The Inevitability of Optimism

Curator's Note

“It operates on a kind of faith in the fundamental goodness of life... that your perseverance will pay off.”

The philosophy of How I Met Your Mother is well-described in 'How I Met Your Mother': The Optimism Of Inevitability. The idea that everything that happens is worth it because one day it All Turned Out OK in the End.

In popular culture, this is the dominant narrative - if you want it enough, try hard enough, put yourself through enough rounds of IVF, eventually It Will All Turn Out OK - you will get your baby. Here’s a recent example from Twitter that we didn’t hear about earlier because infertility is private and people mostly don’t talk about it while going through it.

Infertility is frequently a story of ongoing uncertainty, of hope repeatedly denied. You don’t know that it’s all going to turn out OK in the end. It is not inevitable that you will have a baby.

Lewis and Hannah Vaughan-Jones told the story of their IVF treatment as it happened. Their story didn’t have an ending. The irresistible hope meant the story stopped unresolved. Their videos are powerful and emotional in dealing with the uncertainty of infertility.

In June 2019, the Optimism of Inevitability caught up with them and Hannah got pregnant. It All Turned Out OK in the end. The meaning of their videos has been changed by this new context.

I created and directed IF, a virtual reality film about infertility. The film ends, but doesn't tell you whether the couple eventually have a baby. This was crucial to telling a truthful story for me. Infertility is a story that exists in an ongoing present and that is not a story that our media currently does well.

In HIMYM Robin’s infertility Turns Out OK in the end because Ted managed to marry and have children with someone who conveniently died. She gets her children, via a dead woman who doesn’t matter except to allow Ted and Robin to have the family they were always meant to have. What could be more optimistic than that?  

Comments

Thanks for your post, Dee, and for sharing your own film on here. I enjoyed watching the episodes available on YouTube and would like to see the end (or lack of ending...!). I hope you plan to upload the rest of it soon :-)

I agree with your comments here about infertility only become narratable within popular media when "it all turns out ok in the end" (as per your Twitter eg, which appears to have been posted only after the arrival of baby Esme). The sense of ambiguity and elusive narrative closure that colours experiences of infertility certainly don't sit comfortably with viewers. I wonder, too, if this is somehow bound up with the persistent idea that motherhood marks the end point - the 'happy ever after' - for contemporary women, and which is meant to drop neatly into place after tertiary study, a career, travel, earning enough money, finding the right partner, and so on (of course, many mothers writing today are refuting the notion that motherhood is an ending).  

On a side note - have you seen the Tamara Jenkins 2018 film Private Life? This seems a good example of a text that resists what you are calling the 'optimism of inevitability', favouring instead the uncertainty and lack of resolution that seems more characteristic of experiences of infertility (and reproductive technologies). 

"I wonder, too, if this is somehow bound up with the persistent idea that motherhood marks the end point - the 'happy ever after' - for contemporary women"

Yes, very much so. There is a certain tyranny implicit in the idea that the only quest that can give your life meaning is to get married and have babies. The various adventures available to a male protagonist are not open to women as a default. They can, as you point out, sample a few of them on the road. But the ultimate quest is to have a BABY. And once you have that baby your story is over. Now you're a mother and you don't get a story of your own anymore. You are a supporting character.

Maybe that's why there is such power in the idea that for women life begins at 40? (The age of TOO OLD!!!!, as seen in the video you shared). There is a freedom that goes along with being ignored, with the social invisibility of being a middle aged woman.

I am cueing Private Life on Netflix right now.

Thanks for your kind words about my film and for your comments and your own post, which I really enjoyed. That video is quite something!

"And once you have that baby your story is over. Now you're a mother and you don't get a story of your own anymore. You are a supporting character." 

Yes, indeed! Sexuality seems to be one of the areas where this is particularly rife. This article is on exactly that - thought you might enjoy it: https://www.thecut.com/2017/05/female-sexuality-desire-what-happens-as-w...

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