Abortion: Romantic, Funny, and Now Without the "Schma" Prefix

Abigail, who among us doesn’t love hope and redemption in our feature length films, as well as our Internet shorts starring hilarious locally-grown comediennes? But if we're allowing that Juno and Knocked Up both end on a hopeful and redemptive note, (Juno ends with Ellen Page and Michael Cera singing a duet with the lyrics, “Squinched up your face and did a dance/ Shook a little turdlet from the bottom of your pants" and Knocked Up with Heigl’s character locked into a union with a man she doesn’t even like), I don’t see any reason why Obvious Child, Gillian Robespierre’s funny movie about a date in an abortion clinic is any less satisfying on that front. The hope of the film is that unplanned pregnancies happen and, gasp, they don’t irrevocably ruin lives.

The trouble with your characterization of Donna is that it seems like unless she was a nun you would characterize her as a narcissistic party-loving twentysomething. This is an Internet short, not an Oscar nominated film, so perhaps I wasn’t expecting as much character development as you were. To me, Donna seemed more like an average girl rather than a vodka-downing succubus. We’re introduced to her trying on a matronly turtleneck to wear to dinner at her boyfriend's Grandma's house. After he breaks up with her at the vintage store, her friend takes her to a bar for a drink. She gets drunk and goes home with someone, and since we’re told she’s just gotten out of a two-year relationship, I get the impression this isn’t a habit for her. They use a condom, and she leaves in the morning. Stop me at the point this narrative makes it seem like she’s a “self-absorbed partier.” Because I just don’t see it.

The condom fails, and she goes to get an abortion. Donna does what many of us do when life deals us a shitty hand—she handles it with humor. Juno handles her pregnancy the same way. And if anything, being able to see the light in a craptastic situation is a sign of maturity and self-possession. It seems like the only thing separating your diverging judgment of Donna and Juno is that one chose abortion and one didn’t.

Tags: abortion, jenny slate, Obvious Child

Lauren Bans is a Brooklyn-based writer and Internet addict.

Comments

Thank you

By: Amanda Marcotte | Fri, 10/02/2009 - 08:14

This short felt more realistic to me than Juno, for sure.  Juno actually cracks a Thundercats joke, even though she would have been born after that show went off the air.  I'm sure basically no 16-year-olds have heard of that one.  I mostly liked Juno, but found some of the dialogue unrealistic.  This movie?  Everything the characters said seemed realistic to me.

I'm sick of hearing how people who go to bars and even (gasp!) have casual sex will never find true love.  This is demonstrably false.  The only reason we don't hear that much about stories like the one portrayed in the movie is most couples who got together after sleeping together right away make up a story about how they met to protect the tender feelings of people who think that casual sex is naughty.  But vintage store shopping, condom grabbing, pro-choice women meet, sleep with and then fall madly in love with dudes all the time. The ominous warnings about how women like, well, me will never fall in love crack me up.  I show them to my boyfriend of nearly 4 years and he sagely nods and agrees that he mustn't exist, because apparently it's impossible.

So our abortion policy is now going to be based on ...

By: Dana Stevens | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 21:06

... the personalities of invididual women seeking abortions, and whether we approve of their sexual behavior or not? Both Abigail's anti-abortion post and Lauren's pro-choice one seem to depart from that assumption, as do most of the pop-culture discussions of movies like Juno and Knocked Up. I'm sure many people who seek to terminate their pregnancies are more messed-up and irresponsible (not to mention poorer) than the hipster chick Jenny Slate plays in this video short. Does that mean we want them all to give birth to babies they don't want? It really bugs me when abortion is treated as a referendum on the worthiness of individual cases, rather than as a public health issue.

Carryatis: Wow, you don't

By: NevadaGeo | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 14:27

Carryatis:
Wow, you don't know anybody I know, including reality. Donna sounds like an average girl to me....Lots of people use condoms only for birth control. It's not irresponsible or stupid. They tend to work, you know.

Bravo!

By: LauraPalmer | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 14:11

Bravo, Ms. Bans. Aptly put.

Donna is _not_ an average

By: caryatis | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 14:07

Donna is _not_ an average girl because using JUST a condom for birth control is incredibly irresponsible and stupid.

A girl in a long-term relationship would typically be on the Pill, because condoms break. I thought everyone knew that.