Disrupted Patriarchy – Powers of Pregnant Women in Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (2021)

Abstract

Horror movies are the main contradictors of the cultural characterization of pregnancy as a blissful and positive experience. The representation of characters within the genre withdraws from that practice and offers stories where gestating women disrupt the patriarchal order through an attempt to reclaim their autonomy. In this work, I analyze the issue of horror pregnancy and the numerous binaries that try to define women in the patriarchal structures. This work proposes that Halsey’s independent movie If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (2021) is a story of a woman who does not conform to misogynistic categories through mystical pregnancy. I will trace the evolution of the binaries that began with Freud’s Madonna Whore Dichotomy to Erin Harrington’s “Good” and “Bad” Mother theory to delineate that Halsey’s movie is a contemporary attempt to reintroduce and reframe the theories about women’s sexuality and identity. While referencing the conclusions of feminist scholars like Shulamith Firestone and Betty Friedan, I present how the patriarchal culture often excludes, demonizes, and limits pregnant women’s significance as individuals. A close reading of the scenes and the soundtrack to the movie suggests that If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power uses the trope of horror pregnancy to point out the patriarchal discrimination of pregnant women’s empowerment. In that, the feminist interpretation of Halsey’s movie breaks down the stereotype of a monstrous gestating woman to present that pregnancy can come with a form of power.