Katherine Heigl's Knocked UpThe demise of the female slacker.
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007, at 2:04 PM ET
Back in June, this viewer laughed until she cried at Judd Apatow's goofy comedy Knocked Up, but she also left the theater feeling … disconcerted. An informal poll of female friends revealed the same: They went, they laughed, they felt squeamish. So it came as only a small surprise that sunny Katherine Heigl recently told Vanity Fair that Knocked Up is "a little sexist. It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. … I had a hard time with it, on some days. I'm playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy?" The media seized on Heigl's comments, and—perhaps sensing a Salem bitch hunt in the making—on Dec. 7 the actress issued a clarification to People. While she stands by her original statement, the movie, she stressed, was the "best filming experience of my career."
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StumbleUponAt the time Knocked Up was released, it was hard to express discontent without feeling like a killjoy yourself. After all, the film—a hilarious exploration of the difficulties of family life in the post-feminist age—is in some ways quite uxorious, as Slate's Dana Stevens observed. Its plot follows a schlubby slacker guy, Ben (played by Seth Rogen), learning to shape up and become a good domestic partner to the pregnant Alison (played by Heigl). Stylistically, though, the film treated women and men very differently. Knocked Up made time for men to explore their choices on-screen in almost existential ways; they ask themselves whom they want to be, they joke around, they assume the right to experiment. Women, by contrast, are entirely concerned with pragmatic issues. We never see Alison or her older sister, Debbie, pursue or express her own creative impulses, sense of humor, independent interests; their rather instrumental concerns lie squarely in managing to balance the domestic with the professional. It's as if women's inner worlds are entirely functional rather than playful and open. Knocked Up was, as David Denby put it in The New Yorker, the culminating artifact in what had become "the dominant romantic-comedy trend of the past several years—the slovenly hipster and the female straight arrow."
To be sure, Apatow is sensitive to how romantic expectations ultimately make some women unhappy in marriage. The film deftly shows how squabbling over the distribution of power in a relationship can make love fade as quickly as the new linens. This is precisely the point of juxtaposing Alison and Ben's awkward attempts to create lasting intimacy out of a one-night stand with the acrimonious bickering of Alison's older sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann), and her husband, Pete (Paul Rudd): Must domestic partnerships end up in alienated jockeying? In one scene, we watch Debbie and Pete quarrel about who is going to bring their daughters to school as Alison looks on with discomfort and some superiority—as if assuming she'll never find herself embroiled in such disputes. Apatow seems genuinely to want to know how so many end up in Debbie and Pete's shoes.
Yet Apatow frames the female anxieties in this film in a limited way. Consider two key cross-cutting scenes at the heart of the movie, in which Ben and Pete and Alison and Debbie deal separately with their anxieties about being parents and partners. Each couple has just split up—Debbie has left Pete because she discovers he's been sneaking off to go to the movies or play fantasy baseball with his pals while pretending he's working; Alison gets frustrated when Ben takes Pete's side in the matter and it dawns on her that he might not prove a reliable partner when the baby arrives. The guys go to Las Vegas, where they take shrooms, get lap dances, and pay a visit to Cirque du Soleil. In the dark hours of the night, stoned out of their minds, they riff hilariously about the chairs in their hotel room. This exchange is one of the best sections of the movie—an example of strange linguistic inventiveness and comic energy. Then, suddenly, Pete opens up to Ben, confessing that all Debbie wants to give him is love—something everyone should want, yet something he, to his confusion, doesn't know how to receive. Why would he reject such a thing? he wonders. In a seemingly disconnected gesture, he tries to shove his fist down his throat. It "tastes like a rainbow," he says.
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Comments from the Fray
[Note from Fray Editor: see also Fraywatch]
I believe that Pete and Debbies' relationship mirrors the relationships of many men and women in that Pete wants to be irresponsible and Debbie wants him to be more responsible. The solution to this problem would not appear to be to let Debbie be more irresponsible anymore than a solution to me gaining weight would be my doctor gaining weight. Rather Pete needs to become more responsible. That is the reality we need to acknowledge as a culture in order to be more equitable. Women want men to be more considerate and responsible and the should not be chastised or described as shrewish because they do. Men in our culture need to give up the idea that their freedom and independence is an inalienable right.
--inquisitor
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Knocked Up was a dissection of how many men feel about their place in the post feminist world and not intended to provide anything else. Ask yourself this question: Does the film accurately represent the feelings of many American men? I would say it does and that make the film a success. Did you ever hear a man ask for more balance in Fried Green Tomatoes?
--huskerdenton
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Knocked Up isn't so much sexist as it's only a little funny. That women want men to grow up and men don't want to grow up is a comedy formula that dates at least to the ancient Greeks. (The Lysistrata isn't too far removed if you substitute "actual war" for Halo.)… Is it sexist to portray women, particularly pregnant women or women with primary child care responsibilities, as more concerned about responsibility? I don't think so. To the contrary, portraying those women as happily indifferent to their responsibilities wouldn't be funny -- it would be alarmingly indulgent of the worst sin a woman can commit in American culture: neglectful disdain of her obligation to her children.
Knocked Up isn't sexist in its portrayal of the real anxiety women have and the highly sought after rootlessness that some men simultaneously crave and find repugnant. We're all a little sexist to the extent we find those disparate sentiments both predictable and reasonable. In the end, when the men grow up, Knocked Up urges that we set aside the disparate treatment. At that moment, it's least sexist, even if it's also least funny.
--CullenS
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(12/12)