Lee Skallerup Bessette – Bitch Flicks

Reproduction & Abortion Week: 16 and Pregnant: Degrassi and Abortion

This is a guest post by Lee Skallerup Bessette.

When I saw the call for submissions for this month’s feature on abortion and reproductive rights, I knew right away that I had to write about Degrassi. I grew up in Canada (suburban Montreal to be precise) and Degrassi was the show everyone watched. Even if you didn’t catch the episodes in primetime on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (or the CBC), they were on after school every afternoon. When Spike got pregnant, I was in grade 5 and all the grade 6 girls came to school with their little “Eggberts.” While I was a little young for the show, I rushed home after school to watch them in the afternoon as I was beginning to see myself as “too old” for the cartoons my younger brother wanted to watch.

I realized very quickly however that there would be a number of challenges in writing about these episodes (Spike’s pregnancy in Degrassi Junior High, Erica’s abortion in Degrassi High, and Manny’s abortion in Degrassi: TNG): untangling my emotional connection to the show and dealing with the different history of abortion and reproductive rights in Canada. While a co-production with WGBH (the Boston PBS affiliate), this show was about as Canadian you could get in terms of its look and attitude toward all of the issues dealt with.

(For an excellent analysis of how Degrassi has become less Canadian, read Amy Whipple’s insightful post.)

In 1987, when 14-year-old Spike was having sex with her boyfriend at a party, the Supreme Court of Canada was getting ready to rule that the current laws limiting access to abortion (a panel of three doctors needed to approve the procedure in a hospital setting) were unconstitutional. This was brought before the court by Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who had been brazenly flaunting the law since 1973 in Quebec. Dr. Mongentaler had been unsuccessfully brought to trial three times in Quebec; the juries in each case had been unwilling to convict, leading the government to declare the law unenforceable. The CBC has an excellent digital archive of news footage and interviews of Morgentaler and his cases in the courts.

In 1989, when 16-year-old Erica was getting an abortion because of a fling at summer camp, Chantal Daigle was fighting for the right to terminate her pregnancy against the wishes of the father. Once again, this case originated in Quebec and made national headlines. The case was expedited all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, who ruleD in Daigle’s favor. Daigle had already obtained a late-term abortion in the United States when the ruling was handed down. It was seen as a victory for women’s reproductive rights in Canada. Although there were a number of attempts, there are currently no laws in Canada governing abortion.

I vaguely remember, as an 11 and 12 year old, the Chantal Daigle case, but I have absolutely no memory of the Morgentaler case. It’s notable that both these cases originated in Quebec, in particular the unwillingness of three Quebec juries to convict. After the tyranny of the Catholic Church ruling over the province for approximately 150 years, the 1950s, with the Quiet Revolution, and the 1960s, with everything that came along with that, saw the outright rejection of any and all Catholic religious influences. Including their disapproval of abortions. As a result, I grew up in an environment that while not embracing abortion, at the very least it was treated as being not a very big deal.

(It should also be noted that the period when Morgentaler was being brought before the courts in Quebec, the Separatist movement was gaining popularity, and thus there may have also been some residual resentment towards the federal government leading to the refusal to convict.)

I know this, so far, has read like a long history lesson cribbed for Wikipedia; it is. But it’s important to contextualize the culture in which these shows were being produced and in my case, consumed. For instance, I didn’t understand why Erica, when visiting the abortion clinic, was aggressively confronted by pro-life demonstrators, waving a plastic fetus at her (go to the 4:30 mark). This was more common in the rest of Canada, as compared to Quebec. But these types of protests outside of abortion clinics were common, even in Canada.

Notably, it’s Erica’s twin sister Heather who is scarred by the ordeal, and she has nightmares about the protests. But it is also Heather who stands beside her sister, as well as stands up for her sister when Erica receives threats from a pro-life student at Degrassi. What’s interesting is that the storyline isn’t wrapped up at the end of the two-part premiere (the abortion was one of the main storylines for the premiere episodes of the “new” Degrassi High series); it continues on across the entire first-half of the season, in the same way Spike’s decision to keep baby Emma is dealt with throughout the show’s run. The arguments are nuanced and the kids are treated with respect. The pro-life side is seen as being the destructive force, bullying, scaring, and shaming, while Spike puts it best: “It’s great to have high ideals and stuff, but when you’re in that situation, right and wrong, they can get really complicated.”

Fast-forward to 2004. Degrassi: The Next Generation (or TNG) has been airing on CTV in Canada and The N (originally Nick Teen) in the United States for three and a half seasons. The new iteration of the show started with Spike’s daughter Emma starting junior high herself. Emma’s best friend Manny, midway through season 3, who is trying to change her image from good girl to party girl, gets pregnant. She, too, struggles with what to do, eventually opting to get an abortion. Emma, at first, doesn’t approve of the decision, being the child of young, single mother herself. Spike once again offers wise council, telling Manny to do what is best for her. This upsets not only Emma, but also Craig, the father. Ultimately, Manny (who is identified as Filipino) goes to her mother and is surprised to receive her support, even taking Manny to get the abortion.

This was another two-part episode and it initially didn’t air in the United States. 2004 was during the height of the so-called Culture War in the US, while Canada still maintained a more open and liberal position on abortions. The article linked just above points out that, unlike most shows about teens that were airing at the time, Degrassi: TNG had the courage to take abortion seriously and handle it realistically; neither Manny nor Erica conveniently lose the baby, thus avoiding the reality of having to get an abortion. In both cases, the rights of the mother are given priority; even the women around them who may disagree with their decision ultimately defend the right to choose. And, as pointed out by Sarah, a blogger at Feminists for Choice, each girl goes on to have rich and varied (if, at times, melodramatic) storylines; Manny eventually lives her dream of becoming an actress, while we see Erica briefly during Degrassi: TNG looking happy and fulfilled (and notably not at all in distress when holding someone else’s baby).

So what, then, can we learn from this particularly Canadian perspective on abortion? Certainly, the idea of a woman’s right to choose is forefront in each portrayal, but it doesn’t trivialize the decision, either. The characters are shown dealing with the aftermath of the abortions, but not in a sensational way, either. In fact, it is often those around them who have the most difficulty with a profoundly personal decision. The bullying and shaming methods often used by the pro-life movement are shown as being ultimately counter-productive, both in the late 1980s and in the mid-2000s. Abortion, however, is just one decision in the long and full lives of these young girls, who are shown to go on and have relatively happy and fulfilled lives.

For that, I am glad that Canada has the history it has in regards to abortion, so that we may have these complex and ultimately, to my mind, satisfying portrayals of women’s reproductive rights.

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Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family. She also contributed a piece for Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks called, “Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men” and a review of Friday Night Lights for Emmy Week 2011.

Emmy Week 2011: Tami Taylor, My Hero

Connie Britton as “Tami Taylor” in Friday Night Lights

If there is one woman in Dillon who stands head and shoulders above them all, it’s Tami Taylor. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem too hard to do. Mothers in Dillon have not been the most successful characters; they were either drunk/druggies (Mama Collette, Vince’s mother, Becky’s mother), absent (Jess’ mother, Mama Riggins, Matt Saracen’s mother), or one-dimensional (abuse victim, religious nut, etc). Is it any wonder, then, that Tami Taylor becomes the go-to woman for many of the “lost children” of Dillon?

But let’s take a step back. Even if she is a three-dimensional beacon in a sea of sub-par parenting, she is not without her faults…I just can’t think of any right now. She yelled at Julie a few times, right? And there was that one time she humiliated her daughter by showing up at the pool, pregnant to the point of bursting…Did she pressure Julie to consider a university far, far away from their home in Texas, just because Tami had gone there?

What we get to see in Tami that we don’t get to see in other “mother” characters (except maybe Mindy Riggins) is the conflict that she feels when deciding on the best course of parenting action. And this conflict is rarely ever expressed in words; instead, it is played out on Tami’s face, which can go from anger, to disappointment, to sympathy and love in the course of one short scene. Tami, from the outside, might seem like the perfect mother, making the job look easy, but Connie Britton conveys to us the difficulty her character faces in her decisions as a parent.

This final season, Tami was put through the ringer. She found out her daughter had been sleeping with her TA (the wordless confrontation between the two of them alone should win her the Emmy). She was confronted with the reality of working at an under-funded, under-privileged high school (sometimes that Southern Charm can only go so far), almost moved to Florida because of a college coaching gig for her husband, and, most importantly, she was confronted with a true and possibly devastating conflict in her marriage. At the same time Eric Taylor was contemplating coaching the united Dillon football team, Tami was offered a job as Dean of Admissions at a fictional college in Philadelphia.

The tension between husband and wife is oftentimes unbearable during the last few episodes of the season. When Tami spits at Eric, “I’m going to say to you what you haven’t had the grace to say to me:

congratulations, Eric” and takes her boots and storms off, my heart was breaking. Here is a woman who for 18 years gave up pieces of herself in the name of their marriage, their family, and her husband’s coaching career. The sacrifices that seemed so effortless throughout our time watching the show finally burst through.

Tami seemed to have limited herself. But, when a new opportunity, an unimagined opportunity presents itself, she allows herself to dream. Eric’s unwillingness to even entertain the dream is all the more insulting because of Tami’s willingness to up and move to Florida if Eric decided to take the college coaching job. When the tables are turned, Eric cannot extend to his wife the same level of respect.

At least not at first. By the end of Eric’s own trials, he sees that, on one hand, he owes it to his wife, and on the other, he loves his wife so much that he ultimately wants to do what will make her happy. It takes their daughter getting engaged–and telling her parents that they are her model–for him to realize that he would never want his daughter to give up her dreams, nor sacrifice as much for her future husband as Tami sacrificed for him (or, at least, that’s how I’d like to read it; maybe it was just all about telling Dillon to F-off). Either way, Tami is seen confidently walking across her new campus, cheerily throwing out her trademark “y’all” to those in the City of Brotherly Love.

Emmy Week 2011: Friday Night Lights: Deep in the Heart of Texas

Cast of Friday Night Lights

Each woman in Friday Night Lights, like each man in the show, is defined by their relationship to football. Or rather, the town tries to define them by their relationship to the featured football team (either the Dillon Panthers during the first seasons or the East Dillon Lions during the last two). What is and remains fascinating to me is how in the face of this identity pressure, the women are often more successful in redefining themselves than the men.

(I’d have included pictures, but I defy you to find a picture of any of these women on the Internet that doesn’t put them in some sort of come-hither pose that exposes a whole lot of skin. Sigh. These ladies deserve better.)

One of my favorite characters over the final two seasons of Friday Night Lights is Jess Merriweather. She is the eldest daughter of a former football player-turned-restaurant owner, older sister and surrogate mother to two younger brothers, and football lover. When we first meet her, she is a cheerleader for the new East Dillon Lions (and that image of her remains during the final season’s opening credits); one could wonder why we never saw her as a Dillon Panther cheerleader, but it becomes clear that she probably would never have fit in with the Lyla Garrity-types at the old high school.

No, it becomes clear that Jess is only a cheerleader because it is the only legitimate way for her, a girl, to be close to the game she adores. We see her coaching her younger brother, watching the games not in order to find a potential mate but to dissect plays and increase her football IQ. She is a smart, driven young Black woman, trapped between her love of football and the very gendered expectations of the town. When she is given the opportunity to “coach” star quarterback/boyfriend Vince over the summer, she finds her outlet. Unfortunately, once school and the season start up again, she is relegated to the demeaning role of “rally girl.”

The rally girl is a problematic, but all too realistic, role for Jess. She views herself as Vince’s equal, not his servant. The typical role of the rally girl is to do whatever she can to “motivate” the football players to play at their best on Fridays. In fact, the rally girls wear their respective player’s jersey, essentially owned by the player. It also should be noted that the girls get no say in who their player is; the girls randomly pull jerseys out of a box, and the player can barter and trade girls if the price is right (in one case, it’s a prized pig – do with that what you will). For most of the girls, it is an honor to be a rally girl, to be associated with the “star” football players. But that is not what Jess wants anymore from football; residual fame and greatness is no longer enough.

Jess, instead, becomes the equipment manager for the team. She gets a respectable uniform (versus the scantily-clad cheerleaders), access to the locker room, the coach, the sidelines, and the game. Her job is far from glamorous; she cleans jock straps, washes towels, works to prevent staph infections. Of course, this role strains her relationship with Vince; Vince tries to protect her from the ribbing the team subjects her to, while Jess wants to prove she can hold her own, on her own. In fact, it is Coach Taylor, and not the players, who has the most difficulty accepting Jess in her new role.

Jess fights for the respect of the players and Coach Taylor, working hard to be the best equipment manager/future coach she can be. She presents Coach Taylor with a profile of a female high school football coach to prove to him that it can be done. He tries to scare her by laying out her odds for success. Jess’ confidence never wavers, and Coach Taylor, champion of lost causes (see Vince, as well as Tim Riggins and Matt Saracen), is won over. We last see Jess as an equipment manager at her new school in Dallas.

Jess is just one example of the type of strong, well-developed female characters Friday Night Lights has created. The final two seasons also allowed us to get to know Mindy Riggins: older sister to former cast member Tyra Collette, stripper, mother, and wife to Billy Riggins (who was a former Panther star). In the early seasons, Mindy was simply an excuse for Tyra (and the rest of the cast) to visit The Landing Strip, Dillon’s local strip club. Mindy and their pill-popping, boozy mother Angela, were representative of everything Tyra wished to escape. Tyra did, in fact, successfully make it out, attending UT Austin. But what about those who are left behind in the small town of limited possibilities?

Mindy follows what might be seen as a stereotypical small-town girl path: she gets pregnant and gets married. Both she and Billy struggle with paying their bills and finding meaningful employment. But in what could easily have become a caricature of “white trash” existence (drinking, fighting, divorce, abuse) becomes a very real picture of two people trying to make it work in tough economic times. Mindy also steps up and takes Becky under her wing, a girl in whom she sees much of herself. Mindy also has a boozy mother, an absent father, and is left on her own to navigate through life (but more on her in a moment). When Mindy witnesses Becky being abused by her father and step-mother, she steps in (forcing Billy to do the same) and defends Becky. This is an incredible act from someone who, up until this point, saw Becky as competition rather than a sister. Mindy was perhaps the first person who ever stood up for Becky, acting as the advocate she herself probably never had.

This relationship, of course, is not without its problems; Mindy takes Becky and her son to The Landing Strip and even allows Becky to waitress at the club. Stripping (and as an extension, the strippers themselves) are neither glorified nor vilified by the show. In a town where economic opportunities are limited regardless of gender, these women make money the best way they can, using their bodies to pay the rent. There is nothing glamorous or liberating about their jobs, besides the “easy money” that can be made. But that money isn’t as easy as Becky thinks it is. We see Mindy furiously working out in order to get her body back into shape for the job, and even then, she is relegated to the humiliating “lunch shift.” But the women are also treated with dignity, at least within their group. They are far from being victims or victimized; initially, the show seemed to be saying that Mindy was a stripper because she didn’t have a father and her mother was lacking. But during the last two seasons, the strippers move from being symbols of failure to symbols of survival.

Mindy finds a community with the women of The Landing Strip, and a support system that she never had before, finding a place where she can be honest about her past abortion and how it is still impacting her relationships. The ladies from the strip club also take Becky to participate in one of her pageants; when one of the judges criticizes Becky’s choice of “supporters,” Becky clearly chooses her new family over her dreams of winning pageants. I’ll admit that I bawled like a baby during the final episode when Mindy and Becky say goodbye to each other when Becky moves out to live with her mom again. Family, in this show, is who sticks with us through the hard times.

Which brings us to the issue of the abortion. Becky gets pregnant during the fourth season (by a football player, no less), and she does, indeed, go through with having an abortion (some would argue at her mother’s insistence). Initially, the abortion more immediately impacts another character, Tami Taylor, who was at that time vice-principal at Dillon High School (Becky goes to East Dillon). Tami was brought in to counsel Becky when she had no one else to turn to. But while Becky seems to have come through the abortion okay, we learn in the fifth season that she still carries some unresolved feelings about the boy who got her pregnant.

This portrayal of a young girl feeling trapped by a bad situation is handled, to my mind, sensitively and realistically. Becky is not left unaffected by the procedure, nor does she seem permanently and disastrously scarred. Those around her (her mother, the mother of the baby’s father, the community) seem more upset and emotionally reactionary than Becky herself. It also seems that the extreme reactions of those around her affect her more than the abortion itself; it is again only when she confides in the strippers that she gets the level-headed and unconditional support she needs to move past the event. Abortion, it would seem, is not the issue; the hysteria surrounding it is.

These are just three of the complex women of Friday Night Lights. I’ve focused on the final two seasons, as this is the season that is up for an Emmy. One could look at the evolution of Lyla, Julie, Tyra, and other early-season characters, as well as the myriad of “minor” characters who have populated the edges of the show (Maura the rally girl, Epyk the problem child, Vince’s mother, and Devin the lesbian spring to mind). Each one deserves her own essay, devoted to all the ways the show did (and didn’t) do the characters justice.

Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men

Towards the end of the first season, Peggy Olson goes out on a date set up by her mother. The guy, Carl, drives a potato chip delivery truck, and makes it clear that he doesn’t think too highly of Peggy’s chosen profession. “You don’t look like those girls,” he tells her. Peggy storms off, snapping at Carl, “They are better than us. They want things they haven’t seen.”

I don’t agree, at least not when it comes to the main women of Mad Men. Joan and Betty are victims of both their class and their gender, and the only thing they would seem to aspire to is what they know and what they see: the comforts of an middle-to-upper class existence.

One element that has always fascinated me about Mad Men has been the element of class mobility and class-based constraints. The women, in particular, embody the opportunities and limitations of class during the 1960s. Looking at the characters of Peggy, Joan, and Betty, it becomes clear that if the people who live in Manhattan want things they haven’t seen, they are limited in being able to attain those goals by their class and class constraints.

Peggy Olson

From the beginning, Peggy is presented to us as a girl in her dress and her manners. She tells Joan that she attended “Miss Devers Secretarial School,” and while Joan reveals that it is one of the best, it isn’t a college education. We also see her small and simple apartment, later learning she is from the Bronx and, during the second season, Catholic. Her sister’s husband has been hurt on the job and unable to work, and their rather large family is living in a small apartment. All of this indicates that Peggy comes from a working-class background.

The episode mentioned above is an important moment for Peggy; in the same episode, Peggy has a successful pitch for the “Electrolizer.” Peggy is able to somewhat comfortably talk about the fact that the machine is a vibrator. Juxtapose Peggy’s ability to articulate the benefits of the Electrolizer versus Betty’s experience with the washing machine in the same episode. One embraces the freedom the machine can/could provide for women, while the other has to make do.

Betty Draper Francis

Betty came from both class and means; her family is wealthy, and from the descriptions of her mother, quite proper in terms of gender and class norms. Her mother disapproved of her brief career as a model after Betty had graduated from Bryn Mawr College. All of her married friends seemed to have attended one of the “Seven Sister” schools and traveled extensively in Europe.

For her, her marriage is her goal. She was raised to want to look pretty in order to attract an acceptable husband. She might be unhappy in her marriage to Don, but she has no idea how to escape or to fulfill herself. I saw her holding a rifle, smoking a cigarette, and shooting her neighbors birds not as a symbol of a woman rising up to defend her family, but of a woman who couldn’t bear even a reminder of freedom. Like the birds, she, too, would always come home.

Joan Holloway Harris

Joan, too, is the picture of elegance. She has gone to college and has moved up as far as she can professionally, enjoying being single while looking for a husband. She finds (and problematically marries) an aspiring surgeon. While it isn’t clear what kind of background Joan comes from, it is clear that she possesses the proper credentials for a woman who came from class or means.

Joan’s rape has, obviously, generated a lot of debate. I read it, however, as a type of class sacrifice; in order to “keep” her professional and respectable husband, she has to stay silent about her rape. It is never made clear if Joan truly loves Greg, or views him as her last chance at class respectability. Joan also quits her job at Sterling-Cooper once she is married because it is no longer necessary, but also no longer socially acceptable. But it isn’t just that. When she has the opportunity to read scripts and make valuable contributions to the newly-formed television department, Joan doesn’t speak up when an inexperienced man receives her job. Contrasted with Peggy’s courage to ask for Freddy Rumsen’s old office, Joan would seem to be trapped not just by the constraints of her gender, but the constraints of her upper-class upbringing.

One could also read the competition between Joan and Peggy as a competition between two women from different socio-economic class; Peggy doesn’t know the rules, doesn’t “look” the part, and Joan tries to help her “fit in” as an women with middle-class aspiration. But Peggy isn’t interested in marrying up; her ignorance of the rules is her biggest strength as she is not limited by the gender pressures of middle and upper-class expectations.

Peggy, in her quote about wanting things they haven’t seen yet, could be referring to the women that Don Draper consorts with throughout the first two seasons. Midge Daniels is a bohemian, for class seems to hold no allure or power. Rachel Menken has managed to transcend class (and racial/religious) boundaries and become a power-driven professional woman. The same goes for Bobbie Barrett, who manages her husband’s show biz career with savvy and ruthlessness. Each of these women is successful at eschewing the limits placed on them by class expectations.

It is interesting that when Don is faced with a choice between a non-traditional woman (Dr. Faye Miller) and his secretary (Megan), he chooses the latter. Faye and Peggy are, ultimately romantically punished for their non-traditional interpretations of class and gender norms. It remains to be seen how Faye bounces back from Don’s rejection, but Peggy is certainly doing better than either Betty or Joan when it comes to personal and professional success.

Call it the limitations of an upper-class upbringing; sometimes we can only want what it is we see.