Context
I was looking at the cover of the January 2008 Vanity Fair today, and it apparently had an interview with Katherine Heigl inside. I didn’t read the interview, but there was a pull quote on the cover saying, in effect, that Ms. Heigl thought the part she played in Knocked Up was a little “sexist,” because she was humorless and uptight. I haven’t seen Knocked Up, nor have I read the script.
Commentary
I’m not quite sure what Ms. Heigl means by her character being “sexist.” The character might have had some unattractive traits, but in order to be “sexist,” she would have to hold specific prejudices against either men or women and that’s not what the rest of the quote seems to imply.
I’m not just playing with semantics here. I think we often make the mistake of thinking that creating a stereotypical fiction character, i.e. one that embodies some of the prejudices people hold, is sexist. It may be inappropriate, lazy or stupid, but it’s not sexist.
Sexism (or ageism or racism or sexual orientationism) is the process of generalizing, of saying that certain characteristics are true of everyone who belongs to a given group. Writing a character a certain way only implies that one member of the group holds them. And realistically, it’s just as silly to write as if there are no humorless uptight women as it is to say all of them are.
It is possible to write a sexist character in the way the Heigl quote seems to imply. If the script said, “like all women, the character is humorless and uptight,” that would be sexism. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that any self-respecting actress would have taken the part if they’d read something like that.
What did you see today?
1/11/2008
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