He’s Expecting: A bizarre show with bit of a heart
Films and TV shows about pregnant men are nothing new, but Netflix’s latest one from Japan is one of the strangest, even if ultimately it has a pure message, writes Charlotte Cripps
Wish me luck. I’m about to watch a cisgender man give birth. He’s rushed off on a trolley to have a C-section. The labour pains are excruciating. But before then, he’s throwing up in the toilets at work with morning sickness and has milk leaking from his nipples onto his office shirt during conference.
These are scenes in a new Japanese comedy-drama on Netflix called He’s Expecting – it’s billed as a show that will shed light on the hardships experienced by “pregnant women”.
As somebody who has been through two pregnancies, I decided to give it a go. But do I relate to it?
It’s certainly not a surprise hit like Netflix’s Squid Game from South Korea – in fact, it’s got a 20 per cent “rotten” audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to the 83 per pent positive rating for Squid Game. I can’t find any reviews from mainstream TV critics either.
But the eight-part series is so bizarre – it’s almost binge-worthy. A successful ad man, Kentaro Hiyama, unexpectedly finds himself pregnant. It’s a huge shock – he is cisgender after all. By the laws of nature, it’s not possible. But this show is set in an alternative reality where reports of men becoming pregnant are about once per month in Japan. It’s not a new phenomenon, either – we are told it was first documented 50 years ago in the US, where it caused an uproar at the time because the man was not transgender.
Despite knowing about this rare occurrence of men getting pregnant, Kentaro doesn’t think for a minute it will ever happen to him.
“I can’t imagine what that would be like to be a pregnant man. It would be super weird,” he says casually after watching a news bulletin about it.
When he feels unwell and goes for a scan, he thinks they are checking for cancer. The cold gel is applied across his stomach – and in an eery scene reminiscent of Hitchcock or Rosemary’s Baby, the doctor tells him he’s “nine to 10 weeks along” while pointing to a bean-shaped thing “about 2cm long”. “That’s your baby,” the doctor says.
I remember that moment as clear as day when I found out I was pregnant – I felt a rush of emotion. I had been trying for ages – it was planned. But he’s fleeing in terror.
“I want you to listen to me carefully Mr Kentaro – you’re a pregnant man,” belts out the doctor. As Kentaro rushes out of the hospital, the doctor says: “I understand, for men pregnancy is usually somebody else’s problem.” Kentaro gets a pregnancy test from a chemist – there is no denying it then.
I enjoyed my pregnancies – but clearly, he’s not. Throughout most of the eight episodes – which has a very basic script with minimal dialogue and is somewhat amateurish – he’s clutching his bump as if it hurts. It could easily be mistaken for a mild potbelly most of the time.
“I’m pregnant,” he admits to his on-off girlfriend who he has asked to sign the abortion consent form. “Is it really mine?” she asks – in a role reversal.
“I had no idea that being pregnant would be this draining and difficult. As a man, I never imagined how it would change my life.” Unexpected things happen in life – when you are faced with those, what would you do?
The pregnant Kentaro faces prejudice in the office – like missing job promotions. We witness sexist remarks too. “A man shouldn’t be bothered with wiping his children’s butts. It’s all about taking control of your household, right?” Says one male employee after another male colleague leaves a dinner with the boss early because he needs to get home to do the childcare.
The show comes across as a social stereotype-busting educational show at times. But while it might not gain back subscribers for Netflix – it’s not a bad thing to put men through something which, for many women, is the norm – but why is pregnancy treated as something to endure?
Pregnancy is a beautiful and magical time – and it feels almost a miracle to pop out a baby. I was lucky not to have morning sickness – the labour pains were horrific I have to say, but we do have drugs if needed.
It’s a woke kind of show – but it’s not the first TV or film to deal with the issue of male pregnancy. The 1994 comedy film Junior, starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Austrian research geneticist Dr Alex Hesse, who agrees to carry a pregnancy in his own body as part of a fertility research project. He gives birth to Junior via C-section, with Dr Diana Reddin (Emma Thompson) present, who donated the egg.
Rabbit Test in 1978, co-written and directed by Joan Rivers, was also a comedy about the world’s first pregnant man Lionel Carpenter, played by Billy Crystal, who also suffers extreme bouts of morning sickness – throwing up on one of his students who he then asks out on a date. The film’s tag line was “where do you buy maternity jockey shorts?”
More recently is director Roger Michel’s laugh-out-loud funny Birthday in 2015 starring Stephen Mangan as a pregnant man going through labour in a maternity hospital – Anna Maxwell Martin plays his wife Lisa. While waiting to give birth, he complains that he has been “fingered more times than an unripe avocado” – it’s no exaggeration as any pregnant person knows.
Three Pregnant Men in 2020 is a mockumentary-style comedy about the world’s three first pregnant men in the final terms of their pregnancies as they try to remain anonymous. While the French-Italian comedy, A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973), directed by Jacques Demy, starred Marco (Marcello Mastroianni) – a driving instructor who is engaged to single mother, and hairdresser, Irène (Catherine Deneuve) – who is told he is pregnant. He blames it on eating too much chicken pumped with female hormones – enough to carry a child.
It’s nothing compared to the moving, real-life stories about trans men who were assigned female at birth and can get pregnant, such as in the intimate 2019 documentary Seahorse, in which Freddy McConnell, let a film crew follow him on his journey to start a family – it included the birth. Also, Pregnant Man in 2008 was about trans man Thomas Beatie – whose pregnancy was a media sensation in 2008. He is filmed in the delivery room with his wife Nancy where he gives birth to their baby daughter Susan.
The fictional male pregnancy TV shows are comedies – a chance to laugh at or ponder life as a pregnant woman. But after watching He’s Expecting – I’ve decided, it’s got a heart. There is so much more to it than one-liners about being manhandled during pregnancy.
When Kentaro goes off on maternity leave in the final episode, his colleague says: “I miss the days when we used to compete for promotions.” This is a new challenge for Kentaro – they might be jealous he’s taking such a long break, but as he says: “It’s not really a break – I’m raising my baby.” I remember being made to feel like I was on some kind of holiday camp on maternity leave – not from work colleagues, but from some family who thought it gave me extra time to do stuff they couldn’t because they were working.
But while the TV show’s message is telling most women what we’ve known all along – as women we have to juggle a hell of a lot – at least it’s genuinely trying to confront social inequalities.
It’s one of the weirdest shows I’ve seen in a while. But to show what it’s all like can only help change social conditioning. After all, it doesn’t matter what your gender is – when you see your newborn baby, it’s love at first sight.
He's Expecting is on Netflix
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