Monday, October 3, 2011

Killer Mama

The other day, yesterday in fact, we lit the woodstove for the first time and stayed inside like the two children in the Cat in the Hat and watched the rain. Of course there was laundry and cooking and homework and computer tasks and all that, but when it's pouring outside you do feel like you are just sitting looking. And it did pour, great grey poodles of it.

So when the ten year-old suggested a movie, we adults jumped to it and we all set off to see Spy Kids, even though on one site it had a dismal rating of three. Movies are great! Especially when it's wet and cold, and it's a matinee so you know you aren't spending thirty dollars, if you include a drink (what am I saying - a drink for two people for four dollars?). The warm smell of popcorn, everyone running in without their raingear on yet because it's still October, kids yelling, a young man with his older parents laughing and joking with the cashier. To the movies!

Spykids is about a step-mom who is actually a spy. The step-kids are having trouble with the blended family and ... don't want to spoil it for you. But the most hilarious scenes are at the very beginning, when spy-mom is beating the bad guys, seriously beating them - don't mess with the spy-mom. The thing is, though, that she's about to give birth to the blended baby - product of the new marriage.

This is a bizarre scene presents a beautiful sexy yummy-mummy, dressed in tight leather with belts and things, pregnant and actually in labor, beating off the bad guys with high-powered karate kicks. She says things like "I still have time"   kick, whirl ... "my contractions are still only three minutes apart"... jump, punch, kick, ..."was that my water breaking"?

She leaves the bad guys lying on the ground (kids' movie - they just fall down, no muss, no fuss) and hops into a conveniently waiting ambulance. Next scene, she is rushed into the hospital where she disappears into a room and all you can hear are terrible screams of absolute deathly pain, then whaaaa! A baby!

Oh, dear. I can't begin to unravel the cultural tangle that I observed yesterday in that movie house.I don't know why we are so interested in the image of beautiful women acting aggressively and why we try so hard to silence them in labor. Why don't most women say "My contractions are still only three minutes apart?" 

I do know, though, that I was laughing the loudest when I saw that lovely woman being physical, upright and downright active in labor.

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