The Business of Being Born is an informative documentary about the natural birthing process, midwifery and the differences between a natural birth and a typical hospital birth. I have quite a few friends that have been choosing to have a natural birth instead of the traditional hospital birth and so this topic interested me. I really didn’t know too much about the topic before watching this and so I really appreciated the art cards used to state facts about both types of births and where and how they are used, etc. In addition, the film gave a brief history of natural birthing and its popularity in the early 1900s. It also talked about its rapid decrease in popularity and almost elimination by the mid 1950s which was actually due to the increase of doctors and their need for more work. This along with a series of historical photos were crucial to the film’s story because it validated the natural birthing process.
The filmmakers took a very educational approach with this documentary and they emphasized this in the beginning by cutting together a series of single question and answer clips with numerous women stating that they didn’t know about natural births. The producer’s point of view and her side of the story also helped convey the purpose and information to the audience because as an uneducated viewer I was able to connect with her learning experience. As she talked about how she learned and found out more about natural births, I did too.
By the time the credits rolled, I had learned a great deal of information about natural births which I believe was the purpose of this film, for educating viewers. However, I was not yet convinced of the idea. I think this could have been in part because the filmmaker had become pregnant during filming and decided to have a natural birth. However, she never seemed overly convinced of it and in the end had to have a traditional hospital birth due to complications with the baby.
I did not actually watch this film, but you brought up some interesting ideas. You say that the film describes how the number of natural births decreased in the 1950s because doctors needed more work. It is always interesting to me when trends like this are related to economic interests. I may have interpreted your statement wrong, but my expectation would have been that an increase in the reliability of medicine and technology surrounding hospital births would have caused a decrease in natural births. The fact that the film suggests that it also had to do with the economic needs of the doctors may have been a method used to persuade people to see natural births in a positive light. This suggests that the move away from natural births is not a result of the lack of reliability, which is the impression I have about natural births.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in that I, too feel like I learned a lot about natural births from this documentary. But to be honest, I don't think that the filmmaker's purpose was to solely educate her viewers. While I do feel like this was a large part of it, I think that the educational aspects of the film were either incidental, or necessary background information in order for her to more effectively push her agenda. All of the facts that she used, to me seemed like they were approaching the topic from an angle-- a very anti-hospital, pro-home birth, everybody-who-believes-that-hospitals-are-natural-is-an-ignorant-fool sort of angle. I will admit that it did open my eyes a little bit to the benefits of home births and some of the economical interests involved in hospital births. I only wish that they had provided a more objective argument and given the opposing opinion a chance to defend itself.
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