by Molly Ivors
Is there anything sadder than a movie reviewer who hates the movies?
In Earth-W, it's apparently a prerequisite for the job. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Michael Medved.
A small passage in an interview with a glamorous movie and TV star exposes the sense of superiority, shallowness, entitlement and exceptionalism at the very core of the Hollywood world view.
Now it's quite self-sacrificing of Medved to give up his sanity and comfort so that we in The Heartland don't accidentally see a tit or a gay person. That's damn thoughtful of him, actually. But the issue he takes with Katherine Heigl, who he admits he likes, is going to leave him in a fundie conundrum, a funundrum, if you will.
I know I shouldn’t sound too harsh toward this beautiful and gifted young woman, especially since her intermittently amusing new movie (which I’ve seen) carries an unexpectedly potent pro-life message. Of course, she may change her mind about “birthing babies” (as described in “Gone With the Wind”) as soon as some love relationship intensifies, or she sees that her sister Meg (with whom she experienced the delivery room) actually got some lasting value (it’s called a child) for her hours of maternity ward pain.
Reigl's crime is that she prefers to adopt rather than give birth. I've given birth approximately 137 times, only one of which involved medication, and you know, it kind of sucks. I mean, worth it, eventually, but you'd have to be an idiot to seek it out. I know I was.
Remember that when medication for childbirth first became available, it was opposed by religious leaders on the grounds that women deserved to suffer during childbirth as a punishment on our sex for the crime of Eve. Eat an apple, shove a softball out your hoo-ha..... it's all part of God's plan. I have no doubt that, had he lived 150 years ago, Medved would have been on board with that.
But I was under the impression that on Earth-W, adoption was an objectively good thing. It reduces abortions and gives more wealthy white people babies, and everyone knows they're not having enough of them. So one wonders why Medved would object to this:
I’ve always planned to adopt anyway, but that definitely reinforced my want to. I’m done with the whole idea of having my own children. It doesn’t seem like any fun. I don’t think it’s necessary to go through all that.
Isn't she offering the opportunity of wealth and comfort to babies who might otherwise be aborted? But that doesn't seem to matter to Medved, because, as all debates about female fertility are, this is about his own construction of the Culture Wars.
Once upon a time, Hollywood stars went out of their way to show themselves as “regular guys” and “ordinary gals,” despite their good looks, glamour and fame. That connection with the American Everyman remained the very essence of Ronald Reagan’s appeal, for instance—in movies and in politics. It was no accident that Reagan, and Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable, and Henry Fonda, and even Elvis made it a point to serve in the military, like everyone else.Today’s stars, on the other hand, feel no compunction in acknowledging the fact that they function in a different reality, but seem altogether comfortable with the notion that they constitute a higher species – unencumbered by the messy realities of childbearing.
Chris Kelly smacks down the "regular guy" argument at HuffPo, but jesus tits, did Medved never see Mommie Dearest? Not that it's a great argument for adoption, but it certainly demonstrates that Hollywood stars, even during the mythical Golden Age, adopted because childbirth ruins your figure and adoption is good publicity. Just ask Angelina Jolie. Or perhaps female Hollywood stars don't enter into this equivalence, which of course makes it not an equivalence at all.
Or maybe we're just seeing demonstrated that if you scratch a pro-life male, you find someone who, at their core, despises women.