Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

A week or so ago, my classmates and I were arguing one of the most pressing questions of our nostalgia-obsessed generation: What is ultimate high school movie – Clueless or Mean Girls? (Answer: Neither, it’s obviously Heathers.) Amid the heady discussion and subsequent teen movie marathon planning, I started thinking about how high school movies have portrayed teen sexuality, contraception, and pregnancy over the years. In so many of the teen movies I grew up watching, sex was something that characters are obsessed with and defined by, and pregnancy is the ultimate horror. But is this moralizing cast on teen movies a modern thing? Maybe so.

One of my favorite teen movies is the cult classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (FTaRH). For a film that came out in 1982 – smack dab between two landslide election wins for Reagan – it’s shockingly open-minded. One of the main characters, Stacy, is a 15 year old freshman. She has sex for the first time with a 26 year old man and then initiates an encounter with a classmate, Mike Damone, from which she gets pregnant. She decides to get an abortion and tells Damone that he owes her half of the fee and a ride to the clinic. When Damone turns out to be a flake, Stacy’s brother deduces what has happened. He picks her up from the clinic, agrees to keep it a secret from their parents, and takes her out for lunch. Her best friend get revenge by vandalizing Damone’s car and locker in a classic act of high school public humiliation. Stacy, rather than being ostracized or shamed, is shown as being supported by her social circle and loved ones. It is Damone who is ridiculed for shirking his responsibilities, not Stacy for being sexually active. Stacy shows no signs of trauma and the abortion is never brought up again. Instead her narrative becomes one of her blossoming romance with Rat, a boy who has long harbored a crush on her. Rat angrily brushes aside Damone’s veiled insult that Stacy is “a very aggressive girl” (undertones of slut-shaming fully in force). Stacy continues to be assertive by giving Rat a picture of herself with her phone number on it and kissing him. Her reputation, as well as her confidence in herself and her sexuality is unshaken and unpunished.

I can only imagine the outcry such a story line would cause now. It’s a testament to how much we’ve gone backwards to imagine the complaints that would hound FTaRH for giving teens license to have wild, unprotected sex because the movies told them there’d be no penalties! The climate we live in today even mistakenly accused Juno, a movie in which the young woman chooses adoption rather than abortion, of glamorizing teen sex without consequences. In reality, teen pregnancy and teen moms face a great deal of stigma that is racially charged and makes it difficult to continue their education.

Turning to a classic of the aughts, Mean Girls is a film that has people endlessly quoting and referencing it eight years later. It was written by Tina Fey who promisingly said last week, “If I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a two-dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m going lose my mind.” And Mean Girls does have some golden reproductive justice moments. For example, it makes fun of a health curriculum that tells students that they’ll die if they have sex (taught by a teacher later revealed to be in a relationship with an underage student no less). And yet it leaves some things to be desired. When arch-Mean Girl Regina is in her bedroom with her boyfriend, her mother pops in and asks, “You guys need anything? Some snacks? A condom? Let me know!” It’s part of a larger characterization of Regina’s cold personality resulting from a dysfunctional family in which her mother sets no boundaries because she wants to be a “cool mom.” But is it really being a bad mother to make sure your daughter is equipped to deal with her sexual decisions rather than trying to control her sexuality? Not according to the way many families treat teen sexuality in the Netherlands. Apparently acknowledging that teens have sex, having open communication about contraceptives, and allowing sleepovers actually encourages trust and responsibility rather than the opposite.

Even if Hollywood is unlikely to portray teen sexuality in this way anytime soon (because of both conservative backlash and the lack of narrative drama), hopefully the actual experiences of American teenagers can begin to approach it.

Shelley Halstead, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I am not a reviewer of movies but I feel like I can review previews of movies. OK, I don’t even know if I can do that. But I can tell if I want to go see a movie from the preview. And after watching the Ruby Sparks preview I now know I will not be going to see that movie.

Dig this: Through a young author’s spark of imagination, his protagonist, the ingénue Ruby, transforms from existing on the page to a living breathing entity to behold. Or to be held as our writer protagonist will soon enough be able to do. The opening shot of the preview begins with the young male author putting paper into a typewriter (old school, perhaps it’s just that old fashioned kind of love he’s looking for) with his voice over telling us that he has a good idea but then says he thinks “it’s just stupid.” To which another male voice responds, “Tell me about it.” Immediately I think the response is sarcastic, exasperated like mine, as in yeah, buddy, tell me about your stupid idea. So, the young author begins to speak about the girl he wants to write about as her image appears on screen backlit by the sunshine, nothing discernible except the outline of her body, with her legs and figure accentuated beneath a white flowing skirt  as she walks through a golden field. His therapist(?) editor(?) says that it sounds romantic. Cut to him saying: “Ruby is from Dayton, Ohio” (sounds wholesome) “but was kicked out of high school for sleeping with her art teacher, or maybe her Spanish teacher. I haven’t decided yet.” So ok, not that wholesome. And why does he almost immediately begin with examples of her sexual  exploration? Does this exemplify her free spirit? I, of course, wonder what happened to the male teacher she was sleeping with? How old was he? How old was she? Cut to:

Therapist/editor: I’m glad you found something that inspires you.

Young author: [But] I can’t fall in love with a girl I write.

Therapist/editor:  Why not?

Young author: Because she’s not real.

Oh, but soon enough she will be. She will be everything he’s ever wanted, ever dreamed of, ever created. When she does appear in the preview sequence the young author calls his friend to tell him the wacky news. His friend, incredulous at first, says, “There’s no possible way that girl is in your house, because she’s not a real person. People don’t just appear out of thin air.”

But because it’s the movies we can suspend reality for the sake of art. The art of let’s make believe you are loved not for yourself but what you could be.

 Friend: Have you tried writing more?

Author writes, Ruby acts.

Friend: That’s insane, you’ve manifested a woman with your mind. You can make her do anything you want. For men everywhere, tell me you’re not going to let that go to waste.

This audience member: Big yawn.

 Omniscient voiceover (again): You may see this and think it’s magic, but falling in love is an act of magic.

What’s frustrating about this preview is that it leads us down the oft-trodden male fantasy of the perfect woman. If only one could create her she’d be perfect. (Bwwaahaahaa.) And according to an interview with the NY times, Ms. Kazan, who in real life is the author of the screenplay and plays Ruby on the screen says that “I think I was writing in reaction to a lot of fictional female characters that have been on screen the last few years,” and “just feeling like there’s a diminutive ideal of a girl that’s just one shade away from being true.” While the director puts it more succinctly, “The film is really talking about a male fantasy in a very blatant way.”

Again, I don’t know about the film, but the preview certainly conveys that. For me, it hit that male fantasy squarely on the nose, and appropriately, it made my skin crawl. For the untrained or less cynical or even more hopeful in the crowd (none of whom are me) it’s selling the most magical of magic—it’s selling love or at least the idea of it. The problem is that the preview sells what the interviews, the artists’ statements, and the movie purport to critique—female autonomy within a three dimensional relationship/character. When the omniscient voiceover calls this magic and love it’s forgoing all the creepiness that we just witnessed. They’re selling the fantasy whereby the leading male, lost and forlorn, is to be saved or invigorated by the love of his/the woman.

Believe me, I agree with Kazan and the director that this notion of love, the one where women can be molded by her intimate’s desire, should be critiqued. And I understand that the studio and not the actor/screenwriter/director have a say in the how their film is marketed, but if one does want to make a statement or turn a trope on its head, this preview makes it more difficult for someone like me to buy it.  So even if this movie ends up being quirky and lovely, or quirky and thought provoking, I will never know. But then again, I’m apparently not their target audience.

Film actress and television host Ricki Lake, twice pregnant (in real life and also in the movie Mrs. Winterbourne, alongside his royal hotness, Brendan Fraser), brings one of her birth experiences to the silver screen in The Business of Being Born.  Upset with the hospital birth experience the first time, Ms. Lake opts for a home birth the second time (Go Ricki! Go Ricki! Go Ricki!).  Her second son, Owen Sussman (now 9 years old), greets the world in gooey glory about 45 minutes into the movie, so you know it’s good.  The only thing that might have made it better is, as is the case for all movies, Brendan Fraser.

Somewhere between Frontline and Fahrenheit 911, this documentary presents a fact-based albeit slightly sanctimonious (and one-sided) examination of midwifery (mid-whiff-er-ee) and birthing options in America.  The statistics are frequently sobering – the one that really stuck with me was that, in 1900, 95% of all U.S. births took place at home, which was down to 50% by 1938 and <1% by 1955 (where it is today).  The movie partially credits hippy communes with the “rebirth” of midwifery in the U.S., noting necessity and the empowerment aspects of home birth.  (more…)

There are two events happening at Rutgers in March and in April that are directly related to reproductive justice and women’s rights worldwide.  The first one is being hosted by the Rutgers Women’s Law Forum.  It is a screening of Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter, which is a documentary about a woman’s struggle to obtain asylum in the American immigration system.  If she is deported to Mali, she will have to bring her daughter with her, who would then be subject to Female Genital Mutilation, or excision.  Approximately 90% of women and girls in Mali are subject to FGM, some as young as two days old, which can lead to infection, reproductive problems, and death.  It is an ancient tradition, linked by some to Islam, that many people are fighting against in local communities, at the statewide level, and across the world.  The movie Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter explores not only the cultural and social issues surrounding FGM in Mali, but also reviews the legal process by which Mrs. Goundo attempts to protect her daughter from FGM. (more…)

There was a lot of (figurative) ink spilled this past summer over the Judd Apatow film Knocked Up, and about how the film did and, mostly, did not deal with the question of whether or not the protagonist, a twenty-something woman, pregnant after a drunken one night stand, will have an abortion. The film was at root a comedy, and it muted political concerns by either mocking the righteousness of the abortion debate or ignoring it. It just depended on your perspective.

So it’ll be interesting to see what the reaction is to two new films that shine a spotlight on abortion. The first, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, doesn’t address abortion in the American political context, but rather tells the story of a Romanian woman living under Ceausescu’s communist regime who tries to seek out an abortion (then illegal). The film unblinkingly portrays her search and struggle, and explores the  bribes, secrecy, covert meetings and the looming possibility of jail that women seeking abortions in communist Romania had to face. The film has been very well received, even winning the Palme D’or at the Cannes film festival this year.

The second film deals directly with abortion in American politics.  Tony Kaye’s Lake of Fire is a 2.5 hour documentary (all in black and white) about abortion in the U.S. In the film, reviewed in today’s NY Times and premiering at the New York Film Festival this week, Kaye interviews  political activists, religious activists, and people whose lives have otherwise been affected by abortion (both access to it and the desire to stop that access). But this is no normal talking-head documentary. Kaye also films and screens, without commentary, two (perhaps more?) abortion procedures as they take place. One of them occurs at 20 weeks, and is carried out by non-intact dilation and extraction, the one late term procedure still legal after the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart last term. But, as NY Times critic Manhola Dargis points out, Kaye never tells the viewer (1) at what stage in pregnancy the abortion is taking place, or (2) how infrequently this procedure is actually used. What’s more, according to Dargis’s review, the film, though very obviously about an issue most directly affecting women, features very few women on screen. Dargis writes:

The fight, of course, is over what that something is — an embryo, a baby, God’s creation, a blob of cells — and who has dominion over it and the fully formed human being carrying that something inside her body.

I wish there were more of those fully formed human beings in “Lake of Fire,” which has an awful lot of men talking about what women should and should not do with their bodies. There are women here, to be sure, though it may be instructive that one of the most memorable female voices belongs to an unreliable witness who talks about seeing “babies” stacked in an abortion-clinic freezer. Mr. Kaye follows this startling testimonial with otherworldly and unidentified images of intact late-term fetuses or babies or maybe even dolls. Because I couldn’t tell what I was looking at, I asked the film’s distributor. According to the company, these images had been given to Mr. Kaye by members of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Kaye also relied on anti-abortion groups for footage that he includes, again without comment, in the film. So, despite a glowing review from a family member whose opinion and politics I trust, I’m skeptical about Kaye’s film (though curious to see both Lake of Fire and 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days). And I’m starting to think that maybe Judd Apatow got it right in mocking Americans’ inability to actually talk about abortion while not actually broaching the topic himself.