Writer and Director: Therese Shechter
A project that could be said to be a lifetime in the making, film-maker Therese Shechter’s My So-Called Selfish Life is a boldly feminist documentary, not afraid to ask hard questions.
Shechter reflects on her own experience as a happily child-free woman, and the pressures of a society where motherhood is so deeply ingrained, it is seen as a given. A woman’s path, it is assumed, will involve the raising of children. Anyone who deviates from this path is labelled “selfish”.
The documentary makes good use of its contributors, including some fascinating insights from Therese’s mother, Myriam. Doctors, scientists and journalists help Shechter pick apart the notion of ‘biological destiny’, starting with the perfectly valid reasons for not wanting children.
Shechter’s film lulls us in with pop-culture references (featuring clips from Grey’s Anatomy, Veep and Fleabag) but drops information bombs throughout, as the documentary comes up against the objections to couples, and especially women, staying child-free by choice. Therese interviews Marcia Drut-Davis, who appeared in a 1974 episode of 60 Minutes. Having agreed to let herself be filmed telling her in-laws she wouldn’t be having children, it is not the editing of Drut-Davis’ views that surprises us, but the aftermath once the episode aired. Drut-Davis was fired from her teaching job for being “perverse” and received death threats from members of the public. The refusal to conform met with a wildly disproportionate response.
The film is at its best when it delves deeper – an interview with Dr. Kimya Nunu Dennis from Salem College explores pronatalism. A seemingly harmless word reveals a flip side that is not about persuading women to become mothers, but controlling who should reproduce at all. Shechter crucially looks at her subject through an intersectional lens – in particular the links between race, reproduction and eugenics. The history of forced sterilisations among the Black, Native American and Latina communities is uncomfortable viewing, but it reinforces the complex nature of what is being discussed.
Shechter’s prolific use of clips is deliberate, and her inclusion of 21st century news, where right-wing pundits argue that having babies is good for the economy, underpins the concerns of a system increasingly unable to support itself. Shechter, along with her editor Siobhan Dunne, create a cohesive ideological thread, so when we see the visceral panic as the pundits discuss lower birth rates among white women, the footage inevitably brings the attempt to curtail Americans’ reproductive rights into sharp relief. While capitalism demands a continuation of the status quo, a drop in the fertility rate signals biological empowerment, not destiny. Instead of being seen by mainstream media as progress, it is deemed a failure.
It is, as anyone who’s a regular on social media will know, the topic of the moment. With a new generation of women rejecting traditional roles, it really serves us to ask how the place of women in society needs to be reframed. Shechter’s even-handed take on motherhood and fertility is, in acknowledging the importance of choice, a strong move forward.
My So-Called Selfish Life will be streamed worldwide from 6-16thMay viawww.showandtell.film
The Reviews Hub Score:
Biological empowerment, not destiny
