ROSEMARY'S BABY (as if childbirth wasn't scary enough)

"We can also speak of a living person as uncanny, and we do so when we ascribe evil intentions to him. But that is not all; in addition to this we must feel that his intentions to harm us are going to be carried out with the help of special powers."

the one gender class i took was a gender/film hybrid course, so a cop-out. i had seen the movie and read the book (by ira levin) before--- the book is pretty much ezactly the same except for the ending; rosemary's pretty empowered (which means nothing, since she was at 0% previous) at the end--- she puts her foot down on the baby wearing black all the time and calls him andrew instead of adrian (good call) 

we watched a lot of actually good movies (i'm usually disappointed in movie classes), which, at first, seemed to have nothing to do with womens-folks (still not sure about silence of the lambs, but, hey, buffalo bill? he just wants to do him---and get fucked in a size 12 skin robe).

rosemary's baby was another one of those until i realized, oh yeah, girl gets demon-pregnant. and the thought of myself pregnant vacillates between utter revulsion and ambivalence (i would definitely take advantage of the crazy hormone/cravings stereotype--- chinese food and pieces of chalk, allday) so ranting a paper on how pregnancy is a total shitty hetero-normative whatever whatever and being dominated by shitty patriarchal society was--- fun:

       

The cliché “miracle of birth,” so established in our current cultural lexicon, can be taken as an insulting euphemism and therefore fitting encapsulation of a woman’s expected relation to pregnancy. Rosemary’s Baby, although premised on the mystical & supernatural, expresses the negative (unspoken) pregnant experience; from conception to birth, and the following pressures of maternal instinct, Rosemary falls (even “falls” seems too active) victim to a patriarchal system, which tries very hard to keep her in an infantilized & completely dependent state. In this traumatic tribulation, centered on a heroine literally figured as (passive) sacrificial vessel, lies the horror of feminine reality, historically veiled not behind Satanism per se, but by the normative pregnant experience, as penned and enforced by the dominant patriarchy.

            Beginning, even before conception, with the relationship between Rosemary and Guy there is already stark sexual difference: Rosemary stays at home all day making drapes, Guy works; Rosemary very much wants children, however, she cannot have any until Guy is willing. In the latter especially there is the dependence of the woman upon the man, although she is ultimately the one with the power to carry and give birth to the baby. Guy will not agree to pregnancy, despite there being no major obstacles (women have become pregnant on less). He will only agree (and when he does, he insists) when there arises some sort of benefit he may be able to gain from her pregnancy; the satanic pact is so appealing to Guy that he in essence sells Rosemary’s womb, and in order to sell it, it is implied he must have (felt) he owned it, in order to receive the advantage. A child before the pact would have only given Rosemary satisfaction/gain, and so Guy’s selfishness, his need to be revered as center of Rosemary’s attention, only abates when a better benefit to him is offered.

     In the scene of conception, although shrouded in ritualistic mysticism, there is the question of woman’s coital stance; she is physically strapped into a passive position (the missionary position, ironically). The question, too, of whether this conception scene is consensual or rape also arises; Rosemary eventually seems to start from her unconscious in horror, when she realizes she is not in fact dreaming (“this is real!”). These two together bring a disturbing mixture of fantasy and reality; the ritual conception does not seem too far gone, especially in these modern times when a woman knows which week she is set to ovulate and as insemination becomes more familiar. The reality too stems from our basic conceptions of sex; man above (active), woman below (passive); the bifurcation of consensual vs. non-consensual (rape) sex becomes blurred when in both cases the man takes the dominant and therefore controlling position.

            Rosemary’s pregnancy and birth both express simultaneously the stereotype and taboo of pregnancy. Even more so Rosemary is infantilized by constant subterfuge by the men whom seem to completely surround her and women “shrouded in misogyny” (women also under/working for the enforcement of the patriarchal normative). She is kept ignorant and thus completely dependent on those essentially working against her; she loses control on top of the control she loses due to a swelling belly, morning sickness, etc. Her doctor (a representation of patriarchy in itself) tells her exactly how she should and will feel, although he is not a woman himself. He and even Guy (who’s not even a doctor) dismiss her pains and increasing paranoia as hysteria. However, the rejection of pre-partum anxieties and psychological shifts as “crazies,” seems incredibly ignorant to the dramatic changes the pregnant body undergoes; for a woman not to be anxious about the “rosy” or “glowing” pregnancy she’s only read or heard about would be inhuman (we are all prey to doubts, which just evidence our growing attachment to the alien body growing within us). Rosemary’s doctor even, repeatedly, says, “Every pregnancy is different,” as a reason to keep her from gathering any type of information. However, her doctor’s refusal to even entertain Rosemary’s fears and doubts about her pregnancy reveals the horror of pregnant isolation. Rosemary loses all control of her physical body following the Satanists’ purchase of it; in the instance she tries to make a decision on her own (Vidal Sassoon haircut), her husband reviles her for it, inducing another layer of fear (the one on which she is most dependent, her husband, may leave her).

In giving birth, which we are not privileged a viewing of, Rosemary experiences  “childbirth amnesia” so that she is conscious of parturition only so far as the pain between her legs. However, Rosemary’s supernatural experience still conjures the real; many women now opt for medication, while “natural birth” is still regarded (by whom?) as the best, healthiest, most beautiful experience a woman can have. But why should woman be blamed for wanting drugs instead of suffering a 7-10 pound football being torn from one of their most sensitive parts with Victorian stoicism? They were told from their own birth that pregnancy is the heighth of womanhood, all little girls should always be looking towards motherhood and the glow of conception, but never should they become aware of the “labor pains” (the word “pains” still too euphemistic) less the totality of the feminine race reject the pregnant state? Can’t we (some of us) be trusted to believe the gain is worth the pain, rather than trying to enforce normative/patriarchal ideals, which leaves us resentful of the trauma of birth? Rosemary only expresses this feeling of betrayal after her birth, when she is told her baby has died; the separation of mother and child is another piece of reality; women are normally not allowed to hold their babies until the doctor/nurse have inspected and cleaned them (making sure the newborn is pink and flushed rather than blue and goopy, as it comes).

            The “maternal instinct” also appears near the end of the film, during which Rosemary is guilted into acting as mother to her infant. Again, any deviation from the accepted (by whom?) role of woman in relation to her baby is rejected (post-partum depression is a “maladjustment”). But when exactly does this instinct kick in? When does a woman become a mother? In the same breath one can ask when a fertilized egg becomes a viable baby. The dead-beat woman is far more villainized than a man of the exact same sort simply because the woman is mother; the woman carries the baby and this engenders strictly defined feelings of love, devotion, attachment, etc. and so a woman abandoning her child becomes a terrible rejection of social norms. Rosemary still harbors dependence and conformity to patriarchal conceptions of motherhood so she accepts the baby as her child. The reality of this too reflects the woman as, in general, more accepting and loving than man; the woman has less qualms with accepting a child, perhaps because she can be sure part of this child is part of herself; the man grapples with the fear of paternity, a threat of de-masculinity (which stems from narcissism) because the newborn may not reflect himself. This seeming fear of woman’s intrinsic power of pregnancy is then (over)compensated by the overbearing dominance of patriarchal control; man cannot physically give birth, so they insist on monopolizing every aspect of it; whether it be by way of male authors of pregnancy guides, male doctors normalizing the pregnant experience, or one’s husband selling the occupancy of the womb, patriarchy has actively inserted itself amongst one of our most truly feminine phenomena.