Bally (bally) wrote, @ 2009-08-03 17:35:00

Current mood:	hyper
Current music:	Röyksopp - Eple

Queen Of Hollywood
Time for a thought.

I don't know if this is an original thought or not, but: Hollywood is a front for the Catholic Church.

There's the revered cliché that, if you have sex in a Hollywood horror film, you'll be killed (except for that fun one where you'd only be offed if you hadn't had sex). The thought first struck me, though, off the back of the recent film Four Christmases (IMDb entry here). You might remember it, although it was pretty forgettable.

The lead couple, Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, were, in one scene, at a counselling session (I think). There were two other couples present and the subject of having children came up. The two other couples wanted to have children, but Reese and Vince didn't. The other couples looked at them like they were either aliens, or something they'd just scraped off their shoes.

DIGRESSION ALERT: Or aliens they'd just scraped off their shoes.

In other words, they were portrayed as being weird. Unusual. Not, y'know, modern people who have made a choice about their lives. By the end of the film, of course, they've seen the "error" of their ways and had a child... just like the Catholic Church would have wanted them to do.

If any of you, dear window-owning readers, have any evidence I can throw on the (admittedly scant up to press) pile, it would be gratefully received.

	cosmicavatar 2009-08-04 03:44 (link)
	I think I'm glad I didn't see Four Christmases. If they wanted to have a child, fine, but to be treated like muck because they didn't? Ugh. I don't doubt that many films have someone's socio-political agenda behind them, but the Catholic Church certainly isn't having all the fun, based on the films I watch. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	eileen 2009-08-04 04:09 (link)
	I was so disappointed in that film. Not because of the undertones you talked about, just because it was crap. Christmas films should not be crap, they should all be wonderful (I could say the same about Reese Witherspoon films). (Reply to this) (Thread)

nkl 2009-08-04 12:11 (link)

Oh yes, let's look at the abortion-not-allowed rule. 3 recent examples: Juno High School student is pregnant, wants abortion, even makes the appointment. Changes her mind after an encounter with a weird anti-abortion fellow student (apparently also the only Asian person in the entire Pacific Northwest) and after showing up at the clinic and looking around for less than 30 seconds. Huh? Knocked Up Gorgeous woman with great career is pregnant after one-night-stand with a slacker who is several time zones out of her league (and who thinks he's going to make a living with a website that tells you when any actress has appeared naked in a movie). Decides to keep baby after a single tactless remark by her mother. Huh? Waitress Poor rural waitress with a violent, borderline mentally ill husband whom she doesn't love finds she is pregnant. Despite being the veritable poster girl for why abortion needs to be legal, abortion is not considered for even a nanosecond. *sigh* These are the (unwritten) rules of Hollywood. I would add that in spite of this, I did enjoy two of these three movies (Waitress, not so much). But still. I think the last time I saw a Hollywood movie that portrayed an abortion as not being the end of the world, it was Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Which was made in 1982. Yes, I've given this topic some thought. (Reply to this) (Thread)

cosmicavatar 2009-08-06 03:46 (link)

I've had some more Thoughts. One thing that strikes me about abortion is that, while permissible (as it should be, IMO!), it is not a positive thing. It isn't something you plan to do; it's the means of dealing with an unwanted "accident" and suggests that the person concerned cocked up in some way (forgetting contraception, etc.) and in most of the films I watch, the women are supposed to be more intelligent/positive/whatever insert cliché here blah blah than that. They either have kids because they want them, or they don't. I think. To be honest, I just don't go that deep when it comes to film-watching - I just want to be entertained and escape from real life for a while, so when someone points out a whole load of subtext which never even occurred to me, it can be quite depressing. But I'm guessing that's one reason it isn't shown that much: not because of some Catholic Church-driven agenda, but because it doesn't fit in much with what is required of the character. The only termination in recent years I can recall in film was Ripley's extreme method of disposing of her "baby" at the end of Alien3. Although I'm presuming the pro-lifers would have let that one slide... :P Like nkl, I can only remember a film abortion going on in an 80s film (Dirty Dancing, in my case.) Not positive, but there was no agonizing about what needed to be done. OK, the poor girl was in a bad state afterwards, but she ended up all right. Are we counting TV in this argument? I have seen abortions going on on TV. (Most notably House.) Not happy events, but something to be dealt with. And they've approached it from the other side as well, so there's no apparent bias. Going back to the general Catholic Church front theory, there are plenty of films showing sex outside of marriage with nothing untoward happening to the people involved, so the Catholic Church probably didn't have much influence there. Actually, even after these (rambly) thoughts, it occurs to me that I'm still not much help as I just don't watch many films involving pregnancy and babies. I like them with swords and dorkery and Really Big Guns. Sorry. (Reply to this) (Thread)