The Fantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and, in some cases, is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic Tzvetan Todorov in his work The Fantastic. He describes the fantastic as being the hesitation of characters and readers when presented with questions about reality.

Definition[link]

The fantastic genre can be subtly seen in works where the reader has a sense of confusion about the work and whether or not the described phenomenon was real. Todorov states that this genre never solely encompasses a novel as the ending always drives the hesitation towards one of two decisions which he titles as the uncanny or the marvelous. The uncanny, wherein the phenomenon turns out to have a rational explanation such as in the Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe; or the marvelous, where there truly is a supernatural explanation for the phenomenon:

The fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions. First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural or supernatural explanation of the events described. Second, this hesitation may also be experienced by a character; thus the reader's role is so to speak entrusted to a character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work -- in the case of naive reading, the actual reader identifies himself with the character. Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as "poetic" interpretations.^[1]

The Fantastic can also represent dreams and wakefulness where the character or reader hesitates as to what is reality or what is a dream. Again the Fantastic is found in this hesitation - once it is decided the Fantastic ends.^[2]

Relative Genres[link]

There is no truly typical "fantastic story", as the term generally discusses works of the horror or gothic genre. But two representative stories might be:

• Algernon Blackwood's story "The Willows", where two men traveling down the Danube River are beset by an eerie feeling of malice and several improbable setbacks in their trip; the question that pervades the story is whether they are falling prey to the wilderness and their own imaginations, or if there really is something horrific out to get them.
• Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Black Cat," where a murderer is haunted by a black cat; but is it revenge from beyond the grave, or just a cat?

A clear distinction between the Fantastic and magic realism is that the latter does not privilege either realistic or supernatural elements, nor ask the reader or characters to do so.

The Fantastic is sometimes erroneously called the Grotesque or Supernatural fiction, because both the Grotesque and the Supernatural contain fantastic elements, yet they are not the same, as the fantastic is based on an ambiguity of those elements.

Examples[link]

In Literary Works[link]

• many of Edgar Allan Poe's short works
• Henry James The Turn of the Screw - seen by Todorov as one of the few examples of pure Fantastic ^[3]
• Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose"
• Mikhail Bulgakov
• Algernon Blackwood's works
• Sheridan Le Fanu's works in "In a Glass Darkly"
• Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series
• E.T.A. Hoffmann's works, notably Der Sandmann, "The Golden Flower Pot", and "The Nutcracker and the King of Mice"
• Gérard de Nerval's "Aurelia"
• Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla"

In Language[link]

In Elizabethan slang, a 'fantastic' was a fop; an "improvident young gallant" ^[4] who was obsessed with showy dress. The character Lucio in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure is described in the Dramatis Personae as a 'Fantastic'.

In popular usage, the word "fantastic" has become a casual term of approval, a synonym for "great" or "brilliant", and this has to a great extent supplanted the original meaning of the word. However, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary still lists the original meaning first, with the popular meaning listed second and described as "informal".

Footnotes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1973)
• Eric Rabkin, The Fantastic in Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)
• Christine Brooke-Rose, A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
• Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London, Methuen, 1981)
• T. E. Apter, Fantasy Literature: An Approach to Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982)
• Tobin Siebers, The Romantic Fantastic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)
• Neil Cornwell, The Literary Fantastic: From Gothic to Postmodernism (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990)
• Nancy Traill, Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal in Fiction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996)
• Armitt, Lucy, Theorising the Fantastic (London: Arnold, 1996)
• David Sandner, ed., Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004)
• Riccardo Capoferro, Empirical Wonder: Historicizing the Fantastic, 1660-1760 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010)

See also[link]

• Fantastique
• Grotesque
• Magical Realism

Baby M (born March 27, 1986) was the pseudonym used In re Baby M, 537 A.2d 1227, 109 N.J. 396 (N.J. 02/03/1988) for the infant whose legal parentage was in question.

"In re Baby M" was a custody case that became the first American court ruling on the validity of surrogacy. William Stern and his wife, Elizabeth Stern, entered into a surrogacy agreement with Mary Beth Whitehead, whom they found through a newspaper advertisement. According to the agreement, Mary Beth Whitehead would be inseminated with William Stern's sperm (making her a traditional, as opposed to gestational, surrogate), bring the pregnancy to term, and relinquish her parental rights in favor of William's wife, Elizabeth. After the birth, however, Mary Beth decided to keep the child. William and Elizabeth Stern then sued to be recognized as the child's legal parents.

The New Jersey court ruled that the surrogacy contract was invalid according to public policy, recognized Mary Beth Whitehead as the child's legal mother, and ordered the Family Court to determine whether Whitehead, as mother, or Stern, as father, should have legal custody of the infant, using the conventional 'best interests of the child' analysis. Stern was awarded custody, with Whitehead having visitation rights.

At birth, Mary Beth Whitehead named Baby M., "Sara Elizabeth Whitehead." She was later renamed "Melissa Stern," after William Stern was awarded legal custody.

Background details[link]

Mary Beth Whitehead responded to an ad placed by the Infertility Center of New York in the Asbury Park Press seeking women willing to help infertile couples have children. She was a high school drop-out who had married a waste collector, with whom she had three children.^[1].

Elizabeth "Betsy" Stern was not technically infertile, but had multiple sclerosis and was concerned about the potential health implications of pregnancy, including temporary paralysis.^[2]

William "Bill" Stern and Mary Beth Whitehead entered into a "surrogacy contract," according to which Mary Beth would be inseminated with Bill's sperm, bring the pregnancy to term, and relinquish her parental rights in favor of Bill's wife, Betsy. The Sterns reportedly based their choice simply by looking at her picture.

(According to later terminology, Mary Beth would be considered a traditional surrogate, as opposed to a gestational surrogate, because she was the genetic mother of the child. At the time, the technology for gestational surrogacy was not yet in common use).

On March 27, 1986, Mary Beth gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Sara Elizabeth Whitehead. However, within 24 hours of transferring physical custody to the Sterns, Mary Beth went to them and demanded that the baby to be given back to her, allegedly threatening suicide. Mary Beth subsequently refused to return the baby to the Sterns and left New Jersey, taking the infant with her. The Sterns had the Whitehead family's bank accounts frozen and sought warrants for their arrest.

In 1987, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Harvey R. Sorkow formally validated the surrogacy contract and awarded custody of Baby M to the Sterns under a "best interest of the child analysis". ^[3]

On February 3, 1988, however, the Supreme Court of New Jersey, led by Chief Justice Robert Wilentz, invalidated surrogacy contracts as against public policy but in dicta affirmed the trial court's use of a "best interest of the child" analysis and remanded the case to family court. On remand, the lower court awarded Bill and Betsy custody and Mary Beth was given visitation rights.^[4][5]

Legal significance[link]

The case attracted much attention as it demonstrated that the possibilities of third party reproduction raise novel legal and social questions about the meaning of parenthood and the possibility of contracting around issues of pregnancy and childbirth.

Among other points of contention, people argued about whether the ability to contract away parental rights to a child born to her invoke a basic human right for a woman to make decisions about her own body, or whether recognizing such a right would entail too great risks of exploitation.

The New Jersey court's finding that no contract can alter the legal position of a woman who bears a child as that child's mother seemed to settle the question of the status of surrogacy contracts in America, at least until technological advances permitting gestational surrogacy resulted in cases where a woman can bear and birth a child to whom she has no genetic relation reopened the question in many jurisdictions.^[6]

At least in New Jersey, however, the Baby M. ruling continues to rule. In 2009, New Jersey Superior Court ruled that In re Baby M applies to gestational surrogacy as well as traditional surrogacy cases, in A.G.R. v. D.R.H & S.H.. The intended parents were a homosexual male couple. They created an embryo using an anonymous donor ovum and the sperm of one of the husbands. The sister of the other husband carried the embryo to term and originally delivered the child to her brother and his husband, but a year later asserted her own parental rights even though she was not genetically related to the child. Judge Francis Schultz relied on In re Baby M to recognize the gestational mother as the child's legal mother. However, a later ruling in 2011 awarded full custody to the biological father.^[7]

Aftermath[link]

After reaching the age of majority in March 2004, the daughter known as "Baby M" (now named Melissa) legally terminated Mary Beth's parental rights and formalized Betsy's maternity through adoption proceedings.^[1] When the controversy died down, Whitehead divorced her husband, re-married and had another child with her new husband.

Melissa attended Dwight-Englewood School and later The George Washington University and majored in religious studies. She said it was strange to study the Baby M case in her bioethics class at the university.^[1]

"I love my family very much and am very happy to be with them," Melissa told a reporter for the New Jersey Monthly, referring to the Sterns. "I'm very happy I ended up with them. I love them, they're my best friends in the whole world, and that's all I have to say about it."^[1]

Studying at King's College London, Melissa completed a dissertation, "Reviving Solomon: Modern Day Questions Regarding the Long-term Implications for the Children of Surrogacy Arrangements."^[8] Ms. Whitehead also wrote a book about her experience in 1989.^[9]

In January 2011, a British court ruled a woman who bore a daughter under an informal surrogate agreement with a childless couple should keep the baby.^[10]

In October 2011, the original judge in the Baby M case, Judge Sorkow, presided over the wedding of Melissa and her husband, a neuroscientist from New Jersey. The couple currently reside in London.

In popular culture[link]

An ABC Network miniseries, simply titled Baby M, was broadcast in May 1988. The miniseries starred JoBeth Williams as Mary Beth Whitehead, John Shea as William, Bruce Weitz as Mary Beth's husband Rick, Robin Strasser as Elizabeth and Dabney Coleman as Gary Skoloff.^[11] The miniseries received seven Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Miniseries, which it did not win. Williams, Shea, Weitz, and Coleman all received nominations for their performances, but only Shea won.^[12] Williams also was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance.

In 1989, Mary Beth Whitehead published her own book about her experiences, A Mother's Story: The Truth About the Baby M Case.^[13]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Summary of the Baby M case

A baby mama (also baby-mama and baby-mother) is generally defined as a mother who is not married to her child's father, although the term is often used with other meanings as well.

Definition[link]

Originally, the term was used by the fathers of children born out of wedlock to describe the mothers of their children, but the term is now in general use to describe any single mother. Since entering currency in U.S. tabloids, the terms baby mama and baby daddy have even begun to be applied to married and engaged celebrities.^[1]

The Oxford English Dictionary defines baby mama as "the mother of a man's child, who is not his wife or (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner".^[1]

Peter L. Patrick, a linguistics professor who studies Jamaican English, has said of the terms baby mother and baby father, "[they] definitely imply there is not a marriage—not even a common-law marriage, but rather that the child is an 'outside' child".^[1]

The term "baby-mother" in Jamaica is most often used to describe any pregnant woman or any woman with a young child. For example on a crowded bus you may be admonished to give the "baby-mother" a seat. However in this case no judgement is being made about her marital status and literally means "the mother of the child".

Usage[link]

In news[link]

The term originated in Jamaican Creole as "baby-mother" (pronounced [ˈbebi ˈmada]), with the first printed usage appearing in the Kingston newspaper, The Daily Gleaner in 1966.^[1][2] Another Daily Gleaner use dates from November 21, 1989.^[2]

On Wednesday, June 11, 2008, Fox News Channel used the phrase "Outraged liberals: Stop picking on Obama's baby mama" in an on screen graphic in a discussion as to whether U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, was being unfairly criticized. A senior vice president of programming at Fox said in a statement that a producer "exercised poor judgment" during the segment.^[3]

In music[link]

Baby mother and baby mama had entered wide use in American hip-hop lyrics by the mid-1990s.^[1] The Outkast song "Ms. Jackson", released in 2000, was dedicated to "all the baby mamas' mamas". American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino released a song entitled "Baby Mama" in 2004. Planet Earth, an album by Prince released in 2007, features a song called "Future Baby Mama".

In film[link]

In 2008, Universal Pictures released a comedy entitled Baby Mama starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Poehler plays a woman Fey hires to be her surrogate.

See also[link]

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2010)

Clarence Linden Garnett Ashby III (born May 23, 1960), best known as Linden Ashby, is an American actor and martial artist.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Ashby was born in Atlantic Beach, Florida, the son of Eleanor, a civic organizer, and Garnett Ashby, a pharmaceuticals manufacturer.^[1] Ashby graduated from The Bolles School, a private school located in Jacksonville, Florida. He attended Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, but dropped out his junior year to pursue an acting career. Ashby studied acting at Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.

Career[link]

One of his first roles was as Lance Reventlow, the only son of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton (played by Farrah Fawcett) in the Golden Globe-winning miniseries Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story.

Ashby played the role of Johnny Cage in the 1995 hit Mortal Kombat, but did not reprise the role in the sequel. The previous year, he also appeared alongside Kevin Costner in the 1994 epic Wyatt Earp. Ashby portrayed Dr. Jeff Chapman on the 1998 made-for-TV movie The Lake with Yasmine Bleeth. He appeared in 2007's Resident Evil: Extinction, which marked his first appearance in a theatrical release since Mortal Kombat. In that span, he had done mainly straight-to-video and television work.

He was on Melrose Place as Dr. Brett Cooper for one season in 1998, and played Cameron Kirsten on The Young and the Restless from 2003 to 2004. He also began playing the role of Paul Hollingsworth on Days of Our Lives in March 2008. In a November 2008 Soap Talk interview, Ashby said that he would reprise his role as Johnny Cage in the upcoming third Mortal Kombat film, which has yet to go into production.^[2]

Personal life[link]

Ashby is married to actress Susan Walters. The couple met on the set of the ABC television series Loving in 1983, where she was a regular and he was filming a guest appearance. They have two daughters, Frances Grace (born 1991) and Savannah Elizabeth (born 1992). Ashby has been a student of martial arts on and off since he was 21 with a lot of time off and studied Karate, Tae Kwon Do and Kung Fu.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

2011 Pretty Little Liars Hanna Marins Dad

External links[link]

• Linden Ashby at the Internet Movie Database
• Linden Ashby at AllRovi