Birth Traumas
"Parturition and Horror in "Rosemary's Baby
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8905014 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lucy Fischer (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 3-3 |
| Publication date | 1992-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cinema Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-7101 • E-ISSN: 1527-2087 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1225505 |
| OpenAlex | W2324529092 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 3 |
Multiple Births. Contemporary popular culture has delivered us multiple embodiments of childbirth. In the supermarket, the slick cover of Working Mother presents a radiant television personality who is Pretty and Pregnant. Newsweek flaunts a responsible expectant couple purchasing Mass Mutual Insurance. Parent pictures a postpartum madonna gazing wondrously at her infant-nursing now, but planning to use Gerber Baby Formula. In the local video store, the self-help aisle is stocked with reassuring instructional tapes: Your First Baby and Childbirth Preparation. The neighborhood book shop features Pregnant and Lovin' It, a guide to one of the greatest, most pleasurable events of... life.3 The popular cinema of past decades has proffered alternate views of maternity. It's Alive (1974) opens with a woman in labor, trying to quell a premonition that something is dreadfully wrong. The sequence ends with bloodied doctors evacuating a delivery room where they have inadvertently birthed her murderous monster. This eerie scenario is extended in the film's two sequels: It Lives Again (1978) and It's Alive III (1987). In The Brood (1979) a female mental patient incubates heinous fetuses in external belly sacs; Embryo (1976) and Eraserhead (1978) pursue the theme of malevolent extrauterine conception. Our reflex is to keep these diverse impressions of childbirth separate: to deem some idyllic and others grotesque, some accurate and others apocryphal
Art · American and British Literature Analysis · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Medicine
| Citations per year | 0.15 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1993 - 2025 (33) |
| Highly cited | No |