Dossier » Gender Issues in Contemporary Cinema

A Laugh at Whose Expense?

by Amy Lewis

It seems Katherine Heigl is unlikely to live down her now infamous 2007 interview with Vanity Fair magazine. Speaking about her experience making the film Knocked Up, the star was quoted as saying the smash-hit comedy was “a little sexist,” adding, “It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight…It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I’m playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy?”


Gender Issues in Contemporary Cinema - A Laugh at Whose Expense? -

Two years later, director Judd Apatow and costar Seth Rogan were still fuming at Heigl’s allegations during a July interview with Howard Stern, attributing her remarks to a careless slip-up after a long day of giving interviews, mocking her film choices since Knocked Up, and awaiting an apology (US Magazine).  Notably, however, neither Rogan nor Apatow have entertained the notion that there might be an element of truth to what Heigl said. Why would they? Knocked Up grossed over $200,000,000 at the box office world-wide (Box Office Mojo) and, along with the 40 Year-Old Virgin, signaled the beginning of Apatow “chick flicks” that guys can enjoy. To admit to sexism would be costly – deadly even – to a very lucrative empire. As long as everyone’s focus is on the “lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys,” the money will keep rolling in (Vanity Fair).And yet one cannot help but feel that Apatow and Rogan were a bit too highly on the defensive. Rather than addressing the issue of how women are portrayed in the film, the two quickly turned the scrutiny back to Heigl herself, claiming it is her latest project, The Ugly Truth, that is truly degrading to women (US Magazine). Doth the gentlemen protest too much?


It does not take Heigl’s comments to highlight the sexism in Knocked Up. The film’s two leading female characters perpetuate longstanding and damaging stereotypes of women with little to no redemption in the end. Indeed, it seems the women serve only to canonize their male counterparts. As the audience endures their spats, spasms, and insecurities, they cannot help but sympathize with the men who have to deal with these creatures and admire their ability to maintain their composure whilst doing so. It is only when the women “lighten up” or even “shut up” that the story is allowed to reach its happy ending.


Even female viewers are ready for a break from Alison (Heigle) and Debbie (Apatow’s real life wife, Leslie Mann) at points in the film. Alison is a hard-working production assistant for E! Entertainment Television, desperate to become an on-air personality. When her dream comes true and she is invited to work in front of the cameras as an interviewer for the channel, she and her sister, Debbie, with whom she lives, go out for a night on the town to celebrate. After Debbie is called back home to take care of her children, Alison drinks far too much and has unprotected sex with Ben (Seth Rogan), a good-hearted but penniless man-child she has just met. After discovering she is pregnant, Alison and Ben do their best to prepare for a baby neither expected, only to find themselves falling in love with each other through the ups and downs of impending parenthood.The plot has the makings of a touching romantic comedy, and the idea of including strong male rela


tionships, complete with crude banter in order to entertain the men who are often dragged along to “chick flicks” with their girlfriends, is genius. The problems begin, however, when the scenes start to unfold in detail.Alison is a determined and successful career woman who does not bemoan the fact that she is single – a positive female representation. She also lives in her sister’s pool house and has no intentions of moving out, even after landing her higher-paid position as an on-air interviewer – not so positive, but not terrible. These are just about the only complimentary things that can be said of Alison, however.    


From the moment she sobers up after her one night stand with Ben, Alison is judgmental and argumentative: Ben jokes that Matthew Fox (whom Alison is interviewing later that day) is boring, and she interprets his remark as an insult to her career; when he admits to being nervous about how his life will change as a father, she is disgusted, despite feeling the same way herself; when Ben disagrees with her about an issue in her sister’s marriage, she insults him and leaves him stranded in the middle of nowhere:


ALISON: Oh, that’s helpful. You have to do nothing!


BEN: I’ve sacrificed a lot of shit to this!


ALISON: You are just fucking sitting there! You haven’t sacrificed anything!


BEN: I have.


ALISON: I’ve had to sacrifice my job, my body, my youth, my vagina!


BEN: You’ve sacrificed your vagina?


ALISON: Yes! It will never look the same after this!


BEN: Well. Fine. I’ll pay for vaginal reconstructive surgery.


ALISON: You can’t pay for shit! You can barely buy spaghetti.


BEN: You’re right. Fine!


ALISON: You know what? Get out of the car.


BEN: Oh! You know what? Why don’t you not threaten me?!


ALISON: You should just get out of the fucking car.


BEN: I’m not going to get out of the car in the middle of nowhere! No!


ALISON: Get out of the car.


BEN: No!


ALISON: I own this car! Get out of my car!


BEN: No.


ALISON: Get out of my car!    


Throughout the film, and in this scene in particular, Alison embodies the representation of the “castrating bitch” to Ben. The term, which derives its name from the process of literally removing testicles, has come to figuratively refer to a woman who tries to “one-up” men or “put them down” (Oppenheimer 25-26). Alison is quick to diminish Ben’s role in the pregnancy, including his right to feel any particular way about it. She is critical of his ideas, his employment, and his attempts to make them more pleasing to her, pointing out her superiority morally, parentally, and economically. Ben has no right to disagree with her because he does not have to sacrifice as much as she does and has no money to compensate for that. Furthermore, he should get out of the car because it is hers.    


Ben, by contrast, is slow to anger and endlessly forgiving. Realizing his job will not provide the funds necessary to raise a baby, he seeks a new one; when Alison rejects his marriage proposal, he pretends it does not bother him; and despite Alison pushing him out of the picture in the crucial run-up to the birth, he is still at her beck and call when everyone else fails her. He is the bigger person, and it is only when she realizes this that Alison finds happiness.  


Alison might be a sexist creation, but she is a crusader for female equality compared to the shallow, nasty, and inconsiderate Debbie. That Ben’s triumphant, coming-of-age moment in the film consists of him telling her to “back the fuck off” and stay away from the room where her sister is giving birth speaks volumes about how she is represented. Debbie is a force to be overcome; a beast to be vanquished.    


From the onset, Debbie is established as a woman who has no interest in what her husband, Pete, wants or needs. Her interactions with him are tense, cruel, and hateful: any suggestion Pete makes is shot down; his jokes are met with hostility; and he is denied any sense of freedom or power:


PETE: You’re so concerned with stuff, like don’t get them vaccinated, don’t let them eat fish. There’s mercury in the water. Jesus, how much “Dateline NBC” can you watch?


DEBBIE: I know we’re supposed to be nice with each other right now, but I’m having a really hard time. I’m struggling with it right now.


PETE: What am I doing?


DEBBIE: Because I want to rip your fucking head off because you’re so fucking stupid! This is scary. These are our children. You fucking dipshit!


PETE: I literally am at a point where I don’t know what I can say.    


The effects of Debbie’s exhausting regime become clear when she, convinced Pete is cheating on her, follows him one night and discovers he has been sneaking out to play Fantasy Baseball with some friends. When confronted, he explains the only way he can have any time to himself is to lie to her and tell her he is working. Hurt and offended, Debbie cannot fathom why Pete would not want to spend all of his free time with her. She says wanting to be with his friends instead of her is “worse” than him cheating, despite the fact that she and Alison go clubbing without him regularly. Uninterested in what he has to say, she storms off, telling him not to come home.    


In the “glorious” moment that Ben (unlike Pete) finally stands up to Debbie, a time-honored, male-driven victory occurs: the destruction of the “spider woman.” Since the days of film noir, women have been used to personify the darker aspects of male sexual fantasies. A domineering woman, usually attractive, causes misery for her male victims until she is eventually defeated, restoring the world to its “phallocentric” order (Snyder 157-158). The only difference between Debbie and the femme fatales of film noir is that the ladies of yesteryear were in control until the end; Debbie is anything but.    


Whilst recovering from the shock of her fight with Pete and the ramifications she anticipates it will have on her marriage, Debbie demands that Alison join her for a night out at the club. Earlier in the film, Debbie exclaims: “I can always tell whether I’m looking good based on whether or not I get in.” Now, as she excitedly approaches the bouncer, she is told to wait at the end of the long line as he lets two young, pretty girls forgo the wait. Horrified, Debbie throws a tantrum until she is finally told he cannot grant her admission because she’s “old as fuck.” As Alison tries to escort her back to the car, Debbie crumbles to the curb and weeps about her fading youth.With her self-worth contingent upon admission to a club for younger singles, Debbie fits into a trend that Dr. Diane Purkiss of Keble College says has been happening for the past 50 years. Hollywood heroines appear to be growing more vapid and less in control of their own lives: Now, the only way for a woman to have a complex character on screen is to be depressing, tormented and self-sacrificing… The entertainment industry allows you, the audience member, to pat yourself on the back and say: 'I'm smarter than her, I'm more together than her, and I'm not as stupidly anorexic as her (Moore). If Apatow felt the image of a thirty-something woman weeping about her lost youth would inspire women the world over, then women have a great deal to worry about. Apatow, however, is not the only one putting mixed signals of feminism on screen these days. Hollywood has grown extremely adept at marketing products as “feminist” when they are anything but. It seems anything goes – nudity, sexual promiscuity, moral bankruptcy – as long as some tenuous hold on feminism can be claimed: It is okay to have a woman writhing around in tight, skimpy clothing in gratuitous slow-motion as long as she is seen to be kicking at least one guy’s ass; likewise, Alison and Debbie are not sexist representations as long as Alison is good at her job and Debbie is a concerned mother. It is the film equivalent of a magician distracting the audience with one hand while performing trickery with the other.The stupefying feat will continue to happen, though, as long as fewer than six per cent of Hollywood films have female directors, not even 10 per cent are written by women, and the box office keeps booming (Moore). “The degree of rigidity and shrillness of a stereotype indicates the degree to which it is…enforced… by those with the biggest sticks” (Cook and Lewington 16). With a string of hit films under his belt, Apatow is, indeed, carrying a big stick, and, judging from the stereotype-laden Knocked Up, he intends to use it.


 


 

 

Works Cited
Box Office Mojo. Knocked Up. 2007. 23 August 2009 .
Cook, Jim and Mike Lewington. "The Role of Stereotypes." Dyer, Richard. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation. New York: Routledge, 2002. 11-17.
Moore, Matthew. Hollywood heroines 'vapid and neurotic', Oxford study says. 8 February 2009. 23 August 2009 .
Oppenheimer, Martin. The Hate Handbook. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005.
Snyder, Scott. "Personality Disorder and the Film Noir Femme Fatale." Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture (2001): 155-168.
US Magazine. Rogen: Katherine Heigl Is Hypocritical for Calling Knocked Up Sexist. 31 July 2009. 23 August 2009 .
Vanity Fair. Katherine Heigl Talks About Marriage, Ratings Ploys, and Why She Thinks Knocked Up Is Sexist. 3 December 2007. 23 August 2009 .