I’ve been getting mail about The Avengers and adoption today. This one comes from Rebecca Cusey over at Tinsel:
If people want to get mad about adoption (and who doesn’t?), they should be mad at the Three Stooges movie which showed a loving but wacky and poor orphanage lining kids up and having rich parents pick one in about three minutes, and then the parents returned the kid because he wanted them to adopt his friends too and he was never adopted. Plus, the orphanage was the good thing. The whole movie was trying to save the orphanage from being shut down and the kids from being sent to foster care (“where people are paid to love me.”) It was pretty bad. Even worse on adoption than Despicable Me.
Also, I’d love to see someone explore adoption in Once Upon a Time, a show I love but has a pretty bad adoption message. The birth mother comes back into town and is the salvation of her child as well as the town. The adoptive mother is truly evil (we think), and is basically the evil stepmother, but she pretends to love the kid. You end up rooting for him to reject his adoptive mother and cast his lot with his biological mother. I’d be horrified if I were an adoptive parent. Plus, the biological mother is prettier and smarter (mostly) and definitely better and more sympathetic than the adoptive mother. No fathers around in either case, btw. (Although I think the bio dad may come through in some plot lines).
I thought Kung Fu Panda 2 was pretty good and sweet exploring these themes. You had to be ready for it, but at least it was all true and loving.
Read Rebecca’s review of The Three Stooges, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Despicable Me for more on these films.