Placental Guitars, Umbilical Mikes, and the Maternal Rock-Beat:

Birth Fantasies and Rock Music Videos (Part Two)

III. TYPICAL BIRTH IMAGERY IN ROCK "CONCEPT" VIDEOS

SPERM IN CONCEPT VIDEOS Human sperm wiggle unmistakably in many Birth Rock videos. In Nirvana’s "Come As You Are," Peter Gabriel’s "Sledgehammer," and elsewhere they are microphotographed and very much alive. In Gabriel’s "Steam," and "Blood of Eden" they are symbols drawn by computer graphics. Sperm are inherently macho/sexual images, of course; yet in rock videos they usually carry implications of familial relations and human growth and development that are ultimately part of the perinatal context under discussion. (I have to add here that there is a rock group named Come (!), and it makes no perinatal difference that the leader is a female.)

FETUSES, INFANTS, AND CHILDREN Children, neonates, and even embryo/fetuses are numerous in rock videos, and their presence helps confirm rock’s perinatal connections. The young age of the rock audience as well as many performers may be a factor, for neither is far removed from childhood memories. Video fetuses may flash by very briefly (often only the face is seen, as in "Mountain Song" by Jane’s Addiction or Stone Temple Pilots’ "Wicked Garden"); but sometimes an embryo/fetus is presented pulsing and alive in utero, as in Peter Gabriel’s "Steam." (We see an embryo develop from sperm, ovum, and blastocyst in his "Sledgehammer.") There is a fetus in a blood-red jar (with umbilical and placenta) in a hospital scene in Nirvana’s "Heart-Shaped Box," from the "In Utero" album.

Symbolic fetuses are suggested variously in videos—for instance, by people shown struggling with their (umbilical) chains in (uterine) water (see Duran Duran’s "Come Undone" and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ "Soul to Squeeze," etc.). There are frequent portrayals of a man/fetus in a translucent amniotic chamber (as in Snap’s "Rhythm Is a Dancer"). Many fetuses are associated with space scenes, a common motif in rock videos, such as the spaceman/fetus in a clearly amniotic spherical ship in Lenny Kravitz’ "Believe." Kravitz’ "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" takes place in a "big room" inside an apparent UFO! In "Hangar 18," Megadeth presents its version of a hoary UFO coverup myth, in which officials perform medical procedures on several different types of alien creatures, one of which either gives birth or is aborted.

The most fully developed symbolic fetus in rock music is Tommy, of Peter Townshend’s recently revived 1969 rock opera. Tommy can be seen as a birth allegory, in which the main character’s non-communicative (blind, deaf, and dumb) fetus-like existence moves from prenatal insularity through birth ("freedom"), bonding (the song "Feel Me"), and ultimately to normal human development. His journey is facilitated naturally enough by a constant companion, his mother. (The blatant absence of a father suggests Townshend is making a Christ comparison.) The fetal/Tommy character is a fixture in rock, and can be seen in the burned-out, emotionless rock star of Pink Floyd’s "The Wall" (1979), the tormented adolescents of Townshend’s rock film, Quadrophenia (1979), and also in U2’s deadpan frolic, "Numb" (1993).

Infants are prominent in many rock videos (see Guns N’Roses’ "Don’t Cry"; Ugly Kid Joe’s "Cats in the Cradle"; Lords of the Underground’s "Funky Child"; etc.). Children often appear with elderly people and so imply a family continuum and related perinatal associations (see Arrested Development, "People Everyday"; most of Michael Jackson’s videos; etc.). The popularity of Soul Asylum’s poignant "Runaway Train" video, which includes pictures and names of missing or runaway adolescents, led to a hotline number and plans for periodically updated data for TV showing.

PERINATAL OPENINGS Any doorways, windows, tunnels, tubes, roads, paths, or other types of passageways in concept videos seem to me to be symbols of the cervical opening and vaginal tunnel experienced during normal birth. Peter Gabriel’s computer graphics video, "Kiss That Frog," depicts the most explicit perinatal opening I have seen: a long vaginal tunnel ends with an unmistakable cervical structure, which opens from the center and reveals a human head. In the Talking Heads’s "Road to Nowhere," a boy and girl quickly develop from youths to marriage, pregnancy, and the birth of an infant; the infant matures and leaves; the couple age but do a kissing dance. The road of the title is of course the road of life, but may also be interpreted as a symbol of vaginal passage: there are several womblike enclosures which people pass through, a bleeding Earth/womb, and an amniotic/vaginal whirlpool tunnel. In INXS’ "The Gift," the band members repeatedly smash through cervical glass barriers and fireballs—events suggesting both birth and Grof’s accompanying fiery birth memories.

The unusual frequency of doorways, tunnels, and other openings in videos is difficult to account for outside of a perinatal context. Our experience with UFO abductees is instructive, for we found a comparably high number of tunnel images in narratives of normal-birth abductees, but very few in narratives of cesarean-born "imaginary" abductees (i.e., with no experience of the vaginal tunnel) -- persuasive evidence of a causal perinatal connection. Perhaps the thesis that most hard-core rock headbangers are vaginal-birth individuals should be scientifically tested.

PLACENTAL SYMBOLS Flat, circular objects, sometimes with a trailing "umbilical," serve as one of several symbols in concept videos for the placental/umbilical complex. Such images are similar to the mandala forms which Carl Jung termed archetypal. (See Tears for Fears, "Sowing the Seeds of Love" for placental mandalas; and Terrence Trent D’Arby’s "Delicate" for placental sunflowers, which cover a nude female in near-fetal position; later the Earth revolves about a sunflower/sun in space.)

Variant placental symbols include serpentine fauna or flora, such as the marvelous placental/umbilical tree that Peter Gabriel and a symbolic Eve shake a baby from in "Steam"; and in the tentacled trees with hanging "fruit" in the form of (perhaps aborted) fetuses in Nirvana’s "Heart-Shaped Box." Other placental forms are suggested by "sky ladders" (probably from the Biblical Jacob’s ladder), ladders being a placental symbol. Gabriel’s "Steam" has a computerized scene in which alternate lines of placental ladders and umbilical snakes multiply and carry scores of people up and down. Another placental skyladder carries people upward in Talking Heads’ "Road to Nowhere."

AMNIOTIC CONTAINERS Geometrically shaped containers, usually translucent and of every size, are a recurrent motif in concept videos and symbolize the womb or amniotic chamber. Often there is a human figure or baby-like object inside—a figurative or literal fetus. (See Tasmin Archer, "Sleeping Satellite" for a multitude of egg-shaped worlds in space; in Lenny Kravitz’ "Believe," a fetal spaceman occupies an amniotic sphere; amniotic cubes contain fetal nudes in Elton John’s "Simple Life"; and the amniotic container in Megadeth’s "Wake Up Dead" is a huge cage.) In Duran Duran’s "Too Much Information," fetal faces and figures covered by an opaque (amniotic) membrane push forth grotesquely from walls and floors.

THE NEONATAL POINT OF VIEW In Birth Rock videos, the extreme close-ups of faces, lips, hands, and other body parts present people as the newborn and/or bonding-period infant might perceive them. Similarly, the camera’s typically fuzzy and partial perspectives are consistent with the limited sensory perceptions and understanding of a baby. This neonatal point of view has at least two additional manifestations: sensory overload and images of change, discussed below.

SENSORY OVERLOAD The overwhelming bright lights, sounds, and actions at a typical rock concert, and in videos the quick cuts, endless changes of colors, shapes, movement, sounds, rapid rap talk, etc., parallel the newborn infant’s doubtless confusing overload of sensory experiences for many months afterward. Almost every rock video ever made shows these up-close and quick-cuts techniques.

IMAGES OF CHANGE Recent technology known as "morphing" allows smooth cinematic transitions from one face or body shape to another, and the process is rapidly becoming a cliche in Birth Rock. The technique focuses on the drastic but gradual changes which come during the first months of human life—prenatally, during birth and bonding, and in normal human growth and perception afterward. "Shape-shifter" characters in folklore and children’s literature embody these same human changes. Rock videos seem to present them especially as they might have been experienced by a growing child. (See Michael Jackson, "Black or White" and Terrence Trent D’Arby’s "Delicate").

Since all TV rock programming is heavily influenced by the imagery and cinematic techniques of videos, birth motifs are easy to spot in rock station programming, cartoons, logos, and miscellaneous visuals.

"REVOLUTIONARY" ROCK A frequent motif in rock video programming is that the music is revolutionary, as in the MTV motto, "The Revolution has begun." The socio-political implications of such sentiments are seemingly reinforced by the generally liberal political content of MTV newscasts and specials, particularly on subjects such as ecology, prejudice, and ongoing "choose it or lose it" vote campaigns. Yet while the actual rock "revolution" is also cultural, emotional, and aesthetic, it is not necessarily a liberalizing phenomenon.

Indeed, many of rock’s values are self-indulgent: its ambivalence about risky sex and drugs; its ongoing sexist/misogynist tendencies; its blatant commercialism; and despite all the noise about freedom, its increasing conformity in dress, demeanor, and in music. Moreover, the popular perception of a typical rock concert audience as an entranced, idolizing, emotionally unstable, and mostly male Caucasian mob has many parallels with Leni Riefenstahl’s remarkable 1934 propaganda film of Adolf Hitler’s great gathering of Nazi Brown Shirts at Nuremberg, Germany, Triumph of the Will.

Perinatally, the film is most notable for its unknowing documentation of a national group birth fantasy—complete with massive spiritual rebirths, spectacular stage effects, and a fetus/hero god (whose plane in the film descends from the heavens). The film’s lingering display of endless ranks of Nazis moving in perfect unison, saluting, or repeating "Seig heil!" is paralleled by dozens of videos of huge rock concert crowds packed together like body cells and waving their arms to the music, giving one-armed tributes, or chanting repetitive lyrics. The sight of thousands of headbangers stuffed into vast stadiums is impressive, yet their collective anonymity and automaton-like behavior are disturbing: rock audiences, like Riefenstahl’s Brown Shirts, are prime examples of conformity and anti-intellectualism. (Of countless video examples: Bruce Springsteen, "Born to Run"; Guns N’Roses, "Paradise City,"; and George Michael and Queen, "Somebody to Love." Curiously, AC/DC’s "Thunderstruck" employs a remarkable symbol of rock culture’s mass conformity: half of its audience cheers hysterically from a huge semi-circle of what look like prison cell blocks, stacked five high.)

I wish to emphasize that I am comparing rockers not with Nazis but with Riefenstahl’s fantasized, propaganda film version of Nazis. It is noteworthy, however, that the ideals of Riefenstahl’s film are evoked by widely varying incidents and aspects of rock culture. For example, the Irish rock group U2 displayed scenes from Riefenstahl’s film on huge TV screens during its 1992 European tour, supposedly as ironic commentary on the precarious state of continental socio-political affairs.(29) (But why that film?) A recent cable movie, Skinheads USA: Race War(30) showed youthful members of a U.S. branch of this international white supremacist/neo-Nazi group viewing the Riefenstahl film and uttering effusive praise of both Hitler and his idolizing followers. Skinheads here and abroad have developed their own brand of rock music, which like Nazi doctrine is racist and has been dubbed "hate rock" by mainstream rock critics understandably anxious to disown this element. In addition, dozens of rock videos use formations of dancers whose unisex dress, robotic discipline, or unfocused passions (from rage to frigid detachment) seem consistent with the film’s emphasis on conformity and militarism. (See Michael Jackson’s videos from the "Thriller," "Bad," and "Dangerous" albums; Janet Jackson, "Rhythm Nation"; Madonna, "Vogue"; and many others.) Lastly, classically popular rock titles are called "anthems"—songs of praise or loyalty—with all that term’s authoritarian sacred and nationalistic echoes.

BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD MTV’s scatological animated satire, Beavis and Butt-head, concerns two supposedly moronic teens whose hilarious dialogue is permanently focused on body functions, including perinatal ones. In one segment the birth imagery is pervasive: B&B first are grossed out by a graphic though normal birth scene on TV. Then as a week-long class project they have to care for a "baby" (in the form of a diapered sack of sugar) which they accidently drown, earning an "F" as "mom and dad," which suggests the quality of their own (no-show) parents. Beavis and Butt-head are worth watching because they are alternatively stupid and sharp-witted, and also because they provide virtually the only non-romantic perspectives in rock culture.

TV STATION LOGOS About a quarter of MTV’s animated station logos and other visuals employ unmistakable perinatal imagery. One shows a grinning, eight-armed demon descending from a cloud-borne garbage truck to salvage a mixed group of baby and adult beings from a trash can. As the demon holds a being in each of its hands, a snake-like umbilical vine emerges from its navel (!) and becomes first a placental flower then the MTV logo, which protectively shelters the beings. (Debatable) point: MTV’s seemingly demonized rock programming rescues culturally "lost" people from their garbage-heap heritage!

"FREE YOUR MIND" VISUALS Another visual, one of the network’s "Free Your Mind" anti-prejudice series, is a marvel of perinatal directness: A multi-cultural newsreel is being exhibited on a flesh-colored sphere, and we see brief shots of people of all ages from various countries. When "The End" comes, we pull back and see that our "screen" was the very pregnant globe-like abdomen of a mother-to-be. She adjusts her dress and walks to the movie projector as the message displays: "It’s never too early to expose your child to other cultures." It is testimony to the universal lack of awareness of perinatal fantasy everywhere in popular culture that MTV and its sister rock stations have incorporated so much birth-related data into their TV operations without acknowledgment or apparent awareness.

To repeat, Birth Rock music videos are loaded with perinatal images and events because for unknown reasons human fantasies usually contain substantial amounts of birth-related imagery—and rock videos are potent examples of contemporary fantasy. Twentieth-century radio, tape, and TV technologies have enabled rock music to attract and establish a worldwide audience. Yet the key to rock’s popularity may be its capacity to stimulate and revivify its headbanger fans’ personal mix of good and bad unconscious perinatal memories.

A good opportunity for perinatal analysis of the effect of a Birth Rock concert experience on an audience is provided by the first epigraph to this paper, from a review of the group Smashing Pumpkins’ performance of "Cherub Rock." In language suggesting Freud (throbbing... drive...surging...abandon) the crowd is described as one mass individual aroused by the rock beat, the music, and the sexy concert mood. Actually, the audience is in deep group perinatal fantasy: entranced by the (remembered maternal heartbeat) rhythm, it identifies (i.e., bonds) with the fetus/singer’s (birth) passion, repeating hypnotically his cry for freedom (i.e., delivery), "Let me out!" Stimulated by the music, the beat, and the rocker’s voice and body movements, the fans relive in fantasy their unconsciously remembered emotional peaks and nadirs from the ambivalently benign/oppressive late-stage womb and birth.

The reviewer claims that the evening was a peak experience in part because the performers and the audience were on the same emotional and aesthetic wavelength. Yet this high level of communication between rockers and headbangers can be seen as analogous to the Riefenstahl film’s portrait of the transporting fantasy connection between Hitler and his thousands of Brown Shirts. Both events are intensely, exhaustingly passionate because they are structured by individual memories of experiences that have the power to touch the human soul.

In reality, there is no evidence that rockers, the reviewer, or anyone else at the Pumpkins’ concert (let alone in 1934 Nuremberg!) understood what in perinatal terms was really happening. Of course, any rational comprehension was and is irrelevant to the headbangers’ enjoyment of the intense Birth Rock moment.

In view of Birth Rock music’s international success, one wonders why the vital and rapidly evolving genre of American jazz did not develop a comparable fantasy tradition. I believe that the reason has to do with the change from the flexible and understated swing rhythm of jazz to rock’s booming regularity; and I believe that the change is perinatally significant.

A major difference between jazz and rock is the minimal perinatal content in traditional jazz performances. The Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts, which began during World War II and became widely popular in the late ‘40s and ‘50s, were musically exciting, and there was performer/audience interaction—thousands of fans shouted "Go! Go! Go!" in unison to encourage the jazz instrumentalists, and applauded happily when familiar bits of melody were injected into their improvisations.

Yet compared to a typical Birth Rock concert, JATP affairs were perinatally tame. The musicians stood together informally on a bare stage and generally avoided dancing, posturing, or other rock-type rabble-rousing. There were plenty of reeds and brass, but of course no placental guitars, umbilical mikes, or struggling fetal singer/dancers; there were no mosh-pit dives, no vaginal-tube spotlights, no arrays of deafening 6-foot speakers, no fireworks or other theatrics. Even the audience, with few druggies in those more innocent days, was relatively sober and focused on the music.

I believe that rock’s booming drums evoke the maternal heartbeat of prenatal memory to a degree that swing’s subtler rhythm does not, and that its thunderous beat is the initial stimulus for the audience’s drift into perinatal fantasy. Some jazz purists feel that, compared to swing, rock’s "sternum-pounding drive" is at best mere thunking monotony. Still, that thunk has helped provide two generations of headbangers worldwide with access in fantasy to their perinatal experiences.

And every time that happens, the causal connection between fantasy and birth memories is reaffirmed, and perhaps is brought closer to general awareness, acceptance, and understanding.

This article appeared in slightly different form in The Journal of Psychohistory

23. See deMause, Foundations, pp. 261 ff. for a discussion of the nurturant/poisonous

placenta.  Also, see D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 video, Monterey Pop for a scene of

Hendrix’ guitar smashing  and burning.

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