Knocked back

The makers of Knocked Up must be surprised to find themselves accused of misogyny.

The film, a gentle slacker rom-com movie by Judd Apatow, began its third week at the top of the UK box office last week. Its premise - an accidental pregnancy turning out all right in the end despite the odds - is confounding liberals and feminists - and for all the wrong reasons.

Commentators got themselves caught up in dissecting the film’s stance on abortion. Libby Brooks described it as “the longest pro-life propaganda movie ever to make it into the mainstream”. Which, the film’s makers might argue, is a stretch given that the word “abortion” doesn’t even feature in the dialogue. But its detractors believe hapless heroine Alison (icy beauty, poised, ambitious, successful) should have got rid and focused on her fledgling television journalism career - arguably the most sensible option for Alison, but a turgid plot. Instead Knocked Up sees Alison choose to keep her baby and commit to an uncertain future with a fat and unreliable former dope head.

But Knocked Up’s most serious problem is not that it balks at tackling the abortion issue head-on; it is that it fails to challenge Alison’s employers’ lackadaisical approach to the rights of their pregnant employees.

After deciding to go ahead with her pregnancy, Alison is so terrified of being fired by the E! Entertainment television channel that she conceals her pregnancy for months. She tries, but she can’t find the courage to tell her bosses she is pregnant, so she makes the crazy decision not to tell them at all. She knows she has employment rights in theory, but she also suspects her employers will show no regard for her rights. Alison is under such pressure that she believes it preferable to procrastinate than assert her rights, because she knows her livelihood is precarious.

When they eventually notice Alison’s pregnancy, her employers magnanimously decide to keep her on, but not before they’ve lectured her on “lying”. Her pregnancy is accommodated, as she is assigned to interview pregnant celebrities, but we have the sense that – had that role not been found for her – she would have been out on her ear.

At the heart of all this is a disturbingly casual acceptance of the ideas that pregnancy means “fired”, and that a pregnant employee is still, after all this time and legislation, at the mercy of individual bosses’ prejudices. It’s not the job of Knocked Up to manipulate its plot to fix this – the film simply and very gently reflects workplace reality for a generation of young women like Alison.