06-09-2017, 03:28 PM
Here's a friendly exchange I had with Brent Weinbach, an L.A.-based comedian, who created the video. The birthing man is his fellow-comedian, Ryan Singer:
My email to Brent:
Hi Brent,
Watching Ryan Singer give birth was one of the hottest things I've ever seen!
But in all seriousness, I'm so curious about the artistic decision to make that particular video. A couple of questions/observations:
1.) What did you use to give Ryan such a convincing "penis birth"? Was it a prosthetic or something else?
2.) When men are depicted giving birth, it's almost always comedy (and usually really dumb comedy at that). Your video seemed more like feminist political commentary, comparable to this short by Iciar Bollain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxpVqK8oNi0, but considerably more effective. I don't know that anyone has ever crossed the "birth through the penis" line before. I thought that was pretty damn genius.
His reply:
Hi [redacted], thank you. Everything was prosthetics -the special effects person knows a little better than I do, but I think it was some sort of stretchable silicon. Even the penis in the beginning of the video was a prosthetic piece. As for the feminist commentary, that wasn't really my original intention, but it's definitely a valid interpretation. I just thought it would look funny and outrageous to see a baby birthed out of a penis. I watched a lot of child birth videos in preparation, so I suppose the commentary on what women have to go through was built in to the making of this video, as I was just borrowing a lot from what I saw in the real life footage I had watched.
My email to Brent:
Hi Brent,
Watching Ryan Singer give birth was one of the hottest things I've ever seen!
But in all seriousness, I'm so curious about the artistic decision to make that particular video. A couple of questions/observations:
1.) What did you use to give Ryan such a convincing "penis birth"? Was it a prosthetic or something else?
2.) When men are depicted giving birth, it's almost always comedy (and usually really dumb comedy at that). Your video seemed more like feminist political commentary, comparable to this short by Iciar Bollain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxpVqK8oNi0, but considerably more effective. I don't know that anyone has ever crossed the "birth through the penis" line before. I thought that was pretty damn genius.
His reply:
Hi [redacted], thank you. Everything was prosthetics -the special effects person knows a little better than I do, but I think it was some sort of stretchable silicon. Even the penis in the beginning of the video was a prosthetic piece. As for the feminist commentary, that wasn't really my original intention, but it's definitely a valid interpretation. I just thought it would look funny and outrageous to see a baby birthed out of a penis. I watched a lot of child birth videos in preparation, so I suppose the commentary on what women have to go through was built in to the making of this video, as I was just borrowing a lot from what I saw in the real life footage I had watched.