[Editorial] The Extremes of Motherhood

Content Warning: This editorial contains discussion of extreme horror including rape and torture.

Depictions of mothers in horror vary but when it comes to the more extreme and disturbing side of the genre however, this is when the role of the mother is shown in a different way as the following examples show. 

The focus of motherhood becomes quite bleak when the overall tone of a movie is one of total violence and despair and it is interesting to see a familiar trope of the mother being pushed in various directions by writers of these movies. Pregnancies are a provocative experience to use in such movies with topics of abortion and women's rights being discussed in society globally for the past few decades, the inclusion of taking a baby's life as well as its mothers seems even more provocative and politically driven. These types of movies are well known for pushing boundaries but by showcasing different realistic life circumstances this highlights the darker side to motherhood and overall, the human experience.

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The eroticised pregnant body

Snuff 102 (2007)by Mariano Peralta follows a journalist who is trying to understand a man's point of view on violence and the existence of snuff movies after finding his online reviews intriguing. Whilst interviewing him, it becomes clear that he has some quite troubling views that start to make the woman uncomfortable. At one point he states “through history women have always been seen as objects. Misogyny is a cultural fact, and it won't change”. This belief seems to become more of a statement the movie is trying to make once we do see scenes of violence towards the three kidnapped women. One of them is a pregnant woman, her role in the snuff movie seems to not be to just be another body to torture and kill, but to use her pregnant body as a way for the torture to reach a new level of disturbance. The focus becomes not on the woman being tortured and her reaction of distress as she becomes unconscious quickly resulting in her unable to express any pain. Instead, it is in the scenes that focus on the torture of her pregnant body and how it can be violated differently to the two other women who are tied up watching and screaming. The torturer seems to take extra time with this woman, and it is obvious that his intentions are to dramatically distress the audience of the women in the room but also those who will watch the snuff video, using the ingrained feelings towards babies and innocence against them.

The tortured expectant mother

Inside (2007) by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury focuses on the character of Sarah who is pregnant and grieving for her husband who died four months ago in a car crash which she survived. We see her trying to get by and focus on her work as a journalist photographer. Although we see her attend a hospital appointment to finalise details of her birth, she displays no real interest in getting ready to be a mother other than picking up some knitting she has been working on to make the baby a jumper. When asked by her mother to come over for Christmas and that she would like to be there at the hospital for the birth Sarah is withdrawn and states that she wants to be alone. It is this isolation that leads to her becoming an easy target of a home invasion by a woman who seems to know more about her than she should. When this intruder is asked the classic “why me?” question the response focuses on the baby Sarah is carrying, “I want one, and you do not really want the baby so you should give it to me to look after!” With the intention of killing her so the baby may be taken away, Sarah becomes a little more defensive at times but still does not put up a fight and cowers in the bathroom. At one point, the door to the bathroom is broken down meaning that Sarah can no longer hide and she must confront the intruder and fight for her life. Her feelings of hopelessness and passivity towards her overall circumstances of becoming a single mother are shown to us by her motioning that she will stab herself in the stomach to harm both the baby and herself. An action that doesn’t seem to just be to get the intruder to back off, but to also show that Sarah is willing to die by her own hand taking her baby with her. This only angers the intruder however and what occurs after is what makes this a French extremity classic. 

The fighting for her life expectant mother 

The Human Centipede 2 (2011) by Tom Six follows security guard Martin as he obsessively collects people from the car park he works the night shift at, with the intention of creating his very own human centipede. Although he gets great joy from the movie Human Centipede, Martin seems to want to create an even larger version than the three people-centipede featured in the first movie. And so, he ends up with a diverse collection of people, one of which is a pregnant woman. Martin targets her and her partner who are with their crying toddler as they go to their car. This family dynamic doesn’t faze Martin as he chooses to target the parents,even picking up the crying child and is shown trying to calm him by rocking him before placing him in the car seat and going after the woman who has been trying to crawl away with an injury. There is a point where Martin is shown believing that the woman has died, and he listens to the heartbeat of the baby and weeps, but it seems he is more disappointed that one of his pieces of the centipede is no longer usable. He wraps her in plastic and puts her to the side. After some time however she is shown regaining consciousness and making her way out of the room and to a car as quickly as possible. She manages to start the car with Martin angrily banging on it as if he may be able to break a window and get to her. And just as it can occur in real life, the miracle of childbirth starts at the most unfortunate of times and with a quick labour the baby is delivered right there in the car with no moment to lose to get away. In a desperate act, the woman chooses to hit the accelerator forcefully squashing her new-born child to death as she does. Although it could be argued that she had time to reach down and put the baby in her lap or at least move it out of the way, this act shows that she was desperately fighting for her own life and her own safety. In a behind the scenes clip we see that the special effects for this certain scene were thought out well and the baby prop was chosen so it could achieve the grotesque squash that it did, showing that Tom Six added this in as an extra extreme touch for the movie. 

The exploited mother

A Serbian Film (2010) by Srdjan Spasojevic is notorious for its use of child exploitation in a pornographic way. Although the focus is on ex porn star and father Milo, there are scenes where the exploitation of both mother or caregiver and child are the focus. One scene in particular highlights this disturbing agreement between the makers of porn and the people that they pry on to obtain what they want. A woman who is pregnant is approached for the idea of producing new-born porn. Though all we see is footage of her giving birth and then the act being done in a subtle way, it is interesting to consider the dynamics of this situation. Why had the person agreed to this extreme situation and what did they have to benefit from partaking? It is hard to really grasp what this person's situation really was but there is a certain desperation and bleakness that comes through from the act, making it obvious that the person had been guaranteed a lot of money or comfortable living circumstances, like the proposition Milo is shown to have from the director. Another situation that is looked at throughout the movie includes a young girl who is shown to Milo twice to entice him. At a critical point of the movie the grandmother of the girl is shown telling Milo that taking the girls virginity, through something she calls a virgin communion, would have been the duty of her father who has died and so for Milo to do so feels like it is an act of God.  This situation shows a caregiver willing to be involved in a pornographic film so something which she feels is correct, as her father did this to her, can take place. Yet she and the girl are clearly being taken advantage of for the sake of the director's twisted desire to make extreme porn. And of course the wife of Milo is also exploited by the director who puts her and her son in a very extreme and harrowing scene including Milo showing that not only was he targeted with underlying intentions but so were his family, the aftermath of  them becoming aware of what has happened to them all provides a very bleak ending to the movie. 

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The prostituted mother

Mother is a Whore (2009) by Lee Sang-Woo is a movie which draws inspiration from a true-life story and shows a mother and son dynamic unlike any other. It is often said that a mother's love knows no bounds and, in this instance Sang Woos mother seems quite comfortable to push the boundaries of what she can do as mother to provide financially and allows herself to be pimped for sexual encounters by her son. Throughout the movie there are different scenarios where the two are shown living out their daily life and going through the motions, one of those days is the mother's birthday. When Sang Woo tells a customer on the phone that she is not available today, she questions him and says they need to show the customer's respect. He responds by asking “do you really want to be fucked on your birthday?” This shows that he has decided to be respectful towards her and allow this day to be focused on her celebrating her birthday the best they can, by eating delicious beef and rice and drinking a strong drink together. Although it could be understood that the son is taking advantage of his mother, there is a point where after a serious rape incident he tells her to stop her response is unexpected, “I have told you I love to do it, you don’t know how happy It makes me to have men inside of me. When they touch my skin, I am not alone. I feel alive”. This interaction shows that her son feels bad for their circumstances but as the woman has been left by his father for a younger woman these interactions with men bring her some form of intimacy that she longs for,showing a kind of consent to the situation after all though it is quite a bleak one. 

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