By Anthony Bernier, July 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n Isn\u2019t it nice to blame it all on Trump? Trump\u2019s reactionary political base.\u00a0Trump absconding with the Supreme Court. Trump repealing \u201cRoe\u201d \u2013 a\u00a0women\u2019s right to abortion. While true, of course, these things do not tell the\u00a0whole story. At least part of the responsibility for the rollback on\u00a0reproductive choice rests with an unlikely culprit: \u201cliberal Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n When looking back at the films preceding the Trump era, to the period\u00a0giving rise to the Obama Administration, more complexity emerges. In\u00a0popular films of that period, while baby boomers enjoyed choice, popular\u00a0films denied it to younger women.<\/p>\n Intergenerational hypocrisy is not unique to boomer political ethics, of\u00a0course, especially when it comes to public policy. What we did to advance\u00a0our reproductive freedom was world historical.<\/p>\n Gee. Weren\u2019t we great?!<\/p>\n You kids just have to suck it up. Too bad. So sad.<\/p>\n Among the period\u2019s most celebrated films about youth were Juno (2007)\u00a0and Twilight (2008). In the first, Juno puts the baby up for adoption; the\u00a0second film\u2019s master narrative reclines on un-reflexive sexual restraint: the\u00a0male lead, vampire Edward, doesn\u2019t even have a bed in his bedroom!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n When you see one or two treatments avoiding reproductive choice, you\u00a0take it in on one level. But when you see it over and over again without\u00a0exception it\u2019s time to start connecting the dots.<\/p>\n In addition to Juno\u2019s adoption option and Twilight\u2019s tortured \u201cJust Say\u00a0No\u201d abstinence regime, a long list piled up well before Trump.<\/p>\n Natalie Portman in Where the Heart Is (2000) portrays a 17-year-old in\u00a0Oklahoma struggling to rebuild her life after being abandoned by the\u00a0boyfriend. She insists on raising her new baby alone.<\/p>\n In another, Drew Barrymore portrays a boozy high school girl in Riding in\u00a0Cars with Boys (2001). Barrymore\u2019s character arc gets pregnant (of,\u00a0course, what else do boozy high school chicks do?), has the baby, and\u00a0raises it to become the \u201cadult\u201d in the family.<\/p>\n In Waitress (2007) Keri Russell plays a young woman disconnecting\u00a0from yet another unreliable (and in this case dangerous man) who parlays\u00a0taking her baby to term as a metaphor for becoming \u201cempowered.\u201d<\/p>\n As with Twilight and Juno, these films all depict young women\u2019s culture,\u00a0community, and endurance. Under different circumstances this might be a\u00a0welcome counterpoint to otherwise predictable anti-youth screeds found in\u00a0adult non-fiction, mass media, public policy, and popular culture.<\/p>\n But when viewed against a larger and consistent backdrop these films\u00a0become a de facto Hollywood anti-abortion campaign.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a fan of abortion. Who is? But the very idea of \u201cchoice,\u201d as a right\u00a0and a viable option, in all these representations, \u201coption\u201d means only\u00a0carrying the baby to term or abstinence.<\/p>\n Correction. There is one exception.<\/p>\n In Coach Carter (2005) Samuel L. Jackson plays a self-righteous high\u00a0school basketball coach teaching an inner-city school how to turn boys into\u00a0men. The girlfriend of team\u2019s African American star terminates her\u00a0pregnancy to preserve his collegiate aspirations.<\/p>\n Well, so long as the kids are Black and it\u2019s for the right reasons\u2026<\/p>\n The coming on of the \u201cObama Moment\u201d promised a new narrative about\u00a0young motherhood \u2013 perhaps even young parenthood. We hoped that a\u00a0new narrative might extend all the choices to which citizens are entitled.\u00a0While boomers did enjoy that moment, younger women were left adrift.<\/p>\n How convenient to blame it all on Trump. But anti-choice vampires were\u00a0there first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At least part of the responsibility for the rollback on reproductive choice rests with an unlikely culprit: liberal Hollywood. By Anthony Bernier, July 2023 Isn\u2019t it nice to blame it all on Trump? Trump\u2019s reactionary political base.\u00a0Trump absconding with the Supreme Court. Trump repealing \u201cRoe\u201d \u2013 a\u00a0women\u2019s right to abortion. While true, of course, these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161025"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161036,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161025\/revisions\/161036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}