Baby Blood: Make Pregnancy Gross Again

I can’t describe to you the joy of explaining the plot of Alain Robak’s pregnancy horror film from 1990, Baby Blood, to my very pregnant sister: “It’s about a girl who gets inseminated with an amphibious prehistoric demon that crawls up inside her while she’s asleep and then forces her to kill men and drink their blood for its nourishment. This could seem like a bummer, but luckily she gets really into murdering men and she and the fetus actually wind up vibing over the freedom that brings her and she’s just, like, feral and naked for most of the film. Oh, it’s also one of the goriest movies I’ve ever seen.” She responded, “I can’t believe you can stomach something like that.” To me, the nasty, violent, and terrifying body horror aesthetic of pregnancy in Baby Blood is liberating in its subversion. It exploits the horrific aspects of motherhood and pregnancy that are taboo to discuss and runs with them, flipping the kitsch aesthetic of pregnancy to itself becoming revolting to the main character. 

Baby Blood transgressively counters the ever so nauseating idealized, kitsch aesthetic of pregnancy that we are accustomed to. The kitsch aesthetic of pregnancy arises out of societal expectations of what a mother should be, transforming what is a neutral occurrence into a moral imperative. The horror aesthetic in Baby Blood turns these expectations on their head, creating a narrative that encourages the pregnant character to refuse all repressive expectations of motherhood and pregnancy she encounters. What is repulsive in Baby Blood is reversed: Yanka becomes repulsed by any suggestion that may force her to be motherly to the demon residing inside of her. The narrative of Baby Blood frees Yanka from the web of repression that most women face in reality and which is served by the kitsch aesthetic.

KITSCH <3

Many theorists and philosophers including Milan Kundera, Hermann Broch, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin have considered the meaning, use and ramifications of “kitsch” aesthetics. The narrator of Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness defines kitsch as an “idealized aesthetic” that "excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.” The narrator then argues that this is true with the example of how we treat shitting. Because we are so repulsed by shitting that we only do it behind closed doors, we are refusing the aesthetic of shit as a possible representation of human culture, even though it is a part of every living person’s daily routine. Because of our repulsion we create a kitsch aesthetic of society that denies shitting to make our lives appear more tasteful. That kitsch aesthetic of pregnancy I referred to above versus the horror aesthetic in Baby Blood occurs within this continuum. The horror genre exploits what repels us, and this is certainly the defining feature of pregnancy in Baby Blood– it takes every nasty, scary, and repressive experience of pregnancy that isn’t shown on Instagram and throws it in our faces without remorse to point out the problems with this idealized motherhood.

Propagated mainly through sites like Instagram and Pinterest, pregnancy kitsch can be found across all social media and, more distantly, in film and television. The major descriptions of pregnancy kitsch that I have observed are as follows: pastel colors, the general “softness” (fluffy blankets, round, warm objects) that lends an overall delicate nature to the pregnant person in the image. There is also an overwhelming sterility in these images. They have an almost medical cleanliness, even though many of us know what pregnant women actually experience can be all over the map and is often not fluidless. There is also a trend towards the natural; pregnant bellies decorated with flowers or greenery suggests a “coming back to nature” or a freshness that suggest a sort of link between her body and its biological functions– that she is performing something that her body had always intended to do. These general aesthetic norms suggest a woman who is transforming into her nurturing nature that has been hidden inside of her all along, just waiting to emerge.

HORROR AESTHETICS & REPULSION

The kitsch aesthetic of pregnancy runs entirely counter to the life I have constructed to make me feel at home in my body and how I want to live my life– I do not want to be a mother and I am not interested in giving my freedom away to raise someone else. I love children, I love being an aunt, but it’s not my path to have a child of my own. These normative representations are repulsive to me and that's why pregnancy horror speaks to me as if it’s saying what I’ve been thinking all along– pregnancy would be a nightmare. The ways that Baby Blood alters the “look” of pregnancy around its own political, social and moral reality presents solutions to both the natural requirements of–and the aesthetic problem with–pregnancy that make it unappealing to me. As members of the political reality that this film came out of and is reacting against, I think others like me could take something from this analysis or at least just watch it and appreciate its sense of humor in regard to repression.

BABY BLOOD

The body horror aesthetic of Baby Blood interrogates the repressive conditions of pregnancy in a society that treats women as property. Then it presents multiple solutions for the pregnant woman at the center of its story in unexpected ways by embracing the repulsive aesthetic. All of this dramatic body horror and violence in the narrative results in Yanka, Baby Blood’s protagonist, being allowed to follow her own particular desires in life because of her pregnancy, which is the ironic opposite of how pregnancy functions in reality– it puts all of your own desires on hold to serve someone else. It’s the relinquishing of freedom.

First of all, the entity gestating inside of Yanka is a fully sovereign primordial demon that needs nothing from her once it is born. As the two discuss later in the film–yes, the primordial demon fetus talks, and, yes, it sounds like one of the Gremlins–they are to go their separate ways after it is born. No nurturing required. Yanka wants freedom from a life defined thus far by patriarchal control under an oppressive circus runner and the demon needs blood in order to grow and then be born. Because their physical objectives differ, the two must negotiate to find common solutions– Negotiation with a fetus! First problem I have with pregnancy: solved.

But the relationship with the fetus is two-fold. It is both the epitome of a controlling male figure and it socially allows her freedom because it encourages her to destroy anything that gets in her way. It’s almost as if Yanka has internalized the masculine figure like Terminator. Because it is inside her, she is granted its power even though it also violently lashes out against her for breaking rules. 

To make their dynamic even more complex, the demon fetus and Yanka are more like lovers à la Bonnie and Clyde or co-conspirators à la La Ceremonie than they are anywhere near the dynamic of mother and child. At first, Yanka hates the violence she must commit to keep the hungry little guy at bay. But after she realizes her parasitic companion holds the key to her sexual pleasure, her freedom and her protection from the violence of a patriarchal society, their relationship takes a sharp turn. 

After refusing to kill a coworker whom she wants to fuck, Yanka lurks in an alley waiting for prey and the fetus begins to move inside her in a way that feels “bizarre.” She asks it to stop while grabbing her crotch and biting her lip, suggesting that she does not mean bizarre derogatorily. The fetus acquiesces to her refusal, but makes note that it gave her pleasure. They are interrupted when a handsome piece of meat in a suit walks past and the fetus demands she go after him. Yanka replies, “only if you say please.” The thing responds flirtatiously, “alright, follow him and kill him, please.” She acquiesces. The added flirtation to their arrangement totally changes their relationship from here forward into a vaguely romantic one. Their primary drives–Yanka’s human sexual desire and the creature’s metaphysical desire to erase humanity–find common ground in the enjoyment of her sexual pleasure. It eventually becomes clear that the demon just enjoys making her happy without anything in exchange. In other words, it falls in love with her. This beautiful turn of events is totally transgressive and something that many viewers probably find disturbing. A fetus using its body to arouse its mother? Just wait till Oedipus finds out about this. Do I want this dynamic? Not necessarily. Would it be great if my potential fetus considered or negotiated my wellbeing at all? Yes. (I hope all the fetuses reading this are taking notes.)

In turn, Yanka begins to embrace the violence that she must commit to feed her parasitic companion when it benefits her newfound freedom. It first becomes apparent that Yanka has developed a desire to kill when she responds to a marriage proposal in the goriest scene of unprompted violence thus far, stabbing the man countless times in the stomach and letting the blood splatter all over his kitchen wall (shot tastefully in knife P.O.V.). Then, much later on, Yanka is rescued after a car accident and brought to a church where an older woman has taken her in. After the woman enthusiastically describes the joy of childbirth, Yanka puts on her sweetest bloodstained smile and uses the telephone cord to strangle the harmless old lady to death. These two scenes show Yanka quite literally fighting-to-the-death the imposing forces of patriarchal control that will put her newfound freedom to an end: marriage, childbirth and motherhood.

As Yanka balloons, she becomes less physically threatening–but only if one assumes that she is concerned with protecting the fragile demonic bean inside of her. Not the case! As the hunger within her grows, Yanka’s ghoulish behavior and appearance only increase. At this point she is splattered in blood, looking like she barely escaped a traumatic car accident. It is at this moment that a sliver of kitsch intrudes the horror aesthetic. Our protagonist sits on a park bench, looking like she’s about to pop, when suddenly a voice that belongs to neither her nor the demon fetus asks, “Do you talk to your baby too?” Next to her on the bench, a vision of maternity, dressed in clothes that signify innocence stretched tight over her beach-ball-belly, eagerly awaits her response. Then, like a jump scare, this woman’s other child peeks over her globe-like midsection and gently spits out his pacifier to kiss her stomach over and over in the most corny display of affection imaginable. Yanka, looking absolutely feral in a leather jacket over a blood-drenched yellow sundress, looks at the woman with the same contempt that this film has for all cloyingly positive attitudes towards motherhood. Despite their matching bellies, these women do not share futures. Yanka is not going to be a mother like this woman. She will bear an autonomous agent into this world that will not be breastfed. It will not need daycare, diaper changes or a stay at home mom. Yanka is not having a baby that necessitates motherhood and therefore she is freed from the expectation to model herself in that kitsch aestheticization. Not only that, but it repulses her, reversing the dynamic of kitsch aesthetics.

Perhaps the most shocking moment of the movie is when Yanka finally gives birth to a normal looking baby. It’s honestly sort of disappointing after waiting for this creepy thing to show its face for the first time. In the back of a blood-drenched ambulance, Yanka smiles, holding the baby in her arms. The infant is clean, fresh, entirely goo-less. For the first and only time in the film, Yanka is portrayed as a normal, loving, mother. Would Yanka turn out to be a loving mother after all once she saw its face for the first time, just like that old lady whom she strangled said she would?  Was this no longer a rebellion against but a glorification of the kitsch image of motherhood?

Thank God five minutes later the baby drags an innocent hitchhiker into the window of the car and liquifies his head in the passenger seat while his legs thrash outside like a fish out of water. Shedding its human skin suit, it reveals its true form as it wraps its octopus body around a man’s head and throttles his skull open like an old pumpkin. And we are back! But Baby Blood would not have the same impact without tricking us for a moment into thinking it could end with a glowing mom and happy baby. Thankfully, motherhood is not the resolution for Yanka– it’s killing a bunch of rapist sports guys and then blowing up. For the demon, it’s crawling back into the ocean for five billion years until it takes its final revenge on humanity. A perfectly horrific resolution that only reinforces that pregnancy is a death sentence for the liberated woman.

POLITICALLY SPEAKING….

The reason that kitsch is super helpful for understanding why aesthetic representations matter is because of something that Kundera gets into later in Unbearable Lightness of Being. The totalitarian kitsch functions like this: “everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life… In this light, we can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.” Like any regime, totalitarian or not, control of women extends into how a mother cares for her children. If she is deemed a failure at this by society's expectations, she can get the gulag, so to speak–she may be eliminated from society by prison or death. And, as it becomes harder to access abortions in our current political climate, and the laws around them become more repressive in many states in America, the aesthetic representation of the procedure has become distorted into some sort of evil witchcraft. I am picturing a pro-life billboard with an image of jars of fetuses that seems to suggest Planned Parenthood is a maligned, evil organization. The truth of abortion being life saving and a human right becomes muddled by the way it is advertised as murder by pro-life organizations. Thus encouraging the general public to understand abortion as a crime justifiable of punishment and the people who get them as disposable. This is just one example of how aesthetics and politics are linked and function, but it’s not hard to imagine that if we begin to view women and people who can become pregnant, the stakes of representation extend beyond just abortion into our daily lives.

Children die and or get injured by accident occasionally and it is beyond tragic–but it is rarely treated with care for the mother or parent(s). There are women whose babies die of what is charged as neglect and could range from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), falling asleep breastfeeding (Choose Love Everyday, Beautiful Anonymous) to various other inexplicable and tragic accidents. In the case of Sally Clark, a British woman, who was sentenced to death in 1999 for the death of two children in only a few years, she was later released in 2003 on account of a miscarriage of justice. It is worth noting that on the Wikipedia page for Sally Clark in the recommended section there are links to other pages on women “serial killers.” The reactionary tendency that many societies have toward infant death tends to only cause more harm than good and refuses the truth that death can be somewhat out of our hands. To charge a mother for the murder of their child, requires less imagination in a society that expects mothers to never allow their child to die by some meta-physical willpower. 

This evidence is all to say that our current aestheticizations of pregnancy and motherhood does not serve the grieving parent, the woman who gets an abortion, the poor mother who is actually trying her hardest or any other woman or parent who exists on the edges of what is aesthetically acceptable. There could be a world where, rather than being repulsed by these mothers/parents, we support them or, at least, don’t try to hide them away.

This is why we can relish in Yanka’s unfettered ability to be emphatically neglectful because, in the world that Baby Blood organizes its narrative around, nurturing a demon would be absurd. Although extreme, Baby Blood creates a humorous dichotomy that points out the problems with the pregnancy kitsch. Being proposed to and being told the joys of childbirth become signs of the subjugation of women that she refuses. The film chooses to celebrate Yanka’s freedom above all else, sexual or otherwise and encourages her to pursue it by any means necessary. 

Baby Blood made me realize that the aesthetic of real pregnancy is desperately lacking the je ne sais quoi that could make it attractive for people with bodies and lives like mine–something that can be found readily in the rare genre of pregnancy horror–a whole lot of ugly that opens up the imaginative possibility of a new narrative of pregnancy that centers freedom. Baby Blood presents the potential of just asking the fetus, “hey, is it cool if I smoke a single cigarette or will that give you brain damage?” And it answers, “thanks for asking. Absolutely fucking not,” and then tears your insides to shreds when you do, but it warned you. Until this technology develops I’ll keep fucking this dude with a vasectomy. 

By the time this has been published my sister’s baby will have been born! Welcome to the world Lolo! This is dedicated to you!