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.
Wait, she’s Hitler for mentioning strap-ons?
*brain explodes*
For what it’s worth, I kinda envy penises, but not in a resentful way. I just think they’re nifty. I think what I’ve got is nifty too.
I do, as I said, think ciswomen should have less of a say in things like circumcision and male health issues.
I just don’t think a woman’s pregnancy is a male health issue. (And neither is war or politics; not only can women participated in these male-dominated arenas, lots of them do.)
Women are better than men at making new human beings, it’s true.
Keep working on that artificial uterus and perhaps someday men will be able to achieve true equality with women.
Dude, uterus envy is totally a real thing. Not in that everyone has it. But I know people who don’t have them who would do anything to bear a child. Seriously. It makes me so sad that they can’t.
And I would love a detachable cock. So I bought myself one! Not as good as the real thing, I suppose, but it suits me and my lovers well.
See, here’s the problem with the MRA movement and attached misogynists.
Someone surmises (somewhat accurately) that womb envy explains some of the positions taken in this thread.
MRAL immediately assumes that the poster is saying that all men suffer from womb envy, and this means that all feminists think that all men suffer from womb envy, and is therefore misandrist. Because it’s easier to jump to those conclusions and be a Glen Beck-style reactionary than actually think about what was actually said.
Some men probably do have womb envy, and some women probably do have penis envy. But I think in both cases, they should just get the fuck over it and be content with the bodies they have.
By that logic, men are better than women at pretty much everything else, it’s true.
Man, I wish I could donate my uterus to someone. I have no desire to make use of it, and I know quite a few people who would love to.
“By that logic, men are better than women at pretty much everything else, it’s true.”
Please explain?
Hitler and strap-ons go so well together.
Cis men are better at making sperm than cis women are. Other than that, anything goes.
Sally says men are better than women at making children, but that’s only because men cannot. If you’re going by that logic, all the things women were barred from doing in the ancient past (when society really was patriarchal), was simply because men were better.
I would hate to get pregnant, don’t envy the uterus, thus Sally’s misandry is exposed.
Credit where credit is due: I’m glad that MRAL is willing to re-think his stance on “choice 4 men.”
You may now return to mocking him at your leisure.
MRAL lives in a strange country where all schools, universities, businesses, and civic institutions have doors that only open if your stick your penis in a special penis-recognition device. It’s like retina scanning. Also, every single piece of heavy machinery and every vehicle, and every computer has a similar penis-recognition device attached to it. So, if you don’t have a penis, you are incapable of going to school, working, running for office, driving a car, joining the army, or doing anything except having babies. Oh yeah, and cooking.
I still think the mother is irrelevant in the Choice 4 Men situation, it’s sure as FUCK not for her. It’s for the child, imo.
Basically, kids, Sally is making a distinction without a difference.
You’re conflating two meanings of “cannot”: there’s “incapable of” and there’s “not allowed to.” You’re asserting that women didn’t do a lot of things in the past because they were incapable. But nowadays, they do do those things! Two explanations:
1. Women have undergone a super-super accelerated evolutionary process that has radically expanded their capacity for abstract reasoning and various kinds of intelligences, while men have stayed more or less at the same level
2. Women were always ABLE to do those things but didn’t because they were not allowed to
I know which explanation seems more plausible to me. You have an alternative explanation, MRAL? Let’s hear it.
“Do [you] believe penis envy exists?”
I devoutly believe penis envy exists. I’m like Woody Allen. I believe (devoutly) that penis envy exists among men.
“Sally says men are better than women at making children, but that’s only because men cannot. If you’re going by that logic, all the things women were barred from doing in the ancient past (when society really was patriarchal), was simply because men were better.”
Okay, having a little trouble following the conversation now – MRAI, what things are men better at then women (other than making sperm and possibly building muscle mass)?
“I would hate to get pregnant, don’t envy the uterus, thus Sally’s misandry is exposed.”
Did Sally specifically say you had uterus envy, or that all men had it? I must have missed that.
distinction without a difference. you got no experience, you got no experience.
The frustrating part in this whole Choice 4 Men thing is that no one’s even questioning that it’s the mother’s place to do 100% of the diaper changes, midnight feedings, trips to the playground, supplying and preparing the kid for school, choosing between working part-time and getting childcare, shopping and cooking for two, etc…
The only question is whether the man writes a check once a month or not.
Womb envy is like state sponsored eugenics? What on earth?
Never mind. I can’t even deal with that foolishness, right now.
I also struggle with the concept of the “paper abortion.” I agree that it’s completely disingenuous to conflate terminating a pregnancy with raising a child. I think it provides the illusion of equity in a situation where total equity simply cannot be achieved. Reproduction is asymmetrical.
And I know women who essentially are or have been in this predicament. They found themselves pregnant unexpectedly, told their partner and were told that if they decided to have the baby they’d be on their own. Certainly, women have legal recourse in this situation, but not all women pursue it. They chose, fairly early on in their pregnancy to carry to term and raise a child despite the biological father making it clear that he didn’t want to be involved.
I also know women who received child support payments in a regular and timely fashion but whose children received no emotional support from their fathers. The children still felt abandoned. Rulings about child support cannot require a man to provide emotional support to a child. Don’t misunderstand me, I believe that most men love their children dearly and, in the event of a separation from the mother of their children will do their best to provide financial and emotional support to their child/children. But courts cannot and do not order fathers to actively parent. How would it be enforced?
I still think the mother is irrelevant in the Choice 4 Men situation, it’s sure as FUCK not for her. It’s for the child, imo.
Because no man, ever, anywhere, ever cared about his partner enough to take her feelings, wishes and fears into consideration when contemplating what to do with an unplanned pregnancy.
Sally says men are better than women at making children, but that’s only because men cannot. If you’re going by that logic, all the things women were barred from doing in the ancient past (when society really was patriarchal), was simply because men were better.
Sorry, try harder. Your logic fails. Cismen are biologically incapable of getting pregnant and using their bodies to sustain a growing fetus. No matter how they work out, what inclinations they were born with, what career path they follow, a cisman living in today’s society or any society predating ours, is going to be physically incapable of sustaining a pregnancy. Cismen are not barred from getting pregnant by society, cismen are barred from getting pregnant because that’s the hand biology dealt them.
MRAL’s back already? That was a short three months.
I didn’t say that YOU personally suffer from uterus envy. But I have certainly encountered MRAs who exhibited strong signs of it. This dude named Mercurial Muse who used to pester people on Pharyngula whenever women’s issues came up springs to mind.
This doesn’t make sense. Are you saying that all you need is a little practice in gestating fetuses and you’ll get the hang of it?