My partner and I started watching the series “Your Honor” a week or so ago. We love us some Bryan Cranston.
And we loved the first season. A bit excessive with the gore, maybe, but that Cranston is really something.
And then a baby became part of the plot between the first and second seasons.
When he first showed up, we were thrilled, being lovers of babies in general. We squealed with delight when his little face was captured on camera for the first time.
In subsequent episodes this baby appeared infrequently, always swaddled entirely in a blanket and cradled prone in someone’s arms like a newborn despite being the size of the average six-month-old.
Cooing and ga-ga noises or crying occasionally could be heard, to which characters responded half-heartedly. But this poor babe never got unfolded from his blankies for tummy time or to sit up or wave his limbs about. He was never actually interacted or attuned with.
When the baby’s mama was featured in a scene, this baby was rarely present. It was always in another room lying down in a crib, or just somewhere else.
“Where is the baby?” my partner and I kept asking each other.
One scene did feature mother and baby together in a park, but guess where the baby was?
Stuffed in a car seat.
“GET THAT BABY OUT ONTO THE BLANKET SO HE CAN WAVE HIS LIMBS AROUND AND LOOK UP AT THE TREES AND THE SKY!” I yelled at the screen, and my partner agreed, and the show was just not any good for either of us anymore.
In one excessively cringy scene, the baby’s grandmother held him and the mother leaned down and touched the side of the baby’s head with one finger.
“You have a mother’s instincts,” said the grandmother.
Excuse me?
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Depictions of childbirth on TV and in film are also wildly off-base, for the most part. Have you ever seen a woman push a placenta out of her body on TV? Of course not. So most people don’t even know that is a thing unless they have to do it themselves.
(And placentas…don’t even get me started. I LOVE them. They are possibly the most unsung organ. And most people don’t know they exist.)
Breastfeeding? The horror ride of postpartum hormones? The truth of parenting an infant? Can we have more than just a stereotyped nod at what is arguably the MOST IMPORTANT RELATIONAL PERIOD any of us experiences in our lifetimes, to what shapes us for our entire time on this planet?
The way motherhood and babyhood are depicted matters.
What shows up in the media we consume shapes how we live, what we expect, who we become.
That’s just the truth of our age.
I’m imagining scads of experts contribute to the creation of shows like “Your Honor” to make sure the trial stuff, law enforcement stuff, medical stuff, and so on are at least somewhat true to life.
Where are the highly paid experts ensuring that motherhood and babyhood are depicted with the same level of respect and caring?
I’m asking our friends in Hollywood to start showing the real deal here.
If we can depict violence and sex with such vivid detail and concern for veracity, well by golly, we can depict motherhood and babyhood and parenthood in the same way.
Golly, if that were to happen…imagine it.
It might affect the way the whole plot of the show or movie runs.
And…media plays a big role in normalizing that which makes us uncomfortable in life in general, yes?
So this could translate to an opening-up of the way we see motherhood, babyhood and so on in the larger cultural melting pot that is the Western world.
If a baby and mother were more than a prop or plot device, if their natural states, needs, and expressions were actually integrated into the thing as a whole…well…perhaps it would have to be a different kind of thing altogether.
And that might be good for all of us.