Adoptee Media
I'm really curious to discuss the different ways that Adoption and Adoptees are portrayed in media and how it has affected us.
I never really grasped just how much of the media that I watched growing up featured adoptees or had a theme that spoke to me as an adoptee.
One of my favorite movies growing up was Artificial Intelligence with Hailey Joel Osment. It only occurred to me a few years ago that it's the story of a family who lost their first, biological child, and adopt another. But when their first child returns and doesn't get along with the adopted child, the parents abandon him. The movie is about his journey to earn his mother's love.
Joe Dirt was on TV today and I remembered how much I used to love it growing up. Spoilers if you haven't seen it: !<He's looking for his parents who left him at the Grand Canyon when he was 8. When he finds them, they're awful people, who left him there on purpose and never looked for him. >!
I didn't realize I loved them because I saw myself in them, but they also sent awful messages. These movies took feelings that were already there (fear of being abandoned, fear that my bio family were awful people) and made them so much worse.
There are other movies that I've revisited recently, but those are the ones on the top of my mind.
Was there any media then or now that really affected you as an adoptee?