I Can’t Believe I Just Watched Knocked Up
There are, I feel, many unanswered questions about how I could write that whole endless post about, among other things, Superbad, and then go into radio silence for several weeks as the quarter started and I began using a Costco card, finally leading to my having five unopened cans of shaving cream and at least one more wire-mesh wastebasket than I can possibly use.
There were threads about Hegel that went unanswered. For that I am sorry. I am particularly sorry that, in the limited time I have before I go to answer questions about Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Francis Bacon’s Something By Francis Bacon, I am going to pick right up where Superbad left off and write a quick reaction to Knocked Up, also by Judd Apatow. Think of it as the dialectic of Heigl.
It seems like it was just the other day that I meandered, via AOL, to a blog post written by Dinesh D’Souza about (of course) Rosie O’Donnell’s new memoir, and how it epitomizes the borderline insanity of the American “cultural left.” D’Souza writes, “If Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a wholesome symbol of modern American conservatism, Rosie is an appropriate poster child for today’s cultural left. If these two were running in ’08, I think I know which way America would go.”
The fact that pundits like D’Souza have completely lost sight of the difference between The View and American presidential elections deserves further investigation. I had to Google Hasselbeck, and found out that she made her way to The View after being a contestant on Survivor. Like Hasselbeck, Knocked Up‘s Catherine Heigl is a skinny blonde working in the entertainment industry. She is also like Hasselbeck in that her character, and Apatow’s movie, are symbols of American conservatism.
D’Souza is not a particularly important public figure now that the affirmative action debates have fallen off the front page. Knocked Up, however, was a box-office hit and a critical success. David Denby, at The New Yorker, recently argued that Apatow’s great subject is the necessity of growing up, and the losses maturity entails. He only laments that Apatow’s women aren’t as interesting as the men.
It’s not that the women aren’t interesting. It’s that they are pathetically unequal to the men. Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd are laid-back nice guys; the women are fitful, irrational harpies. Allison throws Ben out of her car, and he has to walk to her gynecologist’s office, which he does because he’s so nice. Allison and her sister Debbie, during the film’s adagio section, get all chirped up on Red Bulls, try to go to the club, and get told by the doorman that they are too old and pregnant to go dancing. The doorman gets to give them a lecture on what constitutes good parenting. Meanwhile, Ben and [Paul Rudd] have to suffer through the horrible experience of driving to Vegas, seeing Cirque de Soleil, taking mushrooms, getting lap dances, and then driving home.
Allison’s only real contribution is her belly, which enables the E! network to promote motherhood and celebrity motherhood. Within the world of the film, she is cast in the (actually very realistic) role of the ordinary, personable woman who shows up to improve the otherwise depraved world of celebrity, a la Hasselbeck. Abortion is not something Allison decides is wrong for her; abortion is a clinical procedure with a heart of ice. The word “abortion” is never mentioned in the film; some characters tell Allison to “take care of [the embryo],” and others mince around the word because even the stoners in the film are pro-baby.
It is starting to feel, thinking back on Superbad, that Apatow’s only real subversive insight is that you can drink while underage, or smoke marijuana, yet still be clear-headed enough to eventually have a job and a baby post-hangover. I guess his point is that there’s always room for prodigal sons, a point he tries to make profounder than it is by tolerantly showing dozens of homemade bongs in Act 1.
There are real prodigal sons, and films that give us more reality; a hippie smokes a homemade cigarette in Into the Wild, and we don’t know if he’s smoking tobacco or marijuana. I can’t imagine Apatow watching this scene without demanding to know which it is — what could be more important than that?
I don’t know if I agree about the doorman. I didn’t take him to be representing the film’s view of who should be able to have fun, but rather society’s standards of that, the same way he’s not allowed to let in more than a certain percentage of black people, and Haigl’s bosses need her to lose weight even though she’s already thin. Judging from the way he juxtaposes the two scenes, I think Apatow is aware of the injustice that the male characters can run off and have any kind of fun they want, while the women, once they become mothers, can’t. (Not that he has any good answers to it.)
On the other hand, I’ll make up for that by agreeing with you on the abortion thing. The worst for me was the unpleasant, unsympathetic, career-emphasizing, abortion-recommending mother, contrasted with the dad who’s so thrilled because he knows everything is going to work out with his beautiful new grandson. So not only is abortion cold, but so is wanting to advance your career if you’re a woman. Score!
These posts are making me appreciate my little dissertation cave and its protection from pop culture.
And Francis Bacon, oooh! I just found out about him. Wonderfully disturbing.
Don’t trapped in the Costco; you have to come say hello on the boat.
First, you should see what hit the cutting room floor.
Second, I think you’re underselling the film’s internal logic here. She’s getting older, sees how her sisters is with her kids, and, well, she wants the baby. If the film were about someone who didn’t want a baby and abortion wasn’t presented as an option, I’d understand this criticism; but the film’s about someone who does want a baby, so saying that abortion isn’t an option seems beside the point. I mean, unless you’re really crafty, in which case you can have your abortion and baby too.
Damn it, I’m exhausted and sound shrill. Mea culpa. (But keep my tone deafness in mind for the moment.)
My basic complaint would be that you’re 1) not taking the film on its own terms and therefore 2) viewing it uncharitably. Tom points out the example of the doorman, who, if anything, is a voice of complacent protest. The complacence is necessary because, well, he needs a paycheck, and compromises must be made to make money. This isn’t the moral cop-out it’d be in other films because from Freaks and Geeks on, Apatow’s work is grounded in the mundane necessities of modern life … which, to his mind, consists largely of having to do things you’d rather not do, in order to win some few hours in which you can. In Freaks and Geeks, this manifests in the futility of high school rebellion, and the feeling it confers despite deeply knowing its futility. It’s an escape, momentary but felt, and thus real, and real in a way that belie the platitudes of popular television and film.
His films are, admittedly, less nuanced, but they’re by no means as simpleminded as you paint them here. For example, you make the trip to Las Vegas sound like it were fun, when it was clearly wasn’t for either of the participants. Yes, were almost any other director to film a scene in Vegas with lap dances, mushrooms, and Cirque de Soleil, it would’ve signified as you imply; however, the shrooms are bad, Cirque de Soleil worse, and the lap dances painfully uncomfortable (both for Rogen and Rudd and the viewer). There’s an emptiness to their frolic, as if the cultural narratives for “male-bonding enabled recovery” simply fail to work for them. Put another — likely more muddled — way:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is easily one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. So long as you remain with Hunter’s frame, you can see why he finds the situations funny … but despite the narration, the film forces you into the third person, such that the girl passed out, and possibly dead, on the floor isn’t funny so much as an indictment of Thompson’s utter lack of humanity. Sure, sure, he’s sodomizing the American Dream … but when you see what that entails, you can’t help but cringe. The Vegas in Knocked Up is advertised as the place they read about in Thompson’s book; but when they get there, they can’t help but feel they ended up in its unfunny adaptation.
Sisyphus: disturbing how? I will break free and come visit for sure.
tomemos,
There’s a moment in the doorman’s soliloquy where he breaks out of saying what he has to do, and begins talking about what the women really should be doing. When he starts asking them why they need to be out clubbing, when that isn’t even good parenting, he’s eliminating the distance between his own point of view and that of his employer (or the larger society).
Scott,
First of all, you can push the internal logic so far, but beyond that point, a film degenerates into either a heartwarming fantasy or a contemptible fantasy. Knocked Up is a blatant fantasy: a guy lives for at least five years on $14,000 in CANADIAN dollars, yet goes clubbing as often as he can, and has an iMac. Despite being vaguely together, he manages to get down to $117 in his checking account without ever thinking about a job. Just then, his romantic situation forces him to get a job, so he settles for a wonderful desk job doing design work.
This wouldn’t wreck a film completely, any more than Love Actually was wrecked by the Prime Minister subplot, but it does mean that the film doesn’t say much about the real world, and thus you are free to take it or leave it.
It’s not that Allison rejects the advice that she get an abortion; she rejects the idea that she should “take care of it.” Tomemos characterized the scene with the mother very well. As for the scene with Jonah Hill, while “shush-smortion” is funny to the ear, it’s not a particularly funny scene because it implies that Hill is the only pro-choice person in a Los Angeles full of stoners and entertainment industry folks. Whether or not Allison keeps the baby is actually a separate issue from how the film “takes care of” abortion.
In terms of what academics like us might call the doorman’s “subject position,” I tried to address that in the comment up above. There are things about Knocked Up that appeal to me — particularly the Asian gynecologist’s two scenes and the very idea of having the doorman give a soliloquy — but getting a lecture from Apatow on what it means to be mature isn’t one of them, and there’s nothing particularly funny about it.
The trip to Vegas matters because it’s a learning experience for the two men. I remain completely unconvinced by their contrition, but regardless, it was something that they came to on their own after going on a spree. The women, on the other hand, are chastened by the doorman telling them what’s what. Naturally, this sets up the scene where Ben throws Debbie out of the delivery room, and then Debbie immediately declares that she likes Ben. I support her eviction, but I don’t find her liking it very credible.
Apatow comes across as just another guy trying to see everybody’s point of view without actually straying from his middle-class vision of The Way. Sure, it’s so sad that the black doorman has to keep out black people, but it’s not as though we can actually hold it against the club, since it’s the same club where Ben and Allison meet, and that’s how babies are made. The grim reality of disco racism shows up when it’s convenient for it to do so; from the standpoint of the club owners, it’s the best thing the doorman could have said, since making Debbie feel guilty shuts her up.
The wife was the only fully-realized character in the movie, and in my view, the most sympathetic by far.
Contrary to the claim above, you aren’t “underselling” the logic of the film, but rather “overselling” it: the plot is nothing but an unfortunate device to connect a series of hilarious jokes and one-liners. The plot is an after-thought or, at best, sets up the jokes that follow: c.f., the Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson movie about weddings; the Will Ferrell movie about car racing; the Snoop Dog, Vince Vaughan, Owen Wilson and (unfortunately) Ben Stiller movie about cops and drugs; the Vince Vaughan and (unfortunately) Ben Still movie about Dodgeball; the Steve Carrel movie about the TV store; the movie where Sacha Baron-Cohen talks in a funny accent about his pubes; and so on. The “plot” in each is roughly equivalent and serves no purpose but to move on to the next joke. (I haven’t seen Superbad yet, so I can’t comment and I’m only halfway through Knocked Up, but so far the “plot” parts are, by far, the least interesting parts of the movie.) This is the ultimate in nihilistic, post-modern comedy: all surface.
Joseph: thanks so much for your comments on “Knocked Up” and “Superbad.” I’ve always loved Apatow’s “Freaks and Geeks,” which is basically so “true” to my experience in high school in the late 1970s that it can almost be called spooky. Nevertheless, both “Knocked Up” and “Superbad” left me feeling simply depressed about the ways in which men and women [and also, “girls” and “boys”] relate to each other [supposedly], and also about how “heteronormative/middle class” and “straight” both films ultimately are, while also capitulating to the nonsense that most men are mainly “boys” who refuse to grow up and women live on another planet.
Craig, what’s so funny about what you say here about Knocked Up is that you should have no trouble finding my recent analyses of Wedding Crashers, Blades of Glory, and pretty much every other bad movie you describe. The way you describe the emptiness of the plot is very similar to the way the unconscious initially shows up as the meaningless thread between sensible conscious articulations.
Eileen, you’ve nailed it. Knocked Up is ultimately depressing, and believes its own nonsense.
Clearly, I need to watch Freaks and Geeks.
Yes you do need to watch Freaks n Geeks. Very fucking cool.
On the other hand, I hate Knocked up. I laughed, and was also forced to attend the communal screening ‘cus it’s all about surrogate families after all, but I hated it for all the reasons you mentioned above and more. I also hate it for the same reasons I hate whats his face, the guy that made Garden State. Somehow these are all connected.
KNOCKED UP SUX! Paul Rudd on the other hand…
Ok I’ll come back and leave a more informed, articulate comment once I finish my homework, not that you’re waiting… BTW hanks for taking time out of your Costco shopping to do this awesome post – jealous of your Costco card!! Also that little detail warmed my heart.