Ben McManus: Weird Science, God's Way

Weird Science, God’s Way

The whole discussion on women in the Bible held a high level of interest for me, as it frequently seems to be women who insight the drama. However, I’ve already blogged about that topic. As such, I’ll focus on another topic we discussed: The concept of couvade or men’s envy of women’s ability to give childbirth. When it was first mentioned, I had to double take. It was an intellectual double take. Men envy women for giving birth? Not in my experience. Any time I see a pregnant women, I think, “Yikes. So glad they’ve got that on lock, cause that’s not for me.” But, apparently plenty of men throughout history don’t share my opinion. Once I thought about it, I realized just how present man’s envy of childbirth is in the Bible. First and foremost, God gives birth to mankind. I suppose God is fairly androgynous, and I understand that humans, as a whole, serve as his gender counterpart, but alas, he is referred to as a “He” and he gives birth, so there it is. Up next, we have Adam. God makes Eve by pulling out one of Adam’s ribs. In a way, Adam gives birth to Eve. Now from here, the women take over, and give birth to the rest of humanity. That being said, The Bible credits men with the firth birth. Is this really because men are secretly jealous of women, or is this just how the story in the Bible goes? I’m starting to favor the former. Evidence of men’s envy appears in all sorts of other literature. The most notable of witch, is most likely Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. It’s a story all about man’s urge to create life. Granted, it doesn’t go well for him, but he creates life. Moving out of great literature to pop culture, we have John Hughes’ film Weird Science. It’s a movie about two male nerds who find a way to create a woman. They use computers and their perverse minds instead of a rib, but they get it done. After Weird Science, came Ivan Rietmen’s film Junior. In this film Arnold Schwarzenegger actually gets pregnant, and subsequently gives birth. I think this is our envy at its purest. Now that I’ve considered all these examples, I guess I’m convinced that many of us are envious of childbirth. But am I? It may take midlife crises to find that out.