Victoria Sturtevant
@vsturtevant.bsky.social
Media Studies Faculty. Author of It's All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy. Always up to talk comedy, gender, popular media, and reproductive politics.
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477330449/
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477330449/
I don't think I have many OKC connections on here, but worth a try: Hey y'all, I have a book signing coming up next week and it's going to be really fun. [Reposting because I forgot alt text last time]
April 24, 2025 at 2:03 PM
I don't think I have many OKC connections on here, but worth a try: Hey y'all, I have a book signing coming up next week and it's going to be really fun. [Reposting because I forgot alt text last time]
I don't think I have many OKC connections on here, but worth a try: Hey y'all, I have a book signing coming up next week and it's going to be really fun.
April 23, 2025 at 8:40 PM
I don't think I have many OKC connections on here, but worth a try: Hey y'all, I have a book signing coming up next week and it's going to be really fun.
FOOLS RUSH IN (1997) Comedy labor scenes have almost always focused on the hysterical father-to-be, not the laboring woman herself. Seems kinda problematic when you think about it.
January 7, 2025 at 8:30 PM
FOOLS RUSH IN (1997) Comedy labor scenes have almost always focused on the hysterical father-to-be, not the laboring woman herself. Seems kinda problematic when you think about it.
MAUDE (1972): Maude (Bea Arthur) makes her friend Vivian (Rue McClanahan) turn away before revealing a secret: she is pregnant. Vivian thinks it's a joke. MAUDE's famous pre-Roe abortion plot holds up beautifully, still sharp and funny. I love the vasectomy subplot, too.
January 6, 2025 at 8:32 PM
MAUDE (1972): Maude (Bea Arthur) makes her friend Vivian (Rue McClanahan) turn away before revealing a secret: she is pregnant. Vivian thinks it's a joke. MAUDE's famous pre-Roe abortion plot holds up beautifully, still sharp and funny. I love the vasectomy subplot, too.
Me, who hates the cold: if I win today’s AFI game, I should get out of bed. If I lose, I will stay here a little longer.
AFI: (Evil laugh)
AFI: (Evil laugh)
January 6, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Me, who hates the cold: if I win today’s AFI game, I should get out of bed. If I lose, I will stay here a little longer.
AFI: (Evil laugh)
AFI: (Evil laugh)
There are some other contenders, but my all-time New Year's Eve movie is Bachelor Mother (1939). Ginger Rogers is very wry, and David Niven is very hapless and there's a good baby in it. And Charles Coburn! Everything you need for a perfect year.
December 31, 2024 at 11:41 PM
There are some other contenders, but my all-time New Year's Eve movie is Bachelor Mother (1939). Ginger Rogers is very wry, and David Niven is very hapless and there's a good baby in it. And Charles Coburn! Everything you need for a perfect year.
MURPHY BROWN (May, 1992): The vice president criticized a sitcom character for having a fictional baby, sparking the shallowest possible national conversation about unmarried pregnancy b/c it was completely removed from the material conditions of actual pregnant people or single parents. So dumb.
December 13, 2024 at 8:28 PM
MURPHY BROWN (May, 1992): The vice president criticized a sitcom character for having a fictional baby, sparking the shallowest possible national conversation about unmarried pregnancy b/c it was completely removed from the material conditions of actual pregnant people or single parents. So dumb.
I LOVE LUCY (1952-53) didn't just acknowledge Ball's pregnancy, it also used her belly as a comic spectacle: propping up a silly hoop skirt, in a Santa suit, or here as a beer belly, allowing Lucy to go undercover as a male reporter. Leaps and bounds ahead of peers (still), audacious and playful.
December 12, 2024 at 4:23 PM
I LOVE LUCY (1952-53) didn't just acknowledge Ball's pregnancy, it also used her belly as a comic spectacle: propping up a silly hoop skirt, in a Santa suit, or here as a beer belly, allowing Lucy to go undercover as a male reporter. Leaps and bounds ahead of peers (still), audacious and playful.
Thank you, Library Journal! I ❤️ Libraries!
December 6, 2024 at 3:49 PM
Thank you, Library Journal! I ❤️ Libraries!
PUZZLED PALS (1933): Ok, this one was always b&w, but I love it. During the era when movies couldn't say the word "pregnant" or show a bump, stork cartoons could do work that live-action features couldn't—including even more unmentionable topics like birth control.
December 5, 2024 at 5:53 PM
PUZZLED PALS (1933): Ok, this one was always b&w, but I love it. During the era when movies couldn't say the word "pregnant" or show a bump, stork cartoons could do work that live-action features couldn't—including even more unmentionable topics like birth control.
My Classical Hollywood class brings up the Shirley Temple cocktail whenever we talk about Shirley Temple the actress, so I had to get this for our final class screening. (It tastes like sugary battery acid, but that’s nostalgia under late capitalism, I guess).
December 5, 2024 at 5:12 AM
My Classical Hollywood class brings up the Shirley Temple cocktail whenever we talk about Shirley Temple the actress, so I had to get this for our final class screening. (It tastes like sugary battery acid, but that’s nostalgia under late capitalism, I guess).
I don't love Amazon, but it was a treat to get this in my inbox today. You can buy directly from @universityoftexas.bsky.social press. And the paperback is a whole lot cheaper!
December 4, 2024 at 1:19 AM
I don't love Amazon, but it was a treat to get this in my inbox today. You can buy directly from @universityoftexas.bsky.social press. And the paperback is a whole lot cheaper!
DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING (1967): "the funniest who done it" turns out to be a whole lot more chaste than the poster suggests. Heckuva poster, though.
December 3, 2024 at 5:22 PM
DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING (1967): "the funniest who done it" turns out to be a whole lot more chaste than the poster suggests. Heckuva poster, though.
SUGAR AND SPICE (2001) sees a squad of cheerleaders robbing a bank to help their pregnant team captain. To anonymize themselves, they all pad their bellies for the heist. The movie is a funny little clap-back at the era's moral panic around teen pregnancy.
December 1, 2024 at 3:19 PM
SUGAR AND SPICE (2001) sees a squad of cheerleaders robbing a bank to help their pregnant team captain. To anonymize themselves, they all pad their bellies for the heist. The movie is a funny little clap-back at the era's moral panic around teen pregnancy.
The miscarriage episode of MOONLIGHTING ("A Womb with a View" 1998). An emissary of the creator arrives to tell "Baby Hayes" that he's not going to be born after all. Takes some of the lamest "everything happens for a reason" platitudes to a whole new level of absurdity.
November 22, 2024 at 3:02 PM
The miscarriage episode of MOONLIGHTING ("A Womb with a View" 1998). An emissary of the creator arrives to tell "Baby Hayes" that he's not going to be born after all. Takes some of the lamest "everything happens for a reason" platitudes to a whole new level of absurdity.
Sandra Bernhard in I'M STILL HERE...DAMN IT (1998). Her pregnancy is quite visible but not part of her material. Stand-up during mid- to late pregnancy was vanishingly rare before BABY COBRA (2016) and is still super complicated for reasons that don't fit in character limit!
November 21, 2024 at 4:49 PM
Sandra Bernhard in I'M STILL HERE...DAMN IT (1998). Her pregnancy is quite visible but not part of her material. Stand-up during mid- to late pregnancy was vanishingly rare before BABY COBRA (2016) and is still super complicated for reasons that don't fit in character limit!
The only movie Joan Rivers ever directed, RABBIT TEST (1978). Comedies about cisgender pregnant men have actually been an interesting testing ground for bigger ideas about bodily autonomy.
November 20, 2024 at 3:52 PM
The only movie Joan Rivers ever directed, RABBIT TEST (1978). Comedies about cisgender pregnant men have actually been an interesting testing ground for bigger ideas about bodily autonomy.
AWAY WE GO (2009): This movie is very good at dramatizing all the annoying things well-meaning loved ones say and do to pregnant people. Personal space? LOL, no.
November 19, 2024 at 11:24 PM
AWAY WE GO (2009): This movie is very good at dramatizing all the annoying things well-meaning loved ones say and do to pregnant people. Personal space? LOL, no.
Last one for today: From LOOK WHO'S TALKING TOO (1990). A doll-like fetus in a pink cloud womb. And it talks! Cute? Maybe! Uncanny? Yes!
November 18, 2024 at 6:18 PM
Last one for today: From LOOK WHO'S TALKING TOO (1990). A doll-like fetus in a pink cloud womb. And it talks! Cute? Maybe! Uncanny? Yes!
And a more heartwarming one: Arlene Francis laughs contagiously on her way to tell her husband that she is pregnant at long last in THE THRILL OF IT ALL (1963). The men surrounding her in the elevator have no idea why she's laughing, but they can't help but join in.
November 18, 2024 at 6:07 PM
And a more heartwarming one: Arlene Francis laughs contagiously on her way to tell her husband that she is pregnant at long last in THE THRILL OF IT ALL (1963). The men surrounding her in the elevator have no idea why she's laughing, but they can't help but join in.
To start with one of my absolute favorites: the animated sperm, each bearing a photorealistic image of Anthony Mackie's face, from Spike Lee's SHE HATE ME (2004). The book has a lot to say about sperm as a comic avatar of masculine reproductive anxiety.
November 18, 2024 at 6:00 PM
To start with one of my absolute favorites: the animated sperm, each bearing a photorealistic image of Anthony Mackie's face, from Spike Lee's SHE HATE ME (2004). The book has a lot to say about sperm as a comic avatar of masculine reproductive anxiety.
H-O-T-T-O-G-O
September 25, 2024 at 6:50 PM
H-O-T-T-O-G-O