Wade legitirnated abortion based on nonviable feîuses. Viability is a medical and legal milestone because, in these spheres at least, it is socially agreed upon . It is not rigid or absolute as a marker of Iife. into the professional Gare of strangers, A thousand years eariier, the Church had launched the West into the business of providing welfare and relief, offering care as a mask for bumt-out love. (23) Duden argues that, more recently, there has in some ways been a kind of one-sided mamage between Christian and scientific beliefs, whereby the Church uses science to back up its "novel dernand that 'brotherly love' be extended to a faceless and shapeless appearance on the [ultrasound] screen, the reality of which is established only by its being a scientific fact" (23). With this extension, the concept of '"love of neighbor,' which through the coldness of faith in the Christian comrnunity led toward increasing institutionalization and the care of strangers, now moves one step kirther into the abstract" (24).

In the 1990's, the notion of the sanctity of Iife extends well beyond the Christian cornmunity in the West. Duden daims that

[olne only has to be vaguely aIert when leafing through glossy mass circulation magazines to recognize how attractive life has become for the advertising industry, how clubs, shoes, towels, toothbrushes, and travel are identified with the quality of "life" (104). How is it that an abstract notion of "Iife" has corne to be worshipped so fewently'? The answer to this question is cornplex and beyond my purpose in this paper. Nonetheless, the question is worthy of bn'ef speculation. Duden refers to Carolyn Merchant's book The Death of Nature for a partial answer. In this book, Merchant maps the process whereby Enlightenment science conceptually transformed nature from an integrated living rnatrix into a dead cosmos. Duden claims that

it is fruitless to discuss the fascination of life for both cIergymen and advertising moguls without keeping "the fading of nature as living matrix" present in one's mind. . . . Only in a cultural milieu where nature has been experienced for a couple of millennia as a pregnant womb can the death of nature be experienced as existential loneliness. . . . Understanding rnodemity as a result of this loss, one can begin to see why those who feel responsible conjure up the ernpty idol, "Iife" (106). Once Iife has been held up as sacred, by clergy, advertising moguls or others, the cultivation of images that invoke this sanctity of tife forms a cycle of affirmation in wfiich the concept further entrenches itself.

There is also a cycle of negation at work that frequently anses in popular discourse and prevents meaningful questioning of the conternporary status of life. This cycle invokes images of atrocity (images that the mass media have helped to disseminate so effectively) in order to defend Iife from potential perpetrators. Duden points out that [alny cnticisrn [of the status of 'life'] is immediately answered by someone who connects Iife with nght or value or sacredness and, by so doing, evokes six million Jews, or sixty million fetuses, or large numbers of Kurds and Cambodians, or even the rain forests, bugs, and grasses. The four-letter word is meaningless and loaded; it can barely be analyzed, yet it is a declaration of war (104). Regardless of the reasons why Me has become such a loaded term, one way or another it has become a highly emotionally charged and powerful terrn, so powerful that Duden claims

[tlhe idof of the fetus has only one cornpetitor at present, and that is the Blue Planet. Just as the sonograrn of the fetus stands for one Iife, so the TV satellite picture of the earth stands for ail life. As the pink disk of the zygote appeals for the maintenance of one immune system, so the blue disk of the biosphere appeals for the survival of the entire global system. Both disks act like sacraments for the "real presence" of life, for whose continuation a global "we" is made responsible (1IO).

The fetus has been constructed as a symbol of Iife on a couple of levels. On one level it can merely represent potential life, much as a pregnant wornan can syrnbolize the potential for new Iife. On another level, however, it can represent a new Iife itself, much as a new born baby can represent a new (quasi) independent life. The construction of fetal personhood works toward the latter end. Images of the fetus as a little person convey the message that it is alive and that it is entitled to the sarne rights and treatment as a post-natal baby. Amy Heckerling's film Look Who's Talking constructs the fetus-as-person in just this way.

Read in the context of conternporary fetal discourse, this film can be seen to echo a variety of recent trends. Throughout the film, matemal subjectivity is marginalized first by the developing fetus and then by the new baby. Maggie's body has become invisible, allowing the audience to look right through her in order to focus on the real star - the talking fetus. The ways in which the fetus is assigned capacities for speech, and for adult patterns and topics of thought, prornote the concept of fetal personhood. Look Who's Talking presents itself as an apolitical and harmless comedy. Yet, representing the fetus as a person necessarily implies that the fetus is alive and already fully human. It therefore supports, intentionally or otherwise, anti-abortionist claims that life begins at conception as well as other claims to fetal rights. In this way, the film also contributes to the connection between the abstract concept of Iife and the image of the fetus, a connection which is conducive to powerful rhetoncal deployrnent.

The film was a huge box office success (big enough to warrant tvvo sequels) and has certainly made its contrÏbution to the publickation of the fetus. It has helped to normalize and popularize the concept of fetal personhood and, regardless of intent, this function has social consequences. Such a normal-kingfuncüon can become ail the more insidious based on its seemingly light and innocuous comic structure. The film promotes the concept of fetal personhood - a concept that is supportive of a vanety of forms of patriarchal and state control over women's bodies.

In cuntrast, Cifizen Ruth addresses issues of abortion, fetal personhood and rnechanisms of social control head on. It highlights the ways in which discussions of fetal rights are inextricably linked to the concepts of Me and of fetal personhood, In fact, "questions about fetal personhood are inseparable from a woman's personhood" (Maynard-Moody, 69). Yet the legal and medical systems attempt to treat fetal personhood as a separate issue, and in so doing can marginalize and ignore women. In order to legitimate intervention - medical or legal- doctors and the state set themeIves up as the ultimate guardians of fetal interests. Wornen, on the other hand, are either completely absent from debates around fetal inter est^,^^ or worse, they are portrayed as a direct threat to the fetus. In the latter instance, she is portrayed as a hostile environment - an environment which can inflict hamful diseases, toxins and even emotional stresses on the innocent and fragile fetus. At worst, a mother could selfishly pit her own desires for autonomy and health against the fetus, possibly even "kiliing" it in the process.

Citizen Ruth goes beyond sirnply critiquing the pro-life rnovement and legal attempts to control women through the notion of fetal rights. The film also issues a warning regarding the dangers of politicaily losing the trees to the forest. The people involved in the pro-choice side of ''the war" are themselves adept at turning Ruth into a symbol that serves their own political agenda. Pro-choice advocates in the film range from Vietnam vets stilI intent upon fighting for freedom to Goddess- worshipping feminists. Despite their rhetoric about wornen's rights to choice, they are also more concemed with the syrnbolic significance of Mat happens to Ruth's fetus than they are about Ruth herself. No one in the film treats Ruth as a subject, as a person. With regard to class issues, the feminist pro-choice activists are capable of bernoaning the plight of indigent women, but not of actually listening to Ruth express her very real needs - needs which have more to do with matenal realities than with symbols. In short, the film highlights the need for political conviction to manifest itseIf in persona1 interactions and not just symbolic jargon.

In Look Who's Tafking , MolIy is set up as the middle-class heroine of the story* The other charaders in the film appear to treat her as a person, yet the film manages to structurally displace her subjectivity. In Cifizen Ruth , Ruth is set up as the poor anti-heroine of the story.

27 In the case of an absence of female subjecüvity, pregnant women are either simply excluded. or are objectified and rendered invisible. They becorne not necessarily hostile environments, but invisible containers, impedirnents to be bypassed or worked around, Such representations echo older 'seed' theories of reproduction. The other characters in the film do not treat her as a person, yet the film manages to stnicturally establish her s~bje~vity.Both films raise the issue of fetal personhood. One confronts the issue directly in an effort to critique it; the other glosses over the implications of its representations, and in so doing contributes to ideological constructions of the fetus, Both films indicate that the concept of fetal personhood has entered the fieId of the social imagination in North Amen'ca. CHAPTER TVVO

PATERNAL VOICES AND TECHNOCRATIC DOMINANCE IN AMERICAN BIRTH RITES AND HOLLYWOOD COMEDIES

[Mlembers of the medical profession want to have it both ways on fetal personhood. They seek advocates for the fetos when they wish to coerce a woman into a caesarean section, but not when they want to use fetal bmin tissue for experimentatîon. ... They fhemselves are confused about the dnndng Iine between the pre-embryo, embryo, Éetus, baby and child. Definitions depend on the use to wbich the resulting 'pmduct' is to be put. What they are not confused about is who should decide the outcome in any of these circumstances. (Rowland, 122)

Western (allopathic) medicine has staked its claim to authority over childbirth on the basis of scientific knowIedge. Some of this knowiedge continues to seem authentic, some of it has been shown to be invalid and incorrect.** As a result of mediml mistakes, increasing numben of people have begun to question medical authonty. Robbie Davis-Floyd writes that

[a]s increasing evidence of the unnecessary and often harmful nature of obstetrical procedures accumulates and is published by the medical, psycho!ogical, anthropological, and lay presses, many individuals involved with birth are asking how it is possible that a medical specialty that purports to be scientific can appear to be so irrationai (2). Yet, despite such apparent irrationality, many people remain convinced by allopathic medicine. The result of the medicalkation of childbirth is that technology, reproductive science and institutionalized medicine have played an increasing role in the processes of parturition and childbirth, ultimately transforming women's experiences of them in fundamental ways.

In this chapter, I would like to elaborate a bit on Davis-Floyd's theories of how standard obstetric procedures and the uses of technology in hospital births function in an Arnetican social context. She atternpts to configure birth as an "ArnerÏcan rite of passage." I want to argue that many portrayals of birth in Hollywood film conform to the basic patterns she outlines as this rite of passage. Furthemore, the films can highlight the workings of another related rite of passage - that is the patemal rite of passage. Ultimately, such films can function to further normalize and entrench these rites. if prospective parents watch such films with an eye to making sense of their own experiences, or in order to assimilate new parental roies in their lives, such films can potentially even play a srnall role in such rites themselves. lnasmuch as people watch the

** See Goer for detailed instances of mediml obstetnc beliefs that are now being challenged by more recent medical research. mainstream films I have been discussing here, and insofar as these films repeat the same images and procedures tirne and again, I argue that these films can be viewed as in some way constitutive of perceptions of childbirth. If the films are viewed by prospective parents preparing for their own birth, or by parents reflecüng on their own previous birthing experiences, I am arguing that they can become a part of a birth ritual in which parücular messages are repeatedly transmitted. Furthemore, people viewing such films as they grow up, or even as childless adults, may have Iittle else on which to base their understandings of chitdbearing. ln this context, the imagery of such films could serve to set up certain individuals to expect experiences sirnilar to those repeatedly depicted - that is, images of hospitals, doctors and technology- I am not asserting that this funcüon iç conscious or intentional, nor am I asserting that it is necessarily successful. Moreover, individuals will interpret and respond to the films differentiy depending on their own beiiefs and Iife expen'ences.

Paternal Voice:

A whole senes of films was produced in the late-eighties and early-nineties whose plots revolved around the social transition frorn 'the couple' into 'the farnily.' Three such fiims are She's Having a Baby (1988), Nine Months (1995) and Father of the Bdde lI (i995). These films have much in cornmon with each other. All three of them are cornedies, As such, their narrative structure follows a IargeIy defined and predictable pattern: the beginning is light, and love blossorns; an incident disrupts the initial harmony; finally, resolution is attained, order is restored and happiness returns. The bulk of the narrative works toward obtaining the final resolution. In the case of al1 these stories, the disruptive incident is pregnancy. The bulk of the narrative focuses on the characters' attempts to assess the impacts this event will have on their lives and then to decide how they will respond to the situation. Resolution is obtained through acceptance of the pregnancy and the successful completion of a persona1transition from one social role into another.

She's Having a Baby stars Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern as a young mamed professional couple. The film starts with their wedding, follows them into purchasing and decorating a new house and other stages of middle-class early marital bliss. Ail seems right in their world until she decides she wants a baby. When she tries to discuss her materna1 desires with him, he declares he is not ready and attempts to avoid the topic. Finally she attempts to tfick him into fatherhood when she stops taking the pill and chooses not to tell hirn. When she does not become pregnant after three months, she finally tek hirn of her attempts and gives him the eariy-nineties in wfiich fathers pick up the slack for neglecfful mothers wtio have abandoned their matemal responsibiliües or, at least, cannot adequately fuifill On another tack, she notes that there are representations of fathers and mothers working together to raise children, but again the father is central. Refem'ng to Parenthood as an example of this, Kaplan writes mat the wifelmother is very present in Parenfhood . but clearly the father (played for laughs by Steve Martin) is the film's enter. The problem of Fatherhood is the problem of the film, and the women are secondary. The film explores, quite interestingly, different kinds of fathers, raising questions about wfiich kind is best. One wonders, once again, why there has not been an analogous exploratory film about mothenng . One can onIy assume either that the cultural assumption of there being only one, universal way in which to mother remains, or that rnotherhood is simply still too deep and problematic a topic to be given simiiar treatrnent (Kaplan, 199).

The three films 1 am looking at differ frorn Parenfhood in one principal way: they do not address issues of fatherhood and the different ways to practice it. Instead, they address the issue of becoming a father. The main concems these men feel regarding the prospect of fatherhood find expression in anxious monologues based on the theme of how their lives will be impacted. Why me? they wonder. Why now? They worry about career -willfatherhood hold them back frorn achieving the greatness they may be capable of? Will it (in Father of the Bnde ) prevent the impending retirement? Will it age them prematurelp Will it lock them into a life of slavery, working al1 day and al1 week, year in and year out, merely to put food on the table and clothes on the kids' backs? What about al1 those vacations at Club Med and the trips to Europe - can they afford it all? They worry about cornmitment - matif they change their mind? Do tkyreally want to be with this woman long enough to raise children with her? Do they really want to be with her once she has become materna1 rather than the carefree sexy woman she was before?

Ail of their concems tum on stereotypes and on the nuclear family model. For example, the stars of our stories are apprehensive about taking on the role of breadwinner. This gender determined role is peculiar to the historically and culturally specific nuclear family structure.30 Their concems about the financial implications of fatherhood reBect the values of a highly matenalistic middle- class culture that believes that good parenting is based on consumption. In Father of the Bnde , Steve Martin buys his old family home back when he leams of the pregnancy, and he has a new wing buiit onto the house to accommodate the new baby. Of course, this wing cornes equipped with a uib and an abundance of toys. In Nine Months , Hugh Grant trades in his Porsche for a four-wfieel drive 'family car.' Concems about loss of freedorn seem tied to a particular

29 For example. Three Men and a Baby (1 988). Three Men and a meLady (1 WO), Kramer vs. hmer(4981) and Parents (1 990) (Kaplan, 184). 30 See Stephanie Coontz (1 992) for a history of North Arnerican family structures. understanding of what freedorn is, that is, there is no form of personal freedorn that can be found within the parameters of social obligation. Their concems about the ways in which their wives will change stem from cultural stereotypes of 'the mother.' Such stereotypes invoive mothers who inevitably luse parts of themselves through the experience of motherhood (especially their sexuatity), Ann Kaplan writes that

[wlhat representations still cannot produce is images of sexual women, wtio are also mothers, and who, in addition, have fulfilling careers. "Sex, Work and Motherhood" is evidently too threatening a combination on a senes of levels (Kaplan, 183). Furthemore, al1 of the above concems are exacerbated by a youth obsessed culture which tends to glonfy a lifestyie of absotute personal freedom, filled with beautiful and expensive toys (sorne of Wich can happen to be women).

I do not want to completely trivialize the concems outlined above or to argue that there is no real basis for thern wfïatsoever. Taking on the responsibility of raising a child does entail adapting one's life to meet the needs of another, largely dependent, human being. Furthemiore, I am equalty wary of attempts to portray wornen who do combine sex, work and motherhood perfectly and al1 of the tirne. It is not empowering to construct images of supewomen wbo have no struggles or fallibilities of their own. Women may constantly strive to live up to such unrealistic images and expectations and inevitably faIl short, In the process, women usually feel undue pressure and stress and may denigrate themselves unnecessariiy. l also do not want in any way to suggest that it is selfish or irresponsible not to want to have children - either for women or for men. The ways in mich such concems are raised in these films, however, not only cornes out as egocentric, self-pitying, male self-indulgence, but it also propagates ali of the worst stereotypes of gender and famiiy roles. The films fail to either effectively problemstize or creatively respond to the challenges of confronting parenthood. Rather than representing differing emotional responses to becoming a father, the films ail portray a more or less formulaic emotionaf progression. It is precisely the fomulaic nature of these representations, combined with the specific process of transfomation, that is interesting to me. A 'rite of passage' is made up of exactly this type of standardized, formulaic transfomative life process.

Birth is essentially a female rite of passage - women are the ones wtio actually give birth, and histoncally women play the central rote in subsequent child rearing. I am ultirnately more interested in exarnining birth from a maternai perspective. Hollywood films, on the otfier hand, seem more interested in portraying birth from a patemal perspective. Therefore, I will be looking at it both ways. Furthemore, 1 want to speculate on the ways in wtiich these representations, frorn both parental perspectives, conform to a 'technocratie rnoder3' of birth. Before I proceed wÏth any analysis of such representations, 1 want to broadly outline Robbie Davis-Floyd's theory of 'birth as an Amencan rite of passage.'

A rite of passage is a series of rituals designed to conduct an individual (or group) from one social state or status to another, thereby effecting transformations both in society's perceptions of the individual and in the individual's perception of her- or hirnself (Van Gennep /Turner, cited in Davis-Floyd, 17). Davis - Floyd goes on to write that 'Yhe most salient feature of ail rites of passage is their transitional nature, the fact that they always involve ... "liminality," - the stage of being betwuct and between, neither here nor there - no longer a part of the old and not yet a part of the new" (18). Birth is certainly a highly liminal period, for both parent and child. Acknowiedgment of this Iiminality has been a key feature of traditional birthing procedures in both Engiand and Arnerica (and quite likely elsewhere as well). Many supernatural beliefs have involved a fear that people are highly vulnerable to witchcraft and spiritual interference during liminal periods, and childbirth was thus seen as a tirne that required protective ri tu al^.^^ However, in contemporary society many people believe that such 'superstitious' fears and elaborate ritual activity are no longer a part of mainstream birthing practices in Arnerica. Davis-Floyd, on the other hand, argues that 'Yhe removal of birth to the hospital has resulted in a proliferation of rituais surrounding this natural physiological event more elaborate than any heretofore known in the 'primitive' world" (1).

Yet rite of passage rituaIs do not only function to protect individuals from the things they fear. Davis-Floyd notes th& there is also an extremely important socialization curnponent:

If the belief and value system of a given society -the "group-cognized environment" - is not passed on to its children, that society will undergo radical changes andlor will eventuafly cease to exist. ... [Blecause mothers are generally the rnost responsible for social'king their children, their absorption of the "group- cognized environment" and its implicit behavioral dicta must be so thorough that they cannot help but teach those systems of behavior and cognition to their children simply by their patterns of daily living (Davis-Floyd, 39).33

31 This term is used by Davis-Floyd to refer to contemporary institutionalized medical birth pracüces. Hospitals, medical training institutions and regulatory boards are govemed by bureaucraties which tend to depend upon and reify technology in medical practice. 32 The role of witchcraft beliefs in birthing traditions will be discussed further in chapter three. 33 Note that Mile mothers do have a significant role in the socialization of their children, they are by no means the only factor. Not only is the 'naturelnudure' debate still open (especially with regard to relative degrees), but other social influences, such as schooling and peer groups, are vastly important. Too often the 'mother as prime agent of socialization argument has been used to blame the mother for society's ills. See Thurer and Eyer. Any given society therefore has a deep motivation for constnicting effective enculturation procedures. Such procedures are particulariy effective during the liminal or transitional period in which a rite of passage occurs. Davis-Floyd breaks the birthing rite of passage into three phases: pregnancy, birth and re-integration. I would like to outline the basic characteristics Davis-Floyd identifies with each of these phases and compare the extent to which the films I am discussing conform to her criteria.

Robbie Davis-FIoyd notes that birth is not just a materna1 rite:

In a sense, the birth process creates not just one but four new social rnembers: the new baby, the wornan who is rebom into the new social rote of rnother, the man rebom as father - and the new unit they form. Each must be properiy socialized to ensure cultural continuity (38). When I look at Nine Months, She's Having a Baby and Fatherof the Bride 11, I see that al1 three of these films are rite of passage storïes. If I look at these films in ternis of Davis-Floyd's birth rite, I notice that they al1 start just prior to the first phase of pregnancy. The bulk of the film revolves around the nine months of pregnancy. The birth occurs at the narrative climax. The final phase of reintegration acts as resolution, and the film ends with a successfully completed rite. As previously discussed, the films represent birth as a patemal rite of passage rather than a matemat rite. The mothers' stories are peripheral. Disturbingly, the peripheral location of matemal voice is in many ways reflective of institutional, medical birth rites themselves. I would like, now, to look at the specifics of birth as a matemal rite of passage, as laid out by Davis-Floyd and as represented in the films under discussion. I want to analyze both the rite and the representations according to three phases: pregnancy, birth and reintegration.

Phase one: Precinancy According to Davis-Floyd's theory, this phase begins not only with the identification of pregnancy but also with its acceptance. Some women may go through a period of decision making, wondering whether or not they want to have the baby. Others wait until after amniocentesis tests 'confirm' the genetic health of their fetus before they fully accept the pregnancy. Once they have accepted that they are pregnant and that they are going to have a baby, they undergo a series of transformations in the different spheres of their life. Davis-Floyd classifies these spheres as the personai, the public, the medical, the formally educational and the peer domains.

In ail three films I examine, the women accept tkeir pregnancy long before their partners do. In part this may be because they experience physical changes profound enough to preclude any drawn-out denial. In part, it reflects a social convention that the drive to reproduce carnes predominantly frorn women and that women will 'naturally,' quickly and happily slide into a matemal role. Once the women in these films have accepted their pregnancy, they get on with the business of adapting to it Because the films are not written or shot frorn a matemal perspective, the audience sees very liffle in the way of transformation in the persona1 domain, We are not invited into the wornen's minds to see how they process or stniggle with the changes they are going through. Both Nine Months and Father of the Bride II make feeble gestures at showing the women's perspective when they finally cal1 their partners on selfish behavior. In Father ofthe Bride II, Nina's accusation that nobody has bothered to ask her how she feels about being pregnant is met with her son-in-law's syrnpathetically whispered rernark that his pregnant wife has been very emotional lately too ... .34 This comment is no doubt intended as a joke about the way in which women during pregnancy can move between feelings "of detachment, fear, wonder, awe, curiosity, hope, specialness, sirnultaneous alienation from and closeness to themselves and their families, irritation, frustration, exhaustion, resentment, [and] joy" (Davis-Floyd, 24). At the same time as women may be experiencing such ernotional volatility, Davis-Floyd claims they may also find that

[olld habits drop off and new ones develop as pregnant women struggle to find new ways of doing sornething as simple as tying their shoeiaces, and as wrnplex as balancing their increasing needs for peace and ernotional support with the daily dernands of their marriages and careers (Davis-Floyd, 24). She goes on to Say that throughout this period, pregnant women remain open to changes as 'The near-constant inner and outer flux of pregnancy keeps the category systems of pregnant women in a continuous state of upheaval" (24).35 While these films do acknowledge some of the signs of flux that characterize many wornen's persona1 expen'ences of pregnancy, they do so only in triwializing and wndescending ways (akin to male jokes about fernale PMS). The films do not convey, in any way, a woman's perspective on the transformations in the personal domain which consist of profound physical, psychological and emotionai growth and change.

In the public domain, Davis Floyd writes mat transformation is characterked by the ways in wt-iich 'the visible physical fact of pregnancy frequently tums women into symbolic objects" (26) and the ways in which women respond to their new symbolic status. In the three films under discussion in

She soon tells us that "1 am happy and 1 am nervous and I am very much alone". And that's the extent of her feelings as far as we can see. 35 By "category systems" Davis-Floyd is refemng to the intemal filing system which organizes a person's beliefs about the worid. She writes, "ln many initiation rites involving major transitions into new social roles, this openness is achieved through rituals designed to break down the initiates' belief system - the intemal mental structure of concepts and categories ttirough wtiich they perceive and interpret the world and their relation to it. Ritual techniques that facilitate this process indude hazing - the imposition of physical and mental hardships ... and strange making - making the cornmonplace strange by juxtaposing it with the unfamiliar (Abrahams 1973). A third such device, symbolic inversion, works by metaphodcally turning specific elements of this belief system upside-ciown or inside-out" (Davis-Floyd, 19). this chapter, we are given no insights into the ways wornen may respond to the new public gaze that is tumed on them, We do not hear them speaking or thinking about their feelings. We atso see litlie response from them to the ways in which they are treated as pregnanf women. We do see moments of frustration with their husbands' reluctance to commit or to behave 'responsibly,' but these moments are superficial. We do not follow them through a routine day in which they have to contend with an amy of tasks and interactions, conversations and glanes, which rnay in some way be a little bit diHferent because they are pregnant. A stranger's glance at the bulging belly could cany kindness or cunosity, disapproval or judgrnent. A woman's response to such a glance may involve anger or resentment, pride or pleasure. However, there are none of these littie moments in these films. Yet, as members of the audience, we become a part of the public. The wornen on the screen are, for us and by us, transformed into symbols, not subjects.

As for transformation in the medical domain, we see ail of the women engage with it in fairly standard ways. Ail of them select doctors to consult. None of them even raise the possibility of an alternative such as a midwife. In She's Having a Baby , we don't see much about the medical aspect of pregnancy. However. since al1 we see is what Kevin Bacon is doing while his wife is pregnant, this is hardly surprising. Although we do not actually see her interact with her doctor, we do know that she consults a doctor at the beginning when she asks her husband to go get a spem count. Fortunately, the solution to the fertility problem is low-tech, involving looser undemear and special positions during sex rather than in-vitro fertilization.

Nin3 Months features the medical domain quite prominently. The obstetrician is played by Robin Williams. His role is based on completely over-the-top comedy routines. It tums out he has recently immigrated from the former Soviet Union. His work there was research onented and consisted of experiences with animals only. His novice status and emphasized accent tend themselves to the ridiculous slapstick humor that ensues. He determines the baby's due date, and conception date, with a amputer program he proudly claims to have written himself. When the conception date he provides coincides witti a tirne when Sam was away on business, fighting ensues and he accuses his girlfnend of in fi de lit^.^^ Robin Williams daims to have rnisentered the information and everything calms down again. Uitirnately, the couple choose not to use Robin Williams' sewices and they find another doctor. The second doctor is a black woman who exudes a calm confident authority. There is an inversion of stereotypes at wotl here, with a white male doctor portrayed as ernotional and incompetent and a black female being a calm, rational and together doctor and authority figure. Yet, through the femate doctor, an underlying respect for the

36 There is an almost identical scene in Father of the Bde li . When Nina is told she is pregnant, George claims that they 'haven't done it in rnonths' and accuses her of having an affair. authonty of doctors, and of technology, is maintained. When we see the couple visit the new doctor, the interaction centers around an ultrasound. The ultrasound is a significant event in this film. Not only does Sam's failure to show up on time for his third ultrasound appointment trigger Rebecca's decision to Ieave him, but it also serves as a major reason why he wants her back- When he later begs for her forgiveness, he explains that "1 saw the ultrasound. 1 saw our son. And I fell in love with him." Sam fell in love with an ultrasound image, with a syrnbol. This scene is a prime example of the power ultrasounds and visual imagery have come to play in perceptions of pregnancy and fetuçes.37

Father of the Bride il does not emphasize the medical aspect of pregnancy. The only time we see them visit a doctor is for the initial test. lnterestingly enough, the original 1951 film specifically addresses medical choices. Lii Tayior, who plays the pregnant daughter, tells her concemed father that she has chosen a doctor who uses 'new' techniques. This dodor believes that "childbirth is natural, that women should be conscious the whole üme and that they shouldn't take the baby away when it's bom - it should stay right with its rnother in the sarne room." She goes on to Say that this technique "isn't realfy new at all." In fad, her doctor has studied 'primitive people' in far away places. These primitive mothers never separate from their children at all. "Ail day long Aile they work they cany their babies on their backs." Her doctor believes that a relationship based on trust is most important and that if this relationship is well developed, the woman should be able to handle whatever happens. Her father (Spencer Tracy) is a bit skeptical of these 'radical' ideas at first, but he warms up to them once he meets the doctor. This film was made in 1951, at a time when the natural childbirth movement was just taking off. The fact that in the 1995 remake there is no discussion around choosing a birth procedure implies that there are no longer any real choices to be made. 'NaturaI childbirth' is no longer a radical idea in the ninaties. Most people going to the hospital now expect to give birth 'naturally.' Perhaps the script writer, therefore, feels the subject of natural childbirth no longer warrants discussion. This type of thinking is based on the premise that 'the baffle has been won,' that women are now empowered in the birth place. I have heard people speaking the same way about feminism - after al1 women can now vote, work and even keep their own narne in mamage. This perspective can be extrernely dangerous. It implies that people may well have stopped thinking critically and that the back door is wide open for more insidious forrns of control to walk in and make thernselves at

57 See chapter one for elaboration on the developrnent and present role of visual imagery and ultrasounds. home. ln Fatherof the BMe II, the absence of medical references during the pregnancies may be more tellïng than the standard presence of Ït in the other films.38

The medical domain is particulariy pertinent to this thesis in that it is perhaps the key cornponent of the 'technocratic model' of chiidbirth. During pregnancy, many women in Arnerica establish a relationship with the medical world unlike any they might normally have, First of ail, it is much more intensive, involving regular visits to a chic or doctots office. Secondly, the relationship of authority between the doctor and woman is intensified. Davis-Floyd observes that

[olne of the very first sensations expen'enced by most of the first-time mothers in my study was panic at the reaIization of their near-total lack of knowledge about birthing and babies. The quest for such knowledge can be identified as a major theme of their pregnancies. Yet it is significant that much of the knowledge they sought is scientifrc knowledge about medical blrth . Most of these women seem to equate knowledge with information - to place their trust in intellectuai knowledge, and not in intuitive, emotional, or bodily knowîedge (31). It is precisely scientific knowledge that doctors provide. Doctors come to take on the role of 'ritual elder' in this rite of passage. However, there are significant distinctions between the wayç in which contemporary medical doctors play this role and the ways in wtiich it was configureci in traditional societies:

a necessary condition for the initiate's absorption of sacred knowiedge is the elders' willingness to impart it to him. Although Our physicians are quite willing to exercise the authority accruing to this ritual eider role, and to effect through their birth rituals a true "change in being," it is the experience of many pregnant women that these physicians seem reluctant at best to impart the sort of empowering knowledge that pregnant women are rnost desirous of receiving. Commonly, pregnant women are not even allowed access to the information recorded in their own charts ...

As Marx and Weber point out, the holders and guardians of traditional authority in society are often protective of the special knowiedge and training that is supposed to legitimize authority; they have a vested interest in the continuing mystification of that knowledge. ... Of even greater relevance here, of course, is the deeper political and ferninist issue of information as power, and of the

38 Davis-Floyd argues that the natural childbirth movement has indeed been coopted by the hospital systern: "Natural childbirth's w-optation in the hospital by the technocratic model mirrors in microwsm that model's atternpts at CO-optionof the entire back-to-nature movement .... This phenornenon refiects a fascinating conceptual split in American society: on one level, we believe that "natural" is better for us, but our deepest belief is in the superiority of technocratic culture. So we start to think of certain phenornena as natural, hoping that now we have the best of both worlds" (176). So, on the one hand, it appears that the terni 'natural childbirth' has been quietly CO-optedby the technocratic rnodel. However, recently it seems that there is beginning to be some acknowledgment of this CO-optionaccornpanied by a letting go of the authentic natural childbirth ideal: "Now, in the 1990's, many childbirth educators and midwives are finding that fewer women even give lip service to the natural childbirth ideal. The co-option of natural childbirth is neariy cornplete - its philosophy and applications have been so subsumed under the technocratic paradigm that many warnen have discarded the label "natural" as too discontinuous with the realities both of their expectations and of hospital birth" (ibid.). centuries-old efforts of men in Western society to shut women out of access to intellectual sources of power by defining spheres of "authoritative knowledge" ..- and ~men'sspheres of social activity as mutually exclusive (30).

Throughout pregnancy, rnany wornen corne to place more faith in their doctor and in technology than in themselves. In contrast to the tradition of 'quickening', they seek 'proof of pregnancy from pharmaceutical tests.39 They often seek confirmation that 'everything is going al1 right' by having ultrasound exams and maybe amniocentesis. Ultrasound pictures also provide further 'proof that the fetus actually exists. Women otten seek medical advice on how to conduct themselves in areas ranging from exercise and diet to behavior and work. A woman will ofien rely on fomulaically detemined due dates, and if "she goes more than two weeks past her due date (one week, in sorne places), her labor will be artificially induced" (Davis-Floyd, 29). ln short, much of her relationship to her own body and to the fetus inside her is mediated and regulated by doctors and technology?o

When it cornes to transfcmation within the realm of formal education, this is where pregnant "wornen do receive much of the technical information they seek" (32). The aim of such education is to infom and prepare women (and often their partners) for birth. Davis-Floyd identifies five ritual roles these classes play in addition to providing intellectual information: 1) they strive to increase the involvement of a partner in the experience; 2) they focus attention on the impending birth; 3) they introduce the pregnant woman (or couple) to other pregnant women (or couples); 4) they offer a cognitive matrix from which a wornan can try to interpret her experiences; 5) they teach her breathing techniques or other ritually grounding rnethods for her Iabor (33). The range of perspectives or paradigms offered through fomal education has become quite wide in recent decades. Ultimately, however, Davis-Floyd daims that "the one critical factor common to al1 of these paradigms is that they tend to present the pregnant woman with a preformulated ideal of what childbirth could and therefore should be Iike" (33),41

39 See Duden on the tradition and significance of quickening and its historical displacement. 40 Within medical systems in North America, there is a tendency to rneasure women'ç birthing procedures against standardized noms. If "the average labor" lasts x arnount of time once a woman has dilated to x size, for example, and a particular labor is taking longer than this, intervention is frequently ordered. Both doctors and technology monitor the "regularity" of women's fabors, and doctots ultimately regulate which deviations are permissible and which not. Many midvvives, and much medical research, question the standards and practices which are currently used for assessrnent See Goer, for detaifs. 41 Many women. including midwives, assert that there is a huge range of birth experiences between women. According to them, every labor is different. When doctors try make women conforni to noms or ideals, or when women themselves have expectations of how things are supposed to be, it can make the expenence far more diffÏcult and complicated if there are deviations. For example, women expedng a smooth, blissful, spiritual natural birth who end up having a long painful one, or a cesarean, can be emotionally devastated both during and after the Childbirth education is not a significant part of the narratives for the films I am discussing. Yet al1 of hem do make some kind of reference to sorne form of childbirth education. Al1 three films at least mention, if not portray, attendance at Lamaze classes. According to Davis-Floyd, Lamaze is the most widely practiced 'naturai' childbirth method in North Arnerica. The Lamaze rnethod of childbirth is based on the cultivation of breathing techniques wfiich help wornen to psychologically alleviate labor pains. and to stay focused and emotionally controlled throughout the pro~ess.~~ Several approaches to childbirth were developed in response to the extremes of patriarchal control over, and technological intervention in, standard birth practices of the 1920's to the 1950's." Davis-Floyd argues that the primary reason that the Lamaze rnethod became the most successful of these approaches is because it is in many ways compatible with the technocratic model. According to her, advocates of iarnaze atiernpted to change the system from within. Their changes were based on reform rather than radical change.

At its inception, the childbirth education organization created to encourage the use of the Lamaze method, ASPO (Arnerican Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics) was geared to the American hospital and the Arnerican way of birth. The only challenge ASPO initially offered to the technocractic model was over the use of analgesia and anesthesia: ASPO advocated 'Wie substitution of psychological for pharrnacolgical control of pain" (Rothman 1981 :16ï) (quoted in Davis-Floyd, l63)? Furtherrnore, she writes that the Lamaze emphasis on control in childbirth makes it compatible with the technocratic model:

the method keeps women quiet by giving her a task to do [the breathing techniques], making king a "good" - non-cornplaining, obedient, cooperative - patient the woman's primary goal ... The husbands are co-opted into doing the staffs work, moving the patients through the medical routines as smoothly as possible. Mother. coached by father, behaves herself Mile Doctor delivers the baby (Rothrnan, quoted in Davis-Floyd, 165).

------experience. Likewise, women whose labors deviate from rnedically determined noms can be filled with anxiety by their doctors who tell them they are taking to long to dilate, etc. Amrding to rnany midwïves, preparing for the unexpected and for difference can be the best emotional preparation women can get. 42 This technique is based on the assurnption that the mind and the body are not separate, and that furthemore, the mind can be used to to alteviate bodiIy pain. The Lamaze technique uses breathing techniques to focus the mind to control the interpretation of the pain signals the body is sending it. Whether the technique actually reduces pain, or rnostly manages it. The terni "psychological" is meant to distinguish it from treatments of pain that are tangibly physical, such as the use of analgesia. 43 The Bradley Method and the Dick-Read method are two other well-known approaches developed at this tirne. See Davis-Floyd for a concise comparative analysis of these techniques. Note that Davis-Floyd goes on to acknowledge that "[t]oday's ASPO-trained childbirth educators adopt a wide spectnirn of approaches to childbirth; many of them are wholistically (sic) oriented. This discussion addresses only the philosophical origins of the Lamaze method" (163). The references to education in the Lamaze technique made in the films discussed here conform to standard Amerïcan birth practices and the technocratic m~del.~~The only other reference to childbirth education is made to the book What fo Expect When You're fipecting . Both Sam and Rebecca are shown reading this book in bed at night. This book is the most popular childbirth preparation book. It is also highly biased toward a technocratic model and the supremacy of medical expertise. Nicknamed '1Miat to Fear When You're Expecüng" by some friends of mine, the book is based on standardked and formulait development- It ouüines what should be happening every step of the way- The standard advice if you do not conform to the norms provided is to '%onsult your physician." The book is consistent with the view that pregnancy and birth are pathologi~al~~and that in dealing with these phenornena, the doctor always knows best.

The final domain in which transformation is seen to occur is the peer domain. Davis-Floyd characterizes transformation in the peer domain by a bonding between pregnant women, or sornetimes between pregnant wornen and other women who are mothers -the formation of a 'secret sisterhood.' According to her, these solidarity networks serve as a support and site in which to exchange information and to formulate alternative communal narratives based on individual experiences.

Encoded in them is a vast amount of information, grounded in experience, which, in spite of its devaluation &y physicians, can serve to counterbalance the technocratic model of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the educative ideal. ... Here we see the dialogue between the official and the informal: 'The doctor says you're too fat? Don't wony, Sibyi gained fi@ pounds and lost it al1 in two rnonths." 'Your teacher said you can't do Lamaze if you develop toxemia? Well, 1 did, and it worked out just fine." (36)

45 Again note that Wile the Larnaze method was and is in many ways in keeping with the technocratic model, in other ways it is subversive. "Many women went away from their hospitat birth experiences feeling that they gave birth al1 by themselves, that the hospital was fundamentally irrelevant to the process" (Davis-Floyd, 167). However, even as some steps were being taken in the direction of a more holistic approach to birth, others were taking it further in the direction of a technocratic ideal: "As the 'awake and aware' Lamaze birth gained increasing popularity during the years 1971-1976, so did the 'awake and aware' Cesarean section, which has a 95 percent increase in performance during those same years" (ibid.).

See the works of Davis-Floyd, Rothrnan and Oakley, which argue that the medical systern treats birth as a pathology. Rothrnan writes that "Medicine has treated, and in rnany instances overtly defined, normal female reproductive processes as diseases. ... The source of the pathology orientation of medicine toward women's health and reproduction is a body-as-machine model ... in which the male body is taken as the norm ... From that viewpoint, reproductive processes are stresses on the system, and thus diseaselike" (Rothrnan 1982,36). She does acknowfedge the movements aimed at changing this perspective that have been active for several decades now. Yet she feels that the attitude persists in more insidious ways. By the 1980's she writes, "Pregnant women, we believe, are not to be 'confined' or treated as sick. ChiIdbirth is healthy and normal. Yet surgical intewention increases: a puzzlement" (ibid, 31). There is also one formal ritual that occurç in the peer domain - the baby shower. Davis-Floyd sees these events as "worthy of study in their own right For one thing, they are forums for communication of accumulated childreanng strategies and wisdorn" (37). She writes that the gifts that are given at these functions can be seen to "constitute a sort of grammar of modem baby- raising techniques, communicating not only the love with which they are given, but also cultural and individual notions about the appropriate roles of mother, father, and child in relation to one another" (37). Furthennore, "[wJhatever the symbolic messages communicated by the gifts ..-the baby shower itself cornrnunicates strongly to the mother that she is loved, valued, and appreciated by her relatives and her peers" (37).

Representations of the peer domain in the films 1 looked at are very pooriy developed. Part of the reason for this is that we see so little of the women outside of their interactions with their husbands. We are not given insights into the way they think or feel, and we are not given audience to their conversations with their women fnends. In She's having a Baby we never see her with her friends. In both Nhe Months and Father of the Bride II , we do see Re becca and Nina smiling at every pregnant woman, mother and baby they see. We are also show that they do have another pregnant woman in their lives wfto provides support. Nina and her pregnant daughter spend a lot of time together, and Rebecca moves in vvith another pregnant woman men her husband fails to provide the support she needs. However, we mostly see them being weepy together and empathizing with each othefs emotional volatility more than ernpowering each other. We certainIy do not see them raising questions about the technocraüc birth model or delving into their deepest doubts and fears.

Phase Two: Birth

Pregnancy is a transfomative process that lasts about nine months; the process of birth lasts only a number of hours. Birth is therefore a shorter and more intense part of the rite, and Davis-Floyd argues that if pregnancy breaks down a woman's cognitive categories leaving her open to change, birth does so even more.

The "opening" that occurs during birth is quite literal - a birthing woman's cervïx must dilate to a diameter of ten centimeters in order for her baby to be bom - while the stress, anm'ety, and pain of the labor process are offen enough in themselves to ensure sirnultaneous category breakdown and psychological opening. Many mothers have commented on the reduced cognitive state and openness to outside suggestion which accompanies labor ... (39)

By making the naturafly transfomative process of birtb into a cultural rite of passage for the mother, a society can take advantage of her extreme openness to ensure that she will be imprinted with its most basic notions about the relationship of the natural to the cultural worids as these two worfds meet in the act of birth (40). This is precisely what Davis-Floyd claims North American culture has done through standard hospital birth procedures: taken advantage of women's openness during birth to engrain in her the core technocratie and institutional values of the culture. Throughout a hospital birth, there are a variety of procedures vuhich, according to Davis-Floyd, have no physical necessity (indeed, can be impediments to womefi's health) and exist only for ritual purposes.

These procedures include: the wheelchair entrance, the 'prep' (separation from partner, papennrork, donning of hospital gown, shaving pubic haïr, enerna), bed confinement and bed delivery, fasting, intravenous feeding, pitocin administration (to induce labor), analgesia (pain relievers), amniotomy (arüficiaI ruptures of the membrane), fetal heart monitoring (with either extemal or intemal rnonitots), cefvicafchecks, epiduraV caudal analgesid anesthesia, counter commands for pushing and then not pushing, transfer to the delivery room, lithotomy position, sterile sheets and disinfectants, episiotomy (cutting the perineum skin) and some instances of forcep use and cesarean sections.

It is not my purpose to expound on these procedures in this paper. It is important, however, to note that the standard hospital birthing procedures are elaborate. Afl of these procedures have an official rationale; al1 of them are arguably unnecessary and even potentially harmful, and many women are unhappy with themS4' Moreover, the above procedures can be seen as reinforcing the cultural messages that birth is an illness; that authority legitirnately rests in the hands of doctors and institutions; that technology is essential and without it we are at great nsk; that birth is now largely under human control; that birth is a procedure that should conform to regulated noms; thât if pregnancy and labor are 'proper!jr managed,' perfect babies are almost gua,mnteed (and that if they are not produced, it is likely the woman's fault); that babies, doctors and hospitals are clean, but women are dirty; mat doctors, not women, are the prime agents in birth; and that ultimately women are not subjects around -ose needs the process centers.

Ail three films under discussion portray hospital births. Again, it is the father's anxieties more than the mothets expen'ences that are the focus. In Fatherof the BMe , both mother and daughter go into labor at almost the same tirne. The daughtets, Annie's, husband is out of tom, and she is staying with her parents. Steve Martin, in his anxiety to be ready for her labor at al1 times, has become severely sleep deprived. By the time labor reafly does begin, he is doped out on

47 See interviews conducted by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Emily Martin. See also Jude Kornelsen's doctoral thesis now in progress. tranquilizers. Martin Short, playing a small, effeminate interior designer, struggles to drag him out to the car. A high speed car ride to the hospital ensues, punctuated with encounters with LA gangs and references to drive-by shootings. When they finally amve, there is some initial preoccupation with papenivork, and Annie is put in a wtieelchair, then a hospital gown and then a bed. The room she is placed in is made to look homey and amfortable rather than institutional- Lurking in the home-style cupboards, however, are electronic fetal heart monitors and al1 the other technotogical trappings. While Annie is concentrating on her breathing with her mother holding her hand, her mother suddenly goes into labor too - fwo weeks 'eariy.' Her labor progresses much more quickly than Annie's. Steve Martin, meanwfiile, has to run back and forth between his wife and daughter. The fetal heart monitor soon informs the doctor that Nina's fetus is showing signs of distress. The obstetrician immediately makes the decision to proceed with a cesarean. Annie and Nina are both wtieeled, on rolIing beds, to special delivery rooms. Anniers husband, who has just retumed from his business trip, arrives just in the nick of time. Annie proceeds to have the classical 'naturat' hospitaf birth, with her husband as labor coach. Nina gets the classical hospital cesarean, with her husband pacing anxiously outside the surgery theater. ln Nine Months , Rebecca's waters break in a restaurant. At almost the same moment, the hostess cuts her hand open on a glas and needs stitches. All of them jump into the car and begin a ridiculous car chase sequence to get to the hospital. Sam drives through the streets of San Francisco as if he is in The Dukes of Hazard, mnning dom pedestrians and cyclists atong the way. By the time they reach the hospital, the car is full of casualties. They leap out of the car, abandoning al1 the other injured parties, and prompfly place Rebecca in a wheelchair. She is put in a hospital gown and taken to a semi-private labor room. Who should she find there but her pregnant friend with whom she had temporarily lived during a split with her partner. The wtiole episode works with 8-grade slapstick. The women are placed on serni-upright inclined beds with stimps. Talk of epidumls and surgical instruments abound. Their regular obstetn'cian tums out to be on vacation, and, of course, Robin Williams, the Russian mad scientist prototype, is the substitute. It is his first delivery, and he is nemous and uncertain of himself. The fn'end's husband is running around with a video carnera, which eventually Ieads to a confrontation between him and Sam. Before long the two of them are engaged in a fist fight, knocking over equiprnent and tables that get in their way. The two women are groaning and yelling. The whole thing is absurd. Underiying the absurdity, however, remains al1 the trappings of the typical technocratie birth.

The birth scene in She's Having a Baby is dramatic rather than comic. The scene is impressionisticallyshot, with a musical soundtrack over top. Christi is humedly wtieeled off for a cesarean, because the baby is in a breach presentation (feet first). We see atmost nothing more of Christi. Instead the film cuts between shots of Jake pacing freffully outside and close-ups of the surgicat instruments the doctor is using for the cesarean section. At one point, we are poignantly shown a single drop of blood fat1 in slow motion onto the floor. The overall tone is one of trepidation - will she su~ve?Wll the baby? kt the end, they both do. Of course,the doctors and the hospital ultimately play hero- After ail, they have saved the day, their skills and technology pulling through in a dangerous situation-

Phase Three: Reinteqration

Affer the birth, in hospital settings, the mother and the new baby are often separated while the baby is subjected to several more procedures. The baby is given an Apgar test to measure her health; she is washed; she gets prophylactic eye treatment; and she is given a vitamin K injection, The mother is briefly given her baby to bond with ("Here's your baby - now bond!" (Davis Floyd, 145)) before being separated again for a four-to-twelve-hour period when the baby is put in the nursery. The baby sleeps separate from the rnother in a bassinet or wanner. When they leave, the woman is often placed in a wheelchair again for her departure. According to Davis-Floyd, it is in these ways that the tiospital puts its stamp on new babies, continues to exert control over women's experience and mediates and regulates the initial interaction between mothers and babies.

As for the women, they continue to experience fairly profound physical, emotional and psychological change. Their bodies begin another physical transformation. Hormones shift. Fatigue is common. Women generally experience a strong initial need for support- This support often cornes symbolically in the fonn of flowers and congratulations. It can come in a more sustained way when a friend, relative or partner stays with her for a few weeks and assists with the baby and other responsibiiities. Sometimes wornen can experience post-partum depression, Causes for this depression are said to stem from a variety of possible sources. Davis-Floyd Mesthat it cauld refiect disappointment with the birth experience itself. It could anse from a lack of support after the birth. It could involve hormonal changes. In the end, women generally settle back into a routine of regular life and feel that a transition into motherhood has occurred. Sometimes they can experience a slight let dom: "they no longer [feel] trembly or potential, but mundane - their sense of special separateness [is] gone and they [are] "mainstreaming" it again" (Davis-Floyd, 43). Often, they experience a feeling of pride and accomplishment-

The reintegration phase as portrayed in the three films are ail short and sweet. There is no post- partum depression. We see none of the Apgar tests, the vitamin injections, the eye treatment etc. We do see a brief bonding period. We do see the babies al1 neafly tucked into their bassinets in the nursery. Mostiy we only see the babies once they are washed and swaddled. Nine Months provides the one exception in wfiich we see the babies covered in vernix (white substance consisting of dead skin cells) and a bit of blood. Thus, for a brief moment, we see the natufa1 wodd invade the technological world, the 'dirt' invade the pristine, sanitized hospital.

The birth scenes al1 represent a rather frenzied narrative climax. Once they are over, there is a pervading sense of calm. We see peaceful babies and peaceful couples al1 gazing lovingly at one another. The films al1 work toward resolution, not disruption; toward closure, not open-endedness. This may be partly because they are confined by cornic structure. It is also because they are confined by a rite of passage structure. Rites of passage work to maintain, not to disrupt, the social order. Their objective is social continuity, not change. The rituals they represent are dominant rituals that refiect the dominant technocratic model of birth. The experiences they portray are superficial and formulait. The matemal voice is marginalized throughout by the patemal voice. The matemal voie is also shown subjugated to medical authority. The women in these fiims seek out information and treatment from 'experts' as a matter of course and without reflection. It may be that the scn'ptwriters, directors and producers represent birth in this way because they themsetves take it as a matter of course, without reflection. It is interesting, however, that these films corne at a time when the medical system is starting to be challenged. Across the board, 'alternative1medicine has begun to challenge the dominance of allopathie medicine, not least in California, and Hollywood in particular.

None of these films give voice to such challenges. On the contrary, each film portrays some of the 'ritual' procedures described by Davis-Floyd. This makes sense given that these rituals are still standard hospital procedure. However, re-presenting these rituals in film can serve to further entrench and norrnalize them through the simple processes of repetition and affirmation. Furthermore, al1 three films represent the key tenets of technocratic birth: birth is represented as pathologica!, and it is not women centered. The materna1 voice is marginalized throughout, mile the patemal voice tells his story. The birth scene itself is no different. Furthermore, inasmuch as the films are true to the technocratic model, we see that neither the doctors nor the husbands are particularly attentive to the birthing women's needs. No one lisfens to these wornen. Their voies, needs and desires are constantiy drowned out by others.

These films come at a time when the nuclear family has been severely challenged and reacüonary rttetoric about 'family values' abounds. I find myself asking why are there relatively numerous films about men becoming fathers and very few about women becoming mothers? Why is it that when I search a video catalogue under the headings of childbirth, pregnancy and mothers al1 1 corne up with is films about fathers narrated by fathers? Where are the films that discuss wornen's fears and concems entering matemity, that is, rite of passage films about birth told by mothers? t cannot fully answer these questions. 1 cm, like Ann Kaplan, speculate that

North American culture feels threatened by the legacies of the wornen's, gay, and other liberation movements of the sixties, As a result, it wunters with images of couples happily united around the biological baby (Kaplan 1994a. 269). These films can becorne a part of the rite themselves by reiterating the basic rites of passage that construct nuclear families and encode in them societ)/s basic values - those of technology and rniddle-class rnaterialism balanced only by individualized social responsibility. MIDWIVES, WlTCHES AND HOLLYWOOD: From Romanticization to Oemonization with Little in Between

Worst of al/, there are the questions of the thefi of the rhetorics of afrocity this centuiy, and fheir deployment to support an identify of Most Persecuted and Innocent Victim. These thefis show how far narcissism can go in clouding the past to make a mimr for the endlessly uncertain presenf. In thus helping ourselves, we are silencing eariy modem women anew. We are also denying ourselves the chance to hear historical differences which might show us just how different things could be, how fragile the assumptions which make us sMer now might seem to our descendants. If the pasf is different, the fufure can be. (Purluss, 26).

Hollywood representations of birth that occur outside the hospital are most frequently found in period pieces and occasionally in horror films.48 The births thernselves are often somewhat melodramatic, involving a fair arnount of groaning and screaming, the environments are often dark and dreary, the women offen poor or fallen, bodily fiuids and dirt are apparent. In short, the images are somewhat animalistic or prirnal. They reflect simultaneously aspects of history and aspects of a contemporary relationship to this history. On the one hand, 1 see a tendency to look back at the past as a dark and scary place, ruled by ignorance and govemed by oppression. On the other hand, we romanticize the past, clean it up and sanitize it. Both of these phenornena can be seen in period pieces, and birth images get caught up in this ambivalence. Roland Joffe's 1995 rendition of Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Lefter is a classic case of this type of ambivalence or (in this instance) dichotomy.

Set in New England in the 164û's, The Scariet Lefter is the story of a woman, Hester Prynne, who comrnits adultery and is forced to pay the ptice for her actions when pregnancy reveals her sin. As punishment, the Puritan community Ieaders of the day send her to prison for a time. Upon release, they insist she Wear the letter 'A' for adultery embroidered on her dress so that the mole comrnunity will know and be constantly reminded of her shame. MeanMile, her partner in crime, Arthur Dimsdale, remains unknown to society. She refuses to narne him, and he does not confess. lnstead he cames the double burden of guilt for the sin itself and the hypocnsy of his apparent innocence. The greatest irony of this situation is the fact that he is a most highly revered local priest; a man Moserves as an exarnple of purity whom the mole community respects

48 For pen'od pieces see The Scarlet Letter, Jude, Mol1 Flanders; for horror see Rosemary's Baby, Erasefiead, its AINe and The Brood. wtioleheartedly. The narrative is further cornplicated by the reappearance of the adulteress' husband, Roger Prynne, who had previously been thought to have died in a shipwreck, lnstead of announcing his existence, he cunceals his identity, now calling himseif Roger Chillingworth, and commits himself to discovering the idenüty of his wife's lover and exacting revenge.

The textrial differences between Hawthorne's novel and the 1995 screenplay are significant. in fact, the film's narrative is almost completely overhauled in an attempt to confom to contemporary perspectives. The basic progression of events, outlined above, remains more or less present, but the characters' relationships to these events are radically altered. This altered perspective is then supported by an embellished narrative line that now includes a variety of themes that were definitely not present in Hawthorne's original.

The character of the rnidwife, Mistress Hibbins, as well as the birth scene itself are exarnples of such narrative embeilishments. Hawthome's novel opens after the birth of baby Pearl; Joffe's film opens sometime before this. Joffe spends about half an hour developing the romance that flourishes between Hester Prynne and the Reverend Dimsdale. In the film, both people are portrayed as educated, intelligent and highly moral people. When I Say highly moral, I do not mean by seventeenth century standards, or even by Hawthorne's nineteenth century standards. 1 mean moral by twentieth century codes. Arthur and Hester do not comply with the Puritan moral codes that declare adultery a crime and any divergences as heretic. On the contrary, Arthur Dimsdale is friends with 'the Indians' (who comprise another significant plot embellishment). He tries to bridge the cultural gap by translating the Bible into Algonquin. This overtly missionary act is noblised by its schoiarfy nature and the respect and caring Arthur apparently feels for the Algonquin, especially his dear friend Johnny. On Hestets part, she befriends the wise, wild woman and midwife, Mistress Hibbins, despite the fact that this woman is a social outcast. Hester holds meetings to enable women to get together and sew and socialize and philosophize. She transgresses Puritan beliefs by declaring that she speaks directiy to God and is dnven by her own sense of right and wrong. In fact, her sexual transgression is cfeariy Iinked to her faith in her own moral judgment, as opposed to a rnere case of lust or overactive libido. Moreover, through the developrnent of the romance between Hester and Arthur, it is forcektlly conveyed that their love is Vue, reciprocal, almost divine.4g

49 Hawthorne, on the other hand, did not seem to share this rornantic vision. Ultimately, Arthur rejeds romantic love and seeks spiritual redemption with his God instead. Various critics have argued about the relative value of Romance in Hawthorne's work (Le. see essays by Colacurcio, Abel, Sandeen, Baym, Cottom in The Scarlef Letter An Aufhoratative Texf, Essays in Crificism and Scholarship, Third Edition, 7988). In the end, his attitude toward it can be seen as ambivalent at best. To many contemporary North Amencan audiences, Hester and Arthufs actions are not sinful or problematic. Roland Joffe's Hester and Arthur stand out as seventeenth century representatives of twentieth century perspectives. In the story, they suffer for their actions and beliefs, but to a present-day audience, they can be taken as role rnodels who have the courage to stand up to the narrow minded judgments of an oppressive society. They are individuals who are strong enough to fight the system. In Joffe's version, their actions ultimately lead them to win their baffle (a major divergence from Hawthorne's own moral message). Of course, the baffle they are fighting for sexual Iiberation and freedom frorn Puritan mord standards is by now historical in North Amen'ca (at least in its Sixteenth Century fom). Joffe can safely glamorize the Amen'can ideal of freedom fighting without actually challenging any currently dominant systems. It is into this context of romanticked social rebellion, of a struggle for a particular kind of sexual and religious 'freed~m',~O that Hester's child is bom?

The birth occurs in the prison. The light is dim, the environment dank and rnusty: a stark contrast to the sterile hospitals in wtiich most Arnerican babies are born today. Hester is alone except for Mistress Hibbins, the local midwife. The birth invofves a fair amount of groaning on Hestets part and kindly words of encouragement from Mistress Hibbins. At one point, Hester whimpers "six months alone here ...". Later Mistress Hibbins remarks: 'You must have a will of iron, girl. Fighting the men usually results in death." At this point the baby pops out, new life in contrast to the foreboding of death. Overall, the scene is not overly warrn, comforting or safe. Nor is it sterile and clean with al1 kinds of technological apparatuses standing by in case 'something goes wrong.' In other words, it is not a birth scene that many contemporary (western) women would feel familiar with or aspire to. Nonetheless, it does invoke an (overblown) sense of fernale bonding, woman power and martyrdom. It plays on a 'woman as victim' motif. Not only is Hester portrayed as being unjustly punished for sexual transgression, but Mistress Hibbins is portrayed as a misunderstood and undervaiued wise wornan. This portrayal is enhanced later when she is accused of an unsubstantiated charge of witchcraft and almost hanged for it. When Mistress Hibbins is read as witch, her comment that women fighting men results in death takes on the weighty connotation of large-sale persecution.

50 That is, agnostic, heterosexual freedom for which women still pay with their nurturing and their labor. 51 Again, Arthur Dimsdale is certainly not painted as a rebel by Hawthorne, but as a rather weak and tormented man. His Hester is certainly not the unambiguous rebel that Demi Moore plays in Joffe's film. While struggles around religious and sexual freedom are indisputably themes of Hawthorne's work, his commentary is far more complex and his perspective much less clear than Roland Joffe's rendition. This cannection between midwifel witciif rebeV victirn has become relatively widespread in the latter part of the 2ûth Century in North Amerka. It is a recumng theme mat has its historical origins in a variety of discourses. During the 1970's a number of voices were raised to reclaim the witch motif. Modem witches and other Pagans, New Agers and feminists have al1 made attempts to alter the symbolism underlying the figure of the ~itch~~.Over the past decade, I have encountered a variety of appointment books, diaries, calendars and greeting cards which featured beautiful fantasy images of witches as wild women engaging in pastoral ritual cerernonies. I rernember songs about witches, such as the one by the Cowboy Junkies wtiose lyrics sing out

There are witches in the hill tops, calling rny name Saying come join us sister, corne kiss the rain Come dance in the rnoonbeams. ride the night winds Make love to the darkness, and laugh at Man's sins. More recently, the film Four Rooms drew an overt parallel between glarnorked witches and midwives. This film consists of a sen'es of four short films which are al1 set in one hotel on a single night. The first short depicts a gathering of a coven of witches. Al1 of them are gorgeous, played by such stars as Madonna. The action centers around a birthing cerernony, not of a baby, but of a witch who had died several centuries ago and is now about to be revived. Each of the witches contribute a personal possession, senn'ng as a charm, and some poetry, wtiich acts as a spell, The charms are cast into a large tub of water very much like the birthing tub used by midwives in water births. The film ends with the successful awakening of their fellow witch. Throughout the cerernony, one younger and slightly less sophisticated woman is present as an apprentice and new initiate. The last words of the film are her declaration that "al1 [she] ever wanted was to be a rnidwife." The film seems to be largely airned at mocking contemporary New Age practices, which have become increasingly popular in California, particularly in elite circles and arnongst many Hollywood stars. Mocking or not, however, the film both indicates and reiterates a connection between witches and midwives and cast both in a gtamorized light.

The connection befween midwïvesand witches, which this short makes fun of, has its roots in 1970's feminism. In 1973, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English wrote a short monograph entitfed Midwives, Wdches and Nurses: a History of Women Healers, which was a highly influential work in ternis of feminist history. Their argument tums on the idea that by the time of the witch hunts, in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, rnidwives had become a threat to doctors, who were beginning to infiltrate the reproductive sphere. Because rnidwives were said to work in the sphere of aborüon and contraception as well as birth, they were also a threat to patriarchy through their ability to help women control their own reproduction. According to

52 See Purkiss for a detailed analysis of several of these perspectives. Ehrenreich and English, the midwife was accused of witchcraft precisely because she posed such threats. Wth the help of religious rhetoric and some hangings, women as autonomous healers were ultimately replaced by women as assistants to male doctorç in the figure of the nurse. Focusing on the figure of Florence Nightingale, Ehrenreich and English seem to assert that the nurses have to do al1 the 'ditty-work' and get Iittle of the 'fun' or respect or payrnent. Patriarchal assurnptions regulate that she should do this graciously, stoically and cheerfully-

This theory is in keeping with the work of Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski regarding cesarean sections in medieval and Renaissance Europe- She asserts that midwives did come into conflict both with the Church and with surgeons with regard to cesarean sections. Surgery, although at this time not a highly valued profession, was nonetheless declared a male activity. Moreover, she argues that cesareans were frequently perforrned on women post-mortem. They were done as much in an attempt to Save a baby's sou1 as its Iife. According to Blumenfsld-Kosinski, midwives finding themselves in this situation took it upon themselves to baptize babies. This act of baptism was a clear infringement on the religious domain of male priests.

Challenging their work, howevet, Diane Putkiss writes that "Ehrenreich and English's pamphlet is Iight on evidence" (1 9). She concedes that "[ilt is true that Malleus Malifacarum specffically singles out midwives for attack," but states that "otherwise there is little evidence that midwives were the prime objects of the persecutions in every country" (21). She goes on to Say Ehrenreich and English's work was instrumental in building the 'midwife-witch myth,' a myth which

thrives not on evidence but on a sense of Iikelihood deriving from twentieth - century political struggles. Reproductive nghts, central to the myth of the healer- witch, came to the fore as a central organizing principle of the women's movement in the mid-1970'~~about the time when Ehrenreich and English's pamphlet was published. (: 9) Joffe, in his rendition of the Scarlet Lefter , certainly seems to project contemporary values ont0 historical situations and onto historical novels. Moreover, he has appropriated feminist interpretations of witches, such as those of Ehrenreich and English, and re-worked them into flat, empty icons which fit the demands of Hollywood narratives.

Regardless of Hollywood recuperations, Purkiss criticires ''the myth of The Buming Times" (in which women were systematically hunted and then burned because of their wisdom, knowledge, healing abilities, sensuality and sexuality) on a number of premises. She argues that such an interpretation of the witch hunts is problematic not only because of its dubious acadernic accuracy but also because it has the effect of "silencing eariy modem wornen anew" (Purkiss, 26). Purkiss points out that by favoring fantasy over a genuine quest for understanding, we are not honoring the lived realities of early modem women who were persecuted on witchcraft charges or the belief system of the early modem people for whom witchcraft was a part of daily life. A theory that reduces the figure of the witch ta a helpless, yet strong and subversive, victim is not necessarily empowering; and a feminism which denies the possibility that women couId participate in the oppression of women is naive:

The midwives who searched for vvitch marks, or who deterrnined whether a convicted woman was pregnant and might ttius be granted a stay of execution, were certainly demonstrating knowiedge of womenrs bodies, but they were doing so at the behest of state power. ... This challenges the usefulness of a myth which insists that women's knowiedge of the body automatically subverts gender hierarchies. (Purkiss, 21)

Purkiss is critical of the modem rnidwife-healer-witch myth on still more grounds. She questions ifs usekilness as a feminist political strategy:

Precisely because the fantasy depends on an opposition between the modem urban world and the cauntryside of the past, it cannot serve as a blueprint for action. It cannot inspire ways to resolve the conflict between the domestic and the public, or offer ways for society truly to appreciate househotd labor. The fantasy also contains elements which reflect uncritically patriarchal notions of appropriate feminine behavior. ... The roles of the herbalist-rnidwife-witch are traditional feminine roles: nursing, healing, caring for women and children. They are roles which center on domestic space and acüvity ... . (21) Finally, she remarks that "[w]orst of all, there are the questions of the theff of the rhetorics of atrocity this century, and their depioyment to support an identity as Most Perçecuted and Innocent

The character of Mistress Hibbins in Roland Joffe's fiim is a picture perfect example of al! the issues Purkiss raises regarding the rnidwife-witch myth as outlined above. The film on the whole can be seen as consisting of a cast split rigidiy down the lines of persecutor/persecuted. On the one side are the Puritan Congregationalists, on the other are Hester (rebelliotis, educated, sexually liberated woman), Mistress Hibbins (midwife-witch) and 'the Indians' (Noble Savages). The persecution of al[ three categones are representative of each other and given equal suffering status. Yet for al1 the glamorization of persecution and the rhetorïc of rebellion the film exudes, it is far from a politially liberating piece. Fortunately, the critics ail agreed, and the film was unilaterally decfared to be abysmal. It is nonetheless interesting in the way it provides such an obvious example of some of the ways in which conternporary uses of the midwife-witch character not onfy fait to be politically liberating but also lend themselves to patriarctial recuperation.

The film fits into recent childbirth discourse within the context of popular culture on yet another level as well. Hester Prynne is played by Demi Moore, the actress wtio created a stir by appearing naked and pregnant on the cover of Vanify Fair. She was apparently tMng to subvert stereotypes of pregnant wornen that placed women in the mousy dornestic realm of the mundanely rnatemal. "Pregnancy is sexy too," she declared, Her statement seems to fa11 into the same trap that Purkiss identifies with feminist Goddess motifs:

The problem with the Goddess is that she remains mired in the thinking of 'images of women' feminism. This thinking can be annihilatingly prescriptive, demanding that al1 women recognize themselves as Iactating mothers, for example. ... The Myth of the Goddess. with its insistence on an identity grounded in the matemal body, betrays its origins in male fantasy" (33). Although Demi does not overtly associate herself with modem witches or Goddess imagery, the connections cannot be ignored. The Hollywood Goddess of love and female sexuality powerfully connects the male fantasies of maternity and sex and markets it well: media coverage of this 'evlp-1' ~entwell beyond Vanity Fair. In this Iight, Demi herself is a symbol of apparent transgression revealed as patriarchy recuperated, an appropriate symbol for The Scarlet Letter as rendered by Roland Joffe.

Not al1 fiims that make a connection between midwives and witches do so within the context of their recent idealkation. Rosemary's Baby is a classic case of playing with the darker side of this notion. Released in 1968, this film predates the 1970's popularization of the midwïfe-witch myth. Moreover, it is a horror film and therefore inevitably plays on more sinister themes. Directed by Roman Polanski and set in the 1960'~~Rosemary's Baby is about a young mamed couple who move into a haunted apartment block. After living there a short time, they befriend the neighbors, the Castevets, who tum out to be the leaders of a local satanic witch aven. Before long, the husband, Guy Woodhouse, has bartered his first bom son for a successful acting career. He promptly impregnates his Me, Rdsemary and the rest of the film dwells on her waking up to the situation at hand and trying unsuccessfuIly to escape.

Minnie Castevet is never overtly named as a midwife in this film. However, in light of 1970's feminist wntings on this topic, Lucy Fischer Wtes that "it is tempting to recast Minnie Castevet as an ersatz modem midwife, shrouded in misogyny" (80). Minnie's role as modem midwife can also be seen as metonyrnous with the history of midwives: "Like the ancient midwife, she must transfer her power to a male physician (Abe Saperstein), who, nonetheless, relies on her expertise" (80). Minnie cannot be read as the innocent and benign feminist midwife-witch. She represents a patriarchal construction of the interferhg busy body driven by malice and her own petty quests for whatever degree of power she can achieve within the confines of patriarchy.

Historical images of the witch are diverse: ternis Iike 'witch' and 'witchcraff were not single or fixed, but highly unstable ternis, sites of confiid and contestation between diverse groups. ... lt figured in, and was refigured in, the discursive selfdefinitions of both absolutkm and antityranny, both Puritanism and Counter-Reformation Catholicism, both colonialism and resistance to colonialism. (Purkiss, 93) Wttiin these discursive traditions, a reading of the terni 'witch' from the period of persecution has the most retevance to child birth. Both Diane Purkiss and Deborah Willis read popular women's stories from early modem (sixteenth- and seventeenth century) England to argue that popular configurations of the witch were, in fact, closely cannected to the matemal body and the transgression of boundaries within the domestic sphere. They point out that many of the accusers were themselves women and many male accusers were acting on their mes' behalf. It is based on these types of testirnonies that Purkiss argues that "some women's stories of witchmft constitute a powerful fantasy wtiich enabled women to negotiate the fears and anxieties of housekeeping and motherhood" (93). Her psycho-analytic interpretations of the witchcraft accusations fit in well with psycho-analytic readings of contemporary honor films, such as Rosemary's Baby .

The functioning of such early-modern fantasies is summarized by Willis in the following way:

Village-level quarrels that led to witch-craft accusations often grew out of struggles to control household boundaries, feeding, child care, and other matters typically assigned to wornen's sphere. In such quarrels, the woman accused of witchcraft was as likely to be the one urging conformity to a patnarchal standard. Her curses and insuIts were experienced not as violations of proper feminine conduct but as verbal assaults on the other woman's reputation for "neighborly nurture," assaults that might also cause ham to loved ones under her care. The accuser, in tum, defamed the witch as a perverse and destructive mother. Engaged in a complex struggle for suMval and empowerment within a patriarchal culture, both women stood in an uneasy relation to definitions of fernale identity which privileged nurturing behavior and well-govemed speech. (Willis, 13) The relationship between Rosemary and Minnie Castevet fits this model exceptionally well. Minnie is Rosemary's neighbor. Her assertive intervention into Rosemary's Iife can certainly be seen as a transgression of Rosemaws domestic boundaries; not only does she visit far more frequently than Rosemary would like, but she assails Rosemary with questions about her reproductive life. These adions could be seen as invasive at the best of tirnes. They are perhaps enhanced by the fact that Minnie is an older woman, someone who could represent a mother figure to Rosemary herself.

Both Purkiss and Willis identify psychological motherdaughter relationship issues as king ewident in eady modem witch stories. They argue that a young woman may see interference by an older woman as challenging her own abilities, autonomy and adulthood. As a result she may dernonize the older wornan who threatens her in this way. Based on some twentieth-century psycho-analytic theories, Purkiss and Wiflis read mis struggle with an older woman as potentialty representing a struggle between the younger woman and her own mother in which the younger woman seeks to assert her independen~e.~~

On another level, the younger woman may feel guilt about hostility she harbors regarding the intenientions of the older woman. Excessive neediness, excessive interference or just sheer wntankerous behavior on the part of the older woman could inspire anger in the ycunger woman. This anger may have had no acceptable outlet for women other than through witch fantasies and projection. At the sarne tirne, on a psychologicd level, the younger woman

confronted in the old woman not only a "bad" mother but also a version of the envious child she once was and of the post menopausal "hag" she would becorne. To rejed and accuse her was in a sense also to reject and accuse herself. The anxiety produced by this set of unconscious identifications was legible as bewitchment. (WiHis, 75) If the relationship between Rosemary and Minnie is read along the lines of an eariy modem witch story representing wtiat Willis calls 'unneighbourly nurture', motherdaughter problems and intra- psychic conflict, such conflict is at its worst when Rosemary is pregnant.

Purkiss describes the early modem medical mode1 &vitti its roots in writing from Ancient Greece and the work of Aristotle in particular) as viewing the female body in general as boundless, formless, leaky and liquid: in short as "chilly molten goo" (121). This condition is exacerbated by pregnancy, birth and rnaternSRythrough the blood, fluids and afierbirth that accompany a child's departure from the womb, and through the Iadating breast (99). On a psychological level,

[tJhe female body as formless spillage is a product of the infant's perception of the maternai body as co-extensive with its own. ln order to be a Cartesian subject, culture insists, the infant rnust acknowiedge its own separation from the matemal; at the same time, separation is always a precarious achievement, and the adult retains a trace of fear at being re-engulfêd by the endless body of the fantasy mother. (Purkiss, 120) She goes on to argue that the 'boundless' nature of the female body cm invoke a psychological fear of having the mother "retum in the form of liquids, engulfing bodily closeness, pollution" (121). This psychological fear could then be projected into fantasies of the 'bad mother' and the '~it~h'.~~

Purkiss works in particular with the psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kn'steva, Luce Igaray, Metanie Klein and Nancy Chodorow. Note that Purkiss goes on to write that "[s]uch links are neither natural nor inevitable. It is not inevitable that a woman should feel threatened in this particular way by another woman entenng her home or saying certain words to her. They are produced by a confluence of medical discourses and social factors" (Purkiss, 121). The assumed fomlessness of the female body, and especially the maternai body, relates to witchcraft in other ways as weli.

Magic and its remedies deal with borders, markers, disu'nctions, insides and outsides, the limits of bodies, and also that Mich breaches those boundaries; bodily fluids, exchanges of objects through bodies and across thresholds, words that pass through the guard of the ear and enter the rnind of the hearer. (Purkiss, 120) Pregnancy, birth and the period immediately post-partum were times when al1 of the above boundaries were blurred. On a physical level, Ann Dally writes that "[tJhroughout history, until recent ümes, motherhood was always close to death" (Quoted in Fischer, 79). Infant and matemal death rates, as well as diseases and infections that could accompany this time, made pregnancy, birth and the post-partum penod legitimately frightening in a very real sense. Contemporary germ theory fends further Iegiümacy to a fear of dirt, 'pollution' and the crossing of boundaries, particulariy through bodily fluids. AIthough earfy modem people did not have a germ theory,they had theories to explain the impacts of gerrns. The puerperalfever that was epidemic at this time shows how 'boundary transgressions' really couid lead to death.

On a psycho1ogic;al and emotional level it is also understandable that women should have felt particularly vulnerable. The time imrnediately around childbirth was a time mena woman was more dependent on the assistance of others than usual. She couid not rnaintain the vigorous schedule required to keep campfetely on top of her domestic responsibilities. This dependence on others could be threatening to her sense of autonomy and control. Moreover, if she believed someone or sornething wished her ill, for whatever reason, this was not a time when her defenses were up. For these reasons, fairiy elaborate rituals were developed in order to keep evil out and to provide the support a woman needed to feel safe and strong. Selected female neighbors andlor relatives would attend the birth as well as the local rnidwife. These women would attend to the birthing woman's needs and help with the domestic chores. These women (excluding the midwife) were known as 'gossips.' Men were not present, and the space was generally closed off "by blocking key hofes and hanging heavy curtains" (Purkiss, 101). Throughout the birth,

[tlhe key figure in preventing hamwas the rnidwife, who guaranteed and subtended the order threatened by the witch. In doing this she often had recourse to rnagical and counter-magical fonns and fonnulae, showing how birth was heavily invested with rnagical significance. (101) These protective procedures could fail, or worse yet, backfire:

rnidwives could use their rnagic to cause rniscarriage or injury to mother and child, just as other gossips might seek to harm instead of help. The witch was in a sense the gossip "gone bad," a woman who brought envy, anger and hatred into a cornmunit)/s informal networt

The birth scene in Rosemary's Baby is the epitome of this ritual gone wrong. There are several 'gossips' attending the birth, none of whom Rosemary knows or trusts. The midwife figure, Minnie Castevet, is a head witch. The ntuals perforrned are unquestionably harmful ratfier than protective. The greatest difierence between Rosemarfs birth ritual and standard eariy modem ones is the presence of men, namely the doctor. Again, this can be read as the historicaf transfer of power frorn fernale midwives to male doctors. Another difference is the specific reference to satanic possession that was not overly common in popular witch stories of early modem times.s5

Lucy Fischer, writing about Rosemary's Baby , notes that "in psychic or social registers horror constitutes an expressionistic 'allegory of the real"' (75). Read this way, the horrors of Rosernary's transition to motherhood can be seen as representing the variety of Iegitimate fears women feel surrounding it. Everything from fear of physical pain and suffenng to ambivalence about entering into a relationship entailing so much responsibility; from hormonal anxiety to disgust toward or alienation from her body; from feelings of being possessed to fear of producing a 'rnonster,' ail of these are concems women frequentiy experience in the course of pregnancy and childbirth. As Lucy Fischer writes, "much of what passes for Rosemary's dernented musings echoes representations of women's ordinary expenence ofparturition " (8 1 ). Such fears can be exacerbated by social pressure to suppress them. Writing about eariy modem experience, Purkiss says that

Medical and popular knowiedge alike affirmed the power of the mothets thoughts and feelings to shape the child in utem ; by usurping her place, the witch or her familiar could do the sarne. These thoughts and feelings are ideologically over determined: the mother must avoid unfeminine feelings of rage, frustration, and fury if she is to avoid miscarriage. These feelings characterise the witch as the opposite of what the eariy modem woman should be. Again the witch is the dark other of the early modem woman, expressing and acting on desires that other women rnust repress to çonstruct their identities as rnothers. (100).

55 On this levet, Polanski's film can be seen in the sarne way as plays written by middle class playwrights shortly alter the period of intensified witch hunting (such as Shakespeare). Such plays refiected both popular and elite witch beliefs. See Willis and Purkiss. Yet these fears have a solid basis. The dark side of childbirth exists. These fears emerged in an early modem experience involving high mortality rates, deeply held beliefs in the supernatuel and in a wlnerability to ofher women in a home-birth environment. These fears could also refiect a conternporary 'homan's expenence of traditional hospital birth - of being physically restrained, anesthetized, and surnmarify separated from her baby" (Fischer, 85). Rosemary survives her dark joumey. Her child is a monster. Nonetheiess, at the end Rosernary accepts him and, according to Fischer, "Mn accepting her loathsome progeny, Rosemary acknowledges her own demons - the fears of motherhood that society wants tiushed. Thus in some respects, Rosemaqts baby is her double"(Fischer, 87),just as the witch is the eariy modem woman's double. f urkiss concludes that the witch "represents what we cxtnnot bear to acknowiedge as ours, the feelings, violence, dirt and filth that we cannot own without destroying our pleased sense that we are good and kind and clean" (Purkiss, 282).

Seen in this light, there is an important place for horror films and for witch stories. By sanitking the witch figure and tuming her into an innocent, persecuted healer and champion of woman's rights, some feminists run the risk of contributing to the silencing of women's dark side and the dark side to matemity. Worse than ttiis, these feminists run the risk of inadvertentiy contributing to unrealistic, and therefore potentially damaging, expectations placed on women. As Purkiss points out,

[tlhere is more than a passing resemblance between the witch-herbalist and the fantasy superwornan heroine of the 1980's and 90's. professional women who have bautiful country gardens, bake their own bread, make their own quilts, and demonstrate sexuality at every tum. (20) Demi Moore as Hester Prynne looks like just such a woman.

In the 1970'~~many feminists were attracied to the figure of the witch and many of them proceeded to rework the witch into symbols of empowerment for themselves; symbols of strong 'fore-sisters' Moresisted patriarchy and asserted women-centered ways of relating to each other and to the natural world. For many years I was very attracted to such symbols myself. There are many values associated with these syrnbols with which 1 identify; values which revere the Earth and advocate living in harmony with the environment and with each other; values which encourage women to respect themselves as strong and independent individuals. As for the details of the imagery, I love to garden. I would like to live in the country. 1 would probably like to have children. I believe in natural medicine. Because 1 Iive in Canada and have an education, living a pastoral fantasy may actually be accessible to me. Unfortunately, it is not accessible to the majority of wornen in most of the worid. Access to land is increasingly limited. Jobs in rural areas are increasingly scarce. Furthemore, I am skeptical that idealizing agrarian and domestic labor is really conducive to eaming these fimetions widespread or tangible respect. I do not believe that romanticized images of witches, or of conternporary middle-class women living pristine rural lifestyies, will do very much to alter global economic systems and result in an economic accounting for 'women's work;' or in an increased valuation of nurtunng, healing or sustaining Iife in al1 its foms. I believe that middle-class women living out versions of the "midwifehitch fantasy," as Purkiss calls it, can make valuable contributions to their cornmunities. l certainly do not want to dernand that ail the women aspiring to such fantasies should live in the city and make true martyrs of themselves. However, I can only see many conternporary images of witches as representative of privilege rather than persecution.

Regarding contemporary understandings of the historical persecution of witches, it seems to me that we still have only scraps of information and understanding of the phenornenon. Perhaps partly because of the mystery that surrounds witches and their persecution, 1 continue to be intrigued by them. I do believe that in order to show a true respect for these historicaf people and their beliefs, we should try to be as thorough and as accurate as possible in our attempts to understand them. However, 1 also believe that to some extent we will inevitably stamp our own values ont0 our interpretations of them, The kvitch as a symbol, rather than a real historical figure, remains fluid and subject to evolution. The interpretations of the witch hunts made by Ehrenreich and English may have emphasized perspectives relevant to their own political stmggtes, such as reproductive freedom. Likewise, Purkiss' interpretations are inevitably influenced by her own historical and social context. tn some ways, for example, Purkiss' work is reminiscent of such Mters as Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who reads folk stories as representing psychological archetypes and relationship patterns; writers who may themselves be thought of as New Age. Furthemore, Purkiss would not be able to adopt the perspective she adopts if it were not for the work of earlier ferninists. As she writes about her own work,

I am a feminist historian indebted to my predecessors in the field. I write of the way psychoanalysis can block apprehension of the supernatural, though I use psychoanalysis to analyse witchcraft. ... to criticise our predecessors is not incompatible with folIowing in their footsteps, since they too criticised a stili eariier generation of scholars (Purkiss, 2). The very fact that we can discuss witches in the context of femafe role models, beneficial or otheMse, recuperated or not, demonstrates the impact of earlier feminist work.

In terms of the connection between midwives and witches, I do not think it is a useful one. Whether witches are perceived as flaky New Age nonsense, as idealized pastoral women, or as evil old crones, none of these images really speaks to the lived realities of most contemporary women. Midwives do not need to associate thernselves with witches in order to ground themselves in a powerful woman-centered knowledge base and healing tradition. Furthermore, contemporary midwives do, to some extent, use modem technological equipment and knowledge; many (if not most) of them operate in urban centers; and increasingly they airn to work within a larger medical system (hopefully an ever improving and expanding one) rather than outside it. While modem midwives have undoubtedly resisted not only patriarchy but also the dominance of technology, and they have been marginalized for their practices in many parts of North America, I do not think that most of them would appreciate being thought of as victims.

Finally, 1 do not think idealized images of birth necessarily benefit women trying to prepare themselves for childbirth. While many rnidwives believe that birth cm be a positive, empowering, sornetirnes sexual and spiritual experience, it is also most often painful and can be very difficult. Fears surrounding childbirth are very legitimate. Furthermore, as Adrienne Rich wrote in her seminal work Of Woman Born, many wornen harbor feelings that are not typically thought of as 'matemal' toward their children once they are born. Anger, resentment and frustration may well be just as normal as love and tendemess. Anticipating the cornplex and significant rote of motherhood, the tirne of pregnancy may cany with it some very ambivalent feelings and a van'ety of apprehensions. 1 believe it is important that these da& sides be culturally represented. It would be difficult to argue that Rosemary's Baby is, on the mole, a piece that is empowering for wornen. Yet at least it allows the potential for a reading such as Lucy Fischer's, a reading that finds within it an expression of fears which are stiil too often repressed. Similady, Mile images of witches as figures of horror may carry their own problematic implications for women, at least it aIlows for a reading such as Purkiss', a reading which sees the witch as a woman's fantasy figure in which her own fears and dark side can be expressed. ln the next chapter, 1 will be looking at some films that try to portray both the joy and the fears, the hope and the anxiety, that accompany pregnancy and birth. CHAPTER FOUR

~ofherhoo~is not a woman's essence, a mystical stafe of being, or histoncally unchanging. Motherhood is whatever a given culture makes of it. lt ïs fundamentally social, findamentally relational. ( Janice Raymond quofedin Rowland, 247)

In the last three chapters, 1 have been looking at sorne of the ways in which Hollywood representations of childbirth, pregnancy and motherhood function ideologimlfy, that is, as per John Thompson's definition, "meaning serves, in parücular circumstances, to establish and sustain relations of power which are systematically asymmetrical" (7). 1 would like to tum my attention in this, the last, chapter toward some films that provide a foi1 to such ideological representations. First, i will be discussing an Australian film, Waiting, then I will proceed to look at two pieces made in Vancouver, Ten Sakakel and Creation .

Waiting is in many ways like a feminist remake of The Big Chi// . A group of friends, who know each other from their university days during the sixties, gather together for a weekend. The occasion is not a funeral, as it is in The Big Chiil, but a birth. The narrative emphasizes dialogue over action. What action there is centers around the everyday events of a weekend in the country - preparing food, sharing meals, going for walks, swimrning in the creek, talking, laughing, reminiscing, drinking, smoking, having fun. There are serious moments, too, when two friends may engage in eamest conversation about where they are going or where they have ken, opening old wounds or patching them up. There are also disruptive episodes - as when one woman's lover gets a concussion in the middle of sex, and she mistakes hirn for dead; or when two of the kids 'borrow' their parents' car for a joy ride and end up getting picked up by the local police. None of these events however are the central concem. The central concern revolves around waiting: waiting for the birth and waiting to resolve the emotional dilemmas that surround it.

The circumstances of the pregnancy itself echo a scene from The Big CM. In The Big Chill , there is a couple who cannot have a baby because the husband is impotent. Over the course of the weekend, they approach several of their male friends asking them to father the child. Someone finally agrees, and the two proceed to have sex in an effort to conceive. In Waiting . it is a woman who has the fertility problern and one of her friends who has agreed to act as a surrogate rnother for her baby. Although we are told that fertilization was attempted through sex rather than artificial insemination, it is not copulation which is the focus in this film. Instead, the film begins about nine months later and focuses on the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. the cornplexities of surrogacy and the debate surrounding midwifery vs. medical birtb models.

Waiting is clearly rooted in a feminist theoretical discourse. Most of the characters are politically aware and, in some way, active. The core cast is made up of Clare, an artist and the surrogate mother. Sandy and Michael are the expectant parents. She is a preschool teacher; he is a political science professor. They have two other adopted children, Tan and Booroomil, who were adopted as children, not as babies. Terry is a struggling independent film maker. single mother and vociferous feminist. She is attending the birth as part of a documentary film project on midwifery. Rosie is her teenage daughter. Diane is a friend, who is there just for support. She is the attractive, successful editor of a fashion magazine and branded as a bit of a sellout by some (perhaps in some ways jealous) members of the cast. Bill is a doctor masquerading as Diane's lover. She has brought him along just in case.

The documentary film-within-the-film allows issues to be raised in a way that would othenvise be difficult to work into the dialogue of a drama. The main theme of the documentary is midwifery or, as Teny describes it, it is "an expose of medical rnalpractice and childbirth with an emphasiç on how wornen can take control of their bodies themselves." The impetus for the film was partly based on her belief that this one was going to be a "winner" and, partly, on her own negative experience with hospital birth. Speaking of her experience, she tells about "the humiliation 1 suffered when 1 was having Rosie... They shaved me like a plucked chicken just in case they had to cut me open - I mean cut me open. I was absolutely petrified. They're bloody butchers. the lot of them." A bit later, Teny reassures Clare that "at least [she] won7 have a bunch of medical students shoving their arms up [her] to see if the head is engaged."

The documentary she makes is equally disparaging of doctors, although the tone is more sarcastic and less overtly angry. Midwifery is held up as the desirable alternative to medical birth. We are shown three clips from the docurnentary. The first shows Clare, walking in the garden, speaking about a traditional birthing practice - about the fact that al1 the women would gather together, and men were not allowed to attend. The visiting women would bnng food, and sornetimes they would even get drunk - "it was like a party really." She also Iikens birth to art, stating that she Iikes to think of both as comparable creative acts. In the second clip, we again see Clare in the garden. This time she tells us that

Originally I was going to have the baby in the hospital, but we weren't happy with the attitudes of most of the doctors we saw. They were totally unsympathetic to us having control over the situation. ,.. Home births are really cornmon these days and totally safe. So what are the doctors afraid of? Finally, we see a clip of the doctors - not in the hospital, but on the golf course. Meanwhile a syrupy sweet voice-over explains that babies in the hospital are only bom berneen the hours of nine and five on weekdays. This is achieved by the routine use of inductions and cesareans, and al1 so that the doctors do not have to "miss a single game of golf."

The points raised about obstetric and rnidwifery practices are ones that appear frequently in feminist treatises on childbirth. Several researchers, including Emily Martin and Robbie Davis-Floyd, have interviewed wornen regarding their birth experiences in the hospital and found that many did indeed feel violated, afraid, disempowered. Others have written about these feelings directly from their own experiences. Rothrnan daims that

the issue of direct medical management of pregnancy and childbirth brings a surprising consensus. The consensus is not only frorn the vanous ferninist perspectives, but also from the rnost traditional of wornen. ... All agree that the medicakation of motherhood, the treatment of pregnancy and of birth as medical events, has not served women well (Rothman, 155). Opposition to the medical mode1 of childbirth rest on a varieiy of premises. These premises can, however, perhaps be surnrnarized in a few core prînciples. First of all, there is an objection to the Cartesian mindhody dualism, upon which modem medicine is based, and which encourages treating the body as a machine. When women's bodies are treated as machines, their identity as embodied individuals tends to get lost Women's emotional, spiritual and psychological needs are cast aside as insignificant Birth is reduced to a purely physical act over which the doctor, as a knowledgeable expert, presides. A second key issue is based on wntrol - who controls the process? As it stands, the doctor controls the proœss in hospital births. Doctors exercise this control through a standardized set of mechanical procedures. There is no space for diverse experienœs and the woman's interpretations of her own experience, her needs and desires are not listened to or taken into account. A third criticism is of the reliance on technology and the tendency toward intervention. For example, labor is usually monitored with an electronic fetal heart monitor rather than by the obsewations of the women themselves, of the midwives, nurses or doctors. As a result, the women are further alienated from the labor process as doctors and nurses monitor machines possibly even from across the rom. Furthermore, when a deviation from #thenom' is noted, doctors are quick to order a cesarean despite the fact that increasing evidence of mechanical errors is accumulating. The midwifery model, on the other hand, is holistic, women-centered and non- interventionist. Midwives do not reject technology or surgery altogether - there are times when it saves lives. They do not, however, privilege the role of technology over the role of the woman, and they do not seek interventions lightly.

Yet despite an apparent consensus against rnedicalized birth amongst feminists and others, such consensus does not include al1 women. Most women still give birth in a hospital in accord with the medical model. Rothman suggests that the continued dominance of the medical modei is based on the deep entrenchment of the ideologies of patriarchy, technology and capitalism upon which Our society is based. Davis-Floyd theorizes about the ways in which these ideologies are affirmed in hospital births as a rite of passage. impinting them deeply into our psyches and our bodies. I argue that Hollywood films often becorne a small part of this rite, and that they certainly play a role in perpetuating dominant ideologies. Waiting tries to break free of these ideologies by representing ideas and experiences that challenge thern.

Waiting presents challenges to the medical rnodel of birth. It also raises the issue of surrogacy and infertility. Ferninist positions on surrogacy Vary. Liberal ferninists tend to support women's right to use th& bodies as they wish, including their right to sel1 their bodies in prostitution or surrogacy. Rothman argues against this perspective claiming that

[qor those people (and they may be the most traditional of conservatives or the most radical of feminists) who want to çee women - our bodies, ourselves, our sexuality, and our motherhood - treated with respect, liberal feminism fails. There is a logic to defending women's rights to be demeaned if that is Matwomen want, if that is the deal wornen rationally made - but it feels like defending the rÏght of blacks to seIl themselves back into slavery if that is what they want. The important point gets missed: Matis happening in society that rnakes such a thing potentially a rational choice - what kinds of unthinkable alternatives do individuals face? (Rothman, 251) In some cases, the unthinkable alternatives revolve around poverty and poverty related issues. In other cases, the issues are personal, emotional, or psychological ones. Some surrogate mothers have spoken of the desire to find fulfiilrnent, identity, or respect through having babies for other women. Rowland cites testirnonies of surrogates who speak of looking up to either the contracting mother or a representative of the surrogacy agency. Surrogates often refer to their desire to be liked or respected by these people. Sometimes surrogates can see thernselves as being engaged in a noble, altniistic profession in which they do the very important work of "giving the gift of life" (Rowland, 185) - both to the baby and to the infertile wornan or couple. There is tmth to the fact that pregnancy and birth are in many ways work - very important work at that. Yet the element of self-sacrifice that accompanies the work of surrogacy is deepiy disturbing. As Rowland writes,

[slurrogacy breaks the bond between mother and child, but it replaces it with an equally effective mntrol myth of women's self-sacrifice; endless giving to the point of self-annihilation. 'Surrogate' motherhood is one more assault on the selfhood of women" (Ibid.). Thus surrogacy can be a highly problematic phenomenon that carries profound social and personal implications.

Opposition to surrogacy can be broken down to several key points. First of all, surrogacy is based on a patriarchal privileging of genetics. Many people seeking surrogates are rnotivated by the desire to have their 'ownf child, meaning a child whom they are genetically connected to. In sorne cases, only the man achieves this genetic connection through sperm donation, in other cases both the sperm and the egg are implanted in the surrogate. At this point the surrogate really does begin to take on the historical definition of incubator and is treated accordingly (that is, with a lack of respect). Thus surrogacy can foster a mysogynistic split between "breeders" and "moral mothers."56 Furthermore, motivation either to hire, or to be, a surrogate is often based on patdarchal

56 This distinction refers to a prejudiced split between (often poor) women who are considered fit to do the physical work of reproduction, but the "moral" work of raising and educating the next generation is reserved for an elite. See Margaret Atwood's story The Handmaïd's Tale for an alarrning science fiction distopia in which this split is formally and ngidly irnplemented. Also see Rothman's analysis of this phenomenon. idealizations of the maternai. Secondly, Rothman and Rowland both read surrogacy as the epitome of capitalist relations taken too far. Surrogacy contracts based on economic exchange reduce both babies and women to commodities, for sale (or rent) on market ternis. Surrogates are laborers (contract workers), babies are products. and prospective parents are consumers. The legal contract, seMng as chief arbiter of completely individualized social relations, often has the last word in cases of disputed custody. As in most capitalist relations of power, poor women tend to be exploited in order to serve ihe interests of the rich. Rowland writes that money is rarely cited as the prime motivation for becoming a surrogate, but it is certainly a significant factor. One does not find wealthy women becoming commercial surrogates. Finally, surrogacy increasingly employs the use of invasive reproductive technologies, especially where both the egg and sperm are provided by the contracting couple. In these cases, it supports the technological development and intervention and the tendency to reduce pregnancy and childbirth to mechanical processes.

In the film Waiting, there is no money involved, no legal contract and no invasive technology. Clare has agreed to be a surrogate mother for her friends, Sandy and Michael. Michael is not overly invested in the idea of having a baby. They - already have two children, whom they adopted as children, and Michael's parental needs are satisfied by his relationships with them. Sandy, on the other hand, wants to have a child to raise frorn babyhood, so that this time she can "do it right" (whatever that means). The surrogacy arrangement is between friends; the motivation is not financial. The surrogacy-related issues that corne up in Waifing revolve around the question of what motherhood means. Why would an infertile woman want a baby badly enough to enter a surrogacy arrangement? Why would any woman agree to adas a surrogate mother (other than for financial gain)? What are the responses of other friends to the arrangement? How do the other women in the film feet about motherhood?

Sandy has placed motherhood as the single most important thing in her life. Unfortunately, she is unable to have children of her own due to a fertility problem caused by surgical scamïng. The waiting lists to adopt babies are extremely long, and it could take years of waiting before being awarded a baby. There is also the possibility that she and Michael would be rejected by the adoption agencies because they are 'Yoo old" (they are probably in their early forties). They realize that IVF is a high-cost, high-risk, low-success-rate treatrnent. Surrogacy seems like the only viable option leR It does not seem like a bad option at that. After ail. Sandy declares, "we al1 believe that children don't just belong to the women who bear them." There seems to be nothing wrong with raising a child willingly given by the biith mother - especially when that rnother is more interested in a career than in motherhood. Sandy, on the other hand, sees motherhood as her chosen mreer. She has been a preschool teacher, but she is no longer "interested in teaching other people's kids." "Ail I ever want as a career is to be a mother," she tells her friend Teny. Sandy has trained for her new career: she has taken Lamaze classes, as if she was the one who was about to give birth; she has read al1 the books on mothering that she can lay her hands on; she has quit her job, and she has taken hormones so she can breast feed the newbom.

Why is it that Sandy wants to experience motherhood in this way? And why is this perceived as different from any other professional desire? After ail, some people long to be writers or doctors, why not mothers? Yet, mothering is unique. Mothering is work, but until recently it has been viewed as an identity rather than a career. Even now, rhetoric about motherhood as a career presents motherhood as something that is "fulfiliing in itself' and thus linked to personal identity and validation. Ail careers tend to be Iinked to personal identity in some way, and individuals are often designated a particular social status based on their careers. However, when it cornes to motherhood as an identity, its label is often inescapable, and its valuation is an extremely complex one to analyze, as it is riddled with contradictions. Kaplan notes that "one of the most subordinated and fetishized positions has been that of the 'mother"' (Kaplan, 21 9). From one perspective, mothering is amongst the most noble of identities. For centuries, motherhood was associated with rnaturity and the attainment of social respectability. Motherhood has also represented nurturing, caring, giving and loving. In the division of labor, mothers formed the backbone of the moral ecology that enabled the market to be driven by cornpetition and an individualist ethic. Mothering is viewed as the epitome of altniism. However, from another perspective, mothering is cornpletely devalued. The work of mothering is unpaid. Very few economic or political policies take mothers into account. Mothers are perceived by many to lose their individual identities, their personality, their intelligence, their sexuality.~The altniism associated with mothering has been said to discourage women from demanding compensation or recognition for their work. In the past twenty years, motherhood has been given a bad reputation within some feminist discourses. Some feminists see motherhood as representing the social role, the identity, the biological potential at the root of women's oppression. This attitude is refiected in Waiting in a response Terry has when Sandy says that al1 çhe ever wanted to be was a mother. "If the nuns wuld see you now ... 'wild one' tumed wimp," Terry retortç - despite the fact she herself is a rnother. Sandy's response to Terry is also telling: "What's wimpy about wanting somebody to love you?" she demands.

This statement, about desiring love, is the only substantial reason the audience is provided as to why Sandy is so intent on having a baby. Any other reasons must be filled in by speculation. Furthermore, we are not told why she is so needy of love - after all, she has a husband, two adopted children, lot's of supportive friends and a career. Again, al1 we can do is speculate. Perhaps she had a traumatic childhood; perhaps she wants to be the mother she never had. Perhaps she has profoundly low self-esteem and wants a child whose love she can wunt on. Perhaps she has such low self-esteern because she is a woman, and 'al1 wornen' have low self-esteem under the conditions of pat~archy. Perhaps she wants a baby for other reasons as well. Maybe al1 she wants to do is mother because she has been socialized to be a mother al1 her life and probably played with too many dolls. Maybe she believes that, as a woman, her self-respect, and the respect of others, is still ultirnately dependent on motherhood. Maybe she has seen too many images of the Madonna and child. Maybe ifs that old biological dock ticking (the one feminists have tried to deny) compelling her to rnother. Maybe she believes that motherhood really is the only way to fin$ persona! fulfillment. Kaplan has suggested that the new focus on motherhood-as-fulfillment is possible in North America now preciseiy because motherhood has become a choice. Rowland has speculated that "because of the enlarged sense of choice which contraception brings, thwarted desire for chiidren is harder to bear" (248).

EJ See Diane Richardson (1 993) for a discussion on contemporaiy motherhood and fernale identity. In any case, we are not provided with insights into why Sandy wants to be a mother. Instead, we just know that she does want a baby and that she can't have one. We also know tbat she is unwilling to accept the idea that she cannot have a baby. lnfertility is another underrepresented issue in film. Many of the images of infertile women circulated in the media in general tend to portray white, middle-class couples who just want a child of their own. The images appeal to traditional nuclear 'farnily values' and are often intended to solicit syrnpathy. If the public feels sympathetic toward infertile couples, people may feel more well disposed toward treatments such as IVF. Another side of this image is the stigmatized infertile woman; the woman who is viewed as an inadequate wife because she could not bear children for her husband. Wornen so branded as 'malfunctional' have to carry al1 the baggage that comes with a less than perfect status. Finally, there is the 'desperate woman' image: "Women are stigmatized as 'desperate' and as 'willing to do anything' if they are infertile. (Rarely do we hear of those women who have adjusted to their situation and moved on in lifs to the next goal.)" (Rowland, 256).

Sandy is not viewed as 'malfunctional' in the film Waiting. Neither her husband nor her friends seem to care at al1 that she is unable to have babies, except in that they want her to be happy. As for the other stereotypes, Sandy fits both in some ways. She and Michael are a white, middle-class couple who could fit the syrnpathy bill. However, she is not generally portrayed as the 'poor-helpless- infertile-woman,' as her character is too strong. Her attempts to control Clare, in particular, and everyone else, in general, throughout the film rnake her a slightly annoying character. She is sometimes overbearing and slightly neurotic. At one point, her husband rnakes a direct comment that she is being obsessive about the whole thing, to which she responds cuttingly, "Don't talk to me about obsession." Her mamage appears not to be particularly healthy. Whether the problems in her mamage stem frorn the stresses of fighting with infertility, or her desire to be a mother is fueled by dissatisfaction in her mamage, is not clear.

As for Clare, she once tries to explain her reasons for entering the surrogacy agreement in the first place. She says that "1 never wanted to be a mother. I wanted to help Sandy. She's always helped me, bought my paintings when no one else did." Her friend counters with "When are you going to stop feeling grateful." His question implies that Clare regularly feels excessive gratitude. Although gratitude can reflect a healthy awareness and appreciation for the gifis or support of others, it can also be symptornatic of low selfesteem. She does not see that Sandy purchased her paintings because they were worth something; rather she sees it as an act of kindness toward her, She must on some level regard herself as unworthy of such kindness. She evidently felt that having a baby for Sandy was a fair reciprocation for friendship, support and patronage. The friendship she herself has to offer is not seen as sutficiently reciprocal in itself. Her generosity and her own desire to give, combined with her sense of gratitude and a politics of sharing make her think the surrogacy will be a good idea.

Over the course of her pregnancy Clare's feelings change. Her self-esteem is no doubt enhanced to some degree by the fact that she has won an award, which will pay for her to live in Paris and paint for a year. Through this award, her work is validated by an external source. Furthemore, she cornes to understand just how significant the experiences of pregnancy are and how difkult it would be to give up a baby that has been a part of her own body for nine months. She talks about the way she felt when it woke her up at night, kicking and punching her. She couldnt sleep again for wondering why she was doing this, why she was planning to give it away. Going into the arrangement, she had felt that it would be no big deal - that she could "be doing this for Sandy and at the same time keep doing [her] own work." By the end of the film, it is clear to her that giving up a baby is, in fact, a huge deal.

Just before the end of the film, Clare decides that she cannot give up the baby, and she summons up the courage to tell Sandy, who is, of course, devastated. She daims that the reason the baby is late is that it is waiting for resolution on who will raise it - waiting for Clare to make up her rnind and to clarify things with Sandy. Sure enough, she goes into labor almost immediately after breaking the news. Ultimately, Clare is able to be honest with herself about her own needs and desires and strong enough to assert them. Yet it was not an easy thing to do. In a painting she has made of the players, Clare portrays Teny as the narrator, Diane as the spectator, Sandy as the creator and herself as the creatlorltraitlor. She feels a profound sense of sadness for her friend's loss and of betrayal for own actions. Despite the fact that Clare is insecure or rnay feel inadequate on some levels, on others she is confident and sure of herseif. She is educated, a ferninist and a (recently) successful artist, who has many people in her life who really do love and support her. In this sense, she is quite different from many surrogates. who tend to be poorer, less educated and sometimes not well supported. There are many surrogacy arrangements which involve much more complicated relations of power and coercion. Breaking these sumogacy arrangements can be far more difiïcult and potentially impossible if money and a legal contract are part of the set up (Rowland, Rothman).

Ultirnately, Waiting delves into a fairly cornplex discussion on motherhood, pregnancy and birth. Because, Sandy is so determined to be a mother to a newbom baby, some viewers could see her character as implanted in a 'biological determinist' perspective that asserts that al1 women are subject to powerful matemal desires. Other characters' viewpoints on motherhood are mixed. There is some suggestion that al1 of them do, in fact, feel some desire to be mothers, or at hast some need for more than a career in their tife. At the same the, rnotherhood is not central to most of them. AI1 of them are ferninists. All have careers. Rosie remarks that her mother, Terry. often cornplains that having a child had interfered with her career as a filrn rnaker. Yet Terry herself mentions that she had always wanted to have another kid. Diane and Clare joke about the fact that its a good thing they're "not the matemal type," yet there Clare is, pregnant and wanting to keep the baby. Later, when the two discuss why Clare is going through with the agreement, Clare cites both her obligation to Sandy and the importance of her career (as if motherhood and career are incompatible). 'You should understand," she implores, "you've got a career." 'Yeah and that's al1 I've got," is Diane's response. In the end. Clare is pushed into embracing both motherhood and career. As she says, "1 have to. I haven't got a choice. 1 can't give either up now."

Sandy is not an overiy likable character. The film seems somewhat critical of women becoming obsessed with having babies, that is, making motherhood the be-ali and end-ail of Me. Yet there are also moments when Sandy solicits genuine empathy, especially in the scene where Clare tells her the deal is off. There also seems to be a tone of revision: al1 the characters have been politically aware and involved since the sixties but rnay be softening their positions a bit now. Diane works for a fashion magazine (of al1 things). Near the end of the film, she tries to persuade Terry that a job as a fashion photographer rnay be an appealing alternative to continuing the struggle with independent film making. Terry is attracted to the idea of a steady income but makes no final decision by the end of the film. All the women characters have some mixed feelings about the relative importance of rnothen'ng and career. Even the assumption of the superiority of home births is rnoderated at tintes, such as the moments when Diane and Clare actually entertain the possibility of a hospital birth. Another time, Terry chastises Diane for bringing a doctor, declaring accusingly 'You know why Clare's having her baby here - it's so she doesn't have to be surrounded by bloody doctors." To this statement, Diane explodes "No that's not it at all, Terry. It's so that you can make your bloody film. and Sandy can control everyone as it suits her. I'm the only one here without a vested interest in how she has it."

This type of political revision can be read as an invitation to sel1 out (to becorne a yuppie like so many sixties 'radicals'), because resistance is just too hard, or perhaps just futile. On the other hand, it could be read as a shift in attitude that cornes with growth and change, a maturing so to speak. Perhaps it is simply an acknowledgment that sometimes lived reality requires deviation from rigid political positions. For example. surrogacy seemed like a good idea in theory. Their interpretations of it were based on sound communal politics and the notion that rnotherhood is not actually based on genetics, or on birth, but on a sustained nurturing relationship. This last perspective is an interesting twist on many surrogacy analyses, which often show the genetic connection as a prime motivation for having a 'baby of one's own' (sometimes so the father can be genetically connected, sometimes for both parents). Nonetheless, it tumed out that things did not happen the way they were supposed to in theory. Their theories underestimated the strength of the relationship that develops between a woman and a fetus prbr to birth. The theory underestirnated the role of pregnancy and birth in attachment. In terrns of birth processes, the film begins with a clear preference for rnidwifery and a holistic model of birth. By the end, however, it seems to advocate a woman's right to choose a birth model more than it advocates a model in itself. Although, in the final analysis, the midwifery model remains the privileged model of the film.

The creators of Waiting were clearly well versed in feminist theorizing around motherhood. The title itself rnay well be a reference to Ruddick's theones of pregnancy as a period of "active waiting." Ruddick calls for finding a way to "represent birthgiving as distinguished from and connected to mothering in ways that allow us to honor both of these activities" (Ruddick in Bassin et al., 38). Sarah Ruddick argues that in order to achieve this aim, we first need to "represent birth as a chosen activity requiring commitrnent and responsibility" (38). Next, we must identify the unique demands of pregnancy without sentimentality. She suggests that pregnancy can be viewed as "an active, receptive waiting that cannot be humed" (39). "Active waiting has an intrinsic relational character" between mother and infant, and "birth's waiting requires judgment" (39) regarding health and value choices and relations to authority. Finaily Ruddick calls for refiection, which could lead to mapping the cognitive and emotional patterns that individual women can use to interpret their birth experience. Such a rnap does not necessarily assume commonality between women, or even between births, but could provide a useful tool nonetheless. Waiting seems to contribute to this type of reflection. It does not provide any answers, but it puts forth some ideas and invites debate. It asks questions from a woman's perspective and, at the end of the day, it seerns to advocate choice - from a surrogate mother's right to change her mind and choose to keep her baby, to every wornan's right to choose whether or not to mother and how and where they want to give birth. The filrn wams of controls exerted on wornen's birth experiences by doctors, but it also sends cautionary messages about less obvious forms of control that can be exerted by friends and loved ones.

Waiting is not a Hollywood film. It did, however, rnake it at least partly into the category of mainstream film - it is widely availabie at Blockbuster Video, after all. if Waiting can be seen as a reiatively mainstream foi1 to Hollywood representations of pregnancy and birth, there are also non-mainstream films that resist the Hollywood stereotypes in ways that are different yet again. Waifing is a drama. Waiting is a feature. Waifing is grounded in theory. I would like to look now at two pieces made in Vancouver about childbirth. Creation is a fifteen minute film by Fumiko Kiyooka. Ten Skakel is a twenty-five minute video by Ceœ Wyss. Neither of these works are dramas, neither are features, and neither have their roots in theory. Rather, both pieces were based on personal experience, and both pieces were produced through organic, evolutionary processes. Ten Skakel58 is an artistic documentary that focuses on Cece's own birth experiences. Her birth experiences involved far more than the physical birth of her child. That time in her life was a tirne of extensive personal growth that took many shapes. In an inte~ewI conducted with Cece, she spoke of the way in which a vanety of things came together at the time of her birth and worked together to open many new doors for her. Towards the end of her pregnancy, she was approached with an offer to do a residency at Western Front, which she accepted. She was briefly concemed about how she would juggle her tirne so that she could make the necessary preparations for the birth, and for the new child, as well as making the video. She soon decided to make the video about the birth so that the two experÏences could work together, which they did beyond any possible expectations. Both the birth and the video ended up bringing her closer to her farnily and to her First Nations culture.

Her pregnancy was not the romanticized experience comrnon in popular representations, in which hormonal volatility and insensitive partners present the greatest challenges. As she says in the video, she was arrested three times during her pregnancy, and she fought with the father incessantly. The belief that "everyone loves a pregnant woman is a big myih" according to Cece. In contrast, she felt her experience of pregnancy was more in keeping with a Jeannette Armstrong poem which reads, "I carry the seeds carefully, through dangerous wastelands, I give them life." Ulümately she found herself seeking her family for support. As she spent more time with her family and became more involved in her community, she began to learn things about cultural beliefs and traditions that she had never really known before.

One discovery she made was about the ways in which birth and death are connected. On one level, birth and death were closely related for her in a very personal way - there is a lot of death in her community and she ended up attending a number of funerals while she was pregnant. On one occasion, she was advised not to go too close to the body and to cover herself with blankets to protect her baby from the spirit of the dead. This belief reflects a concem with the iiminality of the unbom and of the just dead, a liminality which leaves the unborn vulnerable. Birth and death are also closely connected in the cosmic

58 In English it means 'My Babf. order. As she explains in the video, birth and death are not opposites in her culture, nor is birth the beginning and death the end. Instead, birth and death are viewed as points on an etemal cycle, a cycle that has no beginning or end. This connection between birth and death became a theme both in her own life and in her video.

The scene in which she speaks of this cycle is shot in a graveyard. The imagery, the mmera work and the music al1 have a drearnlike quality or, as one of her friends noted, it feels like a memory - which is exactly what it is. Cece grew up next to a graveyard. The graveyard became the place where she played, the place where she and her friend could be away frorn adults and in their own world. They used to go there al1 the tirne, being careful not to step on the actual graves so as not to disturb the dead. One day they found a gravestone that had both of their names written on it. lt marked the space where two friends were buried side by side. It gave thern an eene feeling thai she still remembers well. In the video sequence, the graveyard scene marks the connection between the living and the dead, belween birth and death. It also marks a childhood memory. Cece told me that throughout her pregnancy she was Rooded with memories of her own childhood, memories she hadn't really thought about in years. This conneciion between pregnancy and personal childhood memories is a conneciion I have heard many women speak of, but have never seen acknowledged in mainstream representations of pregnancy. Yet it speaks of a powerful link between a woman's own Iife, history and identity and the life, hope and identity she is creating and incorporating into her own world.

Another significant theme in Ten Skakel works with the cycles of menstruation, or moon times. Cece is a herbalist as well as a video artist. For many years she has been working with another herbalist, an older woman, whom she views as a mentor. It is this woman's voice that explains the four rnoon times and the traditions that accornpany them. It is this woman's voice that recounts a conversation she had with her own grandrnother, when she was a child, about rnoon tirnes, a conversation in which she asks questions based on the things she has been told at school - such as that her people were di@ @or to contact with Europeans; that they had no tampons or pads and were covered in blood throughout menstruation and so had to stay away from the men. Her grandmother dispels these rnyths, telling her the way things actually were. She sets the record straight. By recording this expenence, as well as others of her own, Ceœ is also setting the record straight. She is challenging the myths, challenging the stereotypes - stereotypes about pregnancy, about birth and about her people.

Her motivation to make these challenges was three-fold. On one level, she was simply taking an opportunity when it presented itself and allowing it to organically unfurl. On another level she was fulfilling a need she had to express herself - her thoughts, her feelings, her creativity, her identity, her self On yet another level, she was hoping to reach out to other women, to teach them about her culture and her world, and also to inspire them, encourage thern. She wants other women to know that they don? have to be rich to make a video. Women don't have to be rich to have meaningful things to Say, to be a good storyteller, to have a kid. Furthemore, women can work, women can be creative and women can be mothers. She finds herself busier than ever since having her child, partly because taking care of her is a lot of work, but partly bewuse she is more involved in her work both as a herbalist and in the video cornmunity than ever before. She organizes her time well and takes on a lot of projects. She was concerned at one point during her pregnancy about how she would manage to work and care for her child. She was plagued by stereotypes that motherhood was an al1 encompassing identity which precluded other roles and which led to the burying of other sides of one's self. The process of making the videc, at the end of her pregnancy through her birth and in the first months of her child's life, proved to her that these stereotypes are false. It is possible to be an individual who is active and creative in a variety of capacities, including mothering. Both the video project and the birth of her child were achievernents that required strength and perseverance and which were ultimately empowering for her.

Cece told me that birth can bring people together (as can death). This certainly happened for her. At the sarne the, the process of creating a video brought her closer stiil to a variety of people. She approached people in her cornmunity explaining her project and asking for input or assistance. The response was generous and open. Likewise, within the video cornmunity, people were supportive and receptive. Once her child was bom, she was able to carry her around with her, bring her to work . In the end, her video is art, it is self- expression, and it is therapy. Thus it is resistance - it resists stereotypes through speaking alternatives, through speaking experience, and it is testimony of resisting stereotypes, of resisting oppression, because it is a tool of ernpowerment in itself. It is also a testimony to the value of wmmunity, the value of being supported.

The film is effective. The style is simple, direct and personal. It feels almost like one of those documentaries in which someone's stoory is superimposed over a sequence of stills, only Cece's stills rnove - sometimes slowly, sometimes imperceptibly; sometimes the hand-held camera pans through them, around them; sometimes the images are distorted, and sometimes they move in real time. It is not clutiered, frantic or distracting. The voice-over is clear and very natural. I felt I was being addressed, spoken to by a friend, not spoken at by a distant observer. When I asked Cece if there was anything that she would change, looking back three years later, she replied that she would like the birth scene to be more explicit. As it is, we see her lying on the bed, we see her baby being passed to her, we see the umbilical cord being cut. It is more suggestive than overt. She chose to represent it in this way partly because she was shy about people seeing her give birth (her friends, family, colleagues, strangers) and partly because she felt it might make people uncornfortable. Now she feels differently. She is no longer self-conscious about it, and she feels that other people's discomfort would begin to dissipate as the experience becornes normalized and shown as a natural, beautiful and powerful event. She screamed (loud) during the birth. She feels that women are often made to feel asharned of screaming or expressing themselves during birth. She does not feel asharned about it: birth is hard and painful and screaming is warranted. She gave birth at home. Her neighbors heard her screams and groans and knew she was giving birth. They explained what was happening to their kids, and it was a moving experience for them too. She chose to give birth at home, with a midwife, mostly because she is terrified of hospitals. She felt safer and better supported in her own home. She has footage of the birth itself and still thinks she may edit it again sometime to make a version that includes this footage.

Fumiko's film Creation focuses almost exclusively on the birlh itself. It is more explicit than any other birth scene I have seen, including in medical documentaries. However, it feels more intimate. Birth documentaries tend to show the birth from the tirne the baby crowns. They are also often very impersonal - there is usually a separation between the baby that is being bom and the women who is birthing it; we see the wornan's genitals but not her face. In documentaries about rnidwifery, portrayals tend to be more holistic - we see the whole woman, and we see different phases of her labor. Yet these portrayals can still be stylistically distant. The voice-over is factual, explanatory and third party. In Cece's video the voice-over is direct and personal and it tells a story - it drew me in, involved me. In Fumiko's film, there is no voice-over.

The film is fifteen minutes long. It is more like a poern than a story. The sound consists almost exclusively of the souncls in the birthing room - the birthing woman's (Lolli's) breathing and groaning, sorne background music, the voice of the midwife, rnovement, a heartbeat. The only deviation from this is at the beginning and at the end, when we hear Fumiko's son talking to a frïend. At the beginning he is talking about death and angels and where people go when they die. At the end he talks about being born, about how he didn't like it and tried to hold ont0 his mother's bones so as not to corne out. Both were real conversations that Fumiko had managed to record.

Most of the imagery revoives around the birth and Lolli's body. It flashes back and forth between the labor and other sequences. At the beginning, for example, we see a man's erect penis, a couple having sex, then a Iimp penis. At a couple of points we see a bunch of naked infants piaying together in a play- pen. Several times the camera flashes to modem dance / movement sequences. Most of the perforrners are naked, one wears a wedding dress. Some are women, some are children, there is one man. The pace and the movement, of the dancers and of the film, were dictated by the natural rhythms of Lolli's breathing.

Fumiko herself cornes from a dance and movement background, and this influence is prominent in the film. She uses dance as a medium, rather than words, to convey many of the sentiments she expresses. One of the things she wanted to express through the dance was a feeling of anxiety that she feels often accompanies birth.59 She also wanted to relate birth to sexuality. The most overt connection occurs at the beginning, during the sex scene. Pregnancy

59 1 conducted a telephone intenhew with Fumiko. from which I draw much of the interpretative and intentional information about the film. and birth are both natural outcornes of sex Birth is also a sexual experience in itself, and this is an understanding that is often lost in both contemporary North American experiences and representations of it. Milemost of the images and the movements are not directly sexual, many are erotic.

The actual birth sequence features a close up of the wlva from a time before the head is visible, through the birth of the baby, and then the birth of the placenta. It was important to Fumiko to include images of the placenta, which are very rare in representations of birth. She felt it was much more natural to include it, as its exclusion is often part of the process of sanitization of birth imagery. Its bloodiness may be offensive to a culture that does not like to be reminded of its rnortality, its ongins or its limitations. To be sure, the placenta is a very strange looking thing to the unaccustorned eye. Yet it is actually a powerful, significant and Iife giving thing. It feeds and nurtures the growing fetus and separates the mothets blood from the fetus'. Apparently it even has its own heartbeat. The film shows the midwife opening it up. According to Fumiko, when it is open there are veins on it that look like the tree of life. As an entity and as an image, the placenta is significant. Yet Fumiko noted that many people are surprised by it - by its inclusion in the sequence and by its size. Many people thought it was another baby being bom.

The last scene, after the baby is bom, shows a woman sitting alone in empty, run-down, desolate surroundings. This scene was also an important one for Fumiko. She feels that ultirnately women end up alone. They may have babies, and these babies may fom a big part of a woman's life; but these babies eventually grow up and leave, often leaving their mothers with a profound sense of loneiiness that Fumiko does not think is effectively addressed by North Amencan culture. Furthemore, motherhood does not alter the essential aloneness of women in the world. Wornen may be one with their babies during pregnancy, and they rnay feel incredibly close to them after birth, but at the end of the day they are two. This separation between mother and child is necessary and healthy. As Sarah Ruddick describes it, at the center of the experience of mothehood lies a "distinctive construction of self and other" (43). Such distinctions as defined by other relationships are challenged through pregnancy and motherhood, but remain definitively intact. 'The natal connection foreshadows the matemal relation: both airn for a differentiation that does not deny, but rather is sustained by caring, careful dependence" (43). While such differentiation certainly can be healthy, it is not always - particularfy in a cultural context which over invests in ideas of motherhood as fulfillment, motherhood as source of love, motherhood as identity. The experïences of woments unique isolation within Our culture has yet to be openly acknowledged and discussed.

Like Ten Skakel . the inspiration for Creation was derived from the film maker's personal experience. Fumiko has had children of her own, and ideas about family, as well as pregnancy and birth, are themes that feature in much of her work. Unlike Ten Skakel , the film itself is not diredly about her own experience. The film started when she shot some movernent footage of a pregnant friend. Then she shot the naked infant scenes. Finally she decided that she wanted to put thern together in a film about birth. She advedsed in the paper for someone who was pregnant and interested in having her birth experience filmed. Lolli responded. Fumiko was glad to be filming a home birth. Her own birth experiences had been at the hospital, and she believes that hospital birth experiences can be 'hellish' - invasive, controlling and insensitive to women's needs. In contrast, she felt a home birth would be more natural, and also much easier to film. There were no hospital rules and no doctors telling either the laboring women or her, as a film maker, what to do. Her only consideration was for Lolli. She was very clear about the fad that the birth expenence was the priority, not the film. All the way through, she worked to ensure that she wasn't overstepping any boundaries or iniruding on Lolli's space. The birth was the first one she had ever attended, other than her own. This experience of attending a birth was a powerful experience for her. Thus Fumiko's own life was enriched through the process of making the film itself.

All three of the works discussed in this chapter are examples of an extremely important resistance to dominant, and dominating, ways of envisioning birth. They also resist the dominant structures, codes and conventions of Hollywood film. Ten Skakel and Creation counter Hollywood film not only in content. but in production processes. Thus these films are testirnonies that resistance to such domination is both possible and necessary. CONCLUSION

The public world, wwifhout pafn'archy, is no longer men's worid, but it remains fhe worid of power and privilege. me private worid remains disvalued, as poor people become the wives and mothers of the worid, cleaning the toilets, raising the children. The devaluing of certain work, of nurturance, of private "domesfic" work, remains: rean'ng children is roughly on par - certainly in tems of salary - wifh cleaning the toilet. (Rofhman, 252)

A number of feminists, rnost notabIy mers such as Shulamith Firestone and Marge Piercy, have imagined a world in which women are finally liberated from the burdens of pregnancy and childbirth. In their view, only when women are liberated from biologically determined reproductive functions can they be tnily free and equal to men. Other feminists, such as Luce lrigaray, are not so much interested in seeking equality to men on male tems as much as they are in exploring what it means to be gendered female. Such writers daim that whether or not women choose to reproduce, women's bodily expenences have an impact on the ways in which women experience and interpret their lives. Wornen's physicality is seen as something to be embraced and understood rather than eradicated.

While some feminists, inspired by fantasies of biological liberation, do embrace the development of reproductive technologies, many others situate the histoncal development of reproductive technologies in the patriarchal drive to control female reproduction. For example, in her treatise on ectogenesis, Susan Squier writes that

[aJs 1 understand the image of ectogenesis, it functions as a strong defense against the anxiety raised by mat Patricia Yaeger has called reproducüve asymmetry the fact that women and men contribute in unequal ways to reproduction. ... As a fantasy, ectogenesis functions as an atternpt to abolish the asymmetiy, or at the very Ieast to even it out. In ectogenesis, the notion is, gestation takes place in an artificial utenis; both the man's sperm and the woman's egg are equally alienated from their very moment of union, the moment of coitus having kenreplaced by in vitro fertilization. And with in vitro gestation, woman's gestational contribution to the reproductive process is replaced by man's scientific contribution, as the one who has built and who monitors the machine and its contents. ... The child is now "a value" produced not by reproductive, but by medical scientific labor, any putative ownership thus falling not to the mother, but to the engenden'ng, laboring, delivering power of science. ... Read syrnptomatically, [ectogenesis] speaks of the deepest fears and wishes of Our cuitutal unconscious: the fear of fernale procreative dominance, and the male wish to usurp and monopolize reproductive power (94). As Squier points out, the drive to control human reproduction can be read as a patriarchal imperative. There are also other ways to read this drive, however. On one level, it can be read simply as a technological irnperative: as an inevitable part of the enlightenment project seeking hurnan control over nature, and as a natural extension of the Cartesian division between mind and body. The technological irnperative can still be seen as inextricable from patnarchy and euro- centnsm, since this way of thinking is historicafly gendered mate, and it grew out of European philosophical traditions. The history of western science and technofogy does not in theory necessarily predude its appropriation by feminists or non-Europeans in ways that are empowering. It is toward this end that feminist science fiction writers, such as Marge Piercy, Shulamith Firestone and Naomi Mitchison, have worked their imagination^.^^

Yet large gaps exist between ferninist fantasies on the potential of science and the continuing realities of everyday scientific practice. Within feminist discourse on reproductive technology, Squier notes there és

a punling disjunction behnreen the emancipatory interpretations of reproductive technology ... and the negative responses of feminist theorists and acüvists to the actual implementation of those technologies in Europe and North Arnerica. AIthough many postrnodem literary critics praised the potential of these technologies to destabilize gender identities and cal1 into question the boundaries of self, society, and even species, I found that in the sarne historical moment many feminist theorists and activists were indicting the actual uses of those same technologies as "unsuccessful, unsafe, unkind, unnecessary, unwanted, unsisteriy, and unwise" (19). The reasons why many ferninists have corne to the conclusion that reproductive technologies are ultimately oppressive to wornen are extensive, compfex and specific to each type of technology and its context. However, Deborah Lynn Steinberg cites Sandra Harding as argueing that feminist critiques of science and technology can be analyzed according to two broad perspectives: "feminist empiricism" and "ferninist standpoint" critiques. Steinberg writes that

'feminist empiricisrn', as Harding defines it, wnsists centrally of a uselabuse analysis. The political meaning of science-as-usual is assumed to accrue from the manner (and context) in which its 'artifacts' are used, or the loyalties and disloyalties of individual scientific rnethod-

A 'feminist standpoint' position, by cuntrast, problernatises 'science-as-usual'. The central prerniss (sic) of a 'feminist standpoint' position is that science is a site of powerlçocial relations that is shaped by and that shapes the powerlsocial relations of its historical and cultural context. ... The activities and pnorities of particular scientists, therefore, are not understood individualistically, but rather in the context of a particular social location (5).

See Marge Piercy's Wman on the Edge of Time and Elaine Tuttle Hansen's analysis of it in Namting Mothem (Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy eds.); also see Susan Squier's analysis of Naomi Mitchison's and Helen Longin's work. Many feminist theorists who shy away from visions of technological utopias, and who advocate nakiral or holistic models of childbirth and reproductive practices instead, do so on the basis of a feminist standpoint position. Their analyses of the uses of technology in the birthing process take into account bath the specific implications and effects of particular technologies and procedures and the power and social relations ilpon wtiich these processes are based and which they work to sustain. Robbie Davis-Ffoyd's work, which I looked at in chapter two, involves a detailed analysis of specific hospital birth procedures as well as a theory regarding how these procedures serve as rituals that promote our society's core values. Barbara Katz Rothman's analysis of motherhood identifies motherhood as an institution wtiich is inextn'cably enhivined with the ideologies of patriarchy, technology and capitalism. She asserts that the "ideologies of patriarchy, technology, and capitalism support each other, prop each other up, but they are not the same. And so fighting one does not destroy the others" (Rothman, 251).

I share a preference for the "standpoint" position. Thompson notes that in order to study ideology in ternis of relations of domination, it is necessary to address the construction of meaning within a social and historical context. Meaning can function as ideology both within the scientific community and with regard to the lay community's relation to the scientific community. The latter dynamic can occur when particular social groups use scientific teminology and the label of science to establish authority or credibility. Medical science, as a knowledge system, works with the constmction of meaning. The social construction of meaning can be deployed, intentionaliy or otherwise, to sustain or refute particular relations of domination, In short,"science" is a potential site of ideology. In order to understand the functions and implications of scientific theories and pracüces, we must examine them in specific social and historical mntexts.

There are a variety of ways in which people can fight particular ideologies, including the ideologies of patriarchy, capitalism and technology. Midwifery, for example, can provide a model for resistance. Theoretically, midwifery is women centered, technologically cautious and not driven primarily by market forces. In practice, midwifery often lives up to its theory. Other times, it may not. Midwifery is often a service that can be 'boughtl on market terrns, and it is subject to the pressures of the economic and medical systems of individual countries. In some cases, midwifery has been 'recuperated' by medical systems in such a way that it now confoms to, rather than resists, the patriarcinal, technological and capitalist standards6' associated with allopathie medicine.

6' See Raymond DeVries (1996) for a discussion on the possibilities of recuperation of midwifery that can ensue from Iicensing and regulating procedures. DeVries argues against legalizing In ternis of representation, Fumiko Kiyooka's and Cece Wyss' work demonstrate resistance to these three ideofogies. The content of their work refutes dominant images and stereotypes. The production processes themselves embody resistance. Both artists allow their work to organically evolve rather than forcing it to conform to rigid, predetermined structures. Both artists based their work on their own personal experiences and perspectives. The fact that the works were made at all is a sign of resisbnce, of a refusa1 to be silenced, and a detemination to create. Waitritg resists in a slightly different way. lt seems to hold at its center a theoretical analysis and perspective and to work outwards from there. The perspectives it puts forth are not set up as 'the last word' on the subject, rather they seem to be the beginning. In rnany ways, Waiting feels like an invitation to talk: as if the film maker is saying "Here's what I've done - what do you think?" It is up to individual women and men to respond: to talk, to organize, to lobby or to go get a camera and make themselves heard.

1 believe that representations of childbirth have a considerable impact in the choices wornen rnake about their own birth processes. As the first three chapters of this thesis highlighted, birth has not commonly been portrayed from a wornan's perspective. This silence of female voices is deafening in such a female-centered activity as a birth. Furthermore, hospitalized, medical births are normalized in Hollywood film. Midwives and hornebirths are not depicted except in the context of the past or in the realm of the bizaar. 1 believe that women are generally presented with adequate information about birthing processes and choices. In the context of this derth of information, rnass media becumes a significant source for the formation of ideas and expectations of childbearing experiences. The representations of childbearing in Hollywood film, one fom of contemporary mass media, strongly favor medical birth models and exclude female perspectives. In so doing they contribute to sustaining existing relations of domination in the birth place - relations that privilege patiiarchy, technology and capitalism and which marginalize women. If women are to empower themselves in the birthplace, they need information, they need a voie and they need a forum. 1 hope that soon they wïllachieve these goals and begin to expand their options.

-- midwifery in California because he believes that incorporating ft into the mainstream medical systern willinevitably result in compromising or losing midwifery's key pnnciples and strengths. Also see Sheila Kitunger (1978) for an analysis of the ways in which midwifery practice has been transforrned by the demands of the mainstream health system in England. Budget restraints did not allow midwives to spend the amount of time ~Ïththeir clients that midwives operating under different systems, or independently, generally strive for. Furthermore, the British system did not allow for amtinuity of care and the development of a relationship between individual women and a partiwlar midwife. Instead, women were assigned wtiornever was on duty at the time. LIST OF CITED WORKS

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