During our class discussion on Knocked Up we talked about director Judd Apatow's aversion to the word abortion. An argument was made that Apatow did not use the word abortion in the film because he had some sort of moral objection to abortion and that the film may have some sort of pro-life agenda.
This assertion seemed strange to me. I think anyone that knows Apatow's repertoire knows that he is a remarkably liberal director, even winning a GLAAD award for an episode of 'Freaks and Geeks' that featured an intersexed character. He parodies ignorant opinions of homosexuals and other marginalized groups(that, admittedly, probably goes over the heads of most of his audience). So to say that not saying the word abortion and instead using euphemisms like, "have it taken care of" and "shma-shmortion" seemed like comedic choices, not political ones.
So I did my homework. I watched the commentary for Knocked Up and was able to find the evidence that I needed. In the commentary, Apatow says that, "people always think I'm anti-abortion because [Alison and Ben] don't get an abortion in the movie. But if they did, the movie would be 10 minutes long."
Thank you! I noted this in class and it wasn't well received. I will attribute that to my really outdated reference to the TV series 'Maude', Bea Arthur's show from the '70s. I mentioned that it's easier for a TV series to portray an abortion than it is for a movie because it ends a movie whereas a TV series will continue on. (There have to me more recent examples than 'Maude,' but that was the first one that came to mind.)
Apatow also mentions that he thinks Alison didn't get an abortion because, "She saw the heartbeat and that had an affect on her. And partially because her mom's a bitch."
Seth Rogen, the film's main character, on those who thought that Apatow's characters not having an abortion was some sort of political statement said, "Are the guys who made Ocean's 13 pro-bank robbing? Is Harold Ramis pro-dispensing of ghosts?"
"I understand Waldman's frustration with the male population. However, I do not agree with her proposal of a trans literature. I have to argue that, as a huge advocate for gender neutrality, I understand that males and females have different experiences in the world. I understand that men and women should not have separate experiences*, I'm all for that- but we biologically have different experiences because of the difference between a womb and a phallus.
Also, a 'trans literature'- despite it's name- seems to be excluding transgender/sexual people. The experience of a trans person, whether MTF or FTM, is different from that of someone who is born biologically male or female. Even if someone never transitioned or came of age without having the understanding of why they did not feel comfortable in their own body, their experience would still be different and should not be discounted because they are technically a 'man' or technically a 'woman.' Biology does not determine gender, and Waldman seems to write as though sex and gender are synonymous.
We also cannot discredit the experiences of males. Male writers, whose experiences are different from those of female writers regardless of their gender identity, have the right to those experiences and should not pay for what other male authors have done in the past."
*Your choice of gender identity does make a difference in your life experience. What I am trying to say, and I think what Waldman may be trying to say as well, is that it should not affect how you are treated (evaluated?) in the literary world and otherwise.
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”
There are plenty of stories about the romantic relations between men and women, but because they are all so similar we tend to forget about them unless they bring something remarkable to the table. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, is not likely to be forgotten any time soon. The story of an older man who becomes infatuated with a young girl, the title character, Lolita was deemed filthy and obscene when first published in Europe (ban in France for two years) and, surprisingly, a major success when published in the United States three years later. The novel explores many taboos, most specifically incest and hebephilia. While these entities are important players in the book, perhaps a deeper analysis of Lolita can show us Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of women as supplements to men, Lolita as both a culprit and a victim of the heart, and the relationship between Lolita and her admirer, Humbert Humbert, as a radical one.
Lolita is told from the perspective of Humbert Humbert, a European man in his late thirties with a penchant for what he refers to as “nymphets,” or girls in their early adolescence, who has come to the United States to teach at a college in the fall. For the summer, he rents a room in a house in New England, occupied by a widowed mother, Charlotte Haze, and her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores “Lolita” Haze. Falling in love with Lolita at first sight, Humbert drives himself mad trying to get close to her. He keeps a diary of every detail about how much he loathes Charlotte and how much he adores the beautiful but childish Lolita. Humbert marries Charlotte to stay in Lolita's life and when she dies shortly afterward he becomes Lolita's guardian and lover. Finally able to possess Lolita, Humbert puts a stranglehold on all of her actions until she runs away.
We can tell from the text that Humbert is very controlling of Lolita and that the line between guardian and infatuate is blurred. While she has such a dizzying affect on him, he still treats her like a typical man before the women’s movement. Although it is clear to us, the reader, that they do not have a father/daughter relationship, they must pretend as though they do to conceal the truth from everyone else. While Humbert is her step-father, Lolita is very clearly a possession to him and it is not his intention to treat her badly, but he simply has to own her. After learning of her mother’s death, Lolita has no other option than to cry in Humbert’s arms. She needs him and he uses this to his advantage. In Simone de Beauvoir’s introduction to The Second Sex titled, “Woman as Other” she explains it best: “To decline to be the Other, to refuse to be a party to the deal- this would be for woman to renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior caste.” Lolita falls into this debacle because she needs Humbert and, while he covets her, she needs to be coveted in order to be provided for. While Lolita is still a child during her romance with Humbert, we can see in her relationships with other men that she needs them perhaps just as much as they need her, but in different ways because, “she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her.” (de Beauvoir)
Although Lolita may be an accessory to Humbert in his eyes, she holds an incredible amount of power over him. In Chris Barker’s Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, Diana Meehan’s analysis of women on U.S. television is mentioned. It is a list of typical female characters which were seen on television, but expands far beyond that medium. The ones that we can define Lolita as may be the “bitch” and the “siren.” (307-308) Lolita is perhaps a bitch because she is “manipulative”, but she has to be in order to make the best of a bad situation (after all, her step-father does constantly solicit her for sex). The siren is perhaps a more accurate description of our heroine, although she probably falls somewhere in between. The siren, like in Homer’s Odyssey, “sexually lures men to a bad end.” While Lolita does sexually lure men, it is not her intention. Once she realizes she can do this, she uses it to her advantage. Lolita drove Humbert into madness. However, we must remember that Lolita was only a child and that she had to grow up very quickly only because she was robbed of her childhood. Even if she broke Humbert’s heart, it can be argued that she is the real victim.
This story has been called many things(the terms “pornographic” and “ground-breaking” come to mind), but it can definitely be argued that this it is a radical romance. Firstly, there is the concept of some sort of incest. Perhaps this is the more minor issue, seeing as Humbert and Lolita’s sexual relations are not technically incestuous because he is her step-father. Although this concept did turn publishers away, the biggest concern is the age disparity in and the hebephilia of the relationship. Hebephilia is a sexual taste for someone in their early adolescence; Lolita is the median of this “philia” at 12-years-old. It is important to note that due to the regulations on motion pictures, in Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 adaptation of this novel, the title character was 15, and therefore more reasonable for a grown man to be attracted to, as it is past the onset of puberty and when young women start to look like grown women. In the book, Humbert muses to himself whether Lolita has, “already been initiated by mother nature to the Mystery of the Menarche” (49), cherishing the youth that she had left. Another reason this could be considered a radical romance is that, although Lolita’s physicality was a major draw for Humbert, he really did love her even if she was childish and tactless most of the time. But Lolita did not love him. She may have enjoyed being pursued by an older man at first, but the restraints that the relationship put on her and the abuse she suffered never let her fall in love with him.
While some have seen it as obscene and some have rendered it genius, there is no doubt that the romance portrayed in Lolita is radical. Lolita is a combination of a victimized female, as profiled by de Beauvoir, and a siren, as analyzed by Meehan, and is part of a relationship where she holds both all of the cards and none of the cards, pursued by a lecherous but tender step-father. In Lolita, the story of a nymphet Venus, normalcy is hard to come by.
Lolita makes my heart go, "Humbert, Humbert."
Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008. Print.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, Woman as Other.1949. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Paris: The Olympia Press. 1955. Print.
Annie Hall is one of my favorite movies. I appreciate it for its aesthetics as well as its sentiment. Woody Allen is one of my favorite directors and writers and, though he does have other very funny movies, this is usually considered his best work.
I also think it's a very good example of a radical romance. After I had a particularly bad break-up some time ago and was in some obnoxious state of over-sensitivity, I had to turn off the movie right before Annie and Alvy meet Tony Lacey. I convinced myself that the movie ended with Annie singing "Seems Like Old Times" after her and Alvy have gotten back together. For some reason seeing that Annie and Alvy do not end up together in the end was far too painful for me, and that watching it would mean having to admit to myself that not everything had a happy ending.
To me this is radical. I got over my aversion to the end of the movie and in doing so realized that the characters not ending up together does not necessarily means it is not a happy ending. Annie and Alvy are both content and have both moved on. That's what happens in life. Annie Hall is radical because it shows you what happens in life. In other romantic comedies, the characters always end up together. That doesn't happen in life. My hat's off to Woody Allen for not bullshitting his audience.
"Although all of the characters [in '10'] have slightly more modern profiles, I would argue that Dudley Moore's character is a bit of a hopeless romantic. The oldest stories always involve a man who is just wandering through life until he sees the woman of his dreams. Typically, he would woo her and they would live happily ever after- after he redeems himself for some hi-jinks gone awry in the course of winning her affection. Moore, however, never entirely possesses Bo Derek before he is able to have her. In fact, he doesn't at all. She comes to him, and then he realizes that she is not all she is cracked up to be. He realizes that the woman he is really in love with, Julie Andrews, is the right woman for him. Of course Andrews is not some docile female who waits at Moore's beckoned call; she is a strong female that, although she loves and cares for Moore, does not put up with his shit, so to speak.
Both women in the film are very much in their time, Andrews being a modern woman and a positive product of the women's rights movement. Derek is more of a product of the '60s counterculture, free love and marijuana use. This, I would argue, resists typical "romance." Formulaically, one of the females that Moore has to choose from would welcome him back with open arms. While Andrews does take him back, she does not have to change herself for him. He realizes how lucky he was all along and instead of her being grateful, she kind of says, 'yep, I told you so.'
Extra Credit: Wow! Great haircut, Prof. Wexler!"
I can never hear Bolero de Ravel the same way again.
I'm a big Judd Apatow fan. I'm not entirely sure I'm his target demographic, but I find his characters really relatable. I don't know if I should see so much of myself in thirty-something straight men with juvenile tendencies, but I find comfort in the universe he has created in which geeks reign supreme.
During class we watched a scene from the movie where Steve Carrell's character, Andy, and all of his hetero male co-workers were playing poker and talking about their sex lives. It's supposed to be pretty raunchy and graphic and a glimpse of how men really talk behind closed doors. I couldn't gauge the reaction of the other females in class, but at one point I asked, "don't women do this too?" I didn't get much of a hetero female response, but I know that they do it as well.
I think that The 40-Year-Old Virgin sheds light on the double-standard that we still have about the difference between men and women's preservation of virginity. Luckily we've come a long way from the Biblical executions of non-virgin brides, but I would argue that the hegemonic power structure still longs to keep women virginal.
A few videos on virginity by Seattle-based sex columnist, Dan Savage (they're all great, I couldn't pick just one):
