Hi everybody! It's me! I'm back from the beach (which was so awesome any attempt on my part to list the reasons why it was awesome would totally fall flat, so I will not try, except to say…oho! Got you! You thought that was going to be praeteritio, didn't you? Well it isn't! I'm really not going to try. But I love everyone a whole lot, and being at the beach with SotL is consistently one of the best times in my life, every single year.)
So. That's the happy-feeling part over. Now I can get on to Righteous Anger! Or maybe more Cultural and Intellectual Indignation. Over the past two days, Jamie and I, as part of our Project of Have Fun (a summer goal) have gone to see two movies that turned out (unexpectedly, in one case) to have pregnant heroines, and for which pregnancy is a major plot point. Yesterday we saw Knocked Up and today we saw Waitress.
I do want to make clear that my reaction to these movies (aside from the worries noted below) was not at all similar. I really liked Knocked Up (though slightly less than The Forty Year Old Virgin and quite a bit less than Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks), but I hated Waitress. The first had terrific acting and writing and was about Being a Person much more than about preganancy; the second was overplayed, hackneyed, vomitous, and was totally about God's Love As Revealed Through Babies.
But. Differences aside, there were two points of alarming similarity in the treatment of pregnancy in both movies that made me worried enough to...um...blog about them.
The first, grander thing: both movies dismiss the idea of abortion in a way I found disturbingly offhand. In both of these cases (women who seriously did not want to have children and for whom it would be a major hardship), I would have expected them to consider abortion more seriously than they did. I know that I would, were I in either situation.
My feelings about abortion are mixed. I think almost everyone's probably are. I am staunchly politically pro-choice, and absolutely believe that the procedure should continue to be available in every state. Were I suddenly and unexpectedly pregnant, however, I think it is likely that I would not choose to terminate the pregnancy, regardless of hardships. I also, of course, firmly believe that the absolute best course is having sex in such a way that one ensures that one won't become unexpectedly pregnant.
Now, of course, the plots of both of these movies revolve around women who decide to have the babies they are carrying. The movies wouldn't work if they didn't make that choice. I don't at all quarrel with that. Nor do I quarrel with the characters for making the choice that, in all probability, I would make – or even if I wouldn't, that many, many people would make, for many, many reasons.
What bothered me is the way that both movies basically ignored the issue. Both featured scenes in which a doctor doesn't even get through a sentence about abortion before the woman says "Oh, no, I don't want that!" In the context of these movies, it seems, to me, abortion is subtly, but troublingly, portrayed as Absolutely Unthinkable. In both, actually, the only person who seriously suggests it is Universally Bad – an overbearing and unloving mother in Knocked Up (one of the few completely un-nuanced characters in the movie) and the abusive husband in Waitress.
I find this worrying. Now, I am never one to suggest that movies have to play to any particular political agenda, let alone mine. Movies that do so – liberal or conservative – are usually tiresome and not fun to watch. But. Both of these movies made some claim to character verisimilitude and to portraying the real complications of human interaction – and thus the really...well, it seems reactionarily quick dismissal of abortion really sticks out to me. It felt rushed in both cases, as if an issue that occurs to the viewer (or at least, to this viewer) were summarily dismissed in as anxiously hasty a manner as possible -- like quickly hiding an embarrassing household item behind a cushion. In a pair of movies that seem to revolve around hiding nothing (as comedy almost always does) -- none of the normal indiscretions and embarrassments of human life -- such a hurried concealment is jarring, and it makes me think that more is going on here than simply plot or character considerations.
I guess what I suspect is that either my ideas (people should have the right to consider abortion seriously) are out of step with the mainstream or that the film-makers think they're out of step with the mainstream – and it's the second possibility that worries me more. I think I felt at both of these moments in both of these films that I was witnessing some sort of cultural censorship, and in two movies that purported to show me, as a woman, How to Be (Apatow's also shows men How to Be, but it's still didactic), that's highly unpleasant. It was as if both movies made the choice that even to allow that some people consider abortion would be to damn themselves to failure. But some people -- a lot of people -- do consider abortion. And so, when these two movies so strenuously denied that, I felt, well, thought-policied. And there is very little more unpleasant than that.
My second worry, or peeve, or whatever it is, is less controversial, but perhaps more troubling in its very ordinariness: the assumption both movies made that women who are pregnant should be expected to worry obsessively about being "fat."
Now, I haven't been around a lot of pregnant women. (Yet.) The first time I encountered this idea, that it is normal and expected for a woman who is carrying a whole other person inside her stomach-type-area to be really, really concerned that she looks bigger while doing so was only a few years ago, and I can tell you, it shocked me.
Isn't the whole point of being pregnant that you Get Bigger? Because there's, you know, a kid inside you? Who needs a lot of extra stuff? To feed on? It strikes me as dreadfully and perversely eating disordered to uphold the idea that women should actually fret about this! It seems as if just as a woman must be some kind of unnatural creature if she doesn't hyperventilate about getting into a bathing suit, she's also now expected to lament pregnancy because it makes her ass big. That is, frankly, disgusting.
Of course the physical changes during pregnancy probably cause most women worry – they certainly cause all women discomfort. That's normal. But in both cases, these movies made it seem as if it were So Cute and Completely Normal for the women to repeatedly worry about "I'm getting fat" as related to being pregnant.
In Knocked Up, for instance, there's a scene where Katharine Heigel refuses to have sex while on top of adorable Seth Rogen (always my favorite of the Apatow actors) because she "totally has triple chins from this angle, and her stomach is so fat, and her breasts are all droopy and ugh! National Geographic!!" It's a moment of comic overstatement, but it's also portrayed as a completely normal fear -- as is the Rogen-character's comically overstated concern the baby will be able to see his penis, and will be traumatized. Yes, it's funny. (And I liked the scene because it was funny.) But this kind of obsessive worry about Getting Fat While Pregnant is not funny!
It's not cute, folks. It's disordered. How about we not validate and support that, k? How about that?!! This attitude strikes me as completely and totally pernicious, and I am really not happy that it seems to have become one of those mainstream things that You Ought to Worry About at certain times in your life. We already have enough of those, don't we?
Ugh. You can tell how upset I am by the multiple punctuation marks. But it really upset me. Not least, of course, because both Katherine Heigl and Keri Russell were anything but fat when they were supposed to be hugely pregnant. They were both exactly as slim as they had been the entire movie, only with gigantic, smooth, pretty bellies. Way to uphold nasty, detrimental social paradigms, guys! Woo-hoo!
Some postscripts:
God. I've just learned that poor Adrienne Shelley, whose directing and writing I hated, but whose acting I enjoyed pretty well in Waitress, was murdered last November! Now I feel bad for disliking the movie so much. Maybe it would have been less schmaltzy if she had lived. Or maybe not.
Hey! Here's another exciting coincidence to cheer things up, though! So yesterday's movie had Wash from Firefly and today's had Mal! Totally a Nerd Confluence.
So. That's the happy-feeling part over. Now I can get on to Righteous Anger! Or maybe more Cultural and Intellectual Indignation. Over the past two days, Jamie and I, as part of our Project of Have Fun (a summer goal) have gone to see two movies that turned out (unexpectedly, in one case) to have pregnant heroines, and for which pregnancy is a major plot point. Yesterday we saw Knocked Up and today we saw Waitress.
I do want to make clear that my reaction to these movies (aside from the worries noted below) was not at all similar. I really liked Knocked Up (though slightly less than The Forty Year Old Virgin and quite a bit less than Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks), but I hated Waitress. The first had terrific acting and writing and was about Being a Person much more than about preganancy; the second was overplayed, hackneyed, vomitous, and was totally about God's Love As Revealed Through Babies.
But. Differences aside, there were two points of alarming similarity in the treatment of pregnancy in both movies that made me worried enough to...um...blog about them.
The first, grander thing: both movies dismiss the idea of abortion in a way I found disturbingly offhand. In both of these cases (women who seriously did not want to have children and for whom it would be a major hardship), I would have expected them to consider abortion more seriously than they did. I know that I would, were I in either situation.
My feelings about abortion are mixed. I think almost everyone's probably are. I am staunchly politically pro-choice, and absolutely believe that the procedure should continue to be available in every state. Were I suddenly and unexpectedly pregnant, however, I think it is likely that I would not choose to terminate the pregnancy, regardless of hardships. I also, of course, firmly believe that the absolute best course is having sex in such a way that one ensures that one won't become unexpectedly pregnant.
Now, of course, the plots of both of these movies revolve around women who decide to have the babies they are carrying. The movies wouldn't work if they didn't make that choice. I don't at all quarrel with that. Nor do I quarrel with the characters for making the choice that, in all probability, I would make – or even if I wouldn't, that many, many people would make, for many, many reasons.
What bothered me is the way that both movies basically ignored the issue. Both featured scenes in which a doctor doesn't even get through a sentence about abortion before the woman says "Oh, no, I don't want that!" In the context of these movies, it seems, to me, abortion is subtly, but troublingly, portrayed as Absolutely Unthinkable. In both, actually, the only person who seriously suggests it is Universally Bad – an overbearing and unloving mother in Knocked Up (one of the few completely un-nuanced characters in the movie) and the abusive husband in Waitress.
I find this worrying. Now, I am never one to suggest that movies have to play to any particular political agenda, let alone mine. Movies that do so – liberal or conservative – are usually tiresome and not fun to watch. But. Both of these movies made some claim to character verisimilitude and to portraying the real complications of human interaction – and thus the really...well, it seems reactionarily quick dismissal of abortion really sticks out to me. It felt rushed in both cases, as if an issue that occurs to the viewer (or at least, to this viewer) were summarily dismissed in as anxiously hasty a manner as possible -- like quickly hiding an embarrassing household item behind a cushion. In a pair of movies that seem to revolve around hiding nothing (as comedy almost always does) -- none of the normal indiscretions and embarrassments of human life -- such a hurried concealment is jarring, and it makes me think that more is going on here than simply plot or character considerations.
I guess what I suspect is that either my ideas (people should have the right to consider abortion seriously) are out of step with the mainstream or that the film-makers think they're out of step with the mainstream – and it's the second possibility that worries me more. I think I felt at both of these moments in both of these films that I was witnessing some sort of cultural censorship, and in two movies that purported to show me, as a woman, How to Be (Apatow's also shows men How to Be, but it's still didactic), that's highly unpleasant. It was as if both movies made the choice that even to allow that some people consider abortion would be to damn themselves to failure. But some people -- a lot of people -- do consider abortion. And so, when these two movies so strenuously denied that, I felt, well, thought-policied. And there is very little more unpleasant than that.
My second worry, or peeve, or whatever it is, is less controversial, but perhaps more troubling in its very ordinariness: the assumption both movies made that women who are pregnant should be expected to worry obsessively about being "fat."
Now, I haven't been around a lot of pregnant women. (Yet.) The first time I encountered this idea, that it is normal and expected for a woman who is carrying a whole other person inside her stomach-type-area to be really, really concerned that she looks bigger while doing so was only a few years ago, and I can tell you, it shocked me.
Isn't the whole point of being pregnant that you Get Bigger? Because there's, you know, a kid inside you? Who needs a lot of extra stuff? To feed on? It strikes me as dreadfully and perversely eating disordered to uphold the idea that women should actually fret about this! It seems as if just as a woman must be some kind of unnatural creature if she doesn't hyperventilate about getting into a bathing suit, she's also now expected to lament pregnancy because it makes her ass big. That is, frankly, disgusting.
Of course the physical changes during pregnancy probably cause most women worry – they certainly cause all women discomfort. That's normal. But in both cases, these movies made it seem as if it were So Cute and Completely Normal for the women to repeatedly worry about "I'm getting fat" as related to being pregnant.
In Knocked Up, for instance, there's a scene where Katharine Heigel refuses to have sex while on top of adorable Seth Rogen (always my favorite of the Apatow actors) because she "totally has triple chins from this angle, and her stomach is so fat, and her breasts are all droopy and ugh! National Geographic!!" It's a moment of comic overstatement, but it's also portrayed as a completely normal fear -- as is the Rogen-character's comically overstated concern the baby will be able to see his penis, and will be traumatized. Yes, it's funny. (And I liked the scene because it was funny.) But this kind of obsessive worry about Getting Fat While Pregnant is not funny!
It's not cute, folks. It's disordered. How about we not validate and support that, k? How about that?!! This attitude strikes me as completely and totally pernicious, and I am really not happy that it seems to have become one of those mainstream things that You Ought to Worry About at certain times in your life. We already have enough of those, don't we?
Ugh. You can tell how upset I am by the multiple punctuation marks. But it really upset me. Not least, of course, because both Katherine Heigl and Keri Russell were anything but fat when they were supposed to be hugely pregnant. They were both exactly as slim as they had been the entire movie, only with gigantic, smooth, pretty bellies. Way to uphold nasty, detrimental social paradigms, guys! Woo-hoo!
Some postscripts:
God. I've just learned that poor Adrienne Shelley, whose directing and writing I hated, but whose acting I enjoyed pretty well in Waitress, was murdered last November! Now I feel bad for disliking the movie so much. Maybe it would have been less schmaltzy if she had lived. Or maybe not.
Hey! Here's another exciting coincidence to cheer things up, though! So yesterday's movie had Wash from Firefly and today's had Mal! Totally a Nerd Confluence.
Ginny -- you have to check this out. you may have already seen it, but just in case :-)
he's a shared love, i believe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjNKyoRudOQ
Hi Ginny - I totally agree with your comments on Waitress. I saw it early this week and it disturbed me immensely.
As for Knocked Up, I haven't seen it yet, but I was pretty aghast on learning of the plot. However, I have friends who've seen it and attested to the fact that it's funny, well-written, etc. But, despite it being irresponsible to critique a movie I haven't yet seen, I have to say I really object to the premise: why would this big shot 20-something TV exec woman not at least consider an abortion?
As for the heroine in Waitress not getting an abortion, perhaps we are to understand that a small Southern town implies conservative social morals and that abortion is not an option? But at no point in the movie is any backdrop of social/cultural values really put forth to help us contextualize that kind of attitude so we're sort of left in the dark. And it is quite unpleasant to watch a movie the length of which follows a woman who does not want her baby but never once thought of terminating the pregnancy. It is like the Handmaid's Tale or something. I suppose that negative attitude on the heroine's part serves to set up the ending in which she becomes overcome with (romantic?) love for her new baby girl. I guess a generous feminist critique might see this as a sort of metaphor for separatist feminism... But what if she'd had a boy? Then what?
Another issue I had with Waitress is one that I have had with certain other movies that about "small town girls," and one that comes to mind is The Good Girl with Jennifer Anniston. These movies are obviously written by big city people with little experience in a small town... and I feel that they fetishize and/or exoticize small town life. For example, the Pie Shop, even before Keri Russell takes it over, has retro stylings that one would not find in a typical contemporary small town unless it was really touristy. That retro 50s diner thing is an urban-nostalgia phenomenon, not a small town one! The film stops short of wanting us to see the entire small town through the lense of gooey nostalgia for times past (small towns quaintly "preserve" the past of course), for they make it clear that these people are Less Fortunate Than Us, the Big City Viewer. But I feel these films are supposed to be escapist, and we are supposed to find the problems of these small town people quirky and wholesome. Furthermore, I think there is a way in which the female protagonists of these small town films are supposed to project a kind of girl next door virginal (if not in the technical sense) reticent sexual appeal that might serve to feed the fantasies of urban (male?) viewers who dream of female partners who are more "wholesome," less "tainted" by city life stresses (and heck, education and career aspirations that might rival their own) than the pool of availble urban female sexual partners.
That's my jaded feminist rant for the day!