Baby Blues (a rant, not really a review)

[Photo: mommy dearest psychotically chops tomatoes while her husband pleads with her to be reasonable. God, women are so unreasonable.]

Look. No one would claim I don't like a good exploitation flick as much as the next person. And as someone who watches *a lot* of horror movies I'm pretty accustomed to rampant sexism. My rental habits cross a lot of lines, but apparently the translation of postpartum depression into a low-grade slasher in which a mother stalks, tortures, and kills all of her children, for whatever reason, strays into an area I'd prefer not to go. I don't mind seeing mothers go crazy (Psycho), I don't mind seeing them torment their children (Carrie), and I don't mind movies that assume we all know pregnancy = crazy (Rosemary's Baby). So what exactly is it that I mind about Baby Blues? If you're up for a rant, I've made a list:

1. The not-openly-stated but clearly implied moralization of Andrea Yates' story. "True Events" and "Pray these horrors don't befall your family." Tacky is fine with me; after all, I rented this movie because I thought it was about an evil baby. But this seems a bit....tacky.

2. Some vague and thinly veiled allegorization of violence and farm animals makes it clear that motherhood is a duty to protect, any action to the contrary is a perversion and indefensible. So far I'm bored, perhaps annoyed at the triteness, but not offended.

3. The emphasis on masculinity as a foundation for any family My limit for the phrase "man of the house" lowers in direct proportion to the child's age. This kid is maybe 7 or 8, so I lost patience quickly here. My nagging annoyance notes how the eldest son embodies every christ-like trait imaginable while his sister bickers over dolls and cries through the whole movie. I tell myself I'm being too sensitive.

4. The aggressive means by which the absent trucker father is set up as a hero with strong values (he wants more children, works only because he loves them so much, is deeply faithful while he's gone, sacrifices times together to bring home the literal bacon*), while the mother is petty, jealous, and neglectful (she assumes infidelity on her husband's part, envies a local weather reporter for her flattering job, barely glances at the picture her daughter draws of their happy family). Here I'm irked. It's not just trite. Do we really want to vilify mothers for wanting a job, or not wanting a fifth child? The most recent edition to the family is, after all, about 6 months old.

5. The child killing begins with the drowning of the baby in the bathtub--a scene that feels accurate, tragic, and suffocating. This scene is sad, and it leaves the viewer a little shocked and traumatized when so real a tragedy is immediately followed by a series of slasher deaths worthy of the Halloween movies. Unconventionally, the children are killed on screen, chased by wheat threshers, skewered on pitch forks, hacked with mirrors.** As I watch postpartum depression evolve from a real tragedy to a level of deranged psychosis known only to the wizened horror viewer, my annoyance morphs into real offense. This is sensational, which is fine, and manipulative, which is dangerous.

6. This is already long, so I'll jump to the end, in which the surviving child watches in horror as his pregnant ("it's a miracle!" the tearful father rejoices) mother is released from a mental institution by a villainous band of doctors ("with therapy she's cured") and lawyers ("the law protects women with mental illness") to torment and butcher her next brood. The possibility that attentive medical treatment would have helped her is presented as an outrageous lie perpetuated by anti-family organizations that worry too much about "women's health" (McCain's air quotes, not mine), and I am straining every nerve not to call up Brooke Sheilds and ask her if we can go trounce whatever Tom-Cruise-loving hack of an executive okayed this thing.

What I resent most is being driven to take Cruise seriously, even for a moment.

*In the first ten minutes Chris commented "Personification of a pig so early on does not bode well." It doesn't. For the viewer, or for the pig.
**I don't like spoilers, so I put those in the wrong order