Eraserhead: Why David Lynch depicts a nightmare about a fetus

A personal novel-like private film depicting the madness that dwells within oneself.

Eraserhead's main character, Henry (Jack Nance), is David Lynch himself, as evidenced by his strange, shaggy head. When Henry's girlfriend Mary (Charlotte Stewart) confesses that she is pregnant, they decide to get married. The baby is born with a deformity that resembles a cow's fetus, and Mary can't stand the repeated cries every night and runs away from home. Henry gradually becomes mentally ill, and eventually stabs the fetus with scissors.

This is clearly a murderous impulse towards his own daughter Jennifer. Twisted feelings for the child she didn't want are exploding in a twisted form. Jennifer herself later said of the film, ``I think the theme of this movie is unplanned pregnancy and birth defects.'' She was born with a huge bump on her foot that required corrective surgery!

"Eraserhead" (c) Photofest / Getty Images

Perhaps David Lynch managed to maintain his sanity by expressing the madness that was nesting within him in the form of "movies." ``Eraserhead'' is a private film that is clearly a personal novel.

What's frightening is that, to this day, Lynch remains adamant about the identity of the baby in the film. How it was made (rumored to be a skinned rabbit or a lamb fetus) and how it was photographed remain a mystery. He is so thorough that there is an anecdote that he had the projectionist blindfolded during a rush to film a baby.

However, considering that he used to dissect cats when he was little, and that he hid rotten fruit and animal carcasses in his secret basement, I can kind of guess the baby's identity. But.

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