Earlier this afternoon, as Jess & I sat watching a Kerrywoman pull a plastic baby out of a woolen womb, a single A4 sheet was passed around our ante-natal classroom. Atop the page were the words "Positions for Labour - First Stage". Beneath this heading - a series of "Emergency Art" style line drawings showing women in various stages of undress and distress.
The handout was, one presumes, intended to be educational, helpful and instructive. My reaction? Stifled laughter and bawdy, Carry On style snorting…
I know, I know…it's embarrassingly immature and all that, but there's something about attending a class - any class - that makes me revert to the sniggering, elbow-nudging days of secondary school. In my defence, could any man Jack (or woman Jill) among you gaze upon the below (in such circumstances) and not laugh?
I mean, look at yer man's face! There's something about his delighted grin (and his disturbing hair) that makes him seem less like a loving partner and more like a perverted opportunist.
Then there's the revelation that one's loved one will, during those trying early stages of labour, look upon her piles of ironing and despair.
I can't say I blame her. I've often felt like this at eight in the morning when I realise that all of my shirts are unwearably creased. It's at such times that life reveals itself to be little more than a vile and scarcely endurable vale of tears.
Faced with the reality of this cold and cruel universe (and the onset of crippling pain) it's little wonder that so many expectant mothers fling themselves at the ethereal feet of the labour goddesses.
Such supplication may not yield any miraculous results, but your pelvic floor will (I believe) thank you.
And finally, there's this (my favourite) - an image simultaneously moving, hilarious and tragic.
Sitting astride a plastic chair and weeping while trickles of (what I imagine to be) luke warm water dribble down on you. A more perfect (and Beckettian) picture of life's quotidian miserableness you couldn't hope to find.
Like I said - funny stuff.
Is that a pillow below the woman’s foot in the first picture or is her husbands casually discarded pants?
Whats most disturbing about these is that the crudeness of the drawings makes it very difficult to tell if the characters are wearing any clothes. Although her husband does seem to be wearing an incredibly long tie?
November 18th, 2008 at 2:12 am“Is that an incredibly long tie or are you just pleased to see me?”
My favourite part of the class wasn’t the drawings handed out to us (though they are clearly hilarious), it was when the mid-wife glanced round the room looking confused before asking “where’s my after-birth?”
November 18th, 2008 at 10:32 amWhen I first glanced at Pic 1, I thought the couple might have been engaged in the very thing that got them pregnant in the first place.
“Sitting astride a plastic chair and weeping while trickles of (what I imagine to be) luke warm water dribble down on you. A more perfect (and Beckettian) picture of life’s quotidian miserableness you couldn’t hope to find.”
Except this is a positive thing, because if you DO have some “lukewarm water dribble down on you”, it’s most likely your waters breaking and you’re well on the way to getting it all over with it.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:27 pmChimp, Wearing a tie without shoes, and possibly without pants, is never a good look - though I do like how you assume that the creepy looking character is her “husband”. Maybe that’s why she looks so distressed.
“How could I marry someone with such a long tie…and no pants?”
Forgot about that. Not something you hear asked every day. I think she’d left it on the counter beside the Club orange and Custard Creams.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:29 pmReally? It’s a brave new world and I have much to learn. Hopefully most of it will be equally amusing - on a juvenile, (phnarr) Benny Hill level.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:32 pmAmusing is definitely not a word I’d associate with labour!
Unless you can snaffle some of the gas for yourself and get high and giggly?
November 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pmMaybe not, but it certainly seems to produce entertaining art!
P.S: The demonstration wool womb was quite fetching. Would have made a nice hat.
November 18th, 2008 at 3:25 pmDon’t they look like excerpts from a wordless comic on domestic hardship?
November 18th, 2008 at 9:26 pmPic 1: Brutish, drunken husband forces heavily pregnant wife to pleasure him.
Pic 2: Brutish, drunken husband stumbles off to pub, leaving heavily pregnant wife to do the ironing. (What kind of caveman, in this day and age, makes his partner do piles of ironing when she could go into labour at any moment?)
Pic 3: Heavily pregnant wife is thrown into despair. Note the absence of persons or things which could comfort her.
Pic 4: [Missing] Heavily pregnant wife lies in wait for returning brutish, drunken husband, with murder on her mind…
Pic 5: After savagely murdering brutish husband by strangling him with his unfeasibly long tie, heavily pregnant wife washes off the guilt in shower.
So that’s what Enda Kenny does during the Dail recess… posing as a ’supportive partner’ to labour.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:32 pmThey certainly do, and your excellent panel descriptions paint a bleak (though grimly hilarious) picture. I might pitch this to a small press. Spare black & white art, a story about domestic abuse - bound to be a Christmas bestseller.
There’s punning wordplay here to beat the band. Labour (obviously). Recess (filthily).
Why do I find it all too easy to imagine Enda K in just such a rear supporting position?
November 19th, 2008 at 3:27 pmGlad I tickled your funny bone with the puntastic comment.
As for the domestic abuse graphic novella, a definite must-see in the ‘Misery Lit’ section in Easons…and totally in keeping with the cultural waste recycling theme o’ this here blog.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:08 pmfor me, F., the big news on this post is that you’re going to be a father !!
obviously, you’ll be playing with toys for many years to come
(maybe you’re already a father, are you?)
November 20th, 2008 at 9:00 pmdid i miss the ‘big announcement’ post? (oops - looks like it was over on kind-i-like.com and i must have!)
well, big big congrats to you two! i hope jess is feeling well. it looks like it’s blogger reproducing season as we’re also expecting early next year (mid january). maybe we should get a word in with damien to get a creche sorted for the next awards?
November 21st, 2008 at 12:29 amcongrats, Caitriona
Long live the human genome !!!
(I just looked at your site, C., you have a wonderful eye for color,
IRA in new york city)
and I also visited kind-I-like.com
November 21st, 2008 at 12:43 amaha! February! that’s good, lots of cold evenings in front of a toasty fireplace, holding a newborn on your lap
Let me pass my congratulations on here, as well. Gwan, Fústar! Gwan, Jess!
The title of this post reminded me of Human League’s “Dignity of Labor,” but there’s clearly none of that to be found crying in the shower. That picture’s a dose of some grim reality, like Frank Miller’s Childbirth or something.
November 21st, 2008 at 1:34 amCongrats, Caitriona! Along with Sinead and the McGarrs we’re definitely producing the next generation of bloggers.
Thanks Niall!
November 21st, 2008 at 10:11 amira, Not a father already. My first time. Very exciting. Particularly because, as you say, I get many more years of justifiably buying and playing with toys. My little fella/girl will be surrounded by the finest merchandise 2 Euro shops can provide.
caitriona, This, I suppose, is what passes for my “big anouncement” post! Many congrats to the pair of ye. Great minds and all that…
Niall, If it were Frank Miller’s Chilbirth then the expectant mother would (after being brutalised by lowlifes and junkies) have become a ruthless vigilante killing machine. Here she’s pictured washing off the blood of another night on the prowl through the scum-filled streets.
A reactionary classic.
November 21st, 2008 at 1:22 pmFustar, I need to warn you, that there is a possibility (god forbid!) that your child will not appreciate TOYS — and may not even (god forbid!) appreciate your literary WIT.
November 21st, 2008 at 6:32 pmChildren often are temperamentally opposite from their parents (though the fústarian hyper-activity gene, especially in your family’s males, seems to be dominant and may have already won a fierce zygotal battle!)
Might I also offer my congratulations on the imminent arrival of Fustar Jr (or Jess Jr) and my apologies for not doing so sooner. I have a good excuse: I had my sanity shattered as a result of watching David Lynch’s Inland Empire after a marathon ten-hour painting session, and I’m only just returning to (relative) normality now. (By the way, the previous post’s photo of a child being traumatised by Xmas tyrant Santa is absolutely hilarious!)
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:04 pmand F.,
anytime you need some advice, just give a holler to Ol’ Granpa Lynch
http://oldgrandpa.com/catalog/images/3-digit%2007%20old%20grandpa.jpg
right now, you and Jess are probably considering about 1001 alphabetic names,
BUT please don’t forget that it’s very important for a new baby to also have a numerologic name (that is, a sacred number that is part of its subjective identity for life )
for my own kids, I chose five-digit primes, though if I were doing it again, I think I might’ve gone with just a single-digit (and given them the same one)
my father gave me a numerologic that is an exponential of 10
(he was very much a mid-20th C. scientist type) — it’s obviously very powerful in terms of force, but doesn’t offer me much flexibility
remember, you don’t have to stick to base 10 number systems (though binary has perhaps been over-used)
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 pmYep!! You’ve lit up my paternal instinct !!
Are you ready for girl toys ????
http://cdn.nextsmallthings.com/coolchaser.com/image-7329266.jpg
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:27 pmAs my own father always says, “Nothing as vexing as a numerologically inflexible exponential of 10″.
‘Tis true for him.
Inland Empire is the Lynch film that separates the men/women from the boys/girls. It’s seriously hard core.
If someone mentions to me that they hated Lost Highway or Mulholland Dr I cheerily tell ‘em “Wait till you see Inland Empire! It’ll melt your head”.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 pmI neglected to say that, after watching Inland Empire once, I was compelled to sit down and watch it again on the following night. It is an astonishing film on so many levels, and I’d love to see a double bill of it and Mulholland Drive on a really big screen. (I wasn’t as impressed with Lost Highway; it was intriguing, as all Lynch films are, but I found it cold and uninvolving). On a related note, I don’t understand why people say Mulholland Drive is so confusing and hard to follow; I found it quite easy to follow on a basic, narrative level, although there’s lots of strange things bubbling away under the surface, while Inland Empire is genuinely mysterious (and it’s a tribute to Lynch’s skill that such a difficult and hermetic film could be so mesmerising). I’m off now to watch a copy of Carnival of Souls that I picked up in Waterford for €2. Perhaps with some damn fine coffee, and a slice of cherry pie…
November 24th, 2008 at 8:22 pmI love Lost Highway, but I can see why it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste. It shouldn’t work, it should feel disjointed and indulgent, but somehow it holds itself together in the face of forces that might tear it apart. In the hands of a lesser film-maker it would have, to put it simply, sucked balls.
I don’t mind confusion in the face of Mulholland Dr (or any of Lynch’s films) but I can’t stand the attitude (and it does exist) that implies Lynch is some kind of “make it up as you go along”, pretentious, pseudo, chancer - laughing his way to the bank as po-faced “art house” lovers kneel in worship.
There are (need it be said?) hundreds of earnest, pretentious, self-satisfied directors/writers out there (Sundance anyone?) who serve up curry chips and call it…er…foie gras, but Lynch is about as far removed from their company as Hitchcock is from Michael Bay. He’s the real deal. A real artist. A real film-maker. And I’ll bate the head off anyone who says differently!
Having said all that he’s not without his faults. I think Wild at Heart is hugely overrated and the closest he comes to being a poor man’s version of himself. It has saving graces of course - the most notable being the astonishing Laura Dern, one of Hollywood’s most under-appreciated actors. She’s well overdue a Jeff Bridges style reappraisal.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:17 amI agree whole-heartedly (and not just to spare my head a battering from your Fists of Fury)…
November 25th, 2008 at 8:14 pmMy only objection to Lost Highway is that it lacks, I feel, the emotional resonances which make the other two films so powerful. I’m not sure that I care enough (or at all) about any of the characters to really get drawn into the mystery, so it remains a little unsatisfying for me.
Tell me truly, though: in your august opinion, is Fire Walk With Me worth bothering with, especially as I haven’t seen any episode of Twin Peaks in nearly two decades?
If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend Carnival of Souls. One of the odder films of the sixties, and a must for any Lynch fan (he must have been influenced by it!)