Here it is! My final final FINAL Time Studio project! The assignment was to do anything we wanted so I did an experimental piece. I combined three songs and some video clips that have been altered (in color, speed, exposure, etc) into this video-collage. There is not a story line so don't try to figure it out. Hopefully the clips don't seem 100% random but I realize there is no narrative holding them together. Time Studio has been a pretty fun class; I enjoyed experimenting with video, audio, and animation. After my Surface Research final project and critique, my year in Art Foundation will be over and I will be off to the land of full-time photography!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPnKKaAVsV8
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Business of Being Born in America
Today I finished my final paper for Focused Inquiry, a required freshman university research class. Even though writing is not a visual art, it is an art form. In case anyone is interested, I'm posting my paper here. Feel free to read or not read it. Sorry for any formatting issues that might show up in the post!
The Business of Being Born. Dir. Abby Epstein." 2008, Film.
The Business of Being Born in America
By Zoë Dehmer
In America, birth is no longer just a matter of sustaining the human population but rather a business from which the media and healthcare systems profit. When researching the relationship between maternity in America and the media’s portrayal of women, I found plenty of evidence that women are influenced not only by the media, but also by hospitals and our patriarchal aspects of our culture. These sources create a narrative that women are incapable of giving birth naturally, and women “buy” it. Yet, for thousands of years women have been giving birth without the aid of drugs or resorting to surgical delivery (cesarean section) instead of natural childbirth. While some high-risk deliveries put women at risk of death in childbirth where few medical services are available, there appears to be a growing trend, where the health care system has manipulated women into believing they cannot give birth without the use of drugs or highly medicalized interventions—even when they are not “high risk.” The media has simply skewed our idea of birth; women are considered to be helpless victims and labor an emergency, a situation from which they can only be saved by trained professionals and sedative drugs. One article even claimed that this portrayal of weak women is in fact an endorsement of the hospital as a site for “the production and reproduction of patriarchal and capitalist power” (Mardorossian). Several factors contribute to this demeaning presentation of women: entertainment media, modern hospital procedure and health care companies, and America’s patriarchal tendencies as a society. A mother’s choice to give birth naturally without these interventions should be communicated in a way to counteract these misconceptions.
In the entertainment business, drama sells. In an effort to hype the drama of giving birth, in many television shows and movies, women in labor are shown screaming, being rushed to the hospital, and needing sedative drugs to aid in the birthing process. Although emergencies can occur during childbirth, this commonly found scene is not an accurate portrayal of the majority of births.
Many women learn about the process or prepare themselves for birthing a child through such portrayals. The disparity between the representations of pregnancy and labor in the entertainment business and the actual experience fosters an unrealistic expectation for expecting mothers. Repeatedly viewing birth as a frantic emergency can influence womens’ overall attitude toward childbirth and promote fear and convey womens’ inability to perform the task. Yet as Morris points out, “women’s bodies were designed for the job; we need not think ourselves incapable” (Morris).
Our society views pregnancy as entertainment, and as such, heightens the drama of the experience to hook viewers. Many shows, like “16 and Pregnant,” for example, are dedicated specifically to the issues surrounding maternity such as parenthood, the costs (emotional and monetary) of having a child, and the challenges of being a teen mother (16 and Pregnant). The show follows the stories of teenage girls that are dealing with the hardships of being pregnant in high school. To squeeze an entire pregnancy into a short episode of a television show, only the most dramatic highlights are shown.
What’s more, in movies when there are scenes of giving birth, the mother is almost always shown being wheeled into the emergency room screaming and in a panic. Scenes like this tell mothers-to-be that labor is dramatic and high-stress. The effect of repeating this image conditions Americans to believe that giving birth is a medical emergency.
Television is not the sole factor to blame for our acceptance of the mistaken notion that women are incapable of natural childbirth. Hospitals and the healthcare system both strongly encourage unnatural, drug-assisted labor. In an analysis of reality television programs in the United States, Theresa Morris, Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology at Trinity College, cited that “although the shows we analyzed are not marketed as focusing on problems occurring in pregnancy and birth, the episodes still presented birth as unpredictable and potentially dangerous and women’s bodies as inferior and unreliable” (Morris). Presentation of childbirth in such a way could make soon-to-be mothers fearful of the process and more likely to give up and ask for a Cesarean section. In many of the episodes, “negative consequences of induction were not discussed; rather, induction was portrayed as a natural way to begin the labor process” (Morris). This approach seems regressive. Intervention should only take place in emergencies, not as a preventative for an emergency. The explanation for this backward approach to childbirth cannot be solely blamed on dramatized entertainment media however. Some research indicates that a good portion of the fault belongs to the patriarchal tendencies in American society.
In hospitals in the U.S., if the father of a baby is present in the mother’s life, he is generally expected to be there for the birth. Most recently, the father’s role has switched from being just a bystander in the birthing process to having a key role in coaching and encouraging the mother during delivery. Associate Professor and Associate Chair Carine Mardorossian at the University of Buffalo argues that “this model’s widespread popularity testifies less to the culture’s endorsement of a woman-centered approach than to the healthcare’s appropriation of “natural” childbirth as a site for the production and reproduction of patriarchal and capitalist power” (Mardorossian).
Hospitals are not blamed for this problem of mothers rarely giving fully natural birth because they (rhetorically only) put the power in the hands of the man in the relationship. In reality, hospitals’ main objective is to get mothers out of the room quickly and painlessly. The “natural” birth they say they encourage does not in reality match how nurses and doctors are taught to perform in the emergency room. “By integrating men as coaches in the labor room, the responsibility for the failure of the natural childbirth model is shifted onto the couple, thus effectively obscuring the ways in which the highly clinical and profit-driven environment of the hospital is implicated in such a failure. Because power is rhetorically and performatively located in the husband’s masculinity, it eclipses the power of institutionalized delivery as hospitals rush through birthing practices to save and make more money” (Mardorossian).
Rather than putting the man in the relationship in charge, Mardorossian promotes the practice of having a doula with you to encourage and inform throughout the pregnancy, rather than relying on the far less experienced and knowledgeable man in the relationship. A doula, today, refers to a woman trained to provide emotional, physical, and informational support before, during, and after a mother gives birth. Evidence regarding the effectiveness of having a trained doula during childbirth and post-birth shows that emotional and physical support significantly shortens labor and decreases the need for cesarean section deliveries. Additionally, women who were supported by a doula rated their pregnancy as less painful and difficult than their unsupported counterparts. Benefits of having a doula include lower anxiety, positive feelings about the birth experience, and increased rates of breastfeeding initiation. Post-birth benefits include decreased symptoms of depression, improved self-esteem, and increased sensitivity of the mother to her child’s needs.
Research shows that continuous support from a doula reduced the need for cesarean sections by 51% and shortened the duration of labor by an average of 98 minutes. Since the support of a doula is not only beneficial for the baby’s safety and health during birth, but also the physical and emotional wellbeing of the mother during all stages of the pregnancy, I question why doulas are not a required member in the birthing process in the American healthcare and hospital system.
The reasoning behind it is concerning. Numerous articles I found stated that the increasing number of cesarean sections performed in hospitals these days is not for medical reasons, or reasons due to necessary emergency, but rather as a tool for profit for medical institutions. Hospital administrators and healthcare providers are “under intense pressure to raise profits and improve efficiency, and because elective cesareans can be more cost-effective than labor and vaginal birth, they may be attractive” (Catalinotto). In effect, even if the mother has every intention of having a natural birth, the doctor strongly encourages drug-induced labor or cesarean section. “Medical decisions are being made for monetary and legal reasons, not because they are good for the mother and the baby” (The Business).
Modern technological advancements are intended to render medical emergency less severe. Research and development of medicines and tools saves lives everyday. America’s medical patients with financial needs stand among the most privileged in the world in terms of access to doctors, technology, medicine, and safe, trustworthy practice. Even so, the United States has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world (The Business). It is when companies sacrifice the wellbeing of the patients for financial prosperity, and the hospital care system becomes a business first that they must be challenged. Surgery should be a last resort, not the product of having frightened mothers into asking for it unnecessarily.
Reproduction is our human nature. I hesitate to examine why this most basic, important function has been established as a business practice in America. The business of being born can seem to trump the wellbeing of mother and child during this most crucial bonding stage of their relationship. Machines are replacing the most powerful gift a woman has by nature. Have we strayed so far from our human nature as to trust technology over our innate, ultimate power of giving life? “There is so little understanding of how incredibly important this process [of giving birth] is to a woman” (The Business). When a woman loses her most precious gift- the power to give birth- what can she do? “There’s something going wrong in the nature of care in the United States that’s troublesome. Women, [have] been told for years now that they’re not responsible for their own birth process” (The Business).
Works Cited
"16 and Pregnant (Season 2) Ashley." 16 and Pregnant. MTV. New York, NY, 21 Dec. 2010. Television.
"16 and Pregnant (Season 2) Valerie." 16 and Pregnant. MTV. New York, NY, 21 Dec. 2010. Television.
Catalinotto, Ellen. "Medically Unnecessary Cesarean Section." American Journal of Nursing 107.7 (2007): 13. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.
Mardorossian, Carine M. "Laboring Women, Coaching Men: Masculinity and Childbirth Education in the Contemporary United States." Hypatia 18.3 (2003): 113. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Mar. 2011.
Morris, T. and McInerney, K. (2010), Media Representations of Pregnancy and Childbirth: An Analysis of Reality Television Programs in the United States. Birth, 37:134–140. doi:10.1111/j.1523-536X.2010.00393.x
Scott, Kathryn D., Phyllis H. Klaus, and Marshall H. Klaus. "The Obstetrical and Postpartum Benefits of Continuous Support during Childbirth." Journal of Women's Health & Gender-Based Medicine 8.10 (1999): 1257. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.
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