“Belly Laughs: Contemporary Pregnancy Comedies from Juno to Baby Mama”

Dr. Victoria Sturtevant, Director of Film and Video Studies, spoke March 2 on the recent phenomenon of pregnancy gross out comedies at the Pi Beta Phi house during the Greek Forum titled “Belly Laughs: Contemporary Pregnancy Comedies from Juno to Baby Mama”.

Using a definition off Wikipedia Dr. Sturtevant said, “Gross-out is a sub-genre of comdey movies in which the makers employ humor that is willfully "tasteless" or even downright disgusting, although the latter isn't truly requisite. Typical elements include fast pace, toilet humor, slapstick, sophomoric jokes about sex, body odor, and other bodily functions such as flatulence, vomit and burping, vulgarity, food fights, nose-picking, androgenic hair growth and shaving, gratuitous nudity, unrealistic aggressiveness towards property and Schadenfreude. The movies are generally aimed at a younger audience aged between 18 and 25.”

However, she noted that these gross-out comedies are typically aimed at a young male audience. That is the interesting thing about movies like “Juno”, 2007, “Waitress”, 2007, “Knocked Up”, 2007, and “Baby Mama”, 2008, they use pregnancy as the gross bodily function which is turned funny.

Normally, men are placed as the funny dad role in comedies about families. This new trend of comedy, however, places the women in the funny person role as the movie follows them threw their pregnancy. It always begins with them finding out about their unplanned pregnancy in a shocking way, usually involving vomit. Showing the birthing scene from “Knocked Up”, Dr. Sturtevant notes that there is an actual shot of the birthing processes 3 times in about 5 minutes. The scene, in what can only be described as a doctor’s eye view of a baby being born, resulted in a variety of reactions from the audience. Lots of people were laughing and awkwardly turned their heads to not look but still peeked through their fingers, and one very loud surprised female screamed.

Jennifer Hebden, Gaylord College Sophomore, said, “It was really intense, I mean I’ve seen the movie so I knew it was coming and I closed my eyes. But, whoever screamed… yea, it was like full on scream not just a little shriek.”

This example of how film makers use the grossness of pregnancy for humor was followed by another example of whether or not to keep the baby. For this example Dr. Sturtevant used the scene in “Juno” where Juno MacGuff, played by Ellen Page, goes to an abortion clinic, and as a couple of awkward encounters, and then freaks out and sprints out.

At the end of her speech Dr. Sturtevant said, “The thing about all these movies is they have a kind of everything works out ending, Knocked Up ends with him holding the baby telling this sort of inappropriate story of how the mom said just do it so he did and it was the smartest decision he ever made.”

One of the most interesting things about her speech was how it brought the realization that movies are directed towards specific audiences. These pregnancy comedies, while very popular amongst women, are not commonly viewed by men. Even though they are a “gross-out” comedy, it is one aimed at specifically women because that kind of humor isn’t funny to men. They don’t really understand pregnancy and women’s bodily functions.

When talking with audience members after Austin Kolakowski, sophomore and one of the few men in the audience, said, “I’ve only seen Knocked Up and it was pretty funny; that one part is sick though.”