Meghan O’Rourke lays out her problems with Knocked Up in Slate. (under their series called “The Highbrow”, oddly enough.)
It’s not abortion. Her critique seems to be that the movie, as with much of popular culture, presents men as wanting to goof off and women wanting them to do chores. O’Rourke writes that this doesn’t reflect the reality that women want to goof off too, but that isn’t represnted.
A few responses:
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I don’t think Knocked Up was designed to be the be-all end-all of what young marriage is all about, but a certain perspective; in this case, the man’s perspective. Being that this movie is somewhat unique, I don’t think this particular perspective is overly represented.
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The manifestation of women’s resentments is often is complaining about men’s housework. In this very piece, O’Rourke writes, “Just glance at a book like The Bitch in the House, where female essayists portray their male partners as slouches who don’t get the job done until they’re given a to-do list.” In a book with a woman editor, given an opportunity to write about their furstrations with married life, women didn’t write about how they’d like to go out dancing and chill out; they complained about how their husbands don’t pick up their socks. So if Apatow’s insight into what is driving women’s frustrations with domestic life are less than perfectly on target, I’m not sure the fault is all on him. Men didn’t invent the term “balance.” If what each woman “really wants is not a husband who knows to bring home pink cupcakes for a birthday party, but a culture that grants them the same indulgent latitude their partners get: the luxury of not having to be relentlessly responsible”, then they’re doing a damn good job hiding it — perhaps these are two sides of the same coin - if men knew to bring home pink cupcakes, then women would be free, which to me raises the question of who decided that pink cupcakes were crucial. (Hint: not men)
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I’m pretty sure that the term “me time” wasn’t coined for men, and I’ve seen my share of commercials that some product will allow women to do something faster so they have time to do something, “just for me” (which O’Rourke might say enforces the unfair notion that women need to borrow time for themselves from household work while men get to simply demand it).
In short, yes, Knocked Up presents only one point of view of the conflict, but if that’s the case, it’s simply because Apatow knows himself better than women. It’s self-centeredness, not sexism.
And if O’Rourke wants cultural space to be a slacker, her enemy is not Jude Apatow, but other women who present this model of perfection.
As O’Rourke notes, Juno is out now, and shows as story from a wacky pregnant woman’s point of view.
