Monday, 28 January 2008

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Welcome to the dollhouse

My Fake Baby is the freakiest documentary ever made...

My Fake Baby was like watching a car crash unfold in front of my eyes.

I haven’t been as freaked out by a documentary since watching the masterpiece Guys and Dolls about men who brought realistic plastic life size female dolls and pretended they were their girlfriends.

My Fake Baby however took this to an even freakier level. Basically there were two women who were buying life like dolls of babies to look after as if they were the real thing.

One already had four of these dolls and was buying another one to add to her brood. She didn’t have children of her own and essentially liked dressing them up and taking them for walks in pristine prams.

She spent £300 on baby clothes in preparation for picking her fake baby up from America. You see fake babies don’t scream, cry or make their clothes dirty and this was what she wanted. Apparently it’s money well spent when you don’t have to deal with sick even if it means everyone thinks you’re mental.

The other woman was buying one to replace her grandson and was getting it made to look exactly like he did when he was born, blemishes and all.

At first I thought her baby must have died, but then it turned out her daughter had simply emigrated with her son and the grandmother couldn’t face being without the child. It was genuinely scary.

Never before [Guys and Dolls aside] have I watched a documentary like a horror film. These women treated these dolls like real babies and generally they looked so lifelike it just meant they looked dead.

What was missing in these woman’s lives I don’t know. The husbands all seemed to think it was weird, but still went along with it. Rather than suggesting psychiatric treatment they simply kept sctumn and washed the car.

I did feel a bit sorry for her because it was like watching someone grieve, but there is a time to let go and not try and recreate the past in plastic instead.

I’d like to have known just how much the idea of her mum having an effigy made of her son freaked her daughter out, although we did get to see the boy on the web cam being shown the doll and told it was a baby him by his grandmother for him to exclaim: ‘You numb nut, it’s a doll!’

Out of the mouths of babes indeed.