Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
Abortion isn't easy -- in movies or in life. Plus: Is gun control elitist? Virtual panty raids are better than gore fests.
May 18, 2000 | Abortion at the movies
BY AUDREY FISCH
(05/15/00)
Audrey Fisch is right to point out the contradictory politics in "The Cider House Rules," a film whose greatest mistake both politically and creatively is the dumbing down of John Irving's great and complex novel, about characters whose lives unfold against a backdrop of this political question, to an "abortion film." Irving's novel can't be considered pro-choice as much as against the simplicity of dualistic politics and societal judgment when the issue is so much one of personal responsibility. When Homer returns to the orphanage to take Dr. Larch's place, his decision is pro-choice, but decidedly not pro-abortion, and he does so with all the pain he has seen and lived surrounding reproductive irresponsibility. Indeed, that is the reason for his decision.
As the mother of an 8-year-old child, who has since had an abortion and moved on with my life, I welcome the contradictory politics of Irving's novel, but lament the fact that Irving participated in the reduction of his work to the simplistic politics of the film.
-- Jaime Nichols
Audrey Fisch missed an important point. Yes, "High Fidelity's" few moments on abortion may have been refreshing. But this segment did not amount to a defense of abortion. "Cider House Rules," for all its convolutions and playing with myth, did.
It may be true that "Cider House Rules" "punishes" all or most women who have abortions, but remember the context: Abortion was illegal during the time in which the novel/movie was set. I suspect that most readers and viewers find this element somehow right, mirroring the gravity of the issue.
After all, the issue is grave. It is about the sacrificing of one being (a fetus) for the interests of other beings (the parents, perhaps society at large).
I support abortion, but I don't think that "High Fidelity's" downgrading of its problematic status helps the cause much. (It was a good movie, though, and the music was better than the awful saccharine score for "The Cider House Rules.")
-- Timothy Virkkala
In "High Fidelity" a woman isn't punished for having had an abortion. A man is punished because he caused her to have one.
The three-minute scene in which we learn that Laura had an abortion is not the casual moment Audrey Fisch would like it to be. It's the most important three minutes in the movie. Rob is shown up for having done something terrible. He destroyed his own incipient family through his irresponsibility and selfishness. The movie doesn't treat abortion as a great evil, but it doesn't present it as morally neutral. Laura would much rather have exercised her freedom of choice to have the baby. Rob doesn't deserve her and he has to spend the rest of the movie earning back her love and the audience's respect.
"High Fidelity" isn't a polemic. The film adds only one thing to the abortion debate: the unusual theme of male responsibility. Anti-abortion types are only interested in giving men veto power. Pro-choice types treat men as irrelevant to the question.
The movie suggests that, at least in the case of Rob and Laura, abortion isn't only about a woman's right to control her own body. It's about a man's refusal to grow up.
-- David Reilly
In her comparison of "High Fidelity" to "The Cider House Rules," Audrey Fisch asks the question, "When has a movie ever suggested that a woman can have an abortion and move on with her life?"
Well, it was certainly done in the sleeper hit "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," released in 1982. In the film, 15-year-old Stacy (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who was actually 20) loses her virginity in a typically awkward and wholly ungratifying encounter, gets pregnant as a result, has an abortion and moves on, wiser and stronger. The situation is treated with matter-of-factness by the director, Amy Heckerling, as just one of the many comic, embarrassing and surprisingly poignant vignettes which make up the movie.
-- Hans Phillips
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