The Goodwill Index

I'm concerned that my nearly decade-long love of Seth Rogen might be blinding me to the extent of the sexism in Knocked Up, and I don't really know what to do about it. I kept meaning over the summer to write about how freaking excited the popularity of Knocked Up and Superbad made me as someone who has loved the works of Apatow dating back to Freaks and Geeks. I remember trying in vain to find someone else who watched the show when it originally aired when I was in middle school, and I remember the joyous day that I bought my treasured DVD set. No longer having to explain who Seth Rogen is when I talk about him to my friends is a thing of wonder after some eight-odd years. Katherine Heigl's recent remarks on the sexism in Knocked Up, and the resulting reactions to those remarks, have had me thinking as I peruse blog comments. I don't disagree that the male POV is dominant in the movie, which is entirely what I expected as a longtime Apatow/Rogen fan. I just don't see all of the problems that some people find with it. I completely disagree with the idea that the happy ending for Ben and Allison is based upon them ending up together. The wedding is such a noteworthy scene in The Forty-Year-Old Virgin that I firmly believe that if Apatow wanted the audience to think that they got married, he would have shown us that. All the ending really shows us is that they work together as parents, which to me is independent of the outcome of their "romantic" relationship. I just don't know. I mean, I am a feminist. If people who generally hold a similar set of beliefs about the ways that women should be depicted on screen feel so strongly that Knocked Up does a disservice to its female characters, am I missing something?

Anyway, this whole personal crisis had me thinking about what I like to call my "Goodwill Index" - the amount of goodwill for a specific actor or actress that is built up in my mind due to past TV shows or movies. For example, the Wilson brothers have basically an infinite Goodwill Index due to my love of Wes Anderson movies. Where this relates to the above discussion of Knocked Up is when the Goodwill Index comes into conflict with a present-day project that may be completely abhorrent, or at the very least problematic. My sense of Goodwill Indices have given essential free passes to David Anders and Kristen Bell in the past season of Heroes due to their massive stockpiles of Alias and Veronica Mars-related love. Over the past few months, I have been examining and re-examining my feelings about Jason Lee as his predominantly Almost Famous (with some Kevin Smith in there) related Goodwill Index comes in violent conflict with the pure bile that rises within me every time I come in contact with the trailers for Underdog and Alvin and the Chipmunks. I mean, really? Really, Jason Lee? That is a lot of goodwill that's being thrown down the drain. (Alvin and the Chipmunks is a really rough one, because there's also Justin Long (GI from Ed) and Matthew Gray Gubler (GI from being Intern No. 1 in The Life Aquatic) It's like fingernails on a chalkboard, except the chalkboard is MY BRAIN.) I would maybe give Cameron Crowe a call, because I heard that Elizabethtown was not so good, and you both could probably do with an awesomeness-recovering change of pace.