Letters to the Editor
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What a lovely review!
I cannot wait to see this. The underlying "generous spirit" is what made FYOV such a delight. We need filmmakers like Apatow.
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Yeah, we need more films...
... where schlubby Jewish men nail hott blonde shiksas.
Enough already.
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Where do I even start?
An attractive successful young woman has an unprotected one-night stand with an obese loser with no future and doesn't even bother with the morning after pill. Yeah f-ing right. Yes, it could happen. Is it likely? NO. He suggests all of this is her fault, but it's alright, he really has a good heart! I'm sick of the double standard: beautiful intelligent women paired with stupid ugly men in movies.
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Right on schedule
Zacharek writes an intelligent review in which she states what anyone with any life experience past the age of 16 knows: that the most intelligent, focused people find themselves in situations they didn't plan for. And that the choice of whether or not to reproduce is too complex to break down along ideological lines (NOTE: not access to birth control or abortion, but personal choice) that will make anyone comfortable.
And then, in the long, proud tradition of blowhards who haven't seen what they're pronouncing on, along comes a -- you should pardon the expression -- reader to reduce the movie to ideological terms, the very terms that don't take into account the unpredictability of human behavior which the movie addresses.
Pay attention, folks. As this movie becomes a big hit, Anonymous here has articulated the exact kind of idiocry that we're going to be hearing about it.
Anonymous -- don't let the soapbox bump you in the ass when you fall off it.
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Maybe they should be wearing bobby sox
"Neither Ben nor Alison is ready to become a parent .... But for reasons that aren't, and don't need to be, spelled out, Alison decides to go ahead with the pregnancy."
Let’s see ... America, 2007, two people who are anything but ready to become parents, for unexplained reasons decide to become parents anyway. Riiiiiiight.
For decades, popular entertainment has refused to acknowledge that something like 1 in 4 pregnancies in this country ends in abortion. Movies and TV dish out lots of unplanned pregnancies, but almost never does the heroine choose to terminate one of them (and even then, not without some form of punishment).
Apparently, however, even that little fantasy is no longer enough. In our 21st-century version of the Hayes Code, today’s heroines are forbidden not only from having an abortion, but from even considering one.
I guess that’s why the reasons for this nonsensical plot development “don’t need to be spelled out.”
P.S. To Peter Joshua, your point is well taken: of course, choosing to become a parent is complex, personal, and arational. I’ve been there. But for a popular American movie in the year 2007 to pretend that it is not a choice but an imperative, that two people faced with an unplanned pregnancy and unready for parenthood do not even consider the option of abortion ... that is absurd.
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Assumptions, assumptions
"In our 21st-century version of the Hayes Code, today’s heroines are forbidden not only from having an abortion, but from even considering one."
Apparently, you haven't seen the movie. She does consider abortion. And the scenes where it's discussed parody the squeamishness the subject provokes, not just in the movies but in life. And part of why she rejects it, I think, is that people assume that's what she'll do -- and she's just pissed off at being told what to do.
"I guess that’s why the reasons for this nonsensical plot development “don’t need to be spelled out.” ... for a popular American movie in the year 2007 to pretend that it is not a choice but an imperative, that two people faced with an unplanned pregnancy and unready for parenthood do not even consider the option of abortion ... that is absurd."
It's only nonsensical if you feel there *is* an imperative here -- the imperative to have an abortion. You know, it's called pro-choice. And if you are truly pro-choice, you can't on the one hand condemn the Supreme Court for saying a woman may regret the decision to have an abortion, and then on the other assume women are so incapable of accepting the consequences of their decisions that they will regret having a baby. ,
I can't tell you how many women I've known in their '20s and early '30s who -- today, not forty or even twenty years ago -- get pregnant without meaning to and then have the baby. And I'm not talking about conservative or very religious women. I'm talking about independent, smart people. That may not be what I'd expect of them. But doesn't that just show how easily we fall back on stereotypes -- ie., only poor, uneducated women get pregnant and keep their babies? It's foolish to brand a movie as some sort of pro-life screed for acknowledging that people's behavior, especially when it comes to something this personal and fraught, conforms to our ideas of what they should do, whatever that is. Art can't function as art if a character is meant to be a social role model.
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It's NOT the de facto decision
Yeah, I'll be some upper-middle-class white girls in their mid to late 20s get unexpectedly pregnant on one-night-stands. In fact, I'm sure of it. I've met those girls.
I'll bet many of those girls keep the baby. In fact I'm sure of it. I've met those girls.
The truth is most of the financially successful women I know in that age group are MORE likely to keep the baby because it feels superfluous and problematic to have an abortion. They consider: I AM at my most fertile, I AM at my most energetic for this sort of thing while ALSO making fairly decent wage, having finished college. My parents are still alive and young enough to help. And abortion is complicated, sad, and comes with its own very difficult baggage. What might have been a somewhat forced choice in college can often become a, let's call it even more difficult option once such a woman is a bit more settled in her life. Especially if she has already started entertaining the notion of "Kids...someday." Which is likely by one's mid-to-late 20s.
Abortion is not the de-facto decision for unmarried women, y'know. Even educated middle-class women. That's why I'm pro-choice. Because it is a CHOICE. Not something one gets tracked into based on how others percieve their demographic.
That, and, um, if she had had the abortion there would be no movie.