BABIES—a documentary?
A few years ago I watched a french documentary, with almost no words, that chronicled five-ish babies over the course of the first year of life. It features predominately different cultures treating children in different ways, but also the kind of similarity from baby to baby.
At first horkheimer & adorno, I imagine, are almost fooled by the movie, the lack of dialogue and the straightforward style of everything makes them think that this may be accurate and healthy cinema.
But no!
Look at those carefully prepared camera angles! Think about all the cuts to all the cute or funny things babies do! This is just a derivation of the machine! Ordinary life repurposed into a "documentary" which actually promotes the classic themes of tantulus! This is no better than pornography. This simply promotes an idealized sense of procreation and a false positivism for today. Having babies won't solve anything, but now we believe that they might. But especially for parents, these are knowingly not the whole picture of baby-hood. Sure there's some breast feeding and one or two messes but by and large this is a distorted and not totally attainable picture. The only way to get "satisfied" is to come back for more which is also incomplete, and leaves you wanting.
In fact, the episodic style of each clip furthers the ability to re-watch and to feel as though you could endlessly desire more baby clips. It's like someone put high-quality youtube into a film. It does nothing but poorly re-iterate an idealization of your machined and alienated lifestyle! Marx 4 Life!
In a way you're right. The film (which I've seen) pretends to present global/cultural difference, but ends up saying that "people are people wherever you go" in sort of a Disneyesque fashion.
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