Recently, I’ve been in the mood to watch Knocked Up. I have watched it about three times so far this week. For one, it’s hilarious one of my favorite movies. I die for everything Judd Apatow does. It started with 40 Year Old Virgin and worked backwards to Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Second, when this movie came out I actually had someone knocked up. It was an interesting time in my life for sure, but to see a movie that I actually felt was about my life was different. I hadn’t felt that way since the first time I saw Child’s Play. Now, at some point I am going to delve into what happened in the movie and what happened in my life and try to figure out why I didn’t read the baby books but really that’s another story. Today, I want to talk about the idea that the movie is somehow “sexist”. I’d read this in a few reviews and even the star of the movie, Katherine Heigl said this:
“a little sexist. It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. 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? Why is this how you’re portraying women? Ninety-eight percent of the time it was an amazing experience, but it was hard for me to love the movie.”
I mean, really? People really think that’s what the movie is about? Watching a movie three times in a week you get to know it pretty well and this is definitely not what is going on in this movie. Sure, the boys get all the good lines and they seem like they are just fun loving guys and the women are often bitchy in the movie. Part of this is necessity, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd are a lot funnier than Katherine Heigl. The other part? Simply not true. The men aren’t painted to be lovable or goofy or fun-loving. They are self-centered. The women in the movie are responsible, the men refuse to grow up. This is subtle at first, Ben not rushing to get a job or Pete playing fantasy baseball in secret. Their entire attitudes are lackadaisical and it’s not until they go to Vegas and eat mushrooms that they realize it. They feel sorry for themselves and act even more selfishly and irresponsibly (Basically, it’s the story of my life.) If anything this movie is sexist towards men and by sexist I mean it hits a little too close to home. Which is exactly where I think the negativity came from in the first place, it paints men and women all too realistically and some people don’t like that because it looks like men are fun and women are not. When the truth is that women are just smarter than us and fucking up is always fun.
