Out of all the things people have forwarded me this week, I am gonna talk about this. Mostly because I’ve seen the sentiment that films like Juno and Waitress and Knocked Up are “pro-life movies” crop up elsewhere and it’s just getting annoying.
Juno and Waitress and Knocked Up are all, emphatically, pro-choice movies. This is not hard to understand. In all of these films, the protagonist becomes pregnant, then – wait for it – chooses to have the child. See? Pro-choice. There is a choice made in each film, and the choice to not have an abortion is made freely in each incidence. In all of the movies, other characters are used to emphasize the fact that these characters are, if they wish, allowed to get an abortion.
That is all that being pro-choice entails.
(Never mind that from a narrative standpoint, an abortion is lousy for a whole movie. Consider: the HBO telefilm If These Walls Could Talk deals with three women who have abortions, in three separate segments, each about forty minutes long, and at least one of them feels stretched out. That’s because an abortion is a single event: it happens and done. You can deal with the fallout or the decisionmaking to an extent, but that’s mostly going to be “talk talk” rather than “do do”, and a good narrative usually goes for the latter rather than the former. That’s why pregnancy is a good storytelling engine: it has a defined beginning, middle and “end” which everybody is completely familiar with, which provides its own set of challenges. It’s a process rather than an event, which is why any writer worth their salt knows it’s easier and offers more possibilities for storytelling than an abortion does.)
In any case, complaining that the characters choose to have the children makes the films “pro-life” is just stupid, because by doing so the complainant, who is presumably pro-choice, is buying into the framing of the pro-life argument that being pro-choice is de facto being pro-abortion. This just isn’t true, as any pro-choice individual knows: the whole point of the movement is to make abortion safe, legal, and (for most people) rare. Abortion isn’t a pleasant experience and wishing it on people is just ludicrous; the point of being pro-choice is to ensure that women have the legal right to determine the use of their own bodies. Yes, the movies present childbirth as miraculous. So what? Childbirth is pretty goddamned miraculous, after all. It just shouldn’t be legally required.
That’s why Juno and Waitress and Knocked Up are all pro-choice movies. They assume their characters have a choice. It’s just that simple. Anything more is arguing for ideological tautologies we really don’t need.
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Well, I haven’t seen Knocked Up or Waitress yet. But as for Juno … the thing is, as presented it didn’t really offer a choice. The titular character doesn’t choose to not abort because she feels in her circumstances that’s the better choice, she refuses to abort because a protester telling her that her baby has fingernails convinces her that she doesn’t have a choice. She’s not “I won’t”, she’s “I can’t”, and that’s the problem.
Juno is still a boring retarded movie imo
I’d suggest that the skeeziness of the abortion clinic (which happens and which doesn’t, depending on the clinic) has just as much or more to do with it as the protester does.
And saying that Juno decides she “doesn’t have a choice” because she bases her final decision on emotional instinct rather than a cold, hard, logical decision is pretty patronizing.
The protester’s definitely made into as much a figure of ridicule as much as anyone (hence the bad grammar and her being the only person there), and I think the fingernails thing doesn’t so much make Juno freaked about having an abortion as it makes her freaked in general about having this thing inside her and it now has fingernails and what the hell?
That scene worked, I thought. The film has its shortcomings but it brushes away the politics quickly enough.
I’ve seen Knocked Up. The problem is that the person who trots out the argument for having an abortion is the mom, and she’s a bloodless selfish waspy ogre. So yes, there’s a choice in the movie, but one choice is obviously the Eeeevil one.
Hmm. I’ve seen all three movies in question, enjoyed all three, and thought about this particular issue after watching all three as well.
Waitress, a movie I really enjoyed, gave me most pause. Keri Russell’s character is told by her doctor (I forget his name, an in my mind refer to him as Dr. Mal Reynolds), that “we don’t do that here” referring to abortion. This line isn’t delivered in a judgemental way by Nathan Fillion, just a way of letting her character know that if she should elect to have an abortion, she’ll have to go elsewhere. (Interestingly, where she could go isn’t really explained. As a woman who lives in a small town, without a vehicle or much money this could have been an interesting issue to explore. Availability is a serious issue in reagrds to women’s rights and abortion). However, Russell’s character responds by explaining that, although she doesn’t want a baby right now, she recognises her fetus’s “right to thrive.” As a firmly pro-choice woman, I spent some time thinking about this exchange. I’m still a bit ambivalent about it, to be honest.
Russell’s character wasn’t happy about being pregnant. At all. But is she somehow forced to carry and birth a baby against her will? I’m not so sure. What sort of agency does her character have, then? Well, certainly, her character is pro-life… she states that the fetus has a RIGHT to thrive, afterall. But that opinion seems to be HERS. SHE believes this, and acts according to her beliefs. There is agency in that, I think.
In Knocked Up, the female lead’s choice is played down. Fair enough, since it’s a gross-out comedy and we’ve got weed jokes to get to. I do agree that it is somewhat problematic that the one who pushes the abortion option is her mother, who is characterized as cold, distant and bitchy. She suggests, icily, that her daughter “get rid of it.” I think perhaps the voice presenting abortion as an option could have been characterized differently, and that would have made a significant difference in how that option is presented to the viewers. Without making any other changes whatsoever. That said, the lead character doesn’t have anything negative to say about abortion, and simply seems to think it is not the option that best suits her and, after considering the alternative, decides to have the baby. That’s a choice. The negative characterization of the person who advocates abortion in the first place notwithstanding.
As with Juno, I think Juno makes a decision. And I think abortion is treated as a completely reasonable option in the movie, and, indeed, anti-abortion sentiments are made fun of rather blatantly. Juno clearly has no problem with the concept of abortion, but once she goes to have one finds the environment too clinical and intimidating. She’s freaked out and scared, sure. Which… I mean, she would be. She’s 16. But does she go ahead with her pregnancy simply BECAUSE she’s freaked out an scared? I’m not so sure. In the end, she seems to have really thought through what she believes will be best, and comes up with a pretty detailed and firm solution. And a solution she feels pretty strongly about.
No, none of the main characters elect to have abortions. That in and of itself, however, doesn’t constitute a pro-life statement. As long as the characters have agency and choice… well, I’m okay with that.
I think the issue here isn’t really pro-choice or pro-life but more that people feel the need for everything presented in media to have some other agenda or for said media to all be politically correct in how they present everything as opposed to just telling the story they way the creators feel it should be told. Obviously there should be some level of responsibility on the creators part in what they say and how they say it, but I think in this particular case it’s more people on the pro-choice side (no, not EVERYONE) making an issue out of something that isn’t really there. For comedies the issue is glossed over or presented in the way that they were because, honestly, there isn’t much funny in having an abortion or weighing the option. The option is obviously there, which is why it was probably even mentioned at all. It’s kinda hard to have a gross out comedy like Knocked Up (which was already way too serious IMO considering the way it was marketed) expressing deep contemplation of the choice between abortion and the other options without slowing the pace, getting too serious, or even being just downright depressing. If that’s not what the story is about then there’s no need in wasting much screen time on it when it doesn’t serve the purpose of the movie, just so everyone can have warm and fuzzy feelings about how their personal beliefs were equally and fairly represented to the masses. Not everyone feels the way that you do about things, be it pro-choice, pro-life, pro-monkey sex, whatever. So why do characters in the movies have to? Not just saying that to the pro-choicers, but just in general. Everyone seems to take things way too seriously nowadays and it’s starting to feel like people are making an issue out of stuff just because they don’t have something to bitch about at that particular moment of the day.
I’m not entirely sure that childbirth and/or pregnancy should be presented as miraculous all the time. For almost my whole life I was under the impression that pregnancy was bearable if one decided to go ahead with it, and late last year I was told that this isn’t always the case. It can be really hard to get through with the vomiting, exhaustion, weight fluctuation, depression, etc.
The reason that I never really thought that pregnancy might be absolutely unbearable in some cases is because it’s never been presented as unbearable in movies or tv shows (none that I’ve seen, anyway). The worst thing you might see a pregnant character go through is throwing up, and if the audience is led to believe that puking now and then is the worst thing a pregnant woman has to go through they might be less sympathetic to women who do choose to have abortions.
Btw, it’s not that I never met a pregnant woman in person of course, but the ones I met didn’t talk to me very much about what being pregnant was like. So maybe it was worse than I thought for some of them and they were just trying to be troopers and act like they felt fine.
On the other hand, there’s some nasty torture-porn movie out there (I don’t remember the title, and this is a spoiler anyway) about a serial killer who murders women who travel to his town in Mexico to obtain abortions.
Seulav ylimaf.
You would think you wouldn’t have to explain this to people, but there you go.
Damn right. I for one have encountered too many people recently who think that abortion is just what any sane, educated woman would opt for – no matter what. As if its a simple matter of choosing a new brand of milk. I am thrilled that women have the option to terminate pregnancies they can’t handle, but that doesn’t translate into its being an easy, simple procedure that everyone should take. I have in fact never met a woman for whom it was a no-brainer. Its a tough decisions for totally non-political reasons.
Its nice to see movies about women who have children on their own terms; who accept they are going to deal with it not because they have no choice, but because they can. That’s showing just as much strength as choosing to abort.
^Agreed.
Word.