Papa Don't Preach: Paternalism in Hollywood (and Society)

It's been a dismal summer for women in film. The movies designed to attract women viewers portrayed us less than flatteringly. Ostensibly femme-friendly, both romantic comedy Knocked Up and period biopic Becoming Jane featured one-dimensional female protagonists who, despite intelligence and independence, inexplicably fall for cads. Needless to say, both films were directed by men, and both reflect a paternalistic attitude towards women that persists in our culture.

Knocked Up, supposedly a refreshing look at pregnancy, actually took a conservative stance, obscured by genitalia and bong jokes. This film kept us chuckling all the way to its core message: a woman, no matter how successful her life and career, shouldn't raise a child alone. She needs a man.

Furthermore, the film glosses over heroine Alison's decision to keep her pregnancy after she sleeps with Ben, a slacker who ditched his condom. Her choice is summarized by minor characters serving as angels of conscience -- the good angel, Ben's dad, lovingly encourages his nebbishy son to have a child. The bad angel, Alison's mom, shrilly demands that her daughter "take care of it" and wait to have a "real baby." With these caricatures substituting for her internal life, Alison's agency is nonexistent. She and her pregnant belly are reduced to being the catalyst for Ben's emotional growth.

Set 200 years earlier, Becoming Jane puts its heroine in a similar spot between a rock and a soft place. Jane Austen's mother is a shrew who wants her child to get married -- and fast -- to ease financial strain. Her sweet dad just hopes his daughter ends up happy.

Hathaway's historically inaccurate Jane lacks worldly wisdom. But then she meets whoring, carousing Irishman Tom LeFroy. Tom introduces Jane to the bawdy classic Tom Jones (which the actual Jane most likely have read already) the art of making out, and eventually, heartbreak -- and he feeds her some tasty lines of prose. Tom, the film posits, is the great man behind the great woman; he is her mentor and muse.

Like Knocked Up's Alison, Jane is a self-sufficient woman with supposed talent; like Ben, Tom is a boorish, weak-spirited charlatan. But in each movie, the guy gets the plurality of the screenplay's witty lines, and the woman is relegated to being his faithful audience, a breathing testament to his charm. As Time's Richard Corliss says, "Today, smart or sassy talk is something only the guys get to do."

And then there's that kindly father figure. He is the ethical center of both Knocked Up and Becoming Jane, despite being a small character in each. His voice can be read as a stand-in for a male director who claims to really understand his female audience, even while devaluing his female characters.

Alas, that father-knows-best voice is a familiar one for American women, having been used to threaten our reproductive and workplace rights for years.

It showed up in Justice Anthony Kennedy's April SCOTUS decision banning partial birth abortion. While restricting women's corporal freedom, the Justice waxed sentimental about the "bond" between mother and child, and bemoaned the flightiness of females: "some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained." Kennedy treated women as easily manipulated naïfs. Thanks to him, paternalistic misogyny got codified into law.

And at a May debate, Sam Brownback said that he'd force a women to carry her rapist's baby to term because to him, the fetus is the child of a "loving God." "I think we can explain it [to women]," he said. In other words, if those clueless rape victims really understood things, then they would feel differently.

This reinvigorated paternalism is everywhere, from abstinence pledge rings that dads give their daughters, to judgmental pharmacists who refuse to dispense the pill to women, to discrimination against female professors who are presumed to be on the mommy track. Christopher Hitchens even penned a condescending piece about how women aren't funny -- and it actually got published.

It's ridiculous that women film characters (and film audiences) are disrespected by male directors, but it's genuinely disheartening that the same is true for real women. Much of our society continues to view gender with the same thoughtful subtlety that Knocked Up's Ben shows when he says of his newborn, "It's a girl. Buy some pink shit!"

Comments

[avicenna]

I'd hate to think that we'd be giving credence to Christopher Hitchens's piece about women not being funny by taking every inconsequential event and making it an afront to our beings. We are going to find what we're looking, so if we set out to find pop culture paternalism - my bet is that we'd find it. If I set out to find maternalism, I'd be just as lucky in striking gold. The only way to give validity to an absurd notion is to acknowledge it - since reality is perception.
And as a female, if I were to have a child, I'd also hope that a father figure would be there for both support and an alternative role model with a different perspective in life. One of the problems with American culture is that it hasn't yet come to grips with the fact that it takes a village to raise kids - it wasn't meant to ever be a single person's endeavour - and it doesn't speak towards women's rights and independence by advocating such a circumstance.

[PeteBogs]

"This film kept us chuckling all the way to its core message: a woman, no matter how successful her life and career, shouldn't raise a child alone."

I didn't get that at all... I got that the father should get his act together, quit being a slacker and act responsibly for once... that is a positive message that is not the least bit denigrating to women... you are the second HuffPo contributor to take this film entirely too seriously, and personally­...

"pink shit" is what a character like the father thinks of when he thinks of girls... but there's some indication by his transformation that his notions of the sexes will change from the fatherhood experience­...

[airplane68]

Yawwwwn! Didn't we read almost this exact same argument when the Knocked Up came out. Mick LaSalle at the SF Chronicle summed up the situation best in a podcast of his. If a woman has an abortion, the movie is no longer a comedy and instead becomes a message movie and a drama.

[Storm]

This is the second blog on this site now accusing Knocked Up of being part of some right wing conspiracy. It is not.

It's just a stupid movie. For these interpativ­e-challeng­ed bloggers, it's simply a classic n'er-do-well makes good story. All of the other elements are ancillary to that point. In order to fulfill that plot, it's necessary that the baby be born and the couple stay together.

Abortion humor, I think, is too far out there even for Seth Rogen.

Plus, what's revolting about this and the other blog on this are that somehow staying together as a couple or deciding to have a child is somehow a political choice. It's not. It's nothing of the kind.

Having been through that situation, I can say with some authority (despite being a man) that you think about a lot of different stuff, and you are pulled in a lot of different ways. How you make your choice, I thought, was supposed to be your decision. You're not supposed to decided to do one thing or the other just because it fits the frame of what a Strong Woman (tm) would do. You do what you damn well please.

Plus, in the end, it's just a frickin' dick joke movie. Puh-leeze.

[Brettster]

I'm probably just rambling and missing the point. But something about this blog just really bothered me.

So basically any time a particular storyline holds that a man actually IS wise and ethical or witty, that's automatically some kind of oppression towards women? Perish the thought that that might actually be true in countless real life situations the story might be inspired by (just as the opposite may be true).

I'm not familiar with this blogger, but just going by this post, I'm guessing she probably has no problems with almost every television show or commercial with the Simpsons model: a bumbling, meat-headed, incompetent fool of a husband with the sensible, wise, perfectly balanced wife who rolls her eyes at her fool husband and immediately fixes all the problems. That meme is absolutely everywhere these days. The only difference is that most men don't create some tortured logic and nitpick to find ways to be offended by it. I sometimes roll my eyes at it when I compare it to reality a lot of the time, but it certainly balances out whatever feigned outrage you could have over what's supposed to be just a fun comedy like "Knocked Up." I would argue that there's much more "feminization" of things now. Regardless, it's not some social propaganda film.

Or if she is offended by both examples, then what is the alternative? Making all figures perfect or completely neutral in all aspects? That would be dumb. Let's just face it, most stories will have someone from either gender being stronger or getting the upper-hand, maybe in somewhat unfair ways. It's like that in real life, it's like that in stories. Maybe we should just accept it and take it for what it is. Bitching about such trivialities does a disservice to real examples of cultural problems.

[Karlita]

Great post!

Thank you :)

[Wilson33]

"Alas, that father-knows-best voice is a familiar one for American women, having been used to threaten our reproductive and workplace rights for years."

What about the baby's rights? Women have trampled over the rights of the baby in the name of THEIR reproductive rights. Unbelievable how selfish women have become over the years, all thanks to feminism! Yippee! Since when has it become a woman's right to give life or destroy life?

And thanks so much to women, now men don't know how to be men anymore and they wouldn't be allowed to even if they did know.

Goooooo Girl Power!

[Markson]

Wrong. The most fundamental human right is the freedom to exercise sovereignty over your very being; and not only that but also it forces a person to become a parent against their will. Once that most fundamental of rights is infringed upon there is no limit to what can be justified.

Also: as a man, I don't know what the hell you're talking about that due to women and their apparently magical powers (How else to explain your rant about men not "allowed" to be) we don't know how to be men anymore. Obviously, your definition of "man" is anti-female, in that it depends on the oppression of the female gender for you to feel better about yourself (think: white supremacy). However, even then hurt feelings are no excuse for the overt attack on the human rights of women and girls. The only one responsible for your fragile emotional state of victimhood is yourself.

Get a therapist.

[Markson]

Amendment (first sentence): I meant to add that by infringing on Roe v. Wade it would force people to become parents against their will.

[commonsenselives]

I agree, Wilson needs a therapist. He always shows up on these "choice" threads bemoaning the fact that men aren't the ones in control of a women's body.

If men had the babies, this whole discussion would be moot. It would be his right, his choice period. But since women are vilified for having a sex drive outside of marriage (or in one), I don't see the typical chauvinist attitudes changing.

Good to know, though, Markson that there are guys out there who understand that since its the woman's body, it should be up to her. It gives me hope in the male of the species :)

[Lon]

You mean Alison loses her agency because a man in the movie says to someone else that he should have a child, and she, without ever meeting him, decides to have a child? That is a rather tortured notion of agency.