As you may know, because I say it all the damn time, Rosemary's Baby is my very favorite movie. You may also remember my remarking on how the first time I actually watched it on DVD, previously having only seen it on TV and thus edited, I realized it was a lot more explicit than I thought it was. And of course I eventually bought it on DVD. I bet I've seen this movie at least twenty times. I've been re-watching it this week, mainly because D and I had rented Paranormal Activity after I'd read something that compared it to the classic "demon/Satan" movies: Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen. Well, whoever wrote that was on crack because the movie sucked--I couldn't watch more than 15 minutes of it before giving up--but it made me want to watch an actual good Satan movie.
Now when you have seen a movie twenty times and you know not just the plot, but every scene and much of the dialogue, it gives you time to examine and ponder other things. I was excited on this go-round because RB begins in late summer/early fall 1965 and right now in Mad Men, they're in late spring 1965. So I can compare the clothes in a film from the actual time period to what the costumers are doing on Mad Men. (Because I like clothes. You know that.) Mia Farrow has the most incredible wardrobe in RB, which is one of the reasons I love the movie. Little above-the-knee shift dresses, the plaid maxi skirt and turtleneck in the scene that takes place while Guy, offscreen, is making the deal with Roman, her little pigtails in the laundry room scene, and then the famous Vidal Sassoon pixie cut. Very different from Mad Men, because Mad Men takes place in the workplace, while Rosemary is a young, artsy hip housewife. Though wouldn't you like Peggy on Mad Men to get a Sassoon Mod haircut? She's been flirting with that whole hipster scene anyway. But, anyway, back to RB.
I found a plot hole, or at least something that wasn't addressed in any way, that I'd never considered before. There's a scene where, on their moving day into the "Bramford", they're unpacking a couple plates and sitting on the floor of their living room, empty except for a lamp, to eat takeout for dinner, and suddenly Rosemary looks at Guy and says, "Let's make love!" So he snaps off the lamp (they haven't got curtains yet either, yo), they strip their clothes off, and then they're in each other's arms, making out. Okay, then later in the movie, when Minnie is nosily poking around their apartment, Rosemary tells her that one particular room will in the future be the nursery, because as soon as they're all settled, they are going to try to conceive. And then, still later, after Guy has made the deal with Roman and Minnie to let his wife get knocked up by Satan in return for career success, he tells Rosemary he wants to start trying to make a baby and he's already figured out on the calendar which nights she should be fertile.
Is anyone catching what I'm getting at here? 1.) They are planning when to start trying for a baby, so they *haven't* just been willy-nilly letting nature take its course up until then. 2.) Even if Rosemary's getting knocked up by the Prince of Darkness, it's gotta happen when she's actually fertile apparently; his super demonic sperm apparently doesn't trump nature 3.) Rosemary can't be on the Pill because you need to stop it before you start trying to conceive (or you probably aren't gonna *be* fertile, all those people who have kids after missing one pill notwithstanding) but 4.) when they're getting it on in their empty apartment, they apparently do not have any condoms or a diaphragm or whatever other barrier methods were available in 1965--they're NOT hunting through boxes before throwing themselves into each other's arms.
So what the fuck have they been doing about birth control? This is going to bother me now.
xoxo
4 comments:
You really need to hear from an old geezer! In the spring of 1965--when I was about to graduate from high school--you needed connections better than Satan's to score birth control pills. And yeah, you either needed those boxes you saw were missing, or a calendar and a whole lot of prayer. It was in short way easier to make a baby than not, or so it seemed. Probably why nine girls in my HS class skipped graduation because they were showing. The 10th, I'm sorry to say, fell back on the coathanger method and nearly bled to death before someone found her.
Soo, why is it that I don't like the good old days too much?
Hollywood loves anachronisms. What was that movie with Redford et al as computer hacker heroes? They were supposedly sitting at CRT terminals in 1969. Sheesh: back then you used magnetic or paper tape to access a computer bigger than your mystery room. Solly, no CRT terminals.
Okay, so maybe Rosemary and Guy *were* supposed to be practicing the rhythm method in addition to condoms or whatever and were willing to throw caution to the wind and fuck recklessly on moving day because they knew she was at the wrong part of her cycle. That would be supported by the fact that Guy *could* plot out on the calendar what days were going to be good for the ol' Satan rape. Do most married guys have any idea where their wives are in their cycle? (No PMS jokes, please. Only I get to make those.)
Would the movie-viewing public in 1968 when the movie came out have just assumed that was what a young married couple would do?
Actually, yes: 1968 was a couple of years before the Pill was anything like generally available, especially to single women. I suppose the good thing was that any male who wasn't quite ready to be called "Dad" was much more aware of his partner's cycle than during most of the time since: assuming a regular relationship. So that part rang true. BTW the movie scared anyone with a Catholic upbringing out of a year's growth back then.
Oh, the Catholic thing is why this movie scared me so much when I was a kid--totally believed the devil was real!
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