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From: lmann%jjmhome.uucp@husc6.harvard.edu (Laurie Mann)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: PARENTHOOD (movie as political statement)
Message-ID: <13732@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 23 Aug 89 01:07:45 GMT
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I tried posting this to soc.women, and it died.  I suppose it wasn't
flamey enough or something.  Anyway, I'd like to see what other
feminists thought about this movie.

I have mixed emotions about this movie.  So mixed that I have to look at
this movie as "entertainment" and "political statement."  Since this is
soc.feminism, I want to discuss a few of the troubling political issues
that were raised by this movie.

DISCLAIMER:  In a number of interviews, the writers of this film
	have said they drew on their experiences as fathers  to create
	the movie.  I don't think they deliberately intended to write
	a movie that so strongly promoted the old "anatomy is destiny"
	cliche.  But that's how much of the movie came off.

The theme of Parenthood appears to be threefold:

	Women are sensible and nurturing.

	Men are generally jerks (most of the men in the movie) or are
	well-meaning and appear to be jerks (Steve Martin).

	Children, especially babies, can make anything go right.

In this movie, we are introduced to a number of families.  Gil (Steve
Martin), a basically nice guy, is still scarred by the way his father
ignored him as a child, and has a son who's severely oversensitive.  His
older sister (Dianne Wiest) is a divorced woman coping with two
teenagers, one of whom marries VERY young and the other of whom is
absolutely non-communicative.  Their younger sister Susan is married to
a man who's practically taken her out of the loop of parenthood, by
drilling their three-year-old in academia.  And their younger brother
(Tom Hulce) is a charming ne'er-do-well who arrives with a surprise son.

At the center of this group is Jason Robards, their father who lavishes
more attention on his antique car than on his wife or his grown children
or his young grandchildren.  Yes, he's messed up badly, and even he
admits that he wasn't such a hot father.

So, what's wrong with this picture??

		(Movie spoilers follow.)


1.  Robards' wife is practically a non-entity in this movie.  She
    appears in many scenes, but is given almost nothing to do.   This
    doesn't make lots of sense.  Since it was clearly established
    that Robards was a lousy father, did she make up for it by
    being "SuperMom?"  Probably not.  She was extremely unassertive.

2.  The grandmother (Robards' mother-in-law) was shifted around from
    house to house like a piece of kitchen equipment.	  This lack of
    a permanent address seems to have no effect on a woman in her
    late 80s.  Now, this woman was relatively sharp and even says
    that she likes life to be more like a roller coaster than like
    a merry-go-round.  Still....

3.  Susan lets her husband Nathan (Rick Moranis) walk over her to
    an enormous degree.  Her revenge?  During most of the movie,
    it's eating junk food in the closet (apparently not in the
    pattern of a bulimic, but just in the pattern of a woman who
    can't get through to her spouse).  She finally leaves him.
    After a few weeks, he can't stand it anymore, so this man who's
    always been so stodgy serenades her in front of her class.
    He goes onto become a much more relaxed father when she goes
    back to him.  We surmise this because after almost 2 hours of
    him saying that kids need to be trained and playing was
    a waste of time, he's shown making funny faces with his daughter.

4.  Dianne Wiest's daughter (Martha Plimpton) marries young and
    almost immediately becomes pregnant.  Wiest stressed early
    in the film how important college was and how bright this girl
    really was.  By the time she learns her daughter is pregnant,
    she has completely stopped arguing with her, other than to
    convince the young couple to stay together.

5.  This movie makes birth control out to be a joke.  Susan has
    sabotaged her diaphram, something Nathan discovers after a
    routine check of it!!!!!  Gil is told he's going to be a
    father for the fourth time on the same day he's quit his job.
    Abortion is briefly discussed, but not considered an option
    since Gil's wife was opposed to having one (BTW, I'm not
    advocating that any woman should be forced to have an abortion).
    Since this movie is almost more fantasy than reality, Gil gets
    his job back with a raise a few weeks later, so his lack of
    income was only temporary.  By the end of the movie, every  couple
    in the movie who could have possibly had a baby either had a new baby
    or was pregnant.  I like kids, but I found the simplistic
    attitude towards having them to be really offensive.  The
    teenagers were in no way ready to have a baby; they couldn't even
    manage their own relationship.
        
Now, it may sound like I really hated the movie.  Actually, I really
liked it.  THe performances are very good, and while I found myself
hating the plot, the dialogue is pretty sharp.  There are many very
funny moments in the movie.  But it bothered me, too.

/*The typical American is a married, 32-year-old mother with a career.
/*Gee, and I've worked SO hard to be ATYPICAL!!!
Laurie Mann * harvard!m2c!jjmhome!lmann ** encore!cloud9!jjmhome!lmann
Work:  Stratus Computer		   I log onto the net from Northboro, MA