Women in Film // Research: Various directors/films

Judd Apatow

Knocked Up

Judd Apatow's Knocked Up message seems to be that marriage and maternity are the only options for an accomplished woman who gets pregnant after a one-night stand with an unemployed male slacker. 

As the success of Knocked Up demonstrates, mainstream American film continues to portray a patriarchal fantasy. Feminist scholarship is necessary and women's filmmaking is a tool for correction.

Marcelline Block 

I really enjoy the film Knocked Up, yet can't help but agree with this viewpoint - it is a fantasy created for young males entirely.

"That weird exhalation you hear at the multiplex these days is the sound of female characters settling for less than they deserve. Following on the wildly successful antifeminist heels of “Knocked Up,” Hollywood is falling over itself to introduce beautiful, smart young women to useless, possibly brain-damaged young men. Regular bathers need not apply."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/movies/24dedi.html?_r=0

Apatow writes men with far more insight and acuity than he writes women. As a result, his portrait of contemporary gender relations is unbalanced: Crude and hilarious in Guyville, he seizes up when he gets to Ladyland and allows himself to take refuge in comfortable clichés.
Without knowing a little more about Alison's romantic past or preferences, it's impossible not to take this mismatch as a sheer plot contrivance, a male fantasy a la According to Jim. It's not clear, either, why Alison—who must be earning a decent salary at E!—lives with her sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and brother-in-law Pete (Paul Rudd). 

The real answer: so the bickering couple can provide a grim counterpoint to Alison's shotgun courtship with Ben, while their children (Apatow's real-life daughters, charmingly unrehearsed) serve as a constant reminder of the new life Alison and Ben have unwittingly set in motion. 

Ben pleads with Pete to recognise his wife's stellar qualities: She's gorgeous, funny, a good mother, etc. But Debbie isn't funny, at least not intentionally—she's a tense, strident harridan, a WASP supermom in the mold of Téa Leoni's character in Spanglish. Leslie Mann (Apatow's real-life wife) is extraordinary in the role, wringing laughs from Debbie's humorless reactions to Pete's incessant jokes. Her character never cracks a joke herself, though.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2007/05/unplanned_parenthood.html

"It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. … I had a hard time with it, on some days. I'm playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy?" - Actress in Knocked Up

This is a true concept from someone in the movie itself. Why do men get to have all the, albeit immature, fun?

Stylistically, though, the film treated women and men very differently. Knocked Up made time for men to explore their choices on-screen in almost existential ways; they ask themselves whom they want to be, they joke around, they assume the right to experiment. 

Women, by contrast, are entirely concerned with pragmatic issues. We never see Alison or her older sister, Debbie, pursue or express her own creative impulses, sense of humor, independent interests; their rather instrumental concerns lie squarely in managing to balance the domestic with the professional. It's as if women's inner worlds are entirely functional rather than playful and open.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_highbrow/2007/12/katherine_heigls_knocked_up.html

 Conclusion

Judd Apatow's movies are made for young white males to create a fantasy world for themselves where they get hot and smart women who are very sensible and realistic. Even if the case is that the women are the voice of reason, that is not how they get painted in the viewer's eye - they are uptight and too serious to people watching.