Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Films

by Kelly Oliver

Overview

No longer is pregnancy a repulsive or shameful condition in Hollywood films, but an attractive attribute, often enhancing the romantic or comedic storyline of a female character. Kelly Oliver investigates this curious shift and its reflection of changing attitudes toward women's roles in reproduction and the family. Not all representations signify progress. Oliver finds that in many pregnancy films, our anxieties over modern reproductive practices and technologies are made manifest, and in some cases perpetuate conventions curtailing women's freedom. Reading such films as Where the Heart Is (2000), Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Palindromes (2004), Saved! (2004), Quinceañera (2006), Children of Men (2006), Knocked Up (2007), Juno (2007), Baby Mama (2008), Away We Go (2009), Precious (2009), The Back—up Plan (2010), Due Date (2010), and Twilight: Breaking Dawn (2011), Oliver investigates pregnancy as a vehicle for romance, a political issue of "choice," a representation of the hosting of "others," a prism for fears of miscegenation, and a screen for modern technological anxieties.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231161084
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	10/09/2012
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and the author of Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us To Be Human; Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex and the Media; The Colonization of Psychic Space: Toward a Psychoanalytic Social Theory; Noir Anxiety: Race, Sex, and Maternity in Film Noir; Witnessing: Beyond Recognition; Subjectivity Without Subjects: From Abject Fathers to Desiring Mothers; Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture; Womanizing Nietzsche: Philosophy's Relation to "the Feminine;" and Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double—Bind.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Shameful to Sexy—Pregnant Bellies Exploding Onto the Screen
1. Academic Feminism Versus Hollywood Feminism: How Modest Maternity Becomes Pregnant Glam
2. MomCom as RomCom: Pregnancy as a Vehicle for Romance
3. Accident and Excess: The "Choice" to Have a Baby
4. Pregnant Horror: Gestating the Other(s) Within
5. "What's the Worst That Can Happen?" Techno—Pregnancies Versus Real Pregnancies
Conclusion: Twilight Family Values
Notes
Filmography
Texts Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

Pleshette DeArmitt

In her characteristically lucid prose and with her incisive wit, Oliver easily engages the reader in this very timely and much needed analysis of representations of the pregnant body and birth in Hollywood film, ranging from the romantic comedy to horror and science fiction. Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down is as enjoyable and accessible as it is insightful.

— Pleshette DeArmitt, The University of Memphis

Barbara Creed

This is a wonderful book. Kelly Oliver provides a scholarly, engaging and challenging account of the changing representations of pregnancy (as distinct from motherhood) across a range of popular film genres from the romantic comedy to horror and science fiction. Drawing on concepts from science, philosophy, feminism and film, Oliver's book examines Hollywood's "baby hunger" inviting us to evaluate our own beliefs, values and expectations of the future. It challenges the reader with the depth of its erudition as it explores taboos and stereotypes about pregnancy and the body. It examines new possibilities, not all positive, in an age of techno-pregnancy and the erotic glorification of "baby bumps", "momshells" and pregnant celebrities. A highly serious yet entertaining account of the relationship between film and the popular imagination and a timely reminder of importance of popular culture in everyday life.

— Barbara Creed, University of Melbourne