"ORPHAN," ESTHER, AND US: ADOPTION MUCKETY-MUCKS LOOK STUPID AGAIN

Bastardette was forwarded a press release from Voice for Adoption but can’t find it on the organization’s website:

Organizations dealing with adoption and foster care – along with parent and family groups and individuals around the country – are criticizing the film and its trailer as offensive and potentially undermining to children in need of families.

followed by a list of what “we” can do to stop the death of adoption by Orphan in the United States (and probably the world); mainly how to nag Warner Brothers into fulfilling its social duty to promote the adoption of millions of orphans instead of portraying adoptees as ax-wielding, porch pissing, home wreckers. Oh wait, that’s what the government does!

The Charlotte International Examiner, full of moral panic, calls the film (oh no!) “anti-adoption.”

Evan B. Donaldson director Adam Pertman is in a snit, too. In a May 28, 2009 press release, the EBD calls on Warner Brothers to meet with it and other organizations to help the studio create “educational materials”….to counter fears or negative perceptions that might be engendered by “Orphan” or its marketing.”

“Orphan” is not scheduled for release until July, but its marketing has already raised deep concerns because it is premised on the notion that an older adopted child is profoundly troubled (in this case, perhaps deranged and homicidal); reinforces popular misconceptions (for instance, that there are still orphanages in the U.S.); and fuels corrosive views about the families formed with such children (“It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own,” says the adoptee in the film).

Organizations dealing with adoption, foster care and orphans – along with parent and family groups and individuals around the country – are criticizing the film and its trailer as offensive and potentially undermining to children in need of families. They are speaking out in blogs and listserves, in phone calls and letters to movie executives, and in email blasts to colleagues, friends and fellow parents.

“It has been a long time since a movie caused this much angst and worry in the adoption, foster care and orphan care communities, even before its release,” said Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. “And I think their concerns are well-founded.”

Pertman suggested that, “at a minimum, the current trailer could be replaced so that the fallacies it contains aren’t transmitted even to people who choose not to see the movie.” He added that the Adoption Institute and other organizations would be happy to meet with executives connected with the film to discuss what additional steps could be taken – such as producing educational materials spelling out the realities of children who need families – to counter any fears or negative perceptions that might be engendered by “Orphan” or its marketing.

NOTE TO ADAM: How about a pap & aparent screening of the scariest adoption movie Bastardette has ever seen: the much loved Irene Dunn-Cary Grant classic Penny Serenade. At the end of the movie Adoptee Trina dies of some mysterious movie illness. Within weeks her forever parents, through the kind services of progressive adoption agent Beulah Bondi, acquire a boy toddler (which is what they wanted all along anyway), throw out all of Trina’s stuff, and repaint her room. Now that’s uplifting and adoption positive! How did any adoptee over the age of 40 emotionaly survive this movie that was shown constantly on TV when we were growing up?

Grinding in at full snit boggie is L-d-S feminist Mormon (aka “Worman”) blogger J. A. Benson on The Millennial Star site. Ms. Benson’s keyboard virtually quivers in fear that the throngs of paps who rush to their nearest cineplex to learn more about the orphan adoption experience, will toss their adoption aps in the trashcan after a 2-hour visit with Esther up close and personal. Actually that sounds like a good idea to us. Should people who think Orphan is a documentary really be allowed to adopt orphans?

From, =”spelling_error_24″>Orphan Movie – Taking a real orphan’s chance from bad to worse:
Hollywood is at it again. So like Hollywood to push the envelope in such a sick, sick fashion. This time Hollywood has turned it’s ugly eye to assault the adopted family. Imagine if you had one chance at living your life as part of a family. Your one chance, is resting with a thin bureaucratic file about you; containing a few pictures along with your scant medical and personal information. Imagine some thoughtless person came along and tossed your precious file into a garbage bin. Your one in a million chance just disappeared. * This time don’t imagine, because this scenario could be true for some orphaned children. The villain in this instance is Time Warner (boo hiss). They have produced a movie entitled Orphan a horror movie about adopting an older child. At first I thought surely this movie was a sick, sick joke. No, dear reader it is not. Orphan is set to be released on July 24th.

Orphan, according to Bensen, subverts God’s plan to place millions of “orphans” in the homes of worthy forever married couples.

But wait! There’s more!

Not only will Orphan “kill” adoption, it will prevent God from even implanting his little angel seeds in the wombs of women He intends to knock off (or at least persuade to run off) so the fruit of their wombs can be adopted. If there’s no market, then what use is the product? Kinda like selling buggy whips for Corvettes.

Who knew that God engineered thousands of years of Chinese history and tradition culminating in the One Child policy and abandonment of girl babies just so Mormons and Wormons can adopt them:

I hear some of you saying, “Come on Joanna surely no one is daft enough to take this swill seriously”. Well look at it from my point of view. Often the road to adopting an older child starts with a single tiny thought. I believe this single thought is from God, the author of families. He carefully set out a plan for children to be born or adopted into forever families. Perhaps this sacred thought is like a seed, which cannot take root because the mind carries deep in its folds the memory of a movie about the horror of adopting an older child. This movie plays into the fear of people who believe that an adopted child “has something wrong with him/her (line from the movie)”. Compare the sprit behind Orphan to Bring Me Hope. Instead of planting evil seeds of doubt, this short film brings light and hope for children around the world.

Not content with turning God into a roving inseminator cum film critic, Bensen drags her Chinese adoptee into her doomsday scenario:

I leave you will my witness of the joy a Waiting Child can bring. We are so thankful to God for giving us the miracle of Hong Mei. She is a well-loved member of our family. With her five-year-old arms wrapped around my neck she tells me, “ Tank you Mama for getting me in China.”

Oh, Hong Mei! We feel your pain!

ESTHER AND RHODA
Bastardette doesn’t know any bastards who are upset about this film. In fact, everybody we know is jeering and laughing at the adopta muckety-mucks. I guess that’s why we’re bastards. We haven’t had such a fine hero spokesgirl since Rhoda Penmark!

We admit, though, judging from the trailer, it seems that Esther could use a bit more finesse. Esther blatantly sends her pretty little curly-headed nemesis down the road to nowhere by loosening the brakes of the car she’s sitting in. The much more clever and discrete Rhoda stalked poor little Claude Daigle and neatly drowned him at the school picnic just because he beat her out of HER penmanship medal. Nobody, not even the Psychiatry Club, suspected. Except Claude’s mother, Mrs. Daigle. Bastardette has always felt so bad for Mrs. Daigle, but girls just wanna have fun.

Note to Esther: Watch The Bad Seed. It’s on Turner fairly frequently. The play, though, is even better. Oh, and stay away from bridges during thunderstorms!

SQUEAK!
It’s always amusing to see the adoption industry and its client paps and parents go nutso over movies. The Care Bears. Stuart Little. Meet the Robinsons. Bill Pierce absolutely frothed at The Truman Show. And let’s not forget those touchy folks who think Anne of Green Gables is emotional abuse from which their little darlings will never recover.

Note to paps and parents: Just wait until they learn their records are sealed! Or they get called “little bastard” on the playground.

As we know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease (unless it’s bastards squeaking). The adopta- muckety-mucks managed to squeeze the Brothers Warner’s balls so hard they cried Sorry.

From the Trib again:

“We made a mistake,” said Scott Rowe, a company spokesman “We get complaints about virtually every move…but in this case, we went back and said, ‘You’re right..and we’re sorry.”

The “offensive tagline is now out.

Note to Harry Shearer: Add this to Apologies of the Week. BTW, we’re sorry, too, Scott. For you and Warners. Would Darryl Zanuck have apologized?

WE DEMAND AN APOLOGY!
So, who is going to apologize to us for sealed records, identity theft, forged documents, government lies, adoptee blacklists, coerced surrenders, “safe havens,” profiteering, child trafficking, the child sex trade, and all the other garbage cans bastards are tossed in to to make everybody else feel good?

Oh that’s right. Nobody will. We’re not a B-movie. We’re just B-people.

One ray of sunshine in all this. Well two really. First, the adoption industry looks really really stupid, like some prissypuss matron with the vapors. First Who’s Your Daddy and now Esther!

After that, the funny (to Bastardette) We Want Orphan Movie T-Shirts petition. The goal is 1000 signatures. Surely, that isn’t isn’t too much to ask for. If the Boycott Orphan petition can get nearly 1600 signatures, surely the t-shirt petition can do as well. Tell these adopta muckety-mucks to take their good intentions and shove ’em.