Freelancette

"Knocked Up" is an excellent comedy. It's gleefully hilarious and riotously off-color (I'm still sniggering over the R-rated "dick-skin condoms" remark) but also makes some very astute and grown-up observations about couples and relationships. It's the whole package.

But it's also fundamentally flawed in a way that nagged at me all the way home, even as I recited my favorite lines and chortled over the funniest scenes. And the more I think about it, the more annoyed and disappointed I feel.

A quick plot summary, for those who can't figure it out from the title (or who were born abroad and thus may be unfamiliar with the eponymous American slang): girl meets boy, girl has sex with boy, girl accidentally becomes pregnant with boy's baby, girl decides to keep baby, but isn't sure what to do about boy.

It really bugged me how the girl (Alison Scott, played by Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl) didn't give abortion a second thought. Alison is a radiantly gorgeous, ambitious young producer for an entertainment news program who was just offered an on-screen promotion. This is the opportunity of a lifetime for her, and she knows it. The boy (Ben Stone, played by Seth Rogen) is a pothead slacker with suspect career aspirations who is currently living off the insurance settlement from an accident that took place in his teens.

While I can buy the idea of these two getting it on (Ben's benignly jokey and cute in a cuddly, bearish sort of way), I was not convinced that Alison would sleep with Ben a second time -- never mind attempt to raise a child with him! More than that, there's no way a woman like this, a woman in the prime of her personal and professional life, who could have any man she wants and has at least twelve good child-bearing years to find a good one, whose dream job of interviewing celebs on television just fell in her toned, non-pregnant lap, would chose to give birth to this ill-conceived baby. Okay, maybe if she was an extreme, fundamentalist religious fanatic, but that's the only reason I can come up with. There's nothing in this movie to make us think that Alison is obsessed with kids, or with her biological clock, or mortality or even Ben! If this were real life, a smart, self-possessed career gal like Alison would seriously consider terminating her pregnancy, and something pretty intense would have to happen in order to convince her to keep the baby. On second thought: if this was real life, Alison and her sister (with whom she's very close), would split for the abortion clinic the second they saw that double line on the pregnancy test. Why does this otherwise clever, thoughtful movie insist on thumbing its nose at reality, and feminist politics?

Yes, I caught (and admittedly liked) the "smashmortion" line, but that was just between boys, and doesn't do anything to explain why Alison isn't taking the abortion option -- it merely hints at why the movie isn't (my guess: to avoid alienating viewers, to keep things light and fun). Alison's mother was the only one who brings the idea up to her, and not in a very persuasive or supportive manner. In fact, the mom is portrayed as cold, unsympathetic and rather unlikable. And this is the only pro-choice voice we (and Alison) will hear. If the movie wants to avoid talking about abortion (which I think it does), then why include this at all?

The refusal of mainstream television shows and movies to even utter the word "abortion," never mind incorporate the option into the plot, has long been a feminist cause celébre. So it was no surprise that the no-nonsense, avowedly feminist web site Women's eNews jumped all over the movie as soon as it came out. "Judd Apatow's 'Knocked Up,' a raunchy comedy in a cinema near you, turned abortion into the "A" word, in league with the "N" word and other epithets so taboo as to be bracketed off from regular speech," wrote WeN commentator Sandra Kobrin. Kobrin puts the film in historical context, quotes a pro-abortion joke from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," and also mentions how conservatives have embraced "Knocked Up's" unintentionally family-friendly message. I support her in pointing out the movie's obvious shortcomings. However, she kind of misses the point that "Knocked Up" is a comedy. In refusing to even crack a smile at this undeniably excellent, funny film, she comes off as shrill and militant.

As a feminist, I shouldn't have to sacrifice my sense of humor for my principles! Kobrin and others like her, who condemn "Knocked Up" for its botched handling of the abortion issue without acknowledging the film's other merits, make us pro-choice feminists look like humorless, lame, anti-comedy radicals. I don't want to jump on that bandwagon; I don't think that attitude does anything to raise awareness, understanding and empathy for the pro-choice movement.

Regardless of what those on both sides of the abortion issue may think, Judd Apatow wasn't trying to sell an ideology; he was trying to sell a good, funny, believable story. And it's for that reason that he should have addressed the abortion issue more directly. In interviews, Apatow has mentioned an abortion debate scene that was eventually cut from the movie. But that debate wasn't between Alison and Ben, or Alison and her mother or sister -- it was between Ben's friends! Even with that missing scene, we learn nothing about Alison's intellectual process or value system, or about how she made the decision to go against logic, reason and emotion to keep this baby.

Look, I know the movie is called "Knocked Up" for a reason, but it would have benefited in terms of integrity and believability if Apatow had just devoted one scene, a few short minutes, to a frank, realistic discussion of Alison's options, or a scene that helped us understand why she made such a counterintuitive decision.

This isn't too much to ask. The Irish film, "Breakfast on Pluto" with Cillian Murphy, has a great scene in which a pregnant character (Ruth Negga) decides at the last minute to keep her baby. She's waiting at the abortion clinic, prepared to go through with the procedure, when her friend (Murphy) makes an offhand comment that has a profound affect on her, and precipitates a change of heart. When the attendant comes over to talk to her, Negga's character says with mock surprise, "This is an abortion clinic? Oh, I thought it was a fertility clinic!" then jumps up and hightails it out of there. It was funny, smart, logical, and took just a few minutes to move the story along (the baby becomes a key plot point). There's no reason "Knocked Up" couldn't have included a scene like that.

I think Judd Apatow is a comedic genius, so it really bums me out that "Knocked Up" is so good, yet flawed in such an important way. But I'm not going to shed any more tears over the weird abortion dodge in this film. After all, it's supposed to be a comedy.

Update:
Dana Stevens (a feminist with a great sense of humor) has an excellent, balanced review of "Knocked Up" in Slate, and a follow-up piece that talks about the "politics of shmashmortion" in this film and others.

Posted by Corrie at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to check out the Global Feminisms exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum yesterday, on the second-to-last day of its three-month run. As someone who's interested in women in pop culture, and also happens to be a resident of Brooklyn, I'm ashamed it took me so long to make it to this important and buzzed-about event. This international show of over eighty women, which features art from 1990 to the present, was interesting and thought-provoking –- at times to a fault. As with any thematic exhibition, there was simply too much to take in during a single visit, too many works with too much to say about feminism, womanhood, femaleness, and I fear that the long-form video works suffered the most from this intellectual overload (we just didn't have the time or the energy to sit through anything that ran longer than three minutes).

The stated goal of the show's curators, Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, was not only to give a glimpse of what international feminist artists have been up to recently, but also to "move beyond the specifically Western brand of feminism that has been perceived as the dominant voice of feminist and artistic practice since the early 1970s." A well-intentioned goal, to be sure, but is it necessary? Or even feasible? I think that the curators should have stuck with simply showcasing contemporary art by women, and resisted trying to box it into a particular ideology. My Brooklyn museum ticket certainly didn't serve as a passport to feminism 'round the world.

Let's start with the title of the show, "Global Feminisms." My artist friend Melissa, who accompanied me to the museum, said that she liked the pluralized "feminisms," as it implied that there's more than one way to be a feminist, and frees modern women from the obligation to rally behind outdated ideals. That makes sense, if we're talking about feminism as an evolving political or social movement. But as a category of art? The feminist movement was a real political movement with articulated values and platforms and acknowledged leaders. Regardless of how we as individuals choose to interpret feminism today, that word will always be rooted in the 70's struggles for recognition, freedom from oppression, and equal rights.

I'd expect a show called "Global Feminism" (singular, not plural) to feature art that shows how women around the world are carrying on that struggle in their own countries. And some of the work in this show speaks to that, like a video by the Canadian Rebecca Belmore that showed a woman on a busy street corner, calling out the names of women who had recently disappeared from that area in an attempt to get others to take notice; and photographs by Claudia Reinhardt, a German photographer who stages disturbing scenes of women who have been raped, murdered and abandoned, mostly naked from the waist down, on the sides of roads or along fields. Certainly the heart, or vagina (sorry, I had to say it) of the show, Judy Chicago's well-known but little-seen "The Dinner Party", as a pedantic but important tribute to feminists throughout the ages, fit the description of "feminist art" -- too literally, it must be said.

But most of the pieces here (the better pieces, in most cases) are more about the female experience, or how that particular artist feels about the expectations of being a woman her country and in this world today. The Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu shows the conflicting ideas of femininity, race, and politics in her incredible wall collage of an abstract native woman, dancing engulfed in flames, surrounded by images of motorcycles and thick, blood-clot-red globs of a paint spackled with glitter and embedded with pearls. Miwa Yanagi's large-scale photograph depicts a young Japanese woman's imagined future as a free-spirited, free-wheeling, bling-ed out granny on a motorbike. A short video by Boryana Rossa, from Bulgaria, freeze-frames two screaming women in exaggerated expressions of a range of stereotypically "female" emotions, like excitement and horror (their faces, frozen in moments of extreme feeling, hover between campy and disturbing – it's no wonder the museum chose an image from this piece as the icon for the show). One of the most visceral pieces in the show is a video of a woman's torso, gyrating slowly within a hula-hoop of barbed wire. The camera occasionally zooms in for a close-up of her torn, bleeding flesh, as if to prove that this is for real. Yet the artist, Sigalit Landau from Israel, continues to twist the hoop around her bare hips, making a powerful comment on women's complicity in their own abuse and torment.

These insightful, provocative works show us different perspectives of femininity, but what are they saying about feminism? Identifying as a woman is not the same as identifying as a feminist. Sticking an "s" on the end of the term doesn't really broaden what the movement stood for or stands for, or what feminists believe. And in some ways, it fails to acknowledge the significance of the original movement. Can you imagine an art show called "Global Socialisms"? Or "Global Modernisms"?

Then there's the question of how to view the few pieces in the show that aren't about the female experience at all, like Loretta Lux's quietly surreal photographs of a little boy at play, or Emily Jacir's spy-cam video records of crossing the Israeli-manned Ramallah-Birzeit Road. Both of these are strong, well-executed works, but they don't really belong here. The only reason to include them in an aggressively-titled thematic show like "Global Feminisms" is that the artists are both women (they both happen to be well-known artists that have appeared in other large shows, so it's not like they're hurting for exposure).

I understand Reilly and Nochlin's desire for inclusiveness, especially considering all the (rightful) criticism the 70's women's movement got for focusing on white, Western middle-class women, and basically ignoring everyone else. I love the idea of a truly international collection of talented women's art, and this show totally delivers on that promise. It's a well-organized and smart survey of works by women. But it's not a representation of global feminism, or global feminisms, or whatever. The title "Global Post-Feminism" might have been more accurate, given that we're living in a post-feminist political age in which most young women don't obsess (or even worry) about inequality or fair representation and view "feminism" as a dirty word. But that sounds clunky and abstract, and doesn't really say much at all. And these artists had a lot to say about being a woman.

Lin Tianmiao, who created a large, faded grey image of a woman's face over which she'd embroidered tiny knots, had posted a written statement explaining that she considered herself first an artist, then a woman, then Chinese. Through their work, many of the other artists seemed to be expressing something similar.

Posted by Corrie at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)