The Business of Being Born

      The Business of Being Born is a documentary film produced by Ricki Lake and directed by Abby Epstein that exploits the institutionalized ideology that women are incapable of giving birth naturally.The film encourages natural births at home with the presence of a midwife while criticizing the glorification of giving birth by way of a Cesarean surgery. Some shocking statistics are given to you in the beginning of the film. "Midwives attend over 70% of births in Europe and Japan, in the Unites States they attend less than 8%" ("The Business of Being Born"). In a country where we claim to have the best of everything  the way we are treating women and welcome new life in the world is certainly far from the best. The purpose of the film is to influence and hopefully change your outlook on how American women birth.
Mainstream media instills fear in women with programs such as A Baby Story on cable television. As Bell Hooks says, “They have power over us and we have no power over them” (3). So much of our mainstream media uses fear to control how and what we think, including our news. In my opinion, this documentary was very successful as a piece of alternative media for multiple reasons. First and for most, it was able to persuade me and influence how I want to deliver my baby in the future. I have seen A Baby Story before so I am able to say first hand that the series portrays birthing as a traumatic, painful, and unbearable experience. The Business of Being Born not only gives you a more truthful and honest description of the birthing experience but also provides alternative solutions such as a midwife or doula. They also provided numerous excerpts of interviews with scientists and psychologists that show both sides of the argument which is helpful in allowing the audience to decide for themselves which is better. Second, they exploit the many problems with a hospitalized birth. The educational cartoon in the film explains that the various drugs that are given to the mother are completely unnecessary and are only given to speed up the natural process to open up hospital beds for other patients...which means more of this:

In the Zimmerman reading she says, “a major problem,even today, is convincing men that films by and about women are important" (265) but when it comes to the topic of childbirth mainstream media has managed to convince women themselves that they are unimportant. One mother in the film says, "It's done. It's surgery...1, 2, 3." Celebrities such as Victoria Beckham scheduled her Cesarean surgeries around her husband's soccer games. The glorified version of Cesareans in the media is the root of the issue at hand. It is stripping the importance, emotion, and delicacy of birth away and women are being denied the opportunity to have the initial bonding moment with their newborn baby. The documentary describes the natural birthing process as a "natural high" from a concoction of hormones that is released ONLY through a drug free birth process.
 The whole documentary is constructed around the role of gender, specifically women. It is rare in our society to see an example of media that is not constructed around men in one form or another. This documentary, is focused solely on the well being of women and their children. It focuses on empowering women by making women aware of what their bodies are capable of. As described in the film, a natural birth "can be a beautiful, incredible, empowering life altering experience" that many women are denied because birth has become  a hospital business that is established as the 'norm' by media. The hospitalization of birthing is directly taking power away from women to deliver their own baby. 
I was able to find commentary videos (listed below in sources) on the documentary that included interviews with many well known celebrities such as Cindy Crawford. As said in the documentary, "if Angelina Jolie had a water birth in Africa...more women would be clamoring for water births." The interviews with the movie stars only made their film more successful because women who look up to these individuals will begin to follow their lead. Hopefully, this will popularize natural births and continue to empower women. Using women in the same industry that perpetuates the negative image of childbirth as examples is a highly useful strategy that this alternative media used to exploit the lies that are rerun over and over again on TLC. More sources of alternative media such as this documentary need to be played on billboards in the center of Times Square to make women realize that they can take control of their own bodies and that they can endure what the media portrays to be unbearable. 

Sources:

The Business of Being Born, directed by Abby Epstein (2008) 
http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/about/ (Official Website for film)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJTN88Zv0_M (trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DgLf8hHMgo (another trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdOUUHN8ipw (full documentary)
Bell Hooks, Introduction Reel to Real
Debra Zimmerman, Women Make Movies