In Pregnancy: Choice and Excess, Kelly Oliver deconstructs
Hollywood’s representation of pregnancy. The chapter that stood out to me the
most was Craving Babies. In this chapter she deconstructs the Hollywood
phenomena of representing women who do not want babies but fall in love with
their babies when they give birth. This representation psychologically pressures women to not get an abortion by giving them the impression that if they get an
abortion they will be giving up their happiness or access to happiness. This is
very problematic and similar to the other representations of Hollywood that she
deconstructs because it restricts women’s free will to get an abortion. Also by
solely presenting happy mothers as child bearers, these movies assert patriarchal
norms by stressing the importance of family and children. So in short what
Hollywood does through these movies is to spread patriarchal propaganda to
persuade the viewer to have a baby in order to attain "the ultimate
happiness". Also as expected many of the movies that she deconstructs are
directed by males. It is not surprising as only %7 of movies produced by
Hollywood are directed by women.
Currently the Turkish
President is also following the same subliminal tactic to brainwash people to
only value women if they are mothers and reinforce patriarchal family norms.
Since he was elected he continuously stressed in his talks that every women should
have 3 children and condemned abortion as murder. Also recently he increased
the number of children that Turkish women should have. Apparently now we need
to have 4 children?! In Turkey abortion is state funded and a women can get an
abortion for free up to 10 weeks. After 10 weeks it depends on the doctor’s
decision as if the baby is threatening the mother’s health a women can still
get an abortion for free, otherwise she pays for the abortion. So on paper,
Turkey has pretty good laws but definitely the president’s non-sense speeches
are effecting women’s decision and existence in society.
baby = happy
ReplyDeleteHande,
What an interesting blog post. I am shocked that the Turkish President is telling women they need to have 4 children! Since when do politicians know what the ideal family looks like? (Answer: never.) Is the president significantly more conservative than the legislative body that originally got these abortion policies passed? I hope we can talk about this more in class.
Also, I have one question about the first section of your blog post. When you write, "Also by solely presenting happy mothers as child bearers, these movies assert patriarchal norms by stressing the importance of family and children. So in short what Hollywood does through these movies is to spread patriarchal propaganda" I lose you a bit. Does this propaganda state that women must be happy for their families to be happy (which makes sense to me) or women cannot be happy unless they have a family? Regardless, I agree with you that women (as all humans) are complex and there is no gendered meaning to life, i.e. children.
I did not mean to put "baby = happy" at the top of my response, that was just part of my notes on your piece that I forgot to delete. Sorry!
DeleteI think it is horrifying to think that a government, in this case the Turkish President, can determine what an "ideal family" should be. What is an "ideal family"? Every society has manifested this idea of "perfect" - perfect family, perfect mom, perfect woman, etc. I know that in class you have mentioned that outstanding percentage of inequality within the Turkish society. Does this play a role in the president's statement? I believe so.
DeleteWhen you speak about "patriarchal propaganda", as Sammy has already brought to light, are you talking about the norms that Hollywood presents? What an "ideal father" or "ideal mother" should be? Is Hollywood trying to congratulate fathers and bash mothers?
Sammy you're right. That sentence is a bit long, so it's easy to lose what I meant. (: What I tried to say was that a happy mother is not the and should not be the only representation of women or women's choices. By only representing women who are happy when they are mothers, Hollywood is reinforcing the patriarchal norm of nuclear family as the only place for women. Or the only place that would make her happy. This representation devalues other experiences of women by stressing one quality that women have and that it should be the only quality that women should be concerned with. In case of Turkey, yes the current government is way more conservative than the prior ones but his stress on family goes beyond religion. The president and his party are the ones that brought neo-liberal policies to Turkey. So currently, he is looking for cheap labor force and wants to create cheap labor force, so they can earn more money with less effort. To create cheap labor, he is forcing women to become baby machines. Since he can not explicitly state this he frames it with religion. So that people will buy into his ideas more easily, in theory.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMalaika I agree it is horrifying and yes it is directly influenced by the president and the policies he implemented. For instance. Turkey used to have a ministry of women. He changed this to ministry of family and social policy. The minister is a very patriarchal woman. So by assigning a woman minister he positions women against women. I am unpacking his policies for my final paper and would highly appreciate your ideas on it!
ReplyDeleteAlso this article is helpful for analyzing the cases
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2014/11/27/les-droits-des-femmes-turques-sont-ils-en-regression_4529711_4355770.html