Yesterday, Jessica posted her criticism of the new show on ABC, Defying Gravity, rightfully noting the anti-choice attitude she felt the pilot reflected. It turns out that the daughter of the lead writer and producer of the show reads Feministing and passed our critique on to her dad, James Parriott. He sent us a statement regarding his stance on choice with regard to the show.
I don't want to give away the plot on the blog. But our position on the show is that abortion should be legal and the choice of the woman. But, too often, the Right to Lifers, paint the choice position as being glib, easy and insensitive. What we, in our storyline, say is that that simply isn't so. It's a tough, considered choice that can have repercussions -- but it is a choice that must lie with the woman.Thematically, this show is about man's self determination vs. the need to follow orders. It's about what we can't control vs. what we can -- and the grey area in between. It's about the price we pay for both.
Zoe makes the decision to abort (against the govt) to achieve her dream. It isn't an easy decision (as right to lifers often portray it). It's an agonizing decision that Zoe will carry the rest of her life. But is was her decision to make. Not the government's.
Donner makes a decision on Mars that he regrets. He followed orders (by Goss; the government) and lost two people dear to him. He's paying the price of not following his own gut.
Jen, in growing her bunny (making the choice of having her "baby"), will also pay a price. She'll endanger the crew and the ship for something that never should have been allowed to grow in the first place. (again, this is a choice message, not right to life).
We have a scene upcoming, where Ajay, who knows Zoe aborted a baby, will tell her directly that she made the right choice. Sometimes we need to make our own path and her path is in space. She should not worry about her aborted baby - Hindus believe that the soul simply moves on to another body.
Even religious Paula will come to challenge her own right to life beliefs.
So... we explore the subject from a number of directions. I imagine we'll take heat from people on both sides of the issue - but they should certainly wait and see how the story develops."
It is rare that we write about popular culture and those involved actually respond to us. James Parriott has been the lead writer and producer for a variety of shows, including Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy among others. I am a huge fan of Ugly Betty and I felt that it took a progressive stance on gender, race, immigration, sexuality and class issues so I will check out the next few episodes of and see how the plot develops. And not just because I have a crush on Ron Livingston. I know, a shameful crush since he delivered that one line that took dating books by sexist storm.
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Even though I haven't seen the show, I do thank Mr. Parriott for responding. I'm kind of interested now to watch and see if his intent is communicated well through the script. Sometimes a theme is really great in theory but isn't played out well - but I won't be able to make that determination without watching it with this analysis in mind.
Is it available for streaming on ABC.com? I'll have to catch up on the first episode.
It is on Hulu.
Joan
Wow! This is great that he responded and even better that his daughter is a follower of feministing.com. I did watch it last night and felt that perhaps it was a bit progressive considering it showed the dynamics of the situation. The woman wanted the abortion in order to progress her career, which she had worked so hard to get to, yet her choice was suppressed by the government. I did get the feeling that this law by the government was not a good thing, but then again, like Mr. Parriott said, both sides of the fence will probably see good and bad things in the show. It's opening up an interesting dialogue, that's for sure.
Wow! This is great that he responded and even better that his daughter is a follower of feministing.com. I did watch it last night and felt that perhaps it was a bit progressive considering it showed the dynamics of the situation. The woman wanted the abortion in order to progress her career, which she had worked so hard to get to, yet her choice was suppressed by the government. I did get the feeling that this law by the government was not a good thing, but then again, like Mr. Parriott said, both sides of the fence will probably see good and bad things in the show. It's opening up an interesting dialogue, that's for sure.
That is pretty awesome he wrote back. Much kudos.
I'll check out the show, too! Thank god for HULU.
Wow! This is great that he responded and even better that his daughter is a follower of feministing.com. I did watch it last night and felt that perhaps it was a bit progressive considering it showed the dynamics of the situation. The woman wanted the abortion in order to progress her career, which she had worked so hard to get to, yet her choice was suppressed by the government. I did get the feeling that this law by the government was not a good thing, but then again, like Mr. Parriott said, both sides of the fence will probably see good and bad things in the show. It's opening up an interesting dialogue, that's for sure.
I don't know...
"It isn't an easy decision (as right to lifers often portray it). It's an agonizing decision that Zoe will carry the rest of her life."
I appreciate his sentiment, but I disagree with the idea that abortion has to be something agonizing you deal with for the rest of your lif. I had an abortion, and I certainly never stress about it. Don't right-wingers convey that abortion will cause a woman depression and will ruin her life? I think he's got it a little backwards. Again, it is really cool that he wrote back and that his intentions are good.
Ditto. It was a great letter that revealed how the theme of choice flows through the story. Perhaps "Having an abortion isn't always an easy or difficult choice. It depends on the person and situation; this is why choice is important" would have been a better statement.
I was uncomfortable with Mr. Parriott's repeated use of "aborted a baby." One aborts a pregnancy to avoid having a baby.
I can't quite take the baby out of the equation that completely, pro-choice as I am. While I agree that aborting a BABY is perhaps too strong, I'd prefer the phrase 'aborting a fetus' over 'aborting a pregnancy'. There's no pregnancy without a developing fetus after all.
It's not about taking the fetus out of the equation. It's about the English language. A fetus isn't a process. A pregnancy is. You abort processes, not objects.
I'm old-fashioned: I prefer "restoring the menses." :)
I could go with that!
You can actually use both objects and processes with the verb. 'The match was aborted due to rain' for example, or you can talk about the aborted fetus (to refer to the object). So I suppose it depends on where you want to place your emphasis, on the pregnancy or the developing bundle of cells, one obviously not excluding the other. It's good, I suppose, to have that choice. Thanks for making me think about language more closely. It's good for me!
Well... I think that's not exactly accurate. The match is a process, too. It's a singular noun, but it's a singular noun that represents a continuous action of some sort. In this case, playing a game of golf or tennis or whatever. In the same way, you can abort a swing in baseball because you've started to swing, and then stopped, but you can't abort the bat.
I really appreciate Mr. Parriott taking the time to respond. However, I really hate the fact that even pro-choicers seem to have conceded that abortion is necessarily an awful, tragic, agonizing experience. Sure, for some women it is a gut-wrenching decision, but for many women it is not a particularly difficult or traumatic decision.
I guess that's my problem with Parriott's description here. Why shouldn't women ever be shown making an "glib, easy, and insensitive" decision to have an abortion? Why do women always have to be portrayed as damaged and guilt-ridden over their abortion? Certainly that is some women's experience and it is a valid one, but when it is the only way we see abortion played out it just reinforces the idea that abortion is a horrible, awful thing, which I strongly disagree with.
I will only watch if he portrays Timmy the magic aborted dream fetus as that dancing baby from the 1996 version of the Interwebs.
Wow! It's good that Mr. Parriott felt compelled to respond. It's a testament to Feministing and its power, and to Mr. Parriott's class.
i'm really glad he responded. now i'm interested to watch the show if only to see how they handle the choice issue...
"this show is about man's self determination"
it took me a second to translate, if you will, "man's" into "people's." i found it a bit telling.
That was the first thing I noticed, too.
I don't think he needed to respond anymore than the L Word producers needed to respond to folks who said then were "promoting a homosexual lifestyle". Do your stories and have some balls in the face of critism.
Showrunners respond to criticism all the time. Off the top of my head, I can think of very specific responses from Russell T Davies, Hart Hanson, Eric Kripke, and Shonda Rhimes to things that viewers complained about.
WickedAnnabella said a lot of what I wanted to say.
I think it is possible that the show, being new, is starting out in territory that most people will find comfortable and non-threatening. Anti-choicers will be comfortable in the whole "in a world without abortion" scenario, and everyone else will be comfortable in the hand-wringing, "golly gosh abortion is such a tragedy" scenario. And it's possible that by hooking people through good writing and character and plot development that the writers will be able to lead the audience into a realm where abortion is a moral decision, that is not gut-wrenching, and where women's reproductive freedoms need to be respected, and plant their flag on Mount Feminist with soaring ratings.
However, I don't really see that (with the caveat that I haven't seen the show and I'm reacting to what's been written). Again, this notion of "a world in which abortion and birth control is illegal" is by design a world where women cannot have careers. Those policies do not come from a desire to protect life or encourage population growth, those policies come from a desire to shut women away and make them invisible. So much is owed to birth control and abortion as a means of advancing civilization and quality of life. And it's obvious, since Zoe had to have an abortion in order to further her career, that pregnant women are not given the support that they need to balance childbearing/rearing and career, so this is obviously not a "utopian" quasi-feminist version of "abortion is illegal."
In a space-age society in which science, technology, and exploration are key to survival, you must view each individual as a potential asset to the overarching desire to advance your civilization scientifically. You cannot ghettoize half your population out-of-hand because they might have a baby. If you are also attempting to up your population*, then you need to have policies and support structures in place so that the women who are upping your population can also advance your civilization scientifically. After all, while the baby in the woman's tummy may turn out to be the next Einstein, and wouldn't it be a tragedy if he (and it's always a he) were aborted, how do you know that the woman carrying the baby wasn't destined to be the mind who invented a completely new, high-efficiency renewable energy system, and wouldn't it be a tragedy if she had to sit at home raising a baby who, as it turns out, wasn't the greatest scientific mind of his generation and instead did a pretty job as a line chef in Space Denny's?
* Laws regarding abortion and birth control are rarely made for "moral" reasons (even a desire to see women punished for sex), they're usually made for population control reasons. If you scratch the surface of your average clinic protester, you'll find a dominionist who's afraid that "the wrong sort of people are having the babies" and they want to make abortion illegal so that more white women will have babies
Glad to see that he had the class to respond to a very tough crowd (myself included)!!!
I'm glad that he responded. It seemed that the show is alluding to a somewhat dystopian future (unlike some Sci-Fi shows, society is far from working out many of its kinks). And yes, for the main character, it was a wrenching choice. But they do also portray the woman for whom it is an obvious and matter-of-fact choice (Zoe's friend). The friend basically says, your test is positive, let's do what needs to be done and move on. I'll be interested to see how this plays out.
Firstly I'd like to point out that in the pilot itself, when we learn that abortion is illegal, one of the characters mentions roughly "it's just a few supreme court justices," which I read as not that there's been a massive shift and takeover by the religious right, but that somewhere between now and 2047 we get another right wing president and (lets face it, white/male most likely from that team) he stuffs the supreme court with conservatives, and they override Roe v Wade. After all we're always worried about that happening today, maybe it happens in the DG world.
I actually kind of appreciate that it's a back-alley abortion to say "women will have abortions if they want them, thank you very much" to the idea of outlawing it, although there is an amount of class-blindness (or just sci-fi awesome) in having back-alley abortions be safe. The irony is that the show makes clear that even if abortions weren't illegal, Zoe could not have recieved a legal abortion (thanks to digital medical records, one assumes) that would have disqualified her from the space travel mission. Funny that.
Anyway, I'd also like to thank Mr. Parriott for responding, and aside from some of the wonky physics failures I really enjoyed the first two episodes.
As far as abortions on television. From the perspective of serial television writers, actions are supposed to have consequences. That's the whole foundation of serial television, what makes it great. And so, it's not in writers' nature or best interest to bring up a controversial topic (abortion) for one of its principle characters and then never mention it again, despite what actually happens in real life. I agree that it would be great if people did more often use abortion as the non-issue that it normally is in real life more frequently, to justify the times when it becomes A Big Important Character Arc. But right now that is how it's nearly always presented.
I am worried that (SPOILERS) Zoe's arc with the baby (btw the baby-crying-on-ship will almost certainly be explained by the Mysterious Creature (TM), and is not Zoe's latent guilt) is leading to her telling Maddux that she was pregnant (though frankly he should have asked everyone he'd slept with in the 10 years since he got his fake vasectomy)... and then what, Maddux will go "oh noez, my child" as if A)he could have influenced Zoe's decision, B)as if it was a baby and a tragedy, not a fetus and an unfortunate circumstance. Hopefully she finally tells him and he goes... "ok, well... sorry about that. Good for you on knowing what you want and stuff" and that'll be the end of it.
A lot of shaky ground to walk.