The Hunger Games (Movie Version)/Stream of Thoughts on Abortion
The problem with the movie is that it is an obvious, maybe even unrepentant, product. A built-in fanbase will generate lots of dollars, but not if you make changes they're uncomfortable with. Thus, the two-and-a-half hours of the flick run like a checklist across the screen: Here's her hunting, here's the drawing, here's you get the idea.
Jennifer Lawrence is a terrific actress, and does far more with the character than the movie lets her. Frankly, I think that's the reason why it's made money: Whatever isn't on-screen she does a superb job of getting across. And let's be honest about this: She is the reason the movie is doing so well. Everyone else is competant but shackled by what I'm guessing is a desire to not alienate as many fans of the book as possible.
So as a movie in and of itself, it's astonishingly banal. Not bad. Not incompetant. Not a disaster. It can't be because it never tries to.
Which doesn't segue into my thoughts on abortion. I have two nephews: Grahm (4) and Jack (2). Neither were planned. Neither were convenient. Neither has been anything but a joy to the lives of those that know them. I have made sacrifices to help when I could with them, and it's nowhere near what their parents had to do. Has it been easy? Not always. But I have a MA, and that wasn't easy either.
There's a quote from Walker Percy: "The Nazis favored abortion for theoretical reasons (eugenics, racial purity) whereas modern liberals do so for consumer needs (unwanted, inconvenient)." My cousin, an admirably stereotypical liberal, said that was no connection between the two.
Sadly for him, the next week a Portland couple made news for winning a settlement from the hospital where they received prenatal care as the test run did not detect that the child being carried has trisomy-21 (Down's Syndrome). The article does mention that the couple love their daughter, but knowing what they know now...
I pointed out that most people are eugenicists - they simply want to abide by their own criteria. I wouldn't mind the attitude weren't so many people it utter denial about it.
I hate to sound morbid or joke about something that isn't funny, but I really wonder what would have happened had they just killed the baby in the delivery room. People would be outraged, I imagine, but I've no doubt the more irreverent and attention-seeking amongst us would offer, "Well, who would adopt a baby with that disability?"
Ugh. Our culture is one of such convenience. I'm not pretending to know, directly, the issues that arise with having a child with that disease, but, I do know that this idea that life is supposed to be as easy as possible has moved swiftly from a stroke of to a GD entitlement.
By the way, when Grahm was four weeks in the womb, Amanda (his mommy) went to the ER with stomach cramps. The doctor told her miscarriage, as they couldn't hear a heartbeat. The nurse coldly gave her a prescription for medication. My brother, being a paramedic, later read the report and noticed major differences from Amanda and the person on paper. They went to an OBGYN and found out Amanda wasn't pregnant long enough for the baby to even have a heart.
Oh, and the hospital sent my brother and his then fiancee a bill. When he called some attorneys asking about not paying, the response was the same: "Yes, the hospital royally screw up. But, your son was born healthy and happy, so there really isn't any money in it." One even told Terence, "too bad she didn't take those pills." He hung up before he said anything he would regret, or could be used in court against him."
Grahm hasn't been easy for his parents: He needed a helmet to correct the growth of his head. He's been in the ICU when his blood sugar got down below 40. He's had nurses' elbow twice and uncounted scrapes, cuts and bruises. He can be stubborn as a tree stump and used to wake up at sunrise and tell his parents it was time to play (when the sun went down, it wasn't time to go to sleep because, as he explained it, they could turn on the light).
Yet, when my parents and I took him and Jack to Knott's Berry Farm last month, his parents both confessed that they "didn't know what to do with themselves" without the boys around. People are surprisingly flexible. We can and somtimes do the right thing.
Jennifer Lawrence is a terrific actress, and does far more with the character than the movie lets her. Frankly, I think that's the reason why it's made money: Whatever isn't on-screen she does a superb job of getting across. And let's be honest about this: She is the reason the movie is doing so well. Everyone else is competant but shackled by what I'm guessing is a desire to not alienate as many fans of the book as possible.
So as a movie in and of itself, it's astonishingly banal. Not bad. Not incompetant. Not a disaster. It can't be because it never tries to.
Which doesn't segue into my thoughts on abortion. I have two nephews: Grahm (4) and Jack (2). Neither were planned. Neither were convenient. Neither has been anything but a joy to the lives of those that know them. I have made sacrifices to help when I could with them, and it's nowhere near what their parents had to do. Has it been easy? Not always. But I have a MA, and that wasn't easy either.
There's a quote from Walker Percy: "The Nazis favored abortion for theoretical reasons (eugenics, racial purity) whereas modern liberals do so for consumer needs (unwanted, inconvenient)." My cousin, an admirably stereotypical liberal, said that was no connection between the two.
Sadly for him, the next week a Portland couple made news for winning a settlement from the hospital where they received prenatal care as the test run did not detect that the child being carried has trisomy-21 (Down's Syndrome). The article does mention that the couple love their daughter, but knowing what they know now...
I pointed out that most people are eugenicists - they simply want to abide by their own criteria. I wouldn't mind the attitude weren't so many people it utter denial about it.
I hate to sound morbid or joke about something that isn't funny, but I really wonder what would have happened had they just killed the baby in the delivery room. People would be outraged, I imagine, but I've no doubt the more irreverent and attention-seeking amongst us would offer, "Well, who would adopt a baby with that disability?"
Ugh. Our culture is one of such convenience. I'm not pretending to know, directly, the issues that arise with having a child with that disease, but, I do know that this idea that life is supposed to be as easy as possible has moved swiftly from a stroke of to a GD entitlement.
By the way, when Grahm was four weeks in the womb, Amanda (his mommy) went to the ER with stomach cramps. The doctor told her miscarriage, as they couldn't hear a heartbeat. The nurse coldly gave her a prescription for medication. My brother, being a paramedic, later read the report and noticed major differences from Amanda and the person on paper. They went to an OBGYN and found out Amanda wasn't pregnant long enough for the baby to even have a heart.
Oh, and the hospital sent my brother and his then fiancee a bill. When he called some attorneys asking about not paying, the response was the same: "Yes, the hospital royally screw up. But, your son was born healthy and happy, so there really isn't any money in it." One even told Terence, "too bad she didn't take those pills." He hung up before he said anything he would regret, or could be used in court against him."
Grahm hasn't been easy for his parents: He needed a helmet to correct the growth of his head. He's been in the ICU when his blood sugar got down below 40. He's had nurses' elbow twice and uncounted scrapes, cuts and bruises. He can be stubborn as a tree stump and used to wake up at sunrise and tell his parents it was time to play (when the sun went down, it wasn't time to go to sleep because, as he explained it, they could turn on the light).
Yet, when my parents and I took him and Jack to Knott's Berry Farm last month, his parents both confessed that they "didn't know what to do with themselves" without the boys around. People are surprisingly flexible. We can and somtimes do the right thing.