Three young women wake up, confused and terrified, in a room that looks like a cross between a normal hospital room and the creepy underground lair of some mad scientist from a horror movie. A video screen flickers on and a creepy older man, looking a bit like Academy-award-nominee Robert Loggia, appears on it, telling the women that he’s their “jailer.” The women, you see, had all been getting abortions when their jailer’s shadowy accomplices kidnapped them and brought them to this strange prison, where they will be forced to live for the next seven months until they gave birth. “You were all on the operating table, all ready to commit murder,” announces a mysterious doctor. “Your babies will be given life just as God planned.”
This is the premise of a new horror film called The Life Zone, which recently had its world premiere at the prestigious, er, Hoboken International Film Festival, a festival that was, perhaps not coincidentally, founded and chaired by the film’s writer and producer, Kenneth del Vecchio. In case you think I’m making all this up, here’s the film’s trailer, which makes The Life Zone look a bit like an equal-parts mixture of Saw, Human Centipede, and The Handmaid’s Tale, with Robert Loggia in the role of Jigsaw/Dr. Heiter/The Commander:
Now, if you thought that something seemed really … off about that trailer, well, you’re not alone. For the film is not, as you might have assumed from my description, a warning against the fanatical misogyny of many in the anti-abortion movement.
No, the film – produced by a pro-life former judge, crime thriller author, and Republican New Jersey state senate candidate – is meant as pro-life propaganda. As the offical press release for the film’s premiere put it:
The film, which appears to cut right down the middle [of the abortion debate], examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist. Del Vecchio and the cast invite pro-lifers to come to this historic event.
During the months the three women are held in captivity, you see, they are exposed to a barrage of films and books intended to, er, educate them about abortion –what their attending obstetrician Dr. Wise describes as “an abortion think tank.” Two of the captive women do indeed convert to the pro-life side; apparently we in the audience are supposed to develop Stockholm Syndrome along with them. The third, as we see in the trailer, tries to induce a miscarriage, which doesn’t go quite as planned.
And this sets us up for the final twist, which I’m just going to go ahead and reveal: once all three women have given birth, Dr. Wise tells them she’s going to sew them all, mouth-to-vagina, into a Human Abortion-pede!
Actually no: the twist is that the “life zone” the three women in has actually been … purgatory! All three “captives,” you see, had died on the operating table while getting their abortions. (Apparently they went to the world’s worst abortion clinic, as first-trimester abortions don’t involve anything more surgically invasive than the insertion of a suction tube; the risk of death from a legal surgical abortion is 0.0006%, one in 160,000 cases, making the procedure many times safer than childbirth itself.) Their time in the “life zone” was a test: the two women who changed their minds were whisked up to heaven, while their miscarriage-attempting, stubbornly pro-choice companion is sent straight to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. Dr. Wise, despite being on the right side of the abortion question, also goes to hell for committing suicide. And, oh yeah, their jailer – Loggia – was Satan. Why Satan and a hell-bound doctor were the ones trying to convert the abortion ladies to the pro-life side I can’t tell you; del Vecchio’s theology is evidently more sophisticated than I am.
The real twist here? As Jersey Journal writer Alan Robb notes:
The Life Zone went viral across the internet [last] Friday after blogs The Frisky and Talking Points Memo picked up on the film’s trailer. … But despite garnering more than 20,000 hits on YouTube in the last four days, only fifty people – including the film’s cast and producers – attended this weekend’s screening, and even those who starred in the movie didn’t know how to interpret its twist ending.
It’s impossible to tell from the trailer if the film is bad in a so-bad-it’s-good way, or if it’s just plain awful. I will try to get hold of it when it hits video, and will report back with my results.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a good horror film set in a creepy hospital, try renting Infection, a Japanese film from 2005. Or, if you’ve got a longer attention span, try Lars Von Trier’s supernatural soap opera The Kingdom, a darkly comic miniseries which takes place in what one might call, paraphrasing Bill Murray’s character in Tootsie, “one nutty hospital.” Both are conveniently available on Netflix instant watch, so you don’t even have to leave your pregnancy dungeon to see them.
EDITED: Added some info on the minimal dangers of abortion procedures.
They had one in Boston! I marched! It was a ways back though.
This was my sign!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v92/wolfychan/consensual.jpg
That’s why I don’t like him. It’s slimy cloying sweet code for “men are all rapists or rapist enablers, but they don’t HAVE to be, in some hypothetical La La Land.”
Huh, too bad I didn’t know about that. That’s a “feminist” gesture I can get behind. (I say “feminist”, because I would classify SlutWalk as more an egalitarian goal, not a feminist one).
No, the opposite! It’s saying “men aren’t all rapists!” Very clearly. And it’s saying that rape is enabled (by various people, male and female–women absolutely do this too) by the false belief that men are all rapists.
I hope y’all are right. It’s not impossible. When I was MRAL’s age, I had certain MRA tendencies of my own, complications arising from a mild adolescent case of Nice Guy. I actually bought a lot of the propaganda (anybody remember the song “Girls Don’t Like Boys (Girls Like Cars and Money)”?). It didn’t help that I was in a relationship with a serious libido discrepancy – it made it easy for me to believe all the crap about women not really liking sex. If anyone had been around to talk about Alphas, Betas and Omegas with me, I would have at least wondered.
What saved me was the fact that I had many female friends, both on- and offline, who I listened to and respected and who visibly contradicted the propaganda. Some had the patience to sit down with me and point out the flaws in the propaganda, often using themselves as counter-examples (I can’t tell you how shocked I was the first time I heard a woman complain about being on the wanting end of a desire discrepancy). They also told me some stories that led me to believe that feminism had a reason for existing after all (doctors and abuse counselors have plenty of such stories).
So yeah. Maybe there’s some hope for MRAL. If he starts with the listening and respecting. I’m not holding my breath, but I’d be glad to be wrong.
Well you could have fooled me, because Jesus will come again twice before you ever get Hugo Schwyzer to blame women for anything in the history of the world.
For Christ’s sake, he opens by apologizing and flagellating himself for having a penis, and then he goes on to discuss how sexual crimes are always man on woman, then he goes on to state that it doesn’t HAVE to be ths way, in an ideal world. How much more misandric can you get?
From that video, I took away that when people say, “What was she wearing?” or “Women dressing like sluts and walking around in front of men is like waving alcohol in front of an alcoholic.” (a comment recently made by one of the MRAs on this site), those people are not giving men enough credit. They are treating men as if they are unable to control themselves and this perpetuates the fear that women have the men cannot control themselves. Whereas if, as a society, we recognize that men DO control their actions, then we have no reason to fear MEN, we have reason to fear rapists (and other violent people). Basically, saying that women as to be raped by the way they dress is saying that all men are potential rapists because they cant control themselves when they are turned on and this is simply untrue. People who know and respect men know that they are definitely capable of controlling themselves, no matter what a woman wears.
Apparently Hugo Schwyzer hits very close to home.
Uhhh Hey MRAL – there was a Boston Slutwalk, I attended, and it was great. I don’t think you’re constant back and forth on hating and judging women would have made it a good environment for you though.
Especially since it’s focus was on sexual assault which your opinions on tend to sway from their general message.
Speaking of Boston, there was a fire up there last summer, in which two 21 year old students were badly burned. The male student fled the fire by jumping out a window, landing on his heels and breaking his feet and back. So in addition to burns and skin grafts on his arms, he now walks with a limp and lost 2 inches in height, making him 5’7.
The girl in the fire with him was found in the kitchen, her arms, too are covered in burns and skin grafts that people mistake for some sort of skin disease and openly mock them both when they go out. They can’t cover their arms in shirt sleeves because they’re sweat glands were destroyed and they get really overheated. So yeah, sick burn by god that you have a wonk eye and are “short” – hey why don’t you find a wonky eyed girl and live happily ever after?
Besides for schooling the occasional asshole, my sister and her friend rock their scars. Get over yourself.
Hugo Schwyzer doesn’t hit close to home, I just hate him for a really nebulous reason. He’s a slimy warm melted rotten meat that talks in code. He’s also a man, which makes it worse.
It’s true that a lot of women are afraid of men because of sexual violence perpetrated by men. But the percentage of men who perpetrate this violence is actually quite small! The VAST VAST majority of men do not commit sexual violence.But if, say, 5% of men and 1% of women commit sexual violence that’s still 400% more men committing sexual violence and it makes it look like it’s a problem with men. (I made those numbers up BTW). Acknowledging this is not “flagellating himself for having a penis”.
…annnd it looks like the moment of hope is over. Guess MRAL doesn’t like us thinking too kindly of him for too long.
Oh, well. At least this lets us talk about something useful.
“Apparently Hugo Schwyzer hits very close to home.”
Not surprising. Schwyzer is an example of a man who doesn’t make excuses for himself. He takes responsibility for the things he’s done and tries to be a better person. I guess that comes off as “misandry” to arrogant smug privileged lazy little shits like the one we’re dealing with right now.
Schwyzer explicitly apologized at the very beginning of the video for being a man and talking. That was actually the worst part.
Hippodema’s idea of a good man is apparently someone who constantly flagellates himself in shame, treats women as the superior gender, and loves to talk about how men are responsible for everything in the history of the world (AND THAT MEANS YOU). I hope to God he never has a son, because that kid would probably kill himself out of self-loathing.
I do think it was hyperbolic though to say that the number of women committing sexual violence against men is a tiny tiny number. That’s pretty dismissive of some real victims with real traumatic experiences. Just because it happens less often doesn’t mean it isn’t just as traumatic when it does. But I don’t think that entirely ruins his message.
He doesn’t apologize, he says that it’s difficult to stand up there as a man after hearing accounts of violence by men. He’s not saying that’s because he’s ashamed of his gender, but because he’s ashamed of those members of his gender.
It’s like being German and going up at a Holocaust Remembrance Day meeting. You’re not calling yourself a Nazi, but you have to make some acknowledgement that you have something in common with them and that should make you uncomfortable–not because you’re a Nazi but because you aren’t.
Uh, saying “it is very difficult to stand up here as a man” is NOT AN APOLOGY! It’s just an acknowledgment of how he feels.
Ok… comparing men and women to Germans and Jews is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, not least because women are the privileged class, by and large.
Holly said it better than me 🙂 Maybe I should just give up on this thread and go do actual work 🙂
Actually, normally that post would really really really really really piss me off but Holly is unusually nice for a feminist, so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.
Oh but Jews are also a privileged class! Aren’t they all rich bankers? (joke!)
See? This is why I don’t give a shit about his pain. Let him go back to whining about everything in his miserable freakish life.
Jews were not privileged in Nazi Germany, guy. Maybe you should get some understanding of context and also consider revisiting sophomore English.