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A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. If you can't get enough of Broadway, you'll definitely want to be here on Thursday, either in person or on YouTube or on the radio. The stars of the Outsiders will be in the WNYC green space performing live. It's closing out this season of our Broadway on the Radio live event series. And guess what? This one is free. Thanks to the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment and New York Music month. You can RSVP by going to wnyc.org events but please note, this event is a first come, first serve. RSVP does not guarantee entry. Everybody. And if you can't make it in person, you can always watch the performances of our live streams as always. Or you can just listen to it on the radio. It all starts at noon this Thursday. Go to wnyc.orgevents for more information. Now let's get this hour of the Tribeca Festival documentary started with Hollywood Does Abortion. On November 14, 1972, millions of Americans gathered around their TV sets to watch the show Maude. In the episode, Maude, played by BEA author, is 47 years old. To her surprise and dismay, she's discovered she's pregnant. Her adult daughter, Carol, played by Adrienne Barbeau, wants her mother to know her options.
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B
You know, I've been thinking. There is no earthly reason for you to go through with this at your age. You know it, I know it. Walter knows it.
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C
I don't want you to talk. Just.
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A
I didn't say anything, but now that
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D
you mentioned it, it's legal in New York now, isn't it?
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B
Oh, of course it is, Walter. Mother, I don't understand your hesitancy. When they made it a law, you were for us.
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A
Of course I wasn't pregnant then. But Carol understands Maude's reaction.
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B
Mother, listen to me. It's a simple operation now, but when you were growing up, it was illegal and it was dangerous and it was sinister, and you've never gotten over that. Now you tell me that's not true.
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A
It's not true. And you're right. I've never gotten over it.
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It's not your fault. When you were young, abortion was a dirty word. It's not anymore.
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A
Just a few months before Roe vs Wade was enacted, that episode aired. Now, 54 years later, Roe is no longer the land. Law of the land. The new documentary Hollywood Does Abortion looks at how accurately or not abortion has been depicted on screen and how those storylines shape and reflect American politics. It was directed by Janet Goldwater and Mike Addy. And they join me now. Welcome to all of it.
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C
Thank you.
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D
Thank you so much.
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A
Also here is Steph Harold, the lead researcher for the Abortion on Screen project. She was one of the people interviewed in the documentary.
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D
Hello, Steph.
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E
Hi, Alison.
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A
So, Janet, we just heard the scene I played for Maude. What was so groundbreaking about that episode?
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C
That episode of Maude was groundbreaking in so many ways. First of all, that was when, as you mentioned, or as was mentioned in the clip, abortion was legal in New York. It hadn't been. Roe v. Wade had not been passed by the Supreme Court yet. And yet Norman Lear was able to put this fairly revolutionary show on the screen at a time when really everybody in the country was watching the same shows. As we know, that's not the landscape anymore. It ran with relatively little pushback. And it really wasn't until a couple years later, after Roe v. Wade had been passed and the pushback had started against abortion, that they had trouble re airing it.
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A
Yeah, Maude was created by Norman Lear, as you mentioned, Mike. Any someone who was not afraid to tackle tough subjects. How hard did he have to fight to get that episode re aired?
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D
I actually can't. I might have to ask for support on this because I don't know. I know when he re aired it, there were, when they did re air it, there were numerous stations that boycotted it, and there were actual physical protests, I believe, outside the network against the re airing of the episode. So it's amazing, just in that short period of time how much things actually shifted.
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C
Yeah, I think by that time, the Catholic Church had begun to identify abortion as an issue. They were going to sort of galvanize people around, and they began a campaign which affected corporate sponsors.
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A
Once Roe vs. Wade was passed, how did this shift get reflected in movies and tv?
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C
Janet? So what you started to see was a fair amount of abortion content, both in film and television. And as Steph's research over the years. Steph has really done sort of longitudinal research gathering all these episodes over the years. What her research has shown is that that we see content, but we start to see certain tropes emerging of shame of people considering abortion but not having them. So Roe v. Wade made sort of normalized abortion. It became a guaranteed right. And yet it's never been something that wasn't contested, both morally and, as we know, politically.
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A
Steffi, let's bring you into this conversation. First of all, tell us what the Abortion on Screen project is.
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E
Sure. Abortion on Screen is a research program at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, which is out of the University of California, San Francisco. And we study how abortion is depicted on TV and film that's available to US audiences. We also study how it affects people. So what people think, what they remember, what they know about abortion after they watch TV or after they see movies about abortion.
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A
Maybe you know this, and if you don't, I apologize for asking this, but do you know when the first time it appeared on screen, abortion appeared on screen?
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E
Yeah. So actually, abortion has been part of US pop culture basically since movies and TV started. So one of the earliest movies we have is from 1916, movie called Where Are My Children? Silent film. And then as soon as TV started in the 60s, there were abortion plot lines on shows like the Defenders, these black and white shows that are kind of the precursors to today's Law and Order ER that had kind of episodes of the week where abortion was a plot line.
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A
And how were the abortions portrayed in those versions of it of the screen?
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E
Yeah. So on the old shows from the 60s, you had a lot of tropes where, because abortion wasn't legal in the US a lot of the plotlines were about these kind of white men, main characters who had to save these damsels in distress from these kind of unscrupulous, illegal abortion providers who were taking advantage of them. So abortion was portrayed as something illegal and unsafe and risky and something that women really needed to be saved from
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A
today on all of it, we're spotlighting documentaries that are premiering at the Tribeca Festival. Here now to talk about their film, Hollywood Does Abortion are directors Janet Goldwater and Mike Addy as well as Steph Harold, who just spoke. She's a researcher for the Abortion on Screen project. Hollywood Does Abortion is screening this evening at 5:45pm as part of the Tribeca Festival. Mike, a film that you look at in the documentary is Fast Times at Ridgemont High. First of all, why did you want to look at that film?
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D
So Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a really interesting film because it's this almost like an outlier in that it's a really positive portrayal of an abortion. Jennifer Jason Leigh's character, it's just one of the many stories within that film. And she gets an abortion and it's in some way like a very matter of fact part of her day. There's a moment where you see in the film and in the film she actually has a ledger of her expenses. And it's like abortion, you know, whatever. $60 Rod Stewart tickets like that's how she's making these calculations, and then she gets it and then her brother picks her up and that's that. And it's this really positive abortion that we don't really see anything like that for some time, I think for decades after that. So it's a really remarkable film.
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A
Yeah. Steph, why was that depiction of abortion so rare? That was like 1982.
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E
Yeah. I think there are a couple things that make it rare. I think. First, like what Mike said. The decision isn't really contested. She doesn't really wrestle with it in a way that we actually see more often later in the 90s and early 2000s. Not a wrenching decision for her. It's also unique in that we actually see her try to come up with the cost of the abortion. We don't really see that barrier portrayed very often, even today in film and in movies. So having to show, you know, that she needs to come up with a cost, she needs to figure out a ride, and also that she has a really supportive brother who's there to pick her up. That kind of care and compassion was really unique then and frankly, still unique now.
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A
Let's go to Dirty Dancing, which came out in 1987. The commentators in your documentary say it's about a woman who needs to have an illegal abortion and has a woman cover for her in a dance contest. That would not have sold in the room if it was pitched that way. How was it originally pitched to filmmakers and what did they end up making?
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C
Yeah, so when Hollywood does abortion, we interview Eleanor Bergstein, who's the writer of Dirty Dancing. And. And Eleanor was actually a. She was a kid who went to the Catskills when she was young. This is. It was actually sort of follows, you know, her interests and her love of partner dancing. So she said, well, I'm going to make a movie to bring back partner dancing. But she was also an activist. She was a civil rights activist and she was an abortion activist. She's like, so I'm going to slip those issues in and I'm going to make them so, like, essential to the. To the plot that you can't take them out. And in fact, what happened was when the movie was cut, they said. They said, well, you know, we'll sell this movie, but you have to take the abortion out. She's like, oh, sorry, I can't take it out because everything.
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E
Yeah, yeah.
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A
It's sort of interesting the way she sort of made that happen for the film.
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C
Exactly. But what we discovered. And we discovered this off screen Talking to friends and colleagues, we would say. We would say, well, you've seen an abortion movie. You've seen Dirty Dancing, right? And people don't remember that there was an abortion in it. They remember Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.
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A
Why do you think that is, Steph? That people don't remember it's an abortion movie?
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E
And I think that's actually really common in our research. When we've asked people, you know, have you seen Grey's Anatomy? Have you seen Scandal, all of these popular shows? People will say, yes. And then we'll say, like, oh, do you remember that there were abortion plot lines? And then people will say, do you remember? You know, no, not really. So I think it's that often abortion is a small part of these films or of these TV shows. Often it's not a main character. And if it is a main character who has the abortion, it's never really revisited later. And I think part of what's genius about Dirty Dancing is that the abortion is central to the plot, but I think also because it happens to Penny, who's not the main character, right. The main characters are Baby and Johnny. People don't focus on it as much. And there's so much amazing dancing, and there's love and there's sex, power and money, all of those issues that make Dirty Dancing such a great film. I think it makes sense to me that people wouldn't remember that. Abortion is also a piece of that.
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A
It's interesting because when Scandal had an abortion plot line, it was sort of part of her. Just her health, was her taking care of her health. Why don't we see more of that in film?
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E
That's a great question. And I think there are many, many reasons, but I think the biggest contributor is really this structural stigma related to abortion. I think there are a lot of writers who talk actually in the film about having stories and scripts that they've written about abortion, even entire shows, workplace comedies, buddy series about abortion entirely. And then network executives don't want to make it because they're afraid of what audiences might say, that people won't watch, that advertisers won't sponsor. I think there's this idea that audiences don't want to tune in for abortion when our data actually says the exact opposite, that audiences are really hungry for these types of storylines that are really rich with nuance and context and find those characters really relatable.
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A
Mike. But historically, though, there was a small group, a loud group, that were against these kind of stories. How vocal were they? How did they make a big difference in what we see on screen.
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D
Well, the film sort of explores also the rise of the evangelical right. And they're sort of like, yeah, as we're seeing it, this outsized presence that they have. I mean, the evangelical right, it was a really calculated movement to make abortion into an issue that they could galvanize people around. And so you would see these campaigns to sort of turn this into a single issue. You saw Ronald Reagan supporting it. We saw the Silent Scream becoming a kind of like mandatory viewing for children shown on networks. And so with a relatively. With the minority of the population, they're able to have this sort of outsized influence. And I think it's something that we see today in media as well. And there's a pushback against reproductive rights right now.
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A
Directors have to make a lot of decisions. Janet, in film, what was the decision you had to make about this movie that was difficult?
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C
You know, there have been over 700 abortion narratives identified in the period of time that we look at. We were basically looking at the 50 years that abortion has been legal in this country, so the last five decades. And so we were choosing from among those over 700 either films or different TV episodes that had been identified. And I think we ended up counting that. We used 106. Obviously, there were some tough choices of things that we had to leave out. Some of what we left out was some of the really very potent anti abortion material which has been done over the years. It was just sort of a rabbit hole. We just didn't have time to include as much as we wanted to. And then there's some really wonderful independent film which has been done both in the States and in Europe that we really didn't, you know, I think just have time to do full justice to you. Just, you know, 90 minutes is 90 minutes.
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A
Mike, what was something that you knew had to be in this film?
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D
The one that really had to be in there was Juno. That was a really, really critical film. And I, you know, I myself, when I first saw Juno, I thought it was a great, really like, wonderful movie. It was funny, it was really smart. It was only sort of revisiting it later that I was able to see how damaging that portrayal was. And I think it was really important to have it because it's a film that I think for all on the surface feels like a film that would, you know, and that character feels like they would make this choice. And we really have to wonder, well, why did they do this? You know, why did that? Why in the story Are we suddenly putting this baby up for adoption when we really know that that probably character would have probably had an abortion?
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A
Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Bill Clinton, I think he said that it was going to be abortion was going to be safe, legal and rare. And first of all, Steph, let me ask you, how does that stigmatize abortion?
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E
Yeah, I think it stigmatizes abortion in a number of ways. I think first the word rare assumes that there's a certain magical number of abortions that could happen that would solve the political and cultural conflict over abortion. And we know that's just not true. Another way it stigmatizes abortion, I think, is it, it suggests that there's something wrong with abortion. Right. That it shouldn't exist, that it shouldn't happen. And then finally, I think because abortion has been around ever has been with us since pregnancy. Right. As this writer says in the film. So there's really no, it doesn't make any sense to say that it should be rare when it's something that's always been around.
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A
What's missing from abortion on screen in your opinion, Stephen?
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E
I think there are a couple things missing. We still don't see the barriers that people face today on screen. We're starting to see that more post Dobbs, but we really need to see more of the abortion restrictions that people face on a day to day basis. How challenging it can be to have to cross state lines, to have to gather the money for the cost of the abortion, to figure out if your insurance does or doesn't cover it, to figure out how you're going to find childcare or time off work. Relatedly, we really don't see a lot of parents on screen access abortion. And we know that the majority of people who have abortions are raising kids. We also don't see a ton of characters of color have abortions on screen when we know that the majority of abortion patients are people of color. So it'd be great to have stories that reflect a lot of these intersectional kind of layered experiences.
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A
Janet, where did you find abortion portrayed on screen accurately in what film?
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C
Well, for me the gold standard is an independent film called Obvious Child. That's a Gillian Robespierre film, which
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D
I
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C
hope a lot of people after they watch Hollywood does abortion will run out and see because independent films don't get the audiences that they should. But it was actually sort of the antidote to Juno because Juno was an independent film that we all loved. It was actually very hard in Hollywood does abortion to find anyone who wanted to talk on camera badly about Juno because it was a lovable, wonderful film, but she doesn't have the abortion. And obvious child is Jenny Slate. She has a one night stand with a nice guy and then she has the abortion and it's not a big deal. And it's a funny, lovable movie.
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A
Mike, have you noticed, is there any sort of. How is streaming or YouTube, has that landscape changed the way abortion is portrayed on screen?
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D
Yeah, I mean, we saw a few years ago, with the growth of streaming, that there were more outlets, there are more possibilities for creators. And so we see a lot of. At that point when that happened, we saw a lot more positive portrayals. Shows like Vida, for example, which is in the movie, which is like an all Latina cast, and you saw a positive portrayal of a medication abortion. I would say, conversely, there's a little bit of a concern now though, in that the industry is contracting a lot. You know, we're seeing all these mergers happening and I think a lot of creators are feeling like that there are going to be fewer options and fewer avenues for them to tell these stories.
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A
Steph, as you think about how it has been portrayed on screen, what has been sort of the classic cop out.
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E
The classic cop out is that a character finds out she's pregnant, decides to have an abortion, and then changes her mind at the last minute, like Miranda in Sex and the City, or discovers that she's not pregnant like Jenna in Girls, or wakes up and it's a dream sequence. Or all of a sudden discovers that maybe she does want to be pregnant after all. Even though it's something the character has never mentioned as wanting to consider in her life before, that's usually the cop out. And the way that a plotline kind of has the magic and mystery of abortion without having to deal with the character actually going through with the procedure.
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A
When you decided to make this film, why was it important to make this film?
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C
So we made this film. We had just finished a short documentary which was about abortion funding and lack of access for financially challenged people to get abortion. And we sort of thought that was the big frontier. And then the Supreme Court changed, Dobbs came down and we thought that it was important. And I think a lot of people who are. Who want reproductive rights for women thought that messaging is really the issue that we need to be talking about. Because clearly the majority of people in this country support access to abortion, and yet somehow we're losing. And so the question is, how is the messaging wrong? So we wanted to make a movie about how people are talking about abortion.
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A
We got this really nice comment from someone who said Juno was enraging and deeply unrealistic. The tropes around abortion lead one to believe that it involves grief. When I had an abortion while at university, there was no moment of hesitation and I was innocently surprised to find myself completely devoid of regret. Is that the kind of things that you're hearing, are you hearing at screenings?
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C
Well, last night was our first screening.
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A
Your first one. Oh, I'm sorry. That's exciting. Well, first of all, tell me how that went. I'm sorry you had to do that.
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C
Well, you know, we're a Philadelphia based documentary group, so let's just say say that Tribeca is huge for us and this was and we think it went great. We're really excited about launching this film and, you know, getting it in front of many, many eyes and getting lots of responses like that.
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A
We hope Hollywood does. Abortion is screening this evening at 5:45pm as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. I've been speaking with its directors, Janet Goldwater and Mike Addy, as well as Steph Harold, a researcher for the Abortion on Screen Project. Thank you for joining us and good luck with your film.
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D
Thank you so much.
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E
Thank you.
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A
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C
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