As for the ostensible heroine of this modern fairy tale: Who is she, really? What could you say about her as a person, beyond her impending status as a mother?Īlison’s absence works as a euphemism. You could write pages about Ben’s roommate Jason (Jason Segel)-who alternately worships women and dismisses them, a little bit Don Juan and a little bit Don Quixote. Knocked Up’s minor characters are more fully realized than she is. Alison, we learn, is cool-girl enough to spend a date helping Ben do research for a website dedicated to celebrity nudity she is otherwise cold enough to spend a decent percentage of the film sulking or scolding. ![]() Why does Alison make the life-changing decision she does? We’ll never know, because the movie never tells us.Ī common criticism of Knocked Up is that the film, as Heigl put it in a now-famous 2008 interview, is “a little sexist.” The actor was talking in particular about character development: The movie “paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight,” she said, “and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.” Beyond that, it declines to paint the women as much of anything. The film’s most crucial plot point is withheld in the jump cut. Her mini-arc, instead, goes from weeping to lunching to … calling Ben to tell him that she’s decided to keep the baby. The person we do not hear from, in the tumult, is Alison. From there, we get a series of characters expressing their opinions about the pregnancy: Ben’s friends, arguing about “the A-word” Alison’s mother, lunching with her daughter and advising her to “take care of it” Ben’s father, advising the opposite (“I’m gonna be a grandfather!” he says, beaming) Ben himself, admitting, “I had a vision for how my life would go, and this definitely is not it.” “Congratulations!” chirps the obtuse ob-gyn Alison bursts into tears. Alison tells Ben she’s pregnant (“with … emotion?” he asks in disbelief). After Alison learns that she’s pregnant-the film conveys the discovery through a sequence involving vomit, urine, and James Franco-things proceed at a rapid clip. The pivotal scene of Knocked Up is notable mostly because it doesn’t exist. ![]() It has much to say about Roe’s looming tragedy-precisely because, so often, it opts to say nothing at all. Knocked Up is a self-consciously edgy movie that declines, again and again, to say the word abortion out loud. But comedy, in the assumptions it makes about what is laughable and what is not, can be revealing. Her genre, and therefore her situation, is comedy. She has none of the vulnerabilities that can, for so many, turn a pregnancy into a catastrophe. She has a community of people who are willing and able to support her. She lives in California, one of the bluest of the blue states. Alison’s life is not threatened by her pregnancy, nor is her livelihood. Knocked Up, which processes an unintended pregnancy as a rom-com, is far removed from the grim realities of a post- Roe world. ![]() Combined, the two events augur a rollback of rights that will give today’s women less say over their bodies than their grandmothers had. Wade will soon fall-and because yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill meant to safeguard Roe’s protections. I mention it because last week, a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion hinted that Roe v. The film is a fairy tale, of sorts-a romanticized account of how a night came to last a lifetime. The movie tells the story of Alison (Katherine Heigl), an up-and-coming entertainment reporter, and the charming slacker Ben, who have an encounter and then, in short order, a baby. It premiered in 2007, a product of raunch culture and one of its bards, the director Judd Apatow. “I’m just saying … you should get a shma-shmortion at the shma-shmortion clinic.” “It rhymes with shma-shmortion,” Jonah says. Ben’s friend Jonah (Jonah Hill) offers him advice on the matter. Early in Knocked Up, Ben Stone (played by Seth Rogen) tells his friends that a one-night stand has ended in pregnancy.
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