http://www.slate.com/id/2179621?GT1=10733
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007, at 2:04 PM ET
Katherine Heigl
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, andperhaps sensing a Salem bitch hunt in the makingon 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."
At the time Knocked Up was released, it was hard to express discontent without feeling like a killjoy yourself. After all, the filma hilarious exploration of the difficulties of family life in the post-feminist ageis 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 yearsthe slovenly hipster and the female straight arrow."
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Katherine Heigl's Knocked Up
The demise of the female slacker.
By Meghan O'Rourke
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007, at 2:04 PM ET
Katherine Heigl
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, andperhaps sensing a Salem bitch hunt in the makingon 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."
At the time Knocked Up was released, it was hard to express discontent without feeling like a killjoy yourself. After all, the filma hilarious exploration of the difficulties of family life in the post-feminist ageis 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 yearsthe slovenly hipster and the female straight arrow."
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Originally posted by: SammySoc
Men of little minds always find solace in portraying themselves as victims.