'Knocked Up' and Abortion

This is not your typical movie review. For that read a newspaper. All I will say about the film Knocked Up is that you should go see it because its freaking hilarious. Great great movie.

Instead, I think I'll wax a bit on the issue brought up in the NYT Sunday Styles article, as well as in this Politico article, that abortion, in both thought and deed, is the one act Hollywood deems too dangerous to touch. Both these articles point out that historically, abortion is not even talked about in film or on TV, let alone actually writing an abortion into a script. Isn't this interesting to anyone else? We can make a blockbuster Oscar-winning film about Tom Hanks being gay and contracting HIV, and another a decade later about two hot hetero cowboys Jake G and Heath L falling in love. There is even a sex scene in that one. Not to mention Hollywood's countless references to drug and alcohol abuse, movies about violent serial killers and genocidal wars and all sorts of demented terrible violence. Infidelity is also popular subject matter. Antisemitism? Thank you Mel Gibson. Basically, if you name the potentially offensive thing to someone: Hollywood has covered it. Except abortion. Notable exceptions:

In the rare instances when abortion has made it into the plotlines of major films, like “Dirty Dancing” and “The Cider House Rules,” they tend to be films set in the past and the women who undergo the procedure do not always fare well. “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” is the rare American film in which abortion is legal and dealt with matter-of-factly — and it is 25 years old.

And, to be fair, many independent films to address the actual act of abortion in meaningful ways.

Geoffrey Gilmore, the director of the Sundance Film Festival, said the subject of abortion comes up more realistically in independent films, as do other difficult themes like drug addiction, incest, even infanticide, most recently in “Stephanie Daley,” about a teenager accused of murdering her newborn.

“That’s the meat and potatoes of independent filmmaking,” he said of such social issues.

The price to pay, though, is smaller audiences.

But the fact is, major movies, for the most part, still ignore a woman's right to choose. Why is this? It's no secret Hollywood is ground zero for Liberalism these days, so how come no one has the cajones to feature a leading woman (I like Scarlett, myself, but it wouldn't matter who it was) who confidently and assuredly decides to exercise the right she has over her own body?

I wonder what this says about the future of Roe and choice in this country that not even those bastard leftists will touch abortion in a positive light. Is it because they are afraid of the political backlash? Or is it just because the big studios are still run by crotchety old white guys? Both probably, but who's to know for sure. What I DO know is that it underscores the importance of a Dem winning in '08. Chances are the Supreme Court is going to lose at least 2 justices between 2009 and 2017, and the only way to ensure the safety of a woman's right to choose (short of actual legislation, that is, which I know won't happen because I know no one in this town has the cajones to pick that fight) is to make sure that future appointees to the court look more like Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg and less like Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito.