Ten years later . . .

Katherine Heigl says Knocked Up was sexist, by Jessica at Feministing.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, actress Katherine Heigl says that Knocked Up, was "a little sexist."

"It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys," she says. "It was hard for me to love the movie."

Really Katherine? Here was my immediate response:

I've only been writing about this since this May when the movie came out. Katherine could have taken a looky-loo at my blog months ago. It was hard for me to simply tolerate the movie. Maybe she could have realized the overt sexism and misogyny saturated in the script when she first read it.

Other people had some strong words about this development as well. Feel free to share your reactions.
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I said this two months ago,

and I used less words to do so.

A Fine Romance, by David Denby, at The New Yorker, via Defamer and Jezebel.

For almost a decade, Hollywood has pulled jokes and romance out of the struggle between male infantilism and female ambition.

"Knocked Up," written and directed by Judd Apatow, is the culminating version of this story...

...The louts in the slacker-striver comedies should probably lose the girl, too, but most of them don’t. Yet what, exactly, are they getting, and why should the women want them?...

...one still wants more out of [Katherine Heigl's character Alison] than the filmmakers are willing to provide. She has a fine fit of hormonal rage, but, like the other heroines in the slacker-striver romances, she isn’t given an idea or a snappy remark or even a sharp perception. All the movies in this genre have been written and directed by men, and it’s as if the filmmakers were saying, "Yes, young men are children now, and women bring home the bacon, but men bring home the soul."

The perilous new direction of the slacker-striver genre reduces the role of women to vehicles. Their only real function is to make the men grow up. That’s why they’re all so earnest and bland—so nice, so good...

...how can [Apatow] not know that the key to making a great romantic comedy is to create heroines equal in wit to men? They don’t have to dress for dinner, but they should challenge the men intellectually and spiritually, rather than simply offering their bodies as a way of dragging the clods out of their adolescent stupor...

I'm not the only person who wrote about this disconnect...in May. Way to stay relevant, New Yorker. What's next? Denby's expose on Bruckheimer's Caribbean oeuvre: "Were pirates always this swishy?"?

Turn that frown upside down.

I was having kind of a bummy day today for reasons I will expound upon later this weekend. Then I received a notice in my email Inbox telling me I had a new comment on my blog. It was in response to my infamous post, The Law Fairy says it best:

Anonymous said...

Wow. I was trolling through the internet looking for reviews for a movie I am dying to see and I come across this one. The love of my life is a former feminist. I say former because she had the brains to realize that feminism is as stupid as chauvinism. She says a lot of her female friends were bashing this movie for the same reasons I see here. Hold a sec.....

Let me get this straight. You are mad because a woman you find attractive and successful gets loaded and has sex with a man you find unattractive and gets pregnant. She then decides to keep the child and attempt to be a caring parent and wants the father in the child's life and you find that wrong? What in the hell is wrong with you. First of all, it is a FICTIONAL MOVIE for the strict purposes of ENTERTAINMENT. Second......You sound less like a feminist and more like a spurned woman. Who cares if a beautiful woman digs a guy you find below average. ! mans trash is another mans treasure. My guess would be that your man found another woman and you turned out to feel like the trash and now resent the idea. You have issues. It is just a movie and looks funny as hell. have a good day. :)

Ha ha! So funny. I was seriously cracking up. Where to begin, where to begin?

First, "Anonymous." One of those hit and run commenters. I understand that some blogging programs don't allow you to leave your name if you don't have an account with them. I get around that by leaving my name in my message, along with a link to my blog. That leaves an open door for communication. Anonymous did not do so.

Second, I feel sorry for the love of your life. Not because she's with you (snicker), but because she is a reformed feminist. That concept seems analogous to that episode of Will and Grace where Jack meets Neil Patrick Harris through an organization that tries unsuccessfully to turn gay people straight. The Ted Haggard treatment, if you will. Why would someone not be a feminist anymore? That's ridiculous.

Third, "What in the hell is wrong with [me]." A) that sentence should have a question mark at the end of it, and B) buddy, you have no idea. If you'd like to chip in for my much-needed therapy sessions, please let me know. Donations are welcome and appreciated.

Fourth, "it is a FICTIONAL MOVIE for the strict purposes of ENTERTAINMENT." It is? I've been watching television since I exited the womb and reading since I was three. But thank goodness Anonymous was here to school me on fiction and entertainment. Apparently my graduating cum laude with a degree in film production did not provide me with the necessary skills to recognize that Knocked Up is not a documentary.

Fifth, can't someone be both a feminist and a spurned woman? Don't all raise your hands at once.

Sixth, I'll ignore the "!" that should be a "1," because I'm nice like that. Clearly Anonymous has not read the rest of my blog. I've never had a man. So he couldn't have left me for another woman, because he doesn't exist. And I don't feel like "the trash."

Seventh, I do have issues. Duh. What are you, new? Oh yeah, you are. Welcome!

Eighth, "It is just a movie and looks funny as hell." I guess The Birth of a Nation was just a movie, too. Did Anonymous also find that film amusing?

Ninth, you have a good day, too, Anonymous! :)

Side note: the baby in the above picture was originally labeled "oriental_baby2" on the BBC Parenting website. Someone needs to let BBC know that it's 2007 and we in the civilized world no longer call people "Oriental." (Insert your own Sarah Silverman-esque joke here.) I'm going to watch Degrassi.

I still won't see it, yet I can't let it go.

Not exactly the well-funded version of “Silent Scream”, by Amanda Marcotte, on Pandagon. I love pandas.

Amanda liked Knocked Up. A lot. So why am I linking to her post? Because of the 145th comment that follows her post, by Sam:

...I’m sorry, Apatow-loving feminists, you almost swayed me, but not quite. The movie is pretty sexist. Sexist and funny, like most comedies out there, sure. But to say that Apatow’s brilliant directing masks the misogynist undertones of the film is giving him way too much credit. The last scene of the movie features a guy looking at his daughter and telling her that NOT WEARING A CONDOM WAS THE BEST DECISION HE EVER MADE. On that alone, the movie is seriously problematic...

That comment led me to this post, More Knocked Up Knocking, on The Egalitarian Bookworm (Chick?)..., which led me to this article in Time magazine: Not Knocked Out by 'Knocked Up', by Richard Corliss.

Having chosen to bring the baby to term, Alison now has to figure out whether she brings Ben into the equation. In such a dilemma, whom can she confide in? You might expect that such a personable sort would have a circle of women friends — what Apatow would call her pussy posse — but not Alison. All right, no girlfriends. But she's got an infotainment job in L.A.; the place must be swarming with gay men, ready to offer their sympathy or tart wisdom. In show business, isn't there a Will for every Grace? No again; Alison is effectively friendless. In the old movies, the heroine was often isolated by convention or prejudice. Here, Apatow strands Alison is in order to make the unthinkable Ben an attractive, indeed the only, choice.

Where is my Will? No, wait. I am Will, the uptight intellectual trying to find a man who will put up with my idiosyncrasies. What I should be asking is, where's my Jack?

Someday I'll actually watch the movie that I can't stop blogging about. But that day is not today.

Insert Scream Here.

Yet another blog has linked to my blog without my asking! Hooray for me! You can live the excitement in the Knocked Up review at Pajiba. Apparently I made the argument that "the underlying conservative message of Knocked Up necessarily [has] to be hostile toward feminism." I was mostly trying to make a clever comparison between the respective stars of Undeclared and My Father The Hero. But yeah. Those darned conservatives wreaking havoc on feminism. Sure...Whatever gets you readers to leave a comment.

I'm so cool! Plus, someone called me "an idiot" in the remarks that followed. Wow!

The Law Fairy says it best.

via Feministing, under the nausea-inducing post Dane Cook keeps it classy:

honwood:

slightly off topic, but is anyone else totally turned off by the new movie "knocked up"? everytime i see a preview i wanna scream

The Law Fairy:

honwood, yeah... that's got to be like the WORST romantic comedy setup EVER.

"Hmm, funny-looking one-night-stand guy knocked me up. SHIT. Oh well, I don't like the options of 1) abortion, 2) adoption, or 3) raising the child by myself or with someone I actually KNOW enough to enter into a committed relationship with, so I guess I'll just spend the rest of my life with a man who for all I know just gave me AIDS."

Yeah, genius plot there.

Okay, first? If you clicked on the classy link...who in their right mind wants to blow Dane Cook? (That was rhetorical, put down your hands.) I don't know anyone who wants to see him perform on stage, much less in their face.

Back to Knocked Up. In what universe would Seth Rogen's character end up with Katherine Heigl's character? Even if you look past the grave disparity between their levels of attractiveness, Seth possesses neither the wit nor the charm to lure a blonde shiksa-goddess like Heigl. The real Seth might have money and (relative) fame. But even in real life, Katherine is on Grey's Anatomy. Which hit TV show is Seth in again?

Oh yeah, that's right. Both of his one season, though critically acclaimed, shows got cancelled. Over five years ago.

Yeah, Seth was in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But he wasn't the Virgin. He wasn't even the funniest sidekick.

Every time I see that stupid commercial on my TV screen, I feel like yelling, "Why this accidental pregnancy movie about the schlubby guy who inseminated a woman way out of his league? Why isn't it about the woman who got pregnant?!"

Because that's not how Judd Apatow rolls. In the words of Stephen Colbert, Judd's a man, and men know what men like. Apparently men like hairy, paunchy buffoons that can magically hook up with supermodels. Judd couldn't diverge from his winning formula and make a movie starring realistic women in humorous situations. Because women aren't funny. Don't you remember?