No matter how good the history of women’s liberation is evaluated, it is still ongoing. In other words, it is still liberating, or in the process of being liberated. It is not an exaggeration to say that the history of full-scale liberation has been around for about 100 years. Virginia Woolf <자기만의 방>Space and economic power were presented as the most basic material conditions for women’s liberation, but depending on one’s perspective, the rights to contraception and abortion may be more fundamental material conditions. Of course, the right to contraception takes priority over the right to abortion.
Talking about women’s liberation without these two rights is nonsense. ‘Unwanted’ pregnancy and childbirth were women’s tombs paved in the name of holy motherhood. It was also a structural problem that occurred as only women were responsible for the most important part of reproduction among the two sexes of humans as suckling animals. If a woman could escape reproduction through her own body. The roots of this imagination run deep. <데카메론>There is a story about an Edo man becoming pregnant. Since the emergence of mankind, the time when imagination can be realized into reality has just arrived. This preoccupation is often observed in popular art such as movies.
A mammal’s longing
science fiction comedy <팟 제너레이션>is a work that seeks a cinematic answer to these long-standing concerns of mankind. <왕좌의 게임>Emilia Clarke, widely known as <노예 12년>Tsuitel Ejiofor takes on the lead role and plays a couple who gives birth through in vitro pregnancy.
In a future that doesn’t seem too distant, it depicts the high-tech ‘parenthood’ journey of a couple who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child through an artificial womb called ‘Pod’. Although the movie is a comedy, it is serious as it deals with the ultimate mammalian problem.
In addition, for a movie these days, it is very calm. It deals with philosophical topics by telling the story seriously and calmly while adding laughter here and there. <팟 제너레이션> Detailed directing is essential for a movie like this to receive good reviews.
▲ ‘Pot Generation’ ⓒ Watcha Co., Ltd.
The ‘pod’ in the title ‘The Pod Generation’ refers to the ‘pod’ that contains beans. ‘Pod’ is an artificial womb that raises human children instead of beans.
Rachel and Alvy have no children yet. As her wife Rachel, an executive at her giant tech company, gets promoted, she gets the opportunity to conceive and give birth to their second child at an artificial womb center. In the play, it is set up as something that many people envy. While conventional natural birth and pot birth coexist, pot birth is preferred in movies.
Pod, an artificial womb, is an egg-shaped tool that is responsible for the entire biological reproduction process from fertilization to birth. Even in a world where AI has become deeply embedded in our daily lives, her husband Albie, a botanist who loves soil and nature, is opposed to methods that are not ‘natural’, but he understands Rachel’s feelings about not wanting her work to be interrupted by pregnancy and childbirth, so she decided to give birth to a pod. To agree.
It is an egg-shaped mechanical device, in which the state of the human uterus is reproduced through external power like charging a cell phone, and the pregnancy and childbirth of the ‘pod generation’ is imagined cinematically through an artificial uterine pod that is sometimes portable like a cordless phone. do.
I think that the future artificial uterus may eventually take the form depicted in the movie.
▲ Pot Generation ⓒ Watcha Co., Ltd.
Mountains to overcome to introduce artificial wombs
Considering the current technological level of human civilization, I believe that artificial wombs can soon become a reality. In Korea, Professor Chang-Hoon Song of Chosun University Hospital conducted research on artificial uterus-placenta in 2003. As a result of conducting research by constructing an extracorporeal circulation circuit to raise goat fetuses, 15 of the 35 goat fetuses used in the experiment survived in the artificial womb-placenta system for more than 23 hours, and 8 survived for more than 48 hours. Previously, in the United States, Emmanuel Greenberg patented an artificial uterus in 1954 to provide premature babies with sufficient nutrients and an environment similar to the uterus.
In 2017, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the United States successfully raised and gave birth to eight fully grown sheep fetuses in an artificial womb. The significance of this experiment is that it confirmed that it is possible for sheep grown and born in an artificial womb to live like sheep that went through a normal birth process.
Known medical experiments were mostly concerned with the development of artificial wombs for premature babies, and did not seriously consider human birth.
A novel by Aldous Huxley published in 1932 <멋진 신세계>‘Artificial hatching, conditioned reflex nursery’ appears. It depicts 600 years later (500 years from now) when artificial incubators were developed and in vitro pregnancy and childbirth became possible. <멋진 신세계>is considered a representative work depicting a dystopia among future novels. So far, in vitro pregnancy and childbirth through artificial uteruses have been <멋진 신세계>As represented, the negative perception is strong.
There are so many obstacles to overcome in order to introduce an artificial womb, including issues of bioethics and improvement of laws and systems, that it is unlikely that it will appear in reality in the near future. The barriers to this problem are mostly non-technical.
▲ Pot Generation ⓒ Watcha Co., Ltd.
It is not negative for pot birth. The world depicted in this film is not a dystopia like . After all the discussion was over, we discussed the pot sensibility of the world after artificial wombs were legalized. The film depicts emotions, not agendas. The changes in parents that occur during the pod pregnancy period seem to suggest the possibility of harmonizing with machine civilization rather than criticizing it.
Leaving aside numerous controversies such as the status of embryos, legal regulations of pregnancy, and civil law issues regarding presumption of paternity, the focus was on the emotions of a couple who chose an artificial womb as a way to become parents. In a word, it is a movie.
If you think about it, there is a lot to discuss. Perhaps a solution to the low birth rate problem plaguing Korean society can be found in this film. In a word, it is a movie, but it is also a movie that is difficult to watch as a movie. Therefore, audiences leaving the theater will have a lot to talk about.
Is that kind of movie a good movie? Or is a movie that is good in itself a good movie? Usually, the two can be distinguished in quite a few movies, but in this movie, they are mixed up and it is not easy to distinguish them. In general, the distinction does not have any special meaning. I think the audience will come up with the correct answer to the absurd question. Opened on the 3rd.
Ahn Chi-yong, film critic
