Actor Kirk Cameron waits backstage while being introduced before speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in 2012. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Every time actor and conservative advocate Kirk Cameron makes headlines, as he did this week for arguing that women should be submissive to their husbands[1], I think back to the only work of his that I'm really familiar with, his 1989 college debate movie "Listen To Me[2]." When I was in high school, I watched "Listen To Me" more times than someone who makes a living off her taste in art ought to care to admit, but I haven't seen it in at least a decade.
Revisiting it yesterday, the movie's most cringe-worthy scenes aren't any less hideously embarrassing, and I still want to burn every part of poor Jami Gertz's very, very 80s wardrobe. But while elements of "Listen To Me," which builds up to a debate about Roe v. Wade judged by Supreme Court justices, are certainly hideously dated, it's a movie that contemporary conservative moviemakers could learn a lot from if they want to give their audiences more than pure sermonizing — and especially if they want to try to make arguments for their values that could reach mainstream moviegoers.
In 1989, when "Listen to Me" came out, the number of Americans who said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances or legal only under certain circumstances was falling[3], and the number of respondents who said the procedure should be legal in all circumstances was about to start climbing before reaching a plateau that would reach well into the mid-90s. A year earlier[4], President Ronald Reagan asked his Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, to ex amine whether abortion had an impact on women's physical and psychological health.
"Listen To Me" follows two working-class college students, Monica (Gertz) and Tucker (Cameron) who have earned prestigious debate scholarships to Kenmont College in California, where the activity is as big a deal as Big Ten football might be at another school.
The pair get off to a bad start at an early team get-together when they learn that the subject they'll be debating all year is abortion. Monica instantly insists that it will be easier to argue in support of Roe v. Wade because "nobody today, no educated, thinking people believe abortion's wrong." And Tucker, who alternately exploits his background as a "chicken-farmer's son" from Oklahoma and is sensitive about his poverty, bristles at her dismissal of religious objections to abortion, declaring himself to be the sort of conservative she dismisses. Their coach, Charlie (Roy Scheider, who must have lost a bet) assigns Monica and Tucker to be a team, sensing that their passion for each side of the issue could make them strong contenders on the circuit. And of course their opposition is the stuff of which romantic comedies are made.
If it sounds like the setup for "Listen to Me" lends itself to didactic moralizing, you're not entirely wrong. Some of the worst sequences in the movie are the extended debate scenes where the competitors monologue on and on, reaching for the sorts of rhetorical excesses that would have raised eyebrows during my time on the national high school policy debate circuit. (To be fair, some of those excesses are driven by emotion, rather than ideology.)
But part of what makes "Listen To Me" work — and part of what makes it a canny read of the abortion politics of the late 1980s — is that it doesn't present either side as persecuted, and it gives all the different arguments in the movie credible advocates.
Tucker's roommate, champion debater Garson McKellar (Tim Quill), is the wealthy scion of a political family. And while in both his personal life and his debate speeches, Garson is an advocate for positions that are less liberal than libertine, he's charismatic and funny and obviously very smart. Rather than abusing his privilege, he's generous with Tucker and Monica and encouraging of their debate careers and political aspirations (he dreams of being a writer rather than following in his father's footsteps).
While some of Monica's opinions about abortion opponents are rooted in snobbery, and though Tucker's pro-life position and periodic bursts of showy chauvinism are more reactionary than well-informed, "Listen To Me" likes both of them, rather than casting one of them as well-intentioned but foolish, or an enemy who needs to be converted.
"Listen To Me" doesn't manage to pull off this sense of balance all the way through the end. When Garson dies in a car accident, and Monica and Tucker, who have become the second-best partnership on the Kenmont debate squad, must take his place at the national championship, their Harvard opponents come across as an uppity pair of rich East Coast college boys, leaning heavily and smugly on facts and research to argue in support of abortion.
But Monica turns the debate around when she reveals the secret she's been hiding the entire movie, and that has made her reluctant to date both Tucker and Garson: she was raped* at 14 and had an abortion that weighs on her heavily. It's a canny and emotional depiction of the contention that abortion causes actual psychological harm to women, which if scientifically debunked has persisted as an argument that pro-life advocates use to push back against the contention that their position places low value on women themselves.
In "Listen To Me," Monica's confession works to resolve both the political and romantic tension of the movie. Her disclosure makes Tucker understand why Monica supports abortion rights, and Monica, who says she'd make the same choice again, has room to acknowledge that her abortion is caught up in the complicated feelings she is still grappling with after her rape. Her personal disclosure makes it possible for them to begin a real romantic relationship. And the Supreme Court justices who award them the victory in the championship don't suddenly announce that they oppose either abortion or Roe v. Wade, but they suggest they're open to the idea of national conversation about private morality and the prevention of unintended pregnancy.
I should be clear at this point that I don't think "Listen To Me" is actually a good movie. It has a weird device involving a campus cartoonist that never leads anywhere! Garson reads "Richard Cory[5]" to Monica in a bookshop and then asks her to dinner in the worst attempt to hit on someone in cinematic history! There is literally a scene in the movie in which Garson, who is rebelling against his politician father, wins a debate with a melodramatic speech in which he compares his father's distaste for his own career aspirations to abortion!
But as a progressive, I would be a lot more worried about the rise of conservative movie-making if directors like Harold Cronk of the "God's Not Dead" franchise and Rich Christiano of "A Matter of Faith" were using "Listen To Me" as a model. Finding a realistic way to make a political debate part of the plot and characters' personal lives, rather than creating a contrived situation in which to stage it? Creating reasonably credible characters on either side of an issue? Make sure your movie is also a credible romantic comedy, or action movie, or whatever genre you're working in? "Listen to Me" may not have nailed the execution. But if conservatives want to make Hollywood a little less liberal, "Listen To Me" might give them the formula they need.
*One way in which "Listen To Me" feels completely alien from the present: the movie takes Monica seriously as a rape survivor. The script treats her skittishness about dating with respect and sensitivity, even when we and the other characters in the movie don't know what's behind it. And when Garson, drunk, makes advances on her and hits her, both Tucker and "Listen To Me" are fully on her side, and treat Garson like a cad when he tries to suggest that she was misreading or exaggerating the situation. Given the current discussions of sexual assault on college campuses, this part of the movie practically reads like a progressive fantasy.
References
- ^ arguing that women should be submissive to their husbands (www.rawstory.com)
- ^ Listen To Me (www.imdb.com)
- ^ the number of Americans who said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances or legal only under certain circumstances was falling (www.gall up.com)
- ^ A year earlier (profiles.nlm.nih.gov)
- ^ Richard Cory (www.poetryfoundation.org)
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