“Reproductive Technohorror” Is A Burgeoning Genre On Screen
Editor's Note: This article contains spoilers
A story about bisexual reproductive technology. One of them is comedy. In a movie like The Stranger, artificial insemination is the crux of the joke. Because reproduction takes place in sterile petri dishes, not between sheets, accidents occur with many newborns and confused personalities. Most stories of this nature end happily, with sperm donors embracing the stranger they helped create.
Another type is fear. In part, this is because the world of fertility treatments overlaps with horror. These include tools that look like instruments of torture and are used in both disturbing and intimate ways: beaters, needles. In this story, the main character must take a drug that makes their body look strange, alter their thoughts, or create strange visions. If the treatment is successful, pregnancy and childbirth will occur, causing great pain and suffering.
In Women, Werewolves, and Horror, Erin Harrington calls these stories "techno-horror clones." In these stories, "anxieties about the intersection of technology, the female body, and reproduction rise, collide, and bleed." This type of infection. False Positive (2021) follows a woman (played by Ilana Glazer) who becomes suspicious of her fertility doctor's nefarious practices after becoming pregnant. Dead Ringers , a remake of David Cronenberg's 1988 film, premieres April 21 on Prime Video (shown above and below). The series follows twin sisters Elliott and Beverly Mantle (both played by Rachel Weisz), gynecologists who open their own birthing center and research lab. Ella (Dianna Agron), star of The Hour, which premieres April 28 on Hulu and Disney+, undergoes clinical trials to help her overcome her interest in parenthood.
The filmmaker explores fears about the idea of life developing outside the human body before fertility treatments became widespread. (The market for assisted reproductive technologies is estimated to exceed $50 billion by 2030.) In 1976, two years before the birth of the first child conceived through IVF, Embryon raised concerns about the artificial womb.
In 2017, US researchers launched the Biobag, a device designed to fertilize fetuses from ectopic pregnancies, and described the technology's potential to help premature babies. In Dead Ringers, Elliott also uses sheep to perfect his design for an artificial womb. He also hopes to help premature babies, but will soon turn them into human embryos. The purpose of Eliot's research was to benefit women, and this was one of them. The problem is that he is a rebel, creating a life without much thought of the moral or legal consequences. (One of the children she worked with was born without parental consent.)
"False positives" and "clocks" (pictured below) also raised concerns about violations of the rules and scientific method. Part of the problem with both films is that the treatment is experimental (ie, untested). In the book "False Positive" d. Hindel (Pierce Brosnan) uses his "technology". The Clock says a newly developed combination of synthetic hormones, cognitive behavioral therapy and a special womb device can "restore" Ella's "broken" maternal instincts and help her conceive. When she confronted doctors about the terrible side effects of the drugs, she was told that what she was experiencing was "the most natural thing in the world."
With reproduction as a theme, these stories explore the relationship between ideas. The first is how access to health care is determined by race and class. Part of Beverly's motivation for opening the birthing center was her anger toward women, especially African-American mothers. She wanted the facility to be accessible to more than just "wealthy and privileged women." Others are heredity, the desire to pass on people's DNA. Interestingly, the Mantles Center and the medical facilities Ella visits use the infinity symbol as their logo; Ella's father (Saul Rubin) pressured her to breed so his offspring wouldn't appear to her.
Whether and how to have children is a perennial issue, but it's even more important now that the Supreme Court has struck down America's constitutional right to abortion. In these three stories, the characters lose control over their bodies. In False Positive and The Hour, the experiences of women are directly related to their ability and desire to have children. Dead Ringers explores the politics of fertility. the reporter asks the cloakers if their work has actually limited women's freedoms because "the faster life outside the womb, the stronger the argument against abortion." For filmmakers who want to comment on issues. The spread of the day could be the perfect vehicle for techno-horror. ■:
Ring of the Dead is available on Prime Video. The Hour airs on Hulu and Disney+; "False Positive" is streaming on Hulu
