The Abortion Armageddon

Everybody knows the main character has to be sympathetic, right? If you can’t sympathize with the main character you won’t care about the movie or book. If people don’t care, they won’t be affected, won’t be changed by your work. And the only way you’ll keep them interested is with silly comedy routines.

Alexander Payne’s Citizen Ruth defies this wisdom. The main character, Ruth, is entirely irredeemable. She sleeps on the streets, sometimes alone, sometimes not, it’s all the same to her. Just so long as she can begborrowsteal that next five bucks to buy some WD40 or varnish or something and a paper bag. She can hardly wait to get around the corner before slumping down to the ground and huffing herself into oblivion. To wake up either in a hospital or jail. It’s all the same to her. Just so long as she can do it all over again as soon as possible. And when people try to help her she takes advantage of them. She lies, cheats and steals. From her own family as often as not. Most glaringly, she’s abrasive and inconsiderate. Which may seem like a small thing comparatively, but in the quest for audience sympathy such small things make all the difference.

That’s the point: you can’t sympathize with this character. Oh, you might say you like her. But you wouldn’t want to spend time with her. Yet despite the conventional wisdom, this movie is more than a silly comedy. And it will affect you. Not because any of us can identify with Ruth, but because all of us have a little at stake here. We’re all being made fun of. We all deserve it. And we all need to realize that. You see, this entirely unsympathetic character gets knocked up (not for the first time). And when she finds herself in the vortex of a roiling abortion controversy the audience finds itself becoming involved. But not in the way we’re used to being involved in the abortion issue. Your blood pressure won’t be any higher after Citizen Ruth. Your self-awareness will be.

Because as fascinating and honest and absurd a character as Ruth is, and as important as she is to the plot, the stars of the film are the two sides that bat her back and forth like a ping-pong ball: the pro-choicers and the pro-lifers. And wherever you fall in that spectrum, chances are you have strong feelings. Strong feelings often lead to ridiculous actions. Which is what this movie is about. If in its events and characters you recognize the absurdity of reality, and laugh, then the abortion issue hasn’t claimed your sanity yet.


The Pro-Lifers

When a judge pressures Ruth to abort her fetus, threatening otherwise to jail her until its birth, pro-life activists Norm and Gail Stoney swoop in to save her. They smarmily take her into their Christian home and subject her to stifling beneficence and prayers at the dinner table. It’s all a very eerie experience for Ruth, but she senses they genuinely care for her and enjoys her time with them, trying to stay clean. Until she gets the chance to sneak out with their rebellious daughter and ends up passed out with a paper bag in her hand.

The struggle of trying to help someone battle addiction wears on Norm and Gail. At times they can’t help but vent their frustrations. Kurtwood Smith and Mary Kay Place play these characters excellently. They’re sincere in their desire to be helpful, and in their pro-life beliefs. But their earnestness pushes them more than a little over the top and their anti-abortion protests and scare tactics are usually too vitriolic to be productive. Still, the easy way out is never taken in their portrayal. Norm, for example, is not just a Christian pro-life activist, he’s also a man. And he finds himself aroused by an unsuspecting Ruth on a couple occasions. Yet he doesn’t fiendishly give in to those temptations as some would like to have it. So instead of being discredited, he’s even more believable, which makes some of the things he says and does as an activist that much more touchingly absurd.


The Pro-Choicers

Folks fond of lambasting the media as leftist will be expecting the movie to stop at this point. But belying all conspiracy theories, the other side of the coin is also rubbed. Norm and Gail’s ally, Diane, is in reality an undercover agent of the pro-choicers. When Norm and Gail have a falling out with Ruth, Diane seizes the opportunity and absconds with her. They hideout at a pro-choice enclave, the house where Diane and her lover, Rachel, live. There Ruth is subjected to the other side’s propaganda, and to Ruth and Diane singing about the moon goddess, in a way reminiscent of Norm and Gail’s Christian hymning. The point is that there’s really little difference between the two sides, and the more they fight to separate themselves, the more similar they become.

Conspiracy theorists might validly point out that these lesbians should have experienced the same inappropriate attraction for Ruth that Norm felt, and certainly it was a missed opportunity for artful balance. But that small failing is soon forgotten as the foibles of pro-choice activism are paraded before us just as the foibles of the pro-lifers have been. These women are militants, and while they sometimes show sincere concern for Ruth’s interests, more often they’re using her as a tool for their agenda, which could almost be mistaken as pro-abortion rather than pro-choice. Kelly Preston is good as Rachel; Swoosie Kurtz delightful as Diane. Just as Norm and Gail found themselves struggling with the complex reality of Ruth’s situation, Diane and Rachel are forced to question their motivations in ‘helping’ Ruth. But comedy is not lost, nor the exaggeration abated. When the reinforcements and the TV crews all arrive for the final conflict and Ruth seems to be going to the highest bidder, Tippi Hedren helicopters in as the pro-choice heavyweight, to stand against the pro-life champion, played by Burt Reynolds. These two, like most of the bit-players and all of the situations, are played for every laugh they’re worth. And that amounts to quite a sum.


And Ruth

And what of Ruth in all this mess? Despite Norm and Gail’s and Diane and Rachel’s good intentions, Ruth usually finds herself swept by the wayside. Other people are making decisions for her. Telling her what’s best for her. Telling her what she wants. Using her to send a message to the opposition. Which would all be very sad and poignant except for the fact that Ruth could usually care less. She only minds being used when it becomes inconvenient. And she’s more than willing to sell herself to whichever side is paying.

This is largely what makes the film so brilliant. A lesser effort would have given in to the temptation to portray Ruth sympathetically, to make us feel sorry for her as she gets stretched in this tug-of-war. A writer and director with less insight than Alexander Payne, and an actor with less talent than Laura Dern (who, as Ruth, turns in an exquisitely real and full performance, the kind of acting that’s so good it almost doesn’t get noticed) would have taken that route, would have left us wishing everyone would just leave Ruth alone. But we’re given a Ruth we can’t sympathize with. While she wants them to stop telling her what to do, she consistently proves incapable of reasoning through a decision on her own. By the end of the film Ruth is only more likely to continue her self-destructive cycle of huffing, jail and pregnancy. It’s too obvious that she shouldn’t be left alone. Unfortunately, and this is one of the movie’s few failings, a happenstance resolves Ruth’s situation, absolving her from the need to make any decision.

Although Ruth’s situation is unusually complex, the point is that the abortion issue is not dismissed as something easily solved. This is the realness that makes the movie work. That’s why this movie can pull the audience in. We all have a stake in the issue, and the underlying honesty and seriousness of the film’s approach engages us. At the same time, the overlying shenanigans, which are equally honest, prompt us to admit to the absurdity almost inextricably intertwined with the issue. It’s this absurdity we need to laugh at. For our own good.


- Panguitch