May I recommend, for your viewing enjoyment, a very good German film called Babystar. It’s currently on limited release in independent/arthouse UK cinemas. (You should have an indie cinema in your life. You really should.)
It’s a dark satire about a self-obsessed family of professional Insta-influencers which is centred around their teenage daughter, Luca, whose every moment from her first ultrasound has been broadcast as monetised content. She is at the natural point in every teenager’s life when they begin to explore their own identity outside of their parents – but she of course is not allowed to do that, because she is a brand and a product. Then her parents inform her they’d like to have another baby, not out of any sense of parental love (which they are completely lacking), but for all the new content, marketing, and revenue streams that it (it) will create for them. Drama ensues as Luca takes drastic measures to claim the right to her own humanity from parents who have none, even if the dysfunction of her upbringing means that she is only capable of stooping to their level first.
In my years dealing with online safety legislation, which was its own sort of drama, the real-life storyline which to this day stands as the most absurd was the time when DCMS (as it was then) recruited professional influencer-parents to endorse the draft Online Safety Act.
These parents that DCMS was recruiting were not the kinds of everyday parents who express rightful concerns about social media every day. These were, like the influencer parents in Babystar, the kind of parents whose children have been conceived specifically as content. Like them, these were parents whose children market brands and are their own brands too. Some of these parents have entered into relationships, conceived and bore children, and then blew up the relationships as part of scripted plotlines to sell reality shows and “exclusive reveals” in “Hello”. None of these children had any choice on that, or granted their consent to be content first, humans last.
I was even minutes away from going up on a national Radio 5 Live debate against one of these celebrities – the most notorious one, the one who can’t take a crap without making a reality show and an exclusive Sun headline out of it – but she dropped out with no warning. (I’d like to think it was because she was terrified of me, but that was during the spell when she was collecting as many drink driving arrests as plastic surgeries. She went to rehab, and sold a reality series and a series of front-page “exclusive reveals” about that too.)
There’s a squirm-inducing scene in Babystar where the teenager re-watches the YouTube video, filmed when she was still a very small girl, where her mother explained menstruation in graphic detail to her on their family live stream to capture her daughter’s terrified reaction, resulting in millions of views and lots and lots of money. Some of those parents that DCMS was recruiting had exploited (and broadcast) their children’s puberty in equally grotesque ways.
One of them was the abovementioned celebrity who didn’t show up to the radio debate, who subsequently got her daughter her own reality show and a lingerie photo shoot the week she turned 18. The side wink there – hey boys, look who’s legal now – was part of her scripted content strategy.
And that’s who UK Gov wanted to defend children’s online safety?
In dusting off my disappointment that I didn’t get a chance to kick a drunken sack of silicone’s arse live on national radio, I realised what had bothered me so much about what DCMS was doing. They were recruiting parents who, like the Babystar couple, didn’t actually care one way or the other about their children’s online safety.
They cared about marketing.
People saying mean things about their children online, or objecting to their objectification, were bringing down their revenue. Their concern was not actually their children’s online safety.
It was branding.
Babystar is a brilliant exploration of that.
Here’s my advice: don’t take advice on children’s online safety from monsters, whether they’re big tech bosses or the kindest, most loving parents you’ve ever seen on Instagram.
Film discussion (contains spoilers!)
A few days on, here are a few things from the film which continue to haunt me.
The house
The house where the family lives, a sterile concrete rectangle, is clearly a nod to the house of horrors in Parasite, except this house is somehow even more soulless. There is no decor, no warmth, not a single object in the house which hints at its occupants’ personalities – because they have none. The home exists for Instagram, as do its residents. It is a film set for actors who never say “cut”.
Note also how Luca never sleeps in the dark; there is always a light on in her room. She doesn’t know how to exist without a light on her.
The pool I
In the scene where Luca tells her mother she wants some time off from living as a live broadcast, her mother is reading a book about Medea: from Greek myth, you know, the one who destroyed her own children out of jealousy and spite. It’s an ominous warning that, the more that Luca begins to exercise her sense of agency over her own life, the harder her mother will objectify her into a possession under her control.
The restaurant
Having been reminded that even her potty training was broadcast online as monetised content, Luca takes revenge in a posh restaurant by finding a potty, stripping naked, and peeing in it in front of the patrons. I love this as a provocation: without saying a word, she is saying to her parents “how is this any different from what you did?”
The pool II
Recall the scene where Luca is trying to get her parents’ attention at the pool, where they are both staring at their screens, monitoring their audience numbers. After kicking and throwing water, she throws herself in and lies on the bottom as if she has drowned. Her parents don’t notice. She stays there as long as possible until she surfaces gasping for breath. They don’t notice that either. She then exits the pool and throws her father’s macbook into the pool: this he notices. Now move on to the next spoiler.
The pool III
Luca’s mother gives birth at home, so they can live stream it (of course). She opts for a waterbirth, so they can do an endorsement and marketing for the birth pool manufacturer (of course). In early labour, Luca’s mother takes time to do a special makeup routine for the special occasion, so she can do an endorsement and marketing for the makeup brands (of course).
Once the baby is born, Luca’s mother briefly looks down at it, then grins maniacally at the camera, with her designer makeup smudged and melted all over her face like some sort of horror mask. Her newborn is seconds old – and believe me, you cannot take your eyes off the tiny person you just pushed into the world – but this mother is not looking at her child. She is looking at the camera. Her newborn baby is supposed to be the star (hence the film’s title). But she’s merely a cameo.
It’s then that you realise: this is the second waterbirth in the film. Luca “drowning” herself to test whether her parents cared or not, and realising that they didn’t, is the moment her life changes. Her emerging from the pool to commit an act of violence is the first cry of her new life. We then see Luca holding her baby sister and staring at her intensely with more love than their own mother will ever be capable of.
The end
The film ends with Luca burying her phone in the ground, a symbolic death, and then disappearing into the night with the baby strapped to her chest. Has she used those months of exile to arrange a safe house somewhere? Was that what all the packages being delivered to her hotel suite were?
I don’t know about you, but when I had a newborn, the merest peep would wake me up. Why? That’s how motherhood works. That was with the baby in the cot next to the bed. Luca’s baby sister has been placed in her parents’ bed, sleeping between them (taking the place of Luca, who often slept there), which is an absolute no no no no no no no you do NOT ever place the baby in the bed between you, just no. (That’s another parallel to the “drowning” scene: had their sleeping parents rolled over and suffocated the baby, they wouldn’t have noticed.)
Luca picks up the baby and takes her away, and neither of her parents even stir. This is the final confirmation, as if Luca needed one, that her parents are a lost cause: there is nothing in the world which will ever make them take note of their daughters for the humans they are, ever.
She also knows that, because of the security cameras in every room of the house, her kidnapping of her sister will be captured on film as the most dramatic moment of her parents’ lives. She is giving them the one thing they really wanted.
