Breastfeeding has become a terrorist act as a result of modern body horror

The body-horror film “Infinity Pool” by Brandon Cronenberg leaks. Blood, sweat, tears, pee, semen, and vomit are just a few of the unending fluids that feed this viscous and brutal process. When James (Alexander Skarsgard) and his wealthy wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) visit a posh resort, they discover a hidden hedonistic realm where wealthy visitors led by Gabi (Mia Goth) delve into new levels of depravity. The film’s most touching scene, the ending, is what audiences remember the most. After a feast of extreme savagery, Gabi exposes her breast, daubs it with blood, and allows James to nurse. It turns out that breastfeeding is the most frightening act of all.

Skarsgard joked during the movie’s promotion that “being breastfed by Mia isn’t something you get to do very often as an actor.” Yes, but it’s getting less common. Infinity Pool, Barbarian, Titane, and The Baby are just a few examples of current horror films and television shows that involve erotic breastfeeding, brutalised nipples, and demonic nursing. Breastfeeding is being utilised to produce viral horror moments, and in the case of “Barbarian” and its $45 million movie office take, cash cows, whether it’s a source of simple horrors or something richer.

“Infinity Pool” intimacy coordinator Casey Hudecki said there is no set procedure for producing these moments. She claimed, “I have facilitated the use of prosthetic breasts, prosthetic nipples, breastfeeding doubles, cheating camera angles to hide a lack of contact, or even taping a soother to a breast,” alluding to a dummy used to provide comfort when nursing. However, she continued, “Regardless of how we feel about breastfeeding, it has a primal or visceral connection, so it’s a good way to throw an audience off guard.”

The HBO Max programme “Barbarian” takes great pleasure in this confusing impact. Airbnb visitors Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgard, Alexander’s brother) in Zach Cregger’s smash discover a sex dungeon complete with a TV playing a breastfeeding tutorial on repeat. The Mother, an incest creature with pendulous breasts, then attacks them. Their host, AJ (Justin Long), who has been accused of sexual assault, is “adopted” by the Mother as well when he returns home. AJ and Tess are made to drink from the mother’s bottle then, when AJ rejects it, her breast, in a number of difficult situations.

In a video interview, Matthew Patrick Davis, who plays the Mother, remarked that the self-tape he sent to a new acquaintance was the craziest thing he had ever done. “I was such a huge Justin Long fan. I never imagined that I would be forced to breastfeed him in Bulgaria in 20 years. He displayed a selection of fan art during the conversation that featured the breastfeeding moment.

For Davis, the perverse circumstance in “Barbarian” is what makes nursing particularly evil. “The act itself is beautiful, natural, and primal, so taken into a different context it becomes strange,” he claimed. The “pretty creepy” image, he claimed, actually conveys a sense of vengeance for the rapes the Mother suffered. When AJ is made to breastfeed against his will, “AJ gets a taste of his own medicine that happens to be mother’s milk,” Davis said.

Others are less certain that “Barbarian” embodies feminist ideals. The Mother, in the opinion of Erin Harrington, author of “Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror,” is just another “abject maternal body acting as a punching bag,” she added, adding, “Those images are blatantly designed to disgust, but in a manner that I don’t think is particularly subversive.”

She was much more impressed by “Titane,” the electric body horror directed by Julia Ducournau that won the Palme d’Or in 2021 (and is currently available to stream on Hulu). The main heroine, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), is pregnant after having sex with a car, and while it doesn’t depict real breastfeeding (apart from some sexual nipple biting), it does show motor oil flowing from her breasts. Harrington remarked, “I found the graphics incredibly festive and provocative.

Breastfeeding in terror wasn’t an unexpected development. It appears in timeless 1960s and 1970s films like “The Hills Have Eyes” (in which a mutant forces a woman to nurse), “The Wicker Man” (in which a nursing mother carrying an egg appears in a dream sequence), and “Rosemary’s Baby” (in which her demon kid is fed her milk). The most abstract illustration is the horror-spoof scene from Woody Allen’s film “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)” in which a gigantic breast that escaped from a lab sprays fresh milk on everything in its path.

The infant has also played the villain in a number of television shows and films. A stillborn infant who suddenly comes to life in Paul Solet’s 2009 film “Grace” (available for rental on most major platforms) yearns for blood rather than milk and tears into her mother’s bosom to obtain it. In one especially gory dream sequence, the killer baby from the dark comedy-horror series “The Baby” (streaming on HBO Max) chews off her mother’s nipple as soon as her father begins breastfeeding.

Both “Infinity Pool” and “Barbarian,” which are both available for rental on most major platforms, omit either an infant or a real mother, further perverting the nurturing act. “Horror puts a twisted magnifying glass on very natural images, like breastfeeding, and amplifies the complicated feelings that arise from motherhood,” wrote Anna Bogutskaya, the founder of the feminist horror podcast “The Final Girls” and the author of “Unlikeable Female Characters,” in an email.

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“Infinity Pool” intimacy coordinator Casey Hudecki said there is no set procedure for producing these moments. She claimed, “I have facilitated the use of prosthetic breasts, prosthetic nipples, breastfeeding doubles, cheating camera angles to hide a lack of contact, or even taping a soother to a breast,” alluding to a dummy used to provide comfort when nursing. However, she continued, “Regardless of how we feel about breastfeeding, it has a primal or visceral connection, so it’s a good way to throw an audience off guard.”

In a video interview, Matthew Patrick Davis, who plays the Mother, remarked that the self-tape he sent to a new acquaintance was the craziest thing he had ever done. “I was such a huge Justin Long fan. I never imagined that I would be forced to breastfeed him in Bulgaria in 20 years. He displayed a selection of fan art during the conversation that featured the breastfeeding moment.

She was much more impressed by “Titane,” the electric body horror directed by Julia Ducournau that won the Palme d’Or in 2021 (and is currently available to stream on Hulu). The main heroine, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), is pregnant after having sex with a car, and while it doesn’t depict real breastfeeding (apart from some sexual nipple biting), it does show motor oil flowing from her breasts. Harrington remarked, “I found the graphics incredibly festive and provocative.

Breastfeeding in terror wasn’t an unexpected development. It appears in timeless 1960s and 1970s films like “The Hills Have Eyes” (in which a mutant forces a woman to nurse), “The Wicker Man” (in which a nursing mother carrying an egg appears in a dream sequence), and “Rosemary’s Baby” (in which her demon kid is fed her milk). The most abstract illustration is the horror-spoof scene from Woody Allen’s film “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)” in which a gigantic breast that escaped from a lab sprays fresh milk on everything in its path.

The infant has also played the villain in a number of television shows and films. A stillborn infant who suddenly comes to life in Paul Solet’s 2009 film “Grace” (available for rental on most major platforms) yearns for blood rather than milk and tears into her mother’s bosom to obtain it. In one especially gory dream sequence, the killer baby from the dark comedy-horror series “The Baby” (streaming on HBO Max) chews off her mother’s nipple as soon as her father begins breastfeeding.

Both “Infinity Pool” and “Barbarian,” which are both available for rental on most major platforms, omit either an infant or a real mother, further perverting the nurturing act. “Horror puts a twisted magnifying glass on very natural images, like breastfeeding, and amplifies the complicated feelings that arise from motherhood,” wrote Anna Bogutskaya, the founder of the feminist horror podcast “The Final Girls” and the author of “Unlikeable Female Characters,” in an email.

But why does it elicit such a gut-level response? Going back to those never-ending liquids, most people find gushing liquids unsettling. “From a cultural standpoint, we detest leaky bodies, and we particularly detest leaking biologically female ones. In general, horror enjoys leaking bodies, according to Harrington. Or, in the words of Sarah Arnold, who wrote “Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood,” “the ‘leaking’ body lacks boundaries; it is literally fluid and in flux.”

Breastfeeding is likewise debased in horror by a sexual sensibility. All three of the films “Infinity Pool,” “Titane,” and “Barbarian” conflate sex and parenting. Intimacy coordinator Hudecki remarked that “adding a layer of kink may create a visceral dissonance,” while Harrington stated that “we have a cultural short-circuit between the two, especially when we consider breasts and nipples as both source and site of sexual pleasure.”

A power dynamic is at work in this situation. “Infinity Pool” has a scenario that, according to Bogutskaya, is about “female domination, not nurturing.” James turns docile and obedient when he turns into a “sucky baby,” as Mia calls it. Similar to this, AJ’s status is diminished in “Barbarian,” according to Davis: “He’s been infantilized and his agency has been removed.”

Naturally, completely natural breastfeeding may be seen with dread in cultures where it is “largely abnormal in society,” according to Arnold. In this regard, simply depicting breastfeeding in any manner may be upsetting. “Horror gives us something that other genres can’t: a sometimes dark, sometimes unpleasant take on emotions and experiences that are still too taboo to discuss openly,” said Bogutskaya. Arnold was concerned, though, that in these films, violent, artificial depictions had risky “staying power” and can change how we perceive a natural deed.

The director alone cannot determine whether nursing is terrifying. Many mothers may also find it to be challenging. Hudecki stated, “Having nursed my children for years, I’m sure I view it very differently than a male might. It was a wonderful moment of bonding for me, but it was also an endless, frequently terrible jail of responsibility to feed my child.

What makes it such a fertile source of inspiration is this mass of contradicting effects—the innocent, the infantile, the sexual, and the healthy. The imagery ultimately leads us to face the most terrifying thing of all: our own beginnings.

These pictures serve as a reminder that we sprang from another person’s body and have at some point shared a visceral connection with them, according to Harrington. “We like to imagine ourselves as self-contained people. Our bellybuttons disagree.