Why a judgmental feeding baby? Lozuaway McComsey


Joan is condemned. As she awaits her execution, grasping and crying on a metal cross before the people who will bear witness to her execution, she asks God, "will I be with you in Paradise this evening?"

The scene then cuts to this latched baby suckling. It abruptly whips its (as it is ambiguous, and therefore can represent anyone of us) head over to take a look, presumably at Joan, before hitting her with this judgmental side-eye pictured above. 

The camera cuts back to Joan, same posture and cross, but fresh tears on her face, before cutting back to Baby Judgment (BJ) again. It gives her a few more seconds' stare before re-latching to the breast, its eyes eased into the comfortable look of happy drunk. 

The question is, why and what in the world is this scene doing in this movie, especially at such a time as this?

The answer: It's a metaphor.

BJ represents the soul, in this case, Joan's. 

The breast is God.

Joan is the world at large. 

The cross is Jesus, who is also kind of God depending on who you ask.

When BJ is latched onto the breast, it represents the soul still being one with God. It's clearly two separate entities, i.e. a baby and a mother or God and a soul. In this relationship, one nourishes and keeps the other. One prepares the other to go into the world, but for now, is its keeper. 

BJ then breaks with the breast to look at the world, at Joan. It sees, in Joan, heartache, crying, fear and pain; so too with the rest of the world. But most importantly, BJ sees her salvation in trying times, which is her dependence on God, as represented by the cross she weeps upon. And BJ thinks to itself, as we can clearly see on its face in the above photo, "why is she so sad? Why doesn't she just go back to God without such struggle? Poor thing." Which, obviously, the baby thinks in mostly complete English sentences.

To prove its point, BJ whips its head back lickety-split and returns to God, the breast. Reattached to God, its face relaxes, its judgment is gone, it returns to blissfully giving its full attention to the only thing in life that truly matters. The baby knows the truth, which is the answer to Joan's question: Joan will be in Paradise with God, not when she is executed, but whenever she turns her head from the troubles of the world an depends solely on her maker. 

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshNovember 26, 2021 at 8:46 PM

    I like "lickety-split." This reading is not implausible, but I'm not sure how allegorical the film generally is. I do appreciate how you are struck by this. For me me what's moving about it is that it's a little image of the beautiful callousness of life: no matter what the mother is feeling, the baby is a baby, has no grasp of the significance of this, and will not remember it. Its mother will tell it later, "You were there." Life goes on, and it should.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Noriko and Neglect by Sylas Davidson

Image
     Noriko is highlighted throughout the film and by its viewers for her kindness, her compassion.  She is the only person to take a genuine interest in Tomi and Shūkichi, seemingly outside  of obligation and without patronization.  However, she also seems to rely on tradition to guide her behaviour, taking guidelines as strict rules, to the point of possibly sacrificing her personal happiness. This is most obvious with her continued devotion to her husband, Shōji, and his photo. It’s a little hard to see, but Shōji’s photo appears to be on the top of a simple cabinet or wardrobe with a candle to one side. There doesn’t seem to be anything else, at least not anything easily identifiable, that would  make this a family altar. This appears to be a shrine to Shōji, instead of an altar for worship. Noriko  might not be particularly religious, but she still appears to havecreated an altar, and instead of it being  a place for ...
Read more

The editing skills in Chungking Express

 Editing Tempo: The editing of the film is strange. Wang’s camera looks like time-lapse photography, which creates a weird tempo of the film. The camera moves really fast when the blonde woman and the first cop are running. The fast running, neon light, and time-lapse effect create a dizzy feeling. The opening shot closely follows the blonde woman. After the fast shot, it is a still shot of some chimneys. Only clouds are moving. Then, we have a fast shot of the first cop, 233 runs. He bumped into a man that carries a fake blonde woman. 233 starts to pay attention to the blond fake man. Suddenly, he starts to chase a man whose head is covered by a paper bag. The camera moves to the opposite street and the audience can only see 233 running but the side walkers are all blended into a time-lapsed blurry background. When the camera follows the running 233, it moves very quickly; when the shot is taken across the street, it moves very slowly. These two points of view are alternating...
Read more

Why Watch Movies Anyway? An illustrated double feature. Lozuaway McComsey

Image
Why do we even watch movies? Shouldn’t we be reading, or making something, making love, eating or, best of all, sleeping? What is it about movies that keeps me awake? Literally, why do I lose sleep to watch them (and also, to be fair, the occasional novel)? There is something magical, and more encompassing, than say, looking at a painting or photograph or, yes, reading. And which is the nearest thing to a movie? Pictures, paintings or photos, as a movie is made of a bunch of them (and yes, there is a movie that is entirely painted frames—it’s about van Gogh.) Or novels with their stories? Or is it a soundtrack?  Because the first thing is, movies have audio, which of course, music also has. But I’m not one for listening to music. It’s background noise. I'd rather nap or let my mind wander for 90 seconds before starting something. Ozu, generally, uses music like the 90s food pyramid said to use fats and sugar: sparingly. It’s awesome. Sometimes it adds to the...
Read more