According to Wikipedia, the premise concerns a 19-year-old protagonist who suffers from various ailments. On stage, in front of an auditorium of people, Hannah collapses during her theatrical debut. At the hospital, her parents have her doctor read some of her melancholy journal entries to them (at least, it’s implied in this plot summary). After a fight with their daughter, they reveal they adopted her after a botched abortion.
Now, let me give the parents the benefit of the doubt and assume that they procured, if they were able to, information regarding the biological mother’s medical history and have been in communication with her doctor about her birth records. If she suffers from epilepsy, asthma, and depression, it might be possible that there are additional conditions she might be vulnerable to and everyone involved needs to know about. That aside, I’m left wondering 1) since when do today’s adoptive parents wait until their child is nineteen to share that information with them and 2) what relevance is it that she was the result of a botched abortion? Perhaps that’s what her conditions stems from, I guess, which would explain the latter, but the former still leaves me scratching my head. Adoption doesn’t have the stigma today that it did when I was growing up. And it especially doesn’t matter to parents who truly love their child and, generally, adoptive parents are pretty loving in general, considering the choice to parent was more likely to be deliberate than by accident as with people who happen upon children the missionary way.
For the rest of the film, she travels on an emotional journey with friends to confront her mother while seeking solace from others along the way. After visiting Whitley from A Different World(the nurse who delivered her), a Catholic priest schools her in Christian forgiveness, which is, you know, different from secular forgiveness. So, from just reading about this film, it sounds like pro-life propaganda masquerading as a movie about making amends with those who have wronged you in some way. Now, you don’t need a member of the clergy to tell you that whatever you don’t let go of, you carry with you through life; and that it's a choice to seek resolution or helplessly stew in all of the negative and unproductive feelings it engenders in your mind and soul. If you don’t deal with your issues and make peace with that which you have no control over, you’re going to voluntarily operate through life through a filter of hurt, anger, and victimhood, among other shitty emotions.
Anyhow, to be perfectly honest, when I watched the trailer, my claws came out and I had to take a step back. I sometimes suffer from a liberal elitist mindset, I'm not going to lie. But, stories that don’t jive with my beliefs aren’t what pains me as much as bad writing. Perhaps I should entertain the idea that adoptive parents concealing from their child that they're adopted AND the result from a botched abortion is more common than I realize?
After a short internet search, the name Gianna Jessen keeps coming up. She testified before Congress in 1996 as being a survivor of a instillation abortion. She suffers from cerebral palsy as a result. The whole reason she’s alive is because she came careening down her birth mother’s vaginal slide before the doctor got in at 9 AM. While I don’t have all the facts before me, on the surface, her story is both tragic and disgusting (but hopeful and inspiring that she survived the clutches of a dubiously-motivated mother and unprofessional and unethical clinic), to say the least, considering that her biological mother was 7 ½ months (!) along. Who aborts a baby with only a few weeks (or, apparently, minutes) to go? I hope there was a good reason she was at the clinic, because third-trimester abortions strike me as inhumane unless there is some justification, like potentially fatal consequences.
After a short internet search, the name Gianna Jessen keeps coming up. She testified before Congress in 1996 as being a survivor of a instillation abortion. She suffers from cerebral palsy as a result. The whole reason she’s alive is because she came careening down her birth mother’s vaginal slide before the doctor got in at 9 AM. While I don’t have all the facts before me, on the surface, her story is both tragic and disgusting (but hopeful and inspiring that she survived the clutches of a dubiously-motivated mother and unprofessional and unethical clinic), to say the least, considering that her biological mother was 7 ½ months (!) along. Who aborts a baby with only a few weeks (or, apparently, minutes) to go? I hope there was a good reason she was at the clinic, because third-trimester abortions strike me as inhumane unless there is some justification, like potentially fatal consequences.
I recognize they happen, but don’t botched abortions usually result in the death of the mother? I think it’s an interesting appropriation of the term on the film’s part. It’s correct either way, but kind of muddles the issue. But, they also use the term “abortion survivor” in the trailer, which is a lot more clear. Anyway, the man who plays the adoptive father is John Schneider. Younger audiences know him as Clark’s dad on Smallville. My generation knows him as the blond and more attractive brother (and I’m a brunette man, usually) Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. It also stars a former American Idol contestant and some Reggaeton producer named El Chombo whose shamelessly wrote his own biography on Wikipedia (it’s in the first person, for crying out loud; I get the self-pimping, but, come on).
Well, what I then found out (big surprise) after further research is that the movie is based on the life of none other than … Gianna Jessen! Go figure. Who knew. She made a YouTube video about her story and once the Heritage Foundation started sniffing around and got their hooks into her, they had a movie on their hands. My apologies to the screenwriters Cecil Stokes and Jon Erwin, but, if the script is as bad as the trailer promises, why couldn’t you have just insisted on having professionals hired? I mean, we’re talking about one of the best funded conservative think-tanks here. Like I said, I don’t mind being manipulated, regardless of the political motivations, just have a little respect for my intelligence. I’m not going to hold up The Blind Side like some great piece of art. There were times during the movie, where I was able to step outside of myself and think, what a load of crap! But, those would be between my constant bouts of sobbing, because, let's face it, it was a touching, ten-hanky cryfest. And, while the quality was TV-movie-of-the-week, when you have a bitch like Sandra Bullock, that shit belongs up on the silver screen. This certainly looks like no Blind Side or even Lifetime-level. Paging Sandra Bullock. We need some blond highlights, lipstick and a Texan twang, STAT! Otherwise, this smells like a good Christian girl with a horribly unique story who So-cons are using to whore around to push their religious agenda. And the last thing this country needs right now is MORE SOCIAL ISSUE BULLSHIT. I want to see people work again. I want to see people buy houses. I want to see new businesses. And I don't care what religion you are!
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| Which one of you hillbillies is my daddy?* |
Listen, folks, we have three branches of government. One of the branches, the judicial, interprets our laws and constitution. That's what it's there for. If not, then why did our founding fathers bother including it? They decide what's allowed and what's not allowed. And, in 1973 (41 years ago), they ruled that a right to privacy [the freedom to control what happens to one's body] under due process [federal government protection from state encroachment on certain inalienable rights] in the Fourteenth Amendment extends to a woman's right to an abortion. BUT, ALSO, that right must be balanced against the interests of the state protecting 1) prenatal life and 2) and the health of the mother. It sounds like in Jessen's situation, the clinic was operating illegally, as it appears they had prenatal life drop into their hands care of a saline uteral enema. If the mother's life was really in danger, why would they be waiting three hours for the doctor to arrive? Like I said, I don't have the facts, but something doesn't smell right here. In fact, it smells like a disturbing mixture that includes urea and prostaglandin. And, it doesn't sound like preventing such acts in the future will be achieved by defining life at conception. It sounds like MAYBE, just MAYBE, we should concentrate our efforts on establishments that break the law.
Pro-choice is about a woman’s right to choose: the right to birth a baby OR terminate her pregnancy. That's right, you heard me. Some pregnant women who consider abortion, CHOOSE to have a baby; and it should be her CHOICE to do so. Yes, life is precious. And, yes, the idea of someone terminating a 7 ½ month-old fetus is both revolting and deplorable and makes me want to vomit. If the life of Jessen's biological mother wasn’t in peril, then someone should have put it in peril and killed that bitch** (but save the baby first). We live in a free country. And I don't care if embryo's started sprouting on my arm. If I don't want them on my body, they're coming off, whether YOU like it or NOT.
That being said, the surprise showing for October Baby highlights Hollywood's inability to capitalize on Christian values. You would have thought those greedy heathens would have learned with The Blind Side. There's money in them there hills! But, no, they turn a blind eye, because they did such a spectacular job critically, commercially, and at awards time (the last time a big studio won Best Picture was in for 2006 with The Departed) in 2011. This year is shaping up to be a box-office bonanza, and I'm sure they're going to take all the credit and disregard that most of it has to do with dumb luck.
If the movie comes to a theater near me, I’ll hold my nose, open my mind, give it a shot and report back to you. But, I’m not going to drive an 90 minutes round-trip to do so, which would be required at this point.
*Yes, I know that's not from the movie, but the actress Rachel Hendrix talking to two gentleman at a function. The caption is a reference to the miniseries Lace from the 1980s. And, no, I'm not ashamed I'm paying homage to it. Phoebe Cates knew how to leave an impression, bitch.
**No, I do not endorse murder. That was an off-color joke in response to a highly off-color (to put it mildly) situation.
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