Abortion on screen
Feminists for Choice has a fantastic series running at the moment, which is exploring the representation (and lack thereof) of abortion in television and film.
Yesterday's edition looked at Julia's unwanted pregnancy in season two of Party of Five, so I watched the episode on YouTube. I was never a huge fan of the show, but I dimly recalled watching this episode as a teenager and rolling my eyes at the moralising of Sarah's character (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt).
There's something depressing about watching mid-90s television that is so more sympathetic to feminist politics than shows currently being produced. It's not without sexism, obviously, and the B-plot in this episode is an overwrought storyline about Bailey and Sarah's 'first time'. Bailey is portrayed as the sexual aggressor, and female virginity is fetishised to the nth degree, but the assumptions underpinning all of this sexual stereotyping are somewhat undermined by Julia revealing to Bailey that she is not unhappy because she doesn't want to have sex (as he thinks), but because she is pregnant.
Even with these weaknesses, though, the messages on abortion are clear. The anti-choice line is advanced by pre-pubescent youngest sister Claudia, a character whom we are not supposed to take particularly seriously, and who rethinks her position during the course of the show. Oldest brother (and quasi-parent) Charlie offers his own story of an abortion his girlfriend had in college, although Julia is clear that his experiences don't give him the authority to comment on how his girlfriend felt about this. The episode is ambivalent about the manpain of boyfriend Justin, even though he's shown to be about as decent and supportive as a teenage boy whose world is collapsing on him could be. The best part, though, is that even though Julia has a miscarriage, she makes it clear to Justin that she would have had an abortion. The show's producers may have shied away from the first network abortion since Maude in 1972, but they didn't allow a miscarriage to provide moral exculpation.
What is utterly depressing is the lack of (US) shows and films that have emulated the position that Party of Five took. (I've still to see the Friday Night Lights abortion storyline.) Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Juno, and Knocked Up are all relatively recent productions that dodged the abortion bullet, and in doing so marginalised both the pro-choice majority, and the 25 per cent of women who've actually had an abortion. Knocked Up - which left me feeling grubby because I knew that I'd laughed out loud at sexist crap - was the very nadir of the type of storytelling that lies about women's reality, and does so in the mealiest-mouthed (no one ever uses the word 'abortion') way possible.
It seems that the only way, short of labour or miscarriage, that a pregnancy can end on television, is if a crazed psychopath cuts it out of you (see: every police procedural ever.) Male violence: always an acceptable topic for prime-time. Female reproductive agency? Not so much.
Also interesting:
Yesterday's edition looked at Julia's unwanted pregnancy in season two of Party of Five, so I watched the episode on YouTube. I was never a huge fan of the show, but I dimly recalled watching this episode as a teenager and rolling my eyes at the moralising of Sarah's character (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt).
There's something depressing about watching mid-90s television that is so more sympathetic to feminist politics than shows currently being produced. It's not without sexism, obviously, and the B-plot in this episode is an overwrought storyline about Bailey and Sarah's 'first time'. Bailey is portrayed as the sexual aggressor, and female virginity is fetishised to the nth degree, but the assumptions underpinning all of this sexual stereotyping are somewhat undermined by Julia revealing to Bailey that she is not unhappy because she doesn't want to have sex (as he thinks), but because she is pregnant.
Even with these weaknesses, though, the messages on abortion are clear. The anti-choice line is advanced by pre-pubescent youngest sister Claudia, a character whom we are not supposed to take particularly seriously, and who rethinks her position during the course of the show. Oldest brother (and quasi-parent) Charlie offers his own story of an abortion his girlfriend had in college, although Julia is clear that his experiences don't give him the authority to comment on how his girlfriend felt about this. The episode is ambivalent about the manpain of boyfriend Justin, even though he's shown to be about as decent and supportive as a teenage boy whose world is collapsing on him could be. The best part, though, is that even though Julia has a miscarriage, she makes it clear to Justin that she would have had an abortion. The show's producers may have shied away from the first network abortion since Maude in 1972, but they didn't allow a miscarriage to provide moral exculpation.
What is utterly depressing is the lack of (US) shows and films that have emulated the position that Party of Five took. (I've still to see the Friday Night Lights abortion storyline.) Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Juno, and Knocked Up are all relatively recent productions that dodged the abortion bullet, and in doing so marginalised both the pro-choice majority, and the 25 per cent of women who've actually had an abortion. Knocked Up - which left me feeling grubby because I knew that I'd laughed out loud at sexist crap - was the very nadir of the type of storytelling that lies about women's reality, and does so in the mealiest-mouthed (no one ever uses the word 'abortion') way possible.
It seems that the only way, short of labour or miscarriage, that a pregnancy can end on television, is if a crazed psychopath cuts it out of you (see: every police procedural ever.) Male violence: always an acceptable topic for prime-time. Female reproductive agency? Not so much.
Also interesting: