Where Are My Children?
Nov. 9th, 2018 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI really wanted to like Lois Weber’s films, because she was so famous in her own era and so unjustly forgotten now. But except for the short film “Suspense” I’ve found her films exactly as treacly and moralistic as her detractors claim - which means exactly as treacly and moralistic as D. W. Griffiths’ work, although to give Weber credit, while I don’t always agree with the morals in her movies, none of them are as jaw-droppingly awful as “The Ku Klux Klan was a great idea!”
Where Are My Children? is described as being about birth control, but you have to go into it with the understanding that the Progressive Era understanding of birth control is different from the modern understanding: it was closely tied with eugenics (indeed, our hero District Attorney Richard Walton comes from a family that feels such an interest in eugenics that his sister contracted a “eugenic marriage”) and much more about controlling birth on a general societal level than about an individual woman’s ability to control whether or not she gets pregnant/gives birth.
Therefore, the movie is quite concerned that the wrong people are getting pregnant (including the daughter of Walton’s housekeeper, impregnated by his wife’s cad of a brother, who dies in a botched abortion) while the right people, such as Walton’s wife - clearly cut from the same caddish cloth as her brother! - are not getting pregnant.
Or rather, are not having babies. As Walton discovers when he prosecutes Dr. Malfit (you’ve got to love these Dickensianly fitting names: Malfit for the bad doctor, Homer for the crusading distributor of birth control/eugenics information. Home/r. Get it?), his own wife has repeatedly utilized Malfit’s services.
Thus, the scene where Walton thunders to his wife, “Where are my children?” Even if you’re not on board with the social message, it’s a moment of heart-stopping drama.
But generally I’m not on board with Weber’s social messages, and it’s tiresome enough to be moralized at even when you do agree. But I feel bad giving up on Weber when I’ve only seen two of her films, and she is such an important and neglected part of film history…
Well, if I get the chance to see another Weber in theaters, I’ll definitely do it. (Especially if it’s got a live accompaniment. I love it when silent films have an accompaniment - forever sad that I didn’t see the full orchestra Nosferatu when I had the chance.) But I don’t think I’ll seek out any of her other films for casual consumption.
Where Are My Children? is described as being about birth control, but you have to go into it with the understanding that the Progressive Era understanding of birth control is different from the modern understanding: it was closely tied with eugenics (indeed, our hero District Attorney Richard Walton comes from a family that feels such an interest in eugenics that his sister contracted a “eugenic marriage”) and much more about controlling birth on a general societal level than about an individual woman’s ability to control whether or not she gets pregnant/gives birth.
Therefore, the movie is quite concerned that the wrong people are getting pregnant (including the daughter of Walton’s housekeeper, impregnated by his wife’s cad of a brother, who dies in a botched abortion) while the right people, such as Walton’s wife - clearly cut from the same caddish cloth as her brother! - are not getting pregnant.
Or rather, are not having babies. As Walton discovers when he prosecutes Dr. Malfit (you’ve got to love these Dickensianly fitting names: Malfit for the bad doctor, Homer for the crusading distributor of birth control/eugenics information. Home/r. Get it?), his own wife has repeatedly utilized Malfit’s services.
Thus, the scene where Walton thunders to his wife, “Where are my children?” Even if you’re not on board with the social message, it’s a moment of heart-stopping drama.
But generally I’m not on board with Weber’s social messages, and it’s tiresome enough to be moralized at even when you do agree. But I feel bad giving up on Weber when I’ve only seen two of her films, and she is such an important and neglected part of film history…
Well, if I get the chance to see another Weber in theaters, I’ll definitely do it. (Especially if it’s got a live accompaniment. I love it when silent films have an accompaniment - forever sad that I didn’t see the full orchestra Nosferatu when I had the chance.) But I don’t think I’ll seek out any of her other films for casual consumption.
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Date: 2018-11-10 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-10 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-10 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 03:20 pm (UTC)I did see one Weber film that I liked: her short film Suspense is still suspenseful, and pioneers a lot of the techniques that filmmakers still use today to build up narrative tension.