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dismissed with an ick
Monday, November 19 2007
Today at some point Gretchen and I watched Knocked Up, a movie about what can happen when a stylish and ambitious blond woman has sex with a dumpy stoner. Gretchen had been avoiding the movie because of its known pro-have-the-baby agenda, but she so loves the quirky realism of other films by its writer/director Judd Apatow that she thought she'd give it a chance.
Not only is its setup (dumpy stoner gets lucky with hot blond chick) implausible, but so is what happens next. She actually decides to have the baby, and never once are we shown a scene of her agonizing over the decision. Indeed, the word "abortion" is never uttered in the movie. Even when other characters talk about the situation behind our heroine's back, they use unfamiliar euphemisms like "take care of it" or the cruder (but still indirect) "smashmortion." Why would a woman in her position decide to carry such a baby? It was something that needed explanation, perhaps featuring a montage of her rolling around beneath a pew talking in tongues and handling rattlesnakes. I've known a lot of people who have gotten pregnant in my life, but I've never known of a single case where a single woman had drunken sex with a burnout, regretted it the next morning, but later decided to carry the resulting pregnancy to term. It's creepy to think that our culture has reached the point where abortion is being presented as a tabboo option even in semi-alternative films, particularly given the reality of how important the abortion option is to the lives of many if not most Americans.
In reference to Knocked Up, I use the term "semi-alternative" because, despite its quirky DNA, it seems to be going out of its way to be as mainstream as possible. In the same vein as the tiptoeing around abortion, reflexive consumerism is presented as the only acceptable way to conduct one's affairs. When, for example, people go shopping for new baby things, the idea of using used baby equipment is dismissed with an ick. We're even treated to the now-cliché notion developed by DeBeers (a company mentioned sympathetically by name) that an engagement ring doesn't count unless it's built around a blood diamond costing three months' salary. Still, much of the humor is zany and even shocking in a way that mainstream comedy never is. Furthermore, the use of drugs (including psychedelics) is presented in an unusually non-judgmental way.
After midnight it was November 20th, the date I'd turned on the boiler last year. Increasingly I'd been thinking of this date in the same way I used to think of Christmas back when I was a kid. If only I could hold out until November 20th, I'd told myself, then I'd be extra happy with the heat when it finally arrived. So at midnight I turned on the boiler and babysat the thing as it shuttered and coughed its way through the oil that had been lying stagnant in the oil line for eight months, the longest the boiler has ever been down. There must have been water, air bubbles, or dead insects in that line because it took a good half hour before the boiler was running smoothly.
It was delicious to finally have heat again in the laboratory.
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