Hollywood Makes it Look so Damn Easy!

Ever notice how little focus Hollywood puts on infertility issues? There have been a few scattered examples over the years, but I had to do some digging to find them. Tina Fey has gone to the well twice for comedic effect, with Baby Mama and 30 Rock. Friends addressed it, somewhat inaccurately, with Monica and Chandler (the writers didn’t seem to quite know how it all worked – biologically or legally – and, despite some minor setbacks, adoption went way too smoothly for them).  Some shows go a little deeper, like Sex and the City, but even that had the inevitable happy TV ending. I’ll grant that How I Met Your Mother didn’t resort to the happy miracle resolution with Robin, but it also used only an episode or two to deal with it.

In my research, I came across a 1998 Lifetime movie, called The Baby Dance, which deals with the cliché of the wealthy infertile couple adopting/buying a baby from the poor fertile couple, but with a disturbing twist ending. 1989’s Immediate Family is another “adoption gone awry” film. Then there’s the absurdly funny, Raising Arizona, returning to the “comedy that is infertility” route. The only film I could find that deals with a couple dealing with IVF was the UK film, Maybe Baby, but that again went the comedy route. Where is the true depiction of the struggle and the pain, and fears of never having the family you dream of?

Of course, when it comes to a situation like mine, the examples are even more rare. Jennifer Lopez’s film, The Back-up Plan, and the TV series, Oh Baby! both deal with single women who decide the time is right to start a family on their own. But, in both cases, the conception part gets resolved very quickly (Lopez gets pregnant with twins on the first IUI treatment - oh, and meets her dream guy, by the way. Not that I'm bitter.), allowing the producers to move on to the much more comedically “fertile” ground of pregnancy.

And let’s face it, we all know what a laugh riot pregnancy is – at least in Hollywood. The list of films and TV shows that mine pregnancy for laughs is too long to even mention. Accidental pregnancy abounds in Hollywood (on screen I mean; not meant to be a slight on anyone’s moral character). Conception generally revolves around one-night stands and illicit teen relationships. But the real comedy goldmine is those 40 weeks of hormones! If a show/film does go the drama route, again it seems more likely that they will focus on the pregnancy, and what the expectant mom/parents deal with as the delivery gets closer. Frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that “sex sells,” I’m not sure any of us would even know where babies come from, if we had to rely on Hollywood to tell us!

Accidental late-life pregnancy seems to be an especially popular theme in family sitcoms. Because, of course, once the kids get too old, they stop being cute, and there’s less for the parents on the show to do. So, couples over 40 in sitcom land are constantly getting pregnant (lookin’ at you, Steven and Elyse Keaton! And everyone before and since). This is, of course, usually timed near the beginning of a season so that the May sweeps finale can feature the birth (usually involving some kind of delivery trauma that gets happily resolved in 22 minutes plus commercials). The convenience of this strategy, obviously (other than ratings), is to allow the baby to age four years in the four-month summer hiatus. Because, as we know, once the novelty of Mom and Dad’s “We’re too old for this sh*t” shtick wears off, babies are boring on TV. But, that’s an entry for another day.

So, where is the story that shows the true emotional, psychological and, ahem, financial toll that infertility takes on women/couples? At this point, I should put in an honorable mention for one of my favorite cop shows, Flashpoint, a Canadian production that featured an episode that showed just how traumatizing the process can be. Unfortunately, the show then loses some points for going the cliché route by having the 40-something cop and his wife (parents of a 16-year-old) get unexpectedly pregnant, resulting in the time-honored complicated delivery. Although, I’ll allow that they did address the age thing a bit, and they managed to have the dad get shot on the day of the delivery, just to up the drama! So a bit of a departure from the norm.

Still, the world of infertility, and the women and men who fight a daily struggle to reach their dreams, is vastly underrepresented in Hollywood. What is the answer? I suppose it’s about finding compelling stories that audiences can connect to. Is that really so hard? There are so many compelling stories. So, is it that these stories are just not being written? Or are we too uncomfortable with talking about this sensitive aspect of life? I don’t know. Maybe I should stop griping and start writing. I am an aspiring screenwriter, after all. Maybe the answer to wondering when I’m going to see a film about the struggles of infertility is to just write one. But right now, I’m too busy actually trying to get pregnant, dammit!