I guess these would help if you're grieving the loss of a child and can't let go, but I still can't help feeling those are among the creepiest things I've ever seen. I forget the name of it, but maybe it follows the same phenomenon by which the closer something non-human approaches to appearing human, the more off putting it looks to us. Like clowns and cyborgs, I don't think I'd ever want one of these in my house.

I believe you're thinking of the Uncanny Valley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley

My family's pet ferret does this too, with anything small and round. Carries objects around and protects them. When it's Christmas she gets into a small plush nativity scene and nabs the baby Jesus. It's adorable to see her carrying him around.

I think this starts at creepy and finishes somewhere past mental, way past.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but is it WOMAN who collects fake babies, or WOMEN. (I shudder to think there is more than one). This is very weird and creepy.

Sorry to creep you out Jake, but it's women the plural, the doc follows multipal stories, 2 or 3 if I remember correctly.

I watched this documentary and unfortunately didn't realise it was perfect Boingboing material. There were a few women featured in the documentary. One was very sad, someone who had looked after her grandchild as a baby due to his mother's illness, and then had lost him because her daughter recovered and went off to New Zealand with the baby. I could understand why she wanted a grandson subsstitute, but it made me sad that there are so many families around who could do with an adopted granny with real children that she could hug, and instead of finding them she found a rubber baby.

One of the women was as mad as a box of fish, and had multiple fake babies because the real thing might make a noise or ruin its clothes. She made me very glad that she could have rubber babies and not the real thing. While most real parents hate that whole lugging around the pram and bottle and nappy bags thing, she loved all that - for a pretend baby. I think the truth is she is still a little girl at heart, and couldn't bear not to be the focus of everyone attention. If she takes her fantasy too much further she may find herself the centre of everyone attention - down at the local psychiatric ward.

Another woman who briefly appeared seemed to have a toy show in her house, hundreds of babies in cots crammed into a room. That seemed a bit obsessive compulsive really.

I think some of them are fantastics works of art in the realism, but I agree with others that the more real they are, the more creepy. In general, although I am a woman, I found the men's reactions to them most normal... nearly all regarded them as disturbing and macabre.

Fee: thanks so much for this synopsis! Now I really want to see it.

Darren: that's the cutest ferret story ever. Even cuter than the one about the guy I knew in college who kept a ferret in his dorm that would climb into his bed at might and nuzzle my friend's weird elbow rash.

Hi Mark, you're welcome, I'm only sorry that I type as though wearing boxing gloves at this time of the morning. And that I accidentally reported my own post in trying to find the edit button, lol.

Can I be the only person wondering if your friend's weird elbow rash might have been a ferret allergy?

Previously on BoingBoing:

The creepy, creepy world of "reborn baby dolls":
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/10/the_creepy_creepy_wo.html

Sculptor makes dolls of babies that died:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/08/sculptor-makes-dolls.html

This activity does support Zero Population Growth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth

And I second Mark's comments on Fee's analysis; good job, love the "box of fish".

I watched this when it aired in Britain.. It's really quite sad and disturbing.

There was one part that I thought was way beyond.. The Gran, whose family had moved to New Zealand, named the doll after the grandson (weird enough), and then introduced it to him on a webcam. What is that gonna do to his head? My granny replaced me with a creepy rubber version.

It just seemed delusional and disturbed.

The woman who was featured making the dolls is clearly a fantastic artist, but she entirely encourages these type of see-it-as-a-real-baby clients, it almost seems a little exploitative of people in a weakened mental state.

And ditto on what Fee said about the husbands, they (almost resoundingly) thought it was odd, and didn't appreciate what it represented, although I fail to see the implied connection between her view and her gender. You didn't have to be a man to see these women were batty.

I remember watching this; very weird... what bothered me (besides the grotesque beauty of baby limbs and heads in plastic bags) was them walking into shops, or down the street, and someone stopping them... I mean, the person stopping them is expecting to see a real baby, and they see this freakily accurate doll? That would quickly become an awkward conversation :P

I also missed the first 10 minutes, so had no idea the child was still alive - I thought it had died so spent the entire show thinking "you know, maybe it's not so bad, she is just dealing with loss" - but then she is talking to the boy at the end via webcam, holding this slightly out-of-date doppelganger aloft exclaiming "look it's you!"

interesting but odd :)

Hi Arkizzle,
I suppose what I meant was that while some women loved them and some women agreed with the men, ALL the men thought they were creepy.

Among women of my acquaintance it's roughly half and half "aren't they gorgeous, where do I get one?" (answer: ebay) and "yeuch!"

Men are all in the yeuch department, haven't found one yet who thinks they're cute. Don't know whether that's a gender bias due to environmental conditioning or a real gender bias due to an innate female/male difference.

@IKIGEG:

About missing the first ten minutes, they definitely left it intentionally unclear as to whether her grandson was alive or not until the end. I thought it a little unneccessary, not exactly exploitative but muddied the waters emotionally... I guess I like a documentary to give me the facts rather than play around and imply (suggest?) things that aren't true to build tension.

The grandmothers husband got straight to the point: like something off a slab in the morgue.

Sorry to be nitpicky, Jake0748, but questions end with a question mark. "WOMAN" and "WOMEN" need to be in quotation marks, and one doesn't put a period both before and after parentheses.

After all, if you're going to be nitpicky over a simple typographical error (aka "typo"), you shouldn't have such glaring grammatical errors yourself.

Comprende?

Nutjobs.

This is just very, very bizarre. And creepy.

I was confused for a moment with women/woman too. It changes the post-- if there is one single woman who collects fake babies, it could be either sad or postmodern in some way. If there's an entire group of them, it's probably mostly sad with a side of creepy. It's clear from the use of the plural in the post that it's a group of women, not a single one, but the headline is what sticks in people's minds most of the time.

Let's have a little perspective here, folks: this isn't half as creepy as guys who treat RealDolls as their "girlfriends". More sad, really.

Makes it easy to babysit for these women though.

The whole "baby fever" thing has always creeped me out. It's like some biological switch clicks over in a womans brain, her pupils dialate and her entire personality drains out of her skull.

I have lost touch with a few female friends over the years shortley after they became pregnant because all of a sudden, they could literaly speak of nothing else. After the baby is born they turn into mommy-bots. No more TV, no more books, no more friends except other mommy-bots.

The thing with the dolls seems to be extreme baby fever missing the baby.

Is this any more odd than other parts of our society, like the irrational, unscientific fear of cloned food (or un-organic food) or the evolution boogie man? All of you who are called this "scary" I am sure have a other odd traits yourself.

Stones....glass houses.....

@ #22 BDGBILL
As a husband of a Mommy-bot, while in some women the phenomenon might be bot-ish, I know that my wife's change is solely the result of the demands of her desire to care for our son to the best of her ability. Socializing with other moms is the best way to gain advice and perspective. Its the thing she talks about most because she spends the most time and energy at it -- but she can talk about other things. There's really nothing strange going on for most women. Its just the effect of a very intense job -- childrearing.

@ #16 CRASH! BANG!:
Actually, Jake0748's nitpicky-ness was well founded. The typo in question did alter the meaning of the story in an important way... unlike the grammatical imperfections in Jake's comment. More to the point, he made his point without acting like an asshole.

"Comprende?" Jeez.

I think it's an example of Jean Baudrillard's "precession of simulacra," where the simulated in our culture will replace, eventually, the real thing.

My blog post, How to Survive the Post Holiday Blues Without Leaving Your Couch,

http://www.mediarights.org/engine_feed/2008/01/how_to_survive_the_post_holida_3.php

references this film and gives a bit more on the current trend of the fake trumping the real.

FEE

Thanks for clarifying :)
Its still a little weird for me though, maybe it is environmental, because where I live, I haven't met one single person, male or female (teenage or adult) who thought it was even remotely ok..
Now, that sounds like I've done a poll of the nation or something, but in fact when I watched it I was quite shocked and asked around, and even got some people to watch the repeat, so I could hear their thoughts.

I really didn't hear anyone saying, "oh, thats so cute" it was entirely weirded out "wtf?" responses.

I imagine there are some people who just see it like collecting minatures or hello-kitty stuff, but the circles hi-lighted in this doc were absolutely not of that ilk, as i'm sure you'll agree.

.. and ..

#23

I disagree entirely.
Fears about GM food are encouraged by our press and media, and the consensus (peer reviewed) information is actually quite hard to come by in a day to day capacity. As a fear in its own right, it is in fact (irrational or not) well placed, as eating correctly (and trying not to ruin or food suppy) is centrally important to most of our lives.

The people in this documentary are purposefully self-deluded, to the point of replacing real-life humans and relationships with replicas, and alienating their spouses.
To put society, that has been led astray by the media and misguided government policy, in the same boat as these rather sad people (who probably could do with some councilling) is a bit off the mark in my view.

Now on the Evolution Boogieman, you might have a point. In this day-and-age, creationism is self-delusion (dogma or no).

.

Could someone post the entire video on YouTube or something? Since I'm not in the UK, it won't let me watch it. :(

THATOTHERGIRL:
I just had a look, and it's only a clip, not the whole doc.
Also, tried downloading the clip for you and couldn't find the stream.. :(

clever bastards (cleverer than me anyway)

As a father I wouldn't let a nutjob like within 10' of my kid. That may explain mens reaction to this..protectiveness.

Christ the first two years it was (almost)impossible to take her shopping without people wanting to come up and touch..get the fuck away from my kid!

Arkizzle- I watched the clip, then downloaded and installed the 4oD player to try to download/stream the show. That's when it said no. I had read the requirements, but hoped that it wouldn't check or something. ;)

God bless #25 TOESTUBBER, I feel redeemed. :) I wasn't trying to be snarky in my original comment. And I know I'm not the greatest typist or puctuationist, but the comprende did seem a little harsh.

I came across a 'reborn' maker on Etsy last week and was both fascinated and aghast. The dolls were very well made, but it weirded me out. They each came with their little life's story and 'birth certificate'.

This seemed like such a bizarre hobby, I decided to dig a little deeper and found websites that offer baby parts for making these dolls. Little bags of arms and legs, a selection of baby heads... even ugly, premature or crying babies are on offer.

Even as a little girl, I was not fond of dolls. This takes my 'ick' reaction even further. Zombie babies...

I've only known one woman who was an avid doll collector, and yeah - it was utterly creepy to sit anywhere in her house. Not a single room (including bathrooms) was devoid of porcelain, rubber or plastic dolls. I only went to her house the one time with my husband, and we both blurted out "what's up with the dolls?" to each other upon leaving. Worst of all, she had a live-in boyfriend who was not allowed to display any of his own possessions, nor move "her babies." I didn't waste all that much sympathy on him - after all, he picked her, and decided he was fine with playing second fiddle to a vast collection of artificial humans.

Says a lot, though. And yes, she was a rather pitiable person; low self-esteem and very artificial in appearance and manner, controlling, uncomfortable around other people - well, real people that is. I don't pretend to understand the psychology of "extreme doll collecting." I did find it terribly uncomfortable to be around, and thought it a manifestation of a deeper personality problem in her case. Since I have never met another woman like that, I cannot claim any expertise or accuracy in my assumptions.

@ #34 "extreme doll collecting"

Sounds like a sport some useless TV network would make a reality show out of.

Children of Men. (The book, that is - they left it out of the movie.)

This topic made me think of "Children of Men"--the book, not the movie. If you're not familiar with either, they're set in a near-future world where no human babies have been born for perhaps twenty years. In the book, some women respond by carrying these same types of dolls, treating them like real children. There was one scene where one of the dolls is attacked and crushed by a creeped out bystander. The book's narrator doesn't quite know how to respond; he's creeped out too, but the woman is in such distress over the 'death' of her 'child'.

@ #35...now you've done it. You placed it in writing; inevitably it will become a pitch.

THATOTHERGIRL:
Oh, sorry..
I tried to follow the link and it got me to install stuff, and it did some tinkery stuff, updated and installed other stuff..
and after all that it doesn't work for me. something about needing a different security cert in my wmp. also, it seems the 4OD player drms the video to ur computer for 48 hours worth.. so u couldn't watch it anyway.

so about that :(

my ex-husband's grandmother experienced all the indignities of Alzheimer's disease, compounded by the belief that she could go to one of the hospitals and bring home one of the "crack babies" (this was in the 90s). They bought her one of those realistic baby dolls, and it provided her a lot of comfort at the end of her life. Evidently it satisfied her need to hold and care for a "baby." after she died, my daughter ended up with the doll, and it was so realistic looking, i made her keep it hidden when she wasn't actively playing with it. i'd see it and for a split second think i'd had a new baby and forgotten about it. we called the doll "freaky baby." yeah, they're creepy, but there are some unusual situations when they can be therapeutic.

The slick coupon booklets that come in the Sunday newspaper have, toward the rear where the rates are lower, advertisements for realistic doll babies. I always wondered who bought those things. Now I know.

(The supplements also have adverts for collector plates for various icky little dog breeds, and unbelievably tacky Thomas Kinkade religious kitsch.)

This reminds me a little of animal hording, but far less destructive to one's physical health and the cleanliness of one's home. And, of course, there's not animal suffering involved.

My boyfriend works in a small retail store, and knows most of the customers that come in. There is one lady who wheels around one of these baby dolls in a carriage, and even feeds it using one of the toy bottles that empty when turned over and fill when right side up. That's fine.

The real problem is that she "abuses" it. She'll pick it up, and ram it's head against a counter. She'll hit it, punch it. Swear at it. On a couple of occasions, tourists or non-knowing customers have called the cops on her for abusing her baby. When the cops get there, and see who it is, they usually tell her "[Name], it's not nice to do that to your baby, now go home, it needs to go to bed." The woman will then check out, and promptly leave calmly.

Only once did they try to take it away. She put up so much of a hassle, she got arrested, and was apparently put in a hospital for a while.

It's apparently a decent coping mechanism, yet still very creepy...

The schlock horror film writes itself! Creepy woman protagonist keeps winning reborning competitions, but no one knows they're real-- like the old Herschell Gordon Lewis movie about the sculptor. She never got over having lost her own baby long ago, and is compensating-- she's doing the babies a favor by stealing them from miserable (she feels) surroundings, "reborning" them (through some vivid, disturbing-to-watch process), and letting them be loved, admired, win ribbons at conventions, etc. "Reborn -- You're never too young for a second chance."

I've been on some of the websites of these reborning, uh, artists? The way they describe every detail of the process, stripping the factory color and then applying paint in thin layers, rooting each hair, replacing the eyes, all this painstaking ritual - you know what it reminds me of?

Serial killers.

Sure beats collecting "hummels."

I'm with @22...I know people who spend 30 hours a week playing a Tauren warrior...after pretending you're a cow for much of the week, carrying around a fake baby doesn't look all that odd.

Presumably if this had some bullshit Second Life connection or could be made into some sort of avante garde art project it would be cool, but since it's not I guess it's safe to laugh at these folks.