According to Hollywood Today, a new show coming out in the Fall called “Defying Gravity” is about astronauts preparing for a lengthy mission. One interesting note:
Like The Office, Defying Gravity is filmed documentary-style. With personal cameras in their quarters the astronauts have no secrets from the cameras. That abortion is illegal in fifty years time is a key plot point of Defying Gravity. Before leaving Earth, each astronaut is fitted with a device to inhibit them from fooling around with other crew members. It apparently has the unforeseen side-effect of making them talk about sex incessantly on camera.
Wow! A show where young insanely hot people talk incessantly about sex? Hmmm. Never been tried before. A totally novel concept. Why hadn’t anyone thought of having a bunch of actress/models talk dirty for ratings?
Well, as far as the abortion thing goes let’s hope that in this one instance Hollywood is right.
But as the show is being made by the producers of Grey’s Anatomy which is essentially about young hot people talking incessantly about sex, something tells me we’re going to have some kind of horror stories about abortion that’s supposed to serve as a cautionary tale.
So just get ready for that because I’m sure all the entertainment shows will be screaming how “cutting edge” and “important” it is because someone will likely get a back alley abortion in space (are there back alleys in space?) and get seriously mangled or something. But we’ll see. Just a heads up for ya’.
Is it just me or anytime a reviewer calls a show or a movie “important” doesn’t it make you want to head for the hills?
August 3, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Some folk need to put down the bong and their copy of The Handmaid's Tale and just back away.
August 3, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Good one, Scott W!
August 3, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Scott, I thought the SAME THING (minus the bong). A Handmaidens Tale was just plain pandering and bad. The premise of "either women have 100% control over their bodies or it will eventually lead men being able to use them for sex and breeding whenever they want" is not even worth a smirk and a head-shake.
But one good point it DID make: there may come a time in the not-so-distant future when the human population may indeed be dangerously low. Right now we see this in segments of the human population; namely in Western Europe. There is a perfect storm situation going on; people are living longer, marrying later, deferring family for education/career, and once married simply having less children due to the fact that through medical advances there is a reasonable assurity the children will survive. Right now, the population control is completely voluntary. But if through nature this became involuntary…
August 3, 2009 at 11:00 pm
One thing I found fascinating in "Handmaids Tale" when i read it back in High School, was that they mention groups of nuns holding out in appalachia, fighting to protect their perpetual virginity.
With that, and the prayer wheels, and the generally odd take on religion, at the time I took it as a cautionary tale for what happens when society abandons Catholicism– and the idea that people are NOT objects of use.
Of course, we currently live in a society where people (egg donors, sperm donors, surrogate mothers, frozen babies waiting to be implanted) are regularly treated as objects of use for fertility. And nuns and priests are treated as six weirdos for choosing not to marry.
Where Atwood went wrong is that the world of HT doesn't come about because of evangelical Christians… it happens because of an increase in secularism and general societal malaise. Instead of handmaids we have egg donors, and instead of prayer-wheels we have bumber stickers and t-shirts advocating appropriate liberal platitudes.
Not to be a downer, or anything…..
August 4, 2009 at 8:42 am
Re: "back alley abortions" – the thing that always gets me about this argument (that if abortion becomes illegal, women will be forced to go to "butchers" and die in great numbers, etc.) is that surely those who currently have no problems practising abortions would be able to set up nice, clean facilities (under some guise to get away from the illegality of it all) in which no one is harmed except for the baby. I mean, really, do people actually think that the doctors who would continue to perform abortions – and I have no doubt that there would be some – would truly be using coat hangers???
January 15, 2010 at 10:39 am
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!