anythings.org

When I was younger I was quite the reader. I liked to read because I wanted to be just like my mom (and I still do want to be just like my mom, hence the knitting and the reading) and she loved reading, too. After my brother was born, we spent a lot of time trying to prepare him for school by teaching him how to write and read (he has Asperger’s). When we started working with my brother, I started reading more because my mom began purchasing books that were shorter, quicker, and easier to read. I like books that go by quickly, even if they are 700 page bricks. But the one author I never liked was Dr. Seuss.

I was scared to death of Dr. Seuss. The rhymes, the scary pictures, the political undertones, it was all too much for little four year-old me. The only Dr. Seuss book I read was I’ll Teach My Dog 100 Words - which I probably still have memorized. And then, one day, even though she knew better, my mom brought home Horton Hears A Who!. I begrudgingly read the book, and it ended up being one of my favorite books as a child. As an adult, I even have a Horton Hears A Who! tshirt with his catch phrase “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

So this weekend I went to see the movie. I was excited for many different reasons, but the two most prominent being 1.) Horton!! and 2.) amazing new animation technologies. And I can just say, I really really do not like it when my childhood memories get hijacked by wing nuts.

From AlterNet:

Anti-choicers demonstrate at a children’s movie to claim that “a person’s a person no matter how small” — unless that person has a uterus.

The book was written in 1954, long before Roe v. Wade and the modern framework of the abortion debate. If Seuss’ simple rhymes do contain social commentary, they appear to be a condemnation of Cold War era paranoia. But context doesn’t matter to the anti-choice crowd — in fact a quick internet search reveals that there are many out there who believe that God spoke through the decidedly liberal Seuss’ pen, willing him to write this line that can now be used to justify a movement he didn’t support. They are undeterred by Seuss’ widow’s support for Planned Parenthood and an interview with Seuss Scholar Philip Nel, who said that the author threatened lawsuits against anti-choice groups: “It’s one of the ways in which Seuss has been misappropriated. He would not agree with that.” Death of the author, indeed.

This past Saturday a group of anti-abortion protestors filtered in to the Hollywood premiere of the “Horton” film, voiced by Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell and Carol Burnettt, and others. They interrupted the screening with a coordinated protest, shouting during the film and then walking around with tape over their mouths. It was a bizarre stunt, considering the fact that most of the audience was made up of children who doubtless missed their political message, and Hollywood journalists who made fun of them.

But these kinds of shenanigans, while frustrating, weren’t exactly shocking. Despite lawsuits and voiced disapproval from Dr. Seuss and his widow, the “a person’s a person no matter how small” line has snowballed and is now a de facto motto for the anti-abortion movement. Just google the line: some pro-life sites show up above Dr. Seuss.

[…] The anti-choice protesters, incidentally, were happy to ruin the afternoon of hundreds of those kids, too busy advocating on behalf of blastocysts to pay attention to real people — real “small people,” in fact. This kind of behavior sums up the hypocrisy of a movement that would give personhood to a fertilized egg while denying health care to children and physical autonomy to women.

The problem is that those who are particularly proud of saying “a person’s a person” don’t care about actual persons.

And from Seuss’s side of things:

None of this sat well with Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), who attended the screening. So did Karl ZoBell, the lawyer who represents her and who has represented the interests of Dr. Seuss for some 40 years. In an interview with NPR, he said he couldn’t make out the yelling and thought maybe “some nut” was in the theater. Later, he asked the protesters what group they represented, and none would answer. Their silence didn’t seem like an accident to him, which makes sense, because ZoBell has not been bashful about sending cease-and-desist letters to those who appropriate Dr. Seuss’ material for their own purposes. And many do. (According to ZoBell, politicians love to sling the term Grinch at their rivals.)

ZoBell says it would be nice if these people came up with their own material. But if they don’t go too far—by copping the illustrations, for example—they can use a line like “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” even if it wouldn’t have pleased Dr. Seuss. And it wouldn’t have. The Geisels were opposed to using the Dr. Seuss books for any political agenda.

STOP RUINING MY CHILDHOOD, ANTI-CHOICERS! And more importantly, stop ruining the childhoods of the millions of children going to see this movie.

I understand that they are trying to make their point in as public a venue as possible, but it is a children’s movie: the primary audience is children (and families)… not exactly the kind of people that need to be converted to their cause.

If a person’s a person (no matter how small), then why is the person in my uterus more important than me?

I love Ellen Page. I have a huge, gigantic, unreasonably large amount of love for her. In the words of Juno, “she is the macaroni to my cheese”. This only makes me love her more.

Is “Juno” a pro-life movie?

Not in the slightest, and if you knew me and if you knew the writer and the director, no one would ever say that. It happens to be a film about a girl who has a baby and gives it to a yuppie couple. That’s what the movie’s about. Like, I’m really sorry to everyone that she doesn’t have an abortion, but that’s not what the film is about. She goes to an abortion clinic and she completely examines all the opportunities and all the choices allowed her and that’s obviously the most crucial thing. It’s as simple as that.

I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am ’cause it’s about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you’re working in a patriarchal society when the word feminist has a weird connotation. “Hippie” has a weird connotation. “Liberal” has a weird connotation.

How sick are you of these questions?

Well, because I very much am pro-choice, I don’t really get it. People are always going to project. It’s kind of amazing, though, that a movie that’s caused this much controversy has done really well in America.

Yay!

Last weekend the boyfriend and I settled in for a nice and dull evening at my house. We curled up with the cats in my bed and popped a movie into my fabulous iMac as we eagerly awaited the beginning of the movie. I had just gotten 3:10 to Yuma from Netflix and the boyfriend really wanted to see it, even though he didn’t particularly care for westerns. I thought it looked decent, and I’d heard some okay things about it, so I didn’t have many objections.

It was one of those movies that was good, but terrible at the same time. I couldn’t really put my finger on what bothered me about the movie. From my perspective, it was a movie about people and their complex morals and personalities and all that… except, when you finished the movie, you didn’t feel like you knew much about anyone who was in it. It was a movie about character development that didn’t really spend much time on character development. And I thought about it some more, and the only thing my brain kept saying was “damn westerns”, and I blamed masculinity for the movie’s pathetic failure in my mind.

I spent a lot of time during my last quarter in college watching war movies, the Vietnam War and WWII in one class, and various wars in Latin America for another. I didn’t really understand what I had done to deserve so many war movies in one quarter, but I dealt with it best I could. Some were documentary style, and others were traditional movie-goer films. After that quarter, I never wanted to watch another war movie. In a less than one month period, we had watched the following:

Full Metal Jacket
Rambo
Green Berets
Platoon
Heaven and Earth

The scary part is the list of movies she wanted us to watch was twice as long, but we had to prioritize what we watched so the other TEN MOVIES were dropped off the list. The movies all had something in common: huge, raging, testosterone fueled MEN. Big, scary, hard, masculine, AMERICAN MEN fighting teeny, tiny, puny, worthless, impotent, Vietcong. Whether the American men failed at their masculinity or not, all of these war movies focused on the fact that yes, they are men, and yes, war is hard, but we can still be masculine, even if we lose. Heaven and Earth went so far as to show that when a man’s masculinity is taken away from him by the teeny, tiny, impotent Vietcong he suffers extreme psychological trauma, beats his wife, and subsequently kills himself in the nude in his hippie van. If that doesn’t warn men of the consequences of losing their masculinity then I don’t know what is.

It’s not just war movies, westerns are the same. Men riding around the unsettled west with big guns and stolen horses, doing dirty things to women and either being the best villain ever or taking out the best villain ever. Either way, westerns and war movies rely on one basic trait from which they grow from: masculinity. Now, the same can be said of femininity and romantic comedies, but I’d rather have the particular trait that is associated with my gender be used as an excuse for bad humor and tender moments than war, rape, domestic violence, suicide, murder, mayhem, and many other violent acts.

But the bottom line is, I’m calling a moratorium on war movies and westerns in my movie obsessed life. I just can’t handle it anymore, it’s too much, it’s too violent. The men are always fighting to prove one thing: that they are better than the other guy. And even if the director, screenwriter, whoever, claims that this is not what their protagonist is doing, it still looks like to me, the raging feminist. I embrace breaking stereotypes whenever possible, but I don’t think the movie industry will be doing that any time soon with westerns or war movies. I’m just glad that westerns have fallen out of popularity over the past decade or so.

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the writer’s strike. Personally, I stand with the writers. The internet is not too new. The television and film industry has an opportunity to do something huge with these contracts, something that the major record labels never did. The major labels reacted to the internet with fear by utilizing DRM technology and basically saying they don’t trust their customers. The record industry committed suicide. The television and film industries, however, in their [hopefully] upcoming deals with writers will realize the internet’s potential and harness the power of unlimited opportunities.

Everywhere I turn, there are websites (even CNN) asking readers to submit their thoughts on how the writer’s strike will impact them. These websites are asking their readers “how will you survive without TV? What will you do instead of watching TV?” Is this really a question we need to be asking?

In a culture of burgeoning waistlines and increasing cholesterol levels, do we really need to encourage the masses to sit on their butts and watch TV? I’m sure Blockbuster, Netflix and other video rental centers are going to see a huge increase in movie rentals when everyone’s favorite programs start going into reruns. Maybe - just maybe - instead of relying on the various forms of entertainment provided by the Idiot Box, you should consider something a little less sedentary. Walk the dog, you probably have one. Play with your kids, clean your house, wash the car. Get your house ready for the winter. Or, if you’re into knowledge, read a book. While it may not get you off the couch, it’ll get your brain working a way that television just doesn’t.

Beyond that, there’s the actual sides of the debate that are more important than the fact that people are going to have to live “without TV” for an undetermined amount of time. The big wigs are saying that the internet is “too new” and it’s future is undetermined, therefore, it’s impossible to negotiate media used on the internet into new contracts. I laughed when I heard this. Yes, the future of the internet may be undetermined… but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t negotiate for what exists now, and leave room in the contracts for vague options. It really is about money: not for the writers, but for the big corporations, and just how much they can keep from the writers.

I adored Knocked Up. I thought it was a funny movie - better the first time than subsequent viewings - that put a rather serious life issue into an amusing context to help people cope with the seriousness of the plot. But as a feminist, I have a problem with it.

While I understand it was a comedy about two adults getting into an awkward situation, with one of them semi-prepared for it and the other not even close. I even get that the movie wasn’t about Katherine Heigl’s character, Allison. I totally get (and was amused by) that fact that the movie is about Seth Rogen’s character and how he comes to grow as a man and accept his impending doom role as a father.

What I don’t understand, though, is why Katherine’s character did not even consider getting an abortion. I would have been able to accept the plot more easily had she even considered the option, instead of just glossing over the somewhat sticky subject. When works in the major spotlight such as Knocked Up decide to ignore all of the options available to a woman who finds herself with a bun in the oven, it makes it more difficult for young women to discuss all of their options if something similar happens to them. Movies like Knocked Up are, essentially, taking us back to the ideal that if you get someone pregnant, you better be ready to marry them and be in it for the long haul. While the two characters didn’t get married in the movie (and Heigl’s character actually turned down Rogen’s proposal), they were involved in an intimate relationship, and the movie made it appear that they moved in together after the birth and remained together years afterwards. I feel like the film’s creators opted to not include abortion as an option in the film because they didn’t know how to balance the seriousness of the subject with light-hearted (and occasionally crude) humor, like they did with an unexpected pregnancy. I understand that abortion is a heavy topic and could have potentially caused the comedy to take a turn for the worse, but they didn’t even try.

I understand the limits of a film and I can grasp the concept that the creators of the film may not have had adequate time in the film to include this plot in the movie. Allison’s “decision” to keep the baby didn’t even feel like a decision. It felt like someone coming to terms with the fact that they were pregnant, accepting it, and moving on. There was no decision because her character wasn’t given any other options. I’m not saying she should have had an abortion (although I would have) because then there would have been no movie. What I’m saying is the creators of the film could have spent 2 minutes discussing her options and then show her character coming to the decision that she wants to have a child and that keeping it is her choice.

Keeping a baby is never a simple choice for a young and single career woman. Knocked Up made it look like a young and single career woman has no other option than keeping a baby.

The scary thing is, if the Supreme Court continues going the way it does, no woman will any options other than having the baby - or adoption. To me, Knocked Up is a frighteningly realistic perspective on what the world could look like after the end of Bush’s presidency.

(Granted, it was a very amusing movie that I opted to eventually become an owner of.)

[images via getty]