The Baby of Macon follows Prospero’s Books as the second part of Greenaway’s trilogy set in the 17th century, in this case, the era of the Baroque Counter Reformation when Catholicism had perfected it’s propagands, publicity and illusion – natural characteristics of cinema; characteristic too of advertising and commericial media, the implied demons of the film whose events progress as a play within a play. But as the action unfolds it becomes apparent that distinctions of the real – between spectators and particpants and actors and roles – are breaking down and the audience becomes accomplice to hiumiliation, murder and torture.