I've been watching the Showtime "Masters of Horror" on On Demand the past couple nights. I was thinking about the one involving the abortion clinic, where the woman may or may not be harboring the spawn of a demon. And that made me wonder:
As I've mentioned (and many of you chimed in on) in another thread, violence against children seems to be comparatively rare in horror films/fiction. And we speculated as to why. But there are TONS of movies and books dealing with the subject of a woman giving birth to something that isn't human: "Rosemary's Baby"; "The Demon Seed", "Alien" (although the money shot in that film was a man "giving birth" to the alien, women appear in various films in the franchise doing so; same general idea, I posit), "The Fly", 'Humanoids Form The Deep", "Xtro" and many more I'm sure I missed. A lot of the examples pointed out on the violence against children thread were more obscure or foreign films. The above examples are all mainstream, hit American films.
Now, not being a woman, never being able to know what having a life grow inside you, or the anxiety that the child will be all right when it's born in the same way a mother to be would, I do possess enough empathy to have at least some inkling how horrible having something inhuman in your womb would be. I guess it'd be like finding out you had a parasite living in your body; the "baby" is an alien being, that doesn't belong inside you, and it means you harm. You feel revulsion and want it out of you. Maybe not quite as powerful as the violence against children imagery, but damn close (for some, particularly women, it may even be more disturbing).
So, why is THIS subject not shunned the same way violence against children is in films or othr media? our culture is just getting over Victorian era repression in many ways. Pregnancy and childbirth are still subjects not seriously dealt with in many circles (witness any sitcome where one of the female characters gets pregnant; they poke fun at exaggerated cliches like the labor pains, paternal anxiety, cravings, etc. But the subject is never seriously discussed in comedies or dramas; it's too "gross" for the average person to deal with, it seems). We're obviously still VERY uptight about it. So why is it OK to put a blatantly horrific spin on this topic? Is it because the horor genre, and filmmaking in general, are so lopsidedly male dominated? Is it simply because the women involved are (almost) always adults, and it's more "OK" to do horrific things to adults than to kids (not counting the evil spawn, of course)? Or something else?
Mind you, I don't have a problem w/ the concept. We do watch horror films to be disturbed, and this imagery certainly has the power to do so, so more power to it, I say. IMO, the most disturbing image in film or anything I've read about unnatural births was the scene in "The Fly", the 90's remake, where Gena Davis dreams about giving birth to Seth's baby. . . the giant maggot. I'm not sure why this disturbs me the most; I suspect it's because in any other example you can think of, the baby is at least humanOID, whereas the maggot is most definitely not. The fact that maggots are associated w/ death & decay probably helps as well.
What do you think, and can you think of good examples I missed?
As I've mentioned (and many of you chimed in on) in another thread, violence against children seems to be comparatively rare in horror films/fiction. And we speculated as to why. But there are TONS of movies and books dealing with the subject of a woman giving birth to something that isn't human: "Rosemary's Baby"; "The Demon Seed", "Alien" (although the money shot in that film was a man "giving birth" to the alien, women appear in various films in the franchise doing so; same general idea, I posit), "The Fly", 'Humanoids Form The Deep", "Xtro" and many more I'm sure I missed. A lot of the examples pointed out on the violence against children thread were more obscure or foreign films. The above examples are all mainstream, hit American films.
Now, not being a woman, never being able to know what having a life grow inside you, or the anxiety that the child will be all right when it's born in the same way a mother to be would, I do possess enough empathy to have at least some inkling how horrible having something inhuman in your womb would be. I guess it'd be like finding out you had a parasite living in your body; the "baby" is an alien being, that doesn't belong inside you, and it means you harm. You feel revulsion and want it out of you. Maybe not quite as powerful as the violence against children imagery, but damn close (for some, particularly women, it may even be more disturbing).
So, why is THIS subject not shunned the same way violence against children is in films or othr media? our culture is just getting over Victorian era repression in many ways. Pregnancy and childbirth are still subjects not seriously dealt with in many circles (witness any sitcome where one of the female characters gets pregnant; they poke fun at exaggerated cliches like the labor pains, paternal anxiety, cravings, etc. But the subject is never seriously discussed in comedies or dramas; it's too "gross" for the average person to deal with, it seems). We're obviously still VERY uptight about it. So why is it OK to put a blatantly horrific spin on this topic? Is it because the horor genre, and filmmaking in general, are so lopsidedly male dominated? Is it simply because the women involved are (almost) always adults, and it's more "OK" to do horrific things to adults than to kids (not counting the evil spawn, of course)? Or something else?
Mind you, I don't have a problem w/ the concept. We do watch horror films to be disturbed, and this imagery certainly has the power to do so, so more power to it, I say. IMO, the most disturbing image in film or anything I've read about unnatural births was the scene in "The Fly", the 90's remake, where Gena Davis dreams about giving birth to Seth's baby. . . the giant maggot. I'm not sure why this disturbs me the most; I suspect it's because in any other example you can think of, the baby is at least humanOID, whereas the maggot is most definitely not. The fact that maggots are associated w/ death & decay probably helps as well.
What do you think, and can you think of good examples I missed?
