HOLLYWOOD’S HEIGL PROUDLY DEFINES A NEW SPECIES

A small passage in an interview with a glamorous movie and TV star exposes the sense of superiority, shallowness, entitlement and exceptionalism at the very core of the Hollywood world view.

Katherine Heigl, the lovely and genuinely talented 28-year-old leading lady of “Grey’s Anatomy” on TV and the upcoming movie comedy “Knocked Up,” provided revealing answers for reporter William Keck in Monday’s USA TODAY.

At one point, they engaged in the following interchange:

  Q: Your KNOCKED UP character has a truly gruesome birthing scene. And you were in the delivery room with your older sister, Meg. That all impact your decision to have kids of your own?

   A: Oh yeah. I’ve always planned to adopt anyway, but that definitely reinforced my want to. I’m done with the whole idea of having my own children. It doesn’t seem like any fun. I don’t think it’s necessary to go through all that.

The very phrase “I’m done with the whole idea of having my own children” suggests that she’s moved to a more mature state of consciousness where she can put aside such a retrograde, primitive notion. In the past, billions of women have endured the agony of childbirth but she’s reached the hyper-civilized, enlightened state where “she’s done with all that.” And why? “Because it doesn’t seem like any fun,” of course. Here we are, after long millennia of human progress, ready to embrace the sophisticated notion that the most elemental life-cycle experience of them all, child birth, deserves dismissal because it’s less “fun” than, say, a Yoga class. Ms. Heigl, apparently, fails to consider that certain experiences and processes might be worthwhile even if they aren’t “any fun.”

I know I shouldn’t sound too harsh toward this beautiful and gifted young woman, especially since her intermittently amusing new movie (which I’ve seen) carries an unexpectedly potent pro-life message. Of course, she may change her mind about “birthing babies” (as described in “Gone With the Wind”) as soon as some love relationship intensifies, or she sees that her sister Meg (with whom she experienced the delivery room) actually got some lasting value (it’s called a child) for her hours of maternity ward pain.

But please recall that Ms. Heigl already is 28 – not 18. And that her declaration about moving above and beyond the tacky business of childbirth came not in casual conversation, but in a formal interview with the nation’s top circulation newspaper, while trying to promote a major movie to the largest possible audience.

Did it never occur to her that suggesting that she’s “done with the idea of having my own children” involved her expressed contempt for an experience that the overwhelming majority of women cherish and anticipate and value?

Once upon a time, Hollywood stars went out of their way to show themselves as “regular guys” and “ordinary gals,” despite their good looks, glamour and fame. That connection with the American Everyman remained the very essence of Ronald Reagan’s appeal, for instance—in movies and in politics. It was no accident that Reagan, and Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable, and Henry Fonda, and even Elvis made it a point to serve in the military, like everyone else.

Today’s stars, on the other hand, feel no compunction in acknowledging the fact that they function in a different reality, but seem altogether comfortable with the notion that they constitute a higher species – unencumbered by the messy realities of childbearing.