4 posts tagged “movies”
I love Ellen Page. I have a huge, gigantic, unreasonably large amount of love for her. In the words of Juno, “she is the macaroni to my cheese”. This only makes me love her more.
Is “Juno” a pro-life movie?
Not in the slightest, and if you knew me and if you knew the writer and the director, no one would ever say that. It happens to be a film about a girl who has a baby and gives it to a yuppie couple. That’s what the movie’s about. Like, I’m really sorry to everyone that she doesn’t have an abortion, but that’s not what the film is about. She goes to an abortion clinic and she completely examines all the opportunities and all the choices allowed her and that’s obviously the most crucial thing. It’s as simple as that.
I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am ’cause it’s about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you’re working in a patriarchal society when the word feminist has a weird connotation. “Hippie” has a weird connotation. “Liberal” has a weird connotation.
How sick are you of these questions?
Well, because I very much am pro-choice, I don’t really get it. People are always going to project. It’s kind of amazing, though, that a movie that’s caused this much controversy has done really well in America.
Yay!
Last weekend the boyfriend and I settled in for a nice and dull evening at my house. We curled up with the cats in my bed and popped a movie into my fabulous iMac as we eagerly awaited the beginning of the movie. I had just gotten 3:10 to Yuma from Netflix and the boyfriend really wanted to see it, even though he didn’t particularly care for westerns. I thought it looked decent, and I’d heard some okay things about it, so I didn’t have many objections.
It was one of those movies that was good, but terrible at the same time. I couldn’t really put my finger on what bothered me about the movie. From my perspective, it was a movie about people and their complex morals and personalities and all that… except, when you finished the movie, you didn’t feel like you knew much about anyone who was in it. It was a movie about character development that didn’t really spend much time on character development. And I thought about it some more, and the only thing my brain kept saying was “damn westerns”, and I blamed masculinity for the movie’s pathetic failure in my mind.
By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the writer’s strike. Personally, I stand with the writers. The internet is not too new. The television and film industry has an opportunity to do something huge with these contracts, something that the major record labels never did. The major labels reacted to the internet with fear by utilizing DRM technology and basically saying they don’t trust their customers. The record industry committed suicide. The television and film industries, however, in their [hopefully] upcoming deals with writers will realize the internet’s potential and harness the power of unlimited opportunities.
While I understand it was a comedy about two adults getting into an awkward situation, with one of them semi-prepared for it and the other not even close. I even get that the movie wasn't about Katherine Heigl's character, Allison. I totally get (and was amused by) that fact that the movie is about Seth Rogen's character and how he comes to grow as a man and accept his impending
What I don't understand, though, is why Katherine's character did not even consider getting an abortion. I would have been able to accept the plot more easily had she even considered the option, instead of just glossing over the somewhat sticky subject. When works in the major spotlight such as Knocked Up decide to ignore all of the options available to a woman who finds herself with a bun in the oven, it makes it more difficult for young women to discuss all of their options if something similar happens to them. Movies like Knocked Up are, essentially, taking us back to the ideal that if you get someone pregnant, you better be ready to marry them and be in it for the long haul. While the two characters didn't get married in the movie (and Heigl's character actually turned down Rogen's proposal), they were involved in an intimate relationship, and the movie made it appear that they moved in together after the birth and remained together years afterwards. I feel like the film's creators opted to not include abortion as an option in the film because they didn't know how to balance the seriousness of the subject with light-hearted (and occasionally crude) humor, like they did with an unexpected pregnancy. I understand that abortion is a heavy topic and could have potentially caused the comedy to take a turn for the worse, but they didn't even try.
I understand the limits of a film and I can grasp the concept that the creators of the film may not have had adequate time in the film to include this plot in the movie. Allison's "decision" to keep the baby didn't even feel like a decision. It felt like someone coming to terms with the fact that they were pregnant, accepting it, and moving on. There was no decision because her character wasn't given any other options. I'm not saying she should have had an abortion (although I would have) because then there would have been no movie. What I'm saying is the creators of the film could have spent 2 minutes discussing her options and then show her character coming to the decision that she wants to have a child and that keeping it is her choice.
Keeping a baby is never a simple choice for a young and single career woman. Knocked Up made it look like a young and single career woman has no other option than keeping a baby.
The scary thing is, if the Supreme Court continues going the way it does, no woman will any options other than having the baby - or adoption. To me, Knocked Up is a frighteningly realistic perspective on what the world could look like after the end of Bush's presidency.
(Granted, it was a very amusing movie that I opted to eventually become an owner of.)
[images via getty]
