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Born to Be Sold: Martha Rosler Reads the Strange Case of Baby $/M, With Paper Tiger Television

Martha Rosler

1988 00:35:20 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3Video
Tags:
Family, Feminism, Health, Media Analysis, Performance

Description

Martha Rosler tackles mainstream media's representation of the case of surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead. This video, made with the collective Paper Tiger Television, uncovers the class and gender bias of the media's coverage and the courts, including the nefarious way in which Whitehead was discredited as the mother of the baby and portrayed as "psychologically unstable." Inventive graphics and kooky costumes illustrate Rosler's insightful analysis of the court battle, which cogently contrasts the financial and other rewards of the mostly male professionals involved with those of the surrogate mother--while placing surrogacy and parenthood within a larger political analysis of contemporary reproductive control in America.

This title is also available on martha rosler: crossings.

About Martha Rosler

Since the early 1970s, Martha Rosler has used photography, performance, writing, and video to deconstruct cultural reality. Describing her work, Rosler says, “The subject is the commonplace — I am trying to use video to question the mythical explanations of everyday life. We accept the clash of public and private as natural, yet their separation is historical. The antagonism of the two spheres, which have in fact developed in tandem, is an ideological fiction — a potent one. I want to explore the relationships between individual consciousness, family life, and culture under capitalism.” 

Avoiding a pedantic stance, Rosler characteristically lays out visual and verbal material in a manner that allows the contradictions to gradually emerge, so that the audience can discern these disjunctions for themselves. By making her ideas accessible, Rosler invites her audience to re-examine the dynamics and demands of ideology, urging critical consciousness of the individual compromises exacted by society, and opening the door to a radical re-thinking of how cultural “reality” is constructed for the economic and political benefit of a select group.

Also see:
Martha Rosler: An Interview