Pregnant sixteen year olds have been a lot on my mind this week. I went to see Juno with a buddy and much as I thought the writing was brilliant, the acting fantastic and the characters extremely endearing, I could not quite find myself giving this film a thumbs up. (warning: spoilers ahead if you have not seen the movie, so stop reading NOW if you do not want to know what happened)
Because it’s also about adoption, and whenever adoption is concerned I am super attuned to “What message are they sending here?” And I left this movie deeply concerned that the message was, “Giving your baby up for adoption is a witty, charming romp in the park!”
Sixteen year old Juno finds herself quite hilariously pregnant at the start of the film. From the dry remark by the convenience store clerk, “A pregnancy test isn’t an Etch-a-Sketch, and this is one squiggle that can’t be undone,” (or something to that effect) to her relaying her predicament to her best friend on a hamburger phone, it’s all just too cute for words. Which, really, it isn’t.
Juno’s parents, her charmingly gruff blue-collar dad, and her wise and endlessly supportive stepmom, are what every pregnant 16 year old would wish to have for parents, but probably less than 5% actually experience. They barely raise an eyebrow.
I have to say that my 17 year old accused me of having NO sense of humor and NO appreciation for the fact that “Juno” is not supposed to reflect reality, it’s supposed to be entertainment. But the movie “Elf” is more of a reflection of reality, in my mind.
But on to the adoption theme. Juno finds prospective adoptive parents for her unborn child through the Pennysaver newspaper, and they are, actually cliches of young, professional, desperate infertile parental wannabes. They are both perfect and pathetic. When they inquire about an open adoption, and Juno is like, “No way!” everyone, especially the lawyer, breathes a huge sigh of relief. Because Everyone knows how pesky and troublesome those open adoptions are.
Juno waddles through her pregnancy like an adorable penguin. Even though she complains about various things, she still keeps up her nonstop witty banter throughout, so you don’t get that she’s really suffering in any way. She just wants the thing to be over. That what she keeps calling her jutting belly: The Thing. Even after it is born, she doesn’t want to see it, hold it, nada. She’s done with it. She’s moving on with her life. And indeed, the sweet epilogue shows her in a lovely guitar duo with her sweetheart, both having Moved On quite nicely. It’s SUCH a nice ending.
Um.
I can tell you that every birthmother I have ever read, known, spoken with, listened to, etc, will tell you that there is no Moving On. And that is not sweet, easy or nice.
And even as this movie feels so hip, and indie, and cooooool, the underlying message is SO right-wing it kind of makes me sick. It made me feel confused, and kind of dizzy, and sick. How could such an adorable, smart, witty girl such as Juno be giving such backwards messages?
As in:
Adoption relinquishment is a piece of cake!
Open adoption is totally scary and not a path anyone in their right mind would choose!
Abortion is not okay because fetuses have fingernails!
Once you give a baby up for adoption, everything is Okay and you can Move On beautifully!
Pregnancy is actually kind of cute and amusing.
I’m thinking, uncomfortably, that Juno is a great Trojan horse for the right. So unexpected. She says she doesn’t like George Bush, but she didn’t fool me.
And speaking of pregnant 16 year olds, amidst all the brouhaha surrounding Jamie Lynn Spears, there is one lone voice sending her congratulations. I can bet that Jamie Lynn would get quite the hero’s welcome if she decided to relinquish for adoption, but since she’s deciding to parent herself, it’s a different story.
If you want to read a long-term true story of what it’s like to be pregnant and relinquish a child at 16, I strongly recommend Meredith Hall’s exquisite, poignant and totally complex memoir Without A Map. The writing in this book just blew me away. I think it should be required reading for teens, after they have a great time seeing Juno.
EDITED: Here is a really much more articulate version of what I was trying to say.
December 29, 2007 at 10:39 am
I believe that Jesus will not put any more on you, than you could bare. But the reality of it all is to do what’s best for you and no one else. Next time be extra cautious because you don’t want to be 18 with more than one child, diferent fathers for the kids. That’s what I think is no good, different fathers for the kids, and more than one if your not mentally,financially,and emotionally stable.
December 29, 2007 at 10:59 am
I haven’t seen the movie. Most likely I will not be seeing the movie. I know there is a place for adoptions in this world. It’s not all neat and tidy but they do have their place and time. And no, I don’t have the magic ball that clues me in to that particular time and place. It could be that a message is being sent in this movie asking 16 year olds to consider adoption as opposed to thinking they have two choices; raising the baby on their own or aborting. I don’t know. I think about it though. I just wish I had more solutions rather than questions…
peace
fm
December 29, 2007 at 11:15 am
fm, I do think that the message is clearly asking 16 year olds to considering adoption, but it is such an unbalanced picture it does not feel right.
December 29, 2007 at 11:19 am
Would you be willing to either put this up at Open Adoption Support or let me do it (with a link to this original entry)? I’m bummed about the movie.
And to Jamie Lynn Spears? I think, wow, if this is what people say to a young woman who clearly has the means to parent this child without leaning on social support, (which you know, that big bugaboo of welfare moms that people throw up when they’re talking about the rights of women to parent) then regular old teen moms sure can’t catch a break. My only sorrow for Jamie Lynn (besides the tragedy of her older sister’s situation) is that she has to do this so publicly.
December 29, 2007 at 11:53 am
I haven’t seen the movie either, I suppose that if I do it will be a year or so from now, whenever I have some extra cash to spend at the video rental store.
Having only seen the trailers, I can tell you that it does seem cute and witty…and that’s why it bothers me. It does make teen pregnancy and adoption look like a simple walk in the park, a small bump in the road of life.
While I believe in educating teens about their options, I feel that more and more we have given up the call for abstinence. Sex is everywhere and it is cooler and cooler to be active and open about it, even if you’re too young to hold a job and pay for diapers. We live in this new culture of Girls Gone Wild, Flavor of Love, and Tila Tequila. If a pregnancy results from this activity…oh, well, we can still have fun, no problem.
I’m curious, if you’ve seen it, what did you think of “Knocked Up”?
December 29, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Susan,
I went to see this with my ten year old daughter just yesterday and I have been pretty much in a stir ever since. (I was actually hoping you’d write about it.) I came home and told my husband that while it was cute and funny and certainly opened up a conversation about safe sex and sexual active teenagers, the movie’s glamorization of teen pregnancy felt to off and off putting to me, I assumed it was written by a man.
This morning, come to find out that Diablo Cody (and I hope she’s googling her name left, right and center to monitor all the various reactions to her work) is a woman. So that got me onto a whole new train of thought, and that is this: the movie, and its themes, takes its place next to raunch female culture. Nice to know, in fact, that raunch female culture resides so comfortably next to male fantasy (which was my first instinct about the movie). In other words, this could have been written by a man as fantasy, but was actually written by a woman who thinks she’s saying something empowering–and who, finally, is so far removed from the struggle to obtain reproductive freedom that she feels free to make mockery of abortion clinics.
Oh, right, I forgot: it’s a comedy. Sorry, I too seem to have lost my sense of humor.
December 29, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Vicki – exactly. It’s kind of enough to make one’s brain turn inside out. Is it empowering? Is it retro? Is it backwards, or so forward we can’t even conceive of it (no pun intended). Is it feminist, or is it super conservative? It’s disturbing.
December 29, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I’m glad you wrote about this, too. In the previews even, it just seems too cute and light, like others have said, offputtingly so. And even if you were with a great guy, and had a supportive family, there’s just no way (I can imagine) that it would be cute and light.
I’d be curious to read any interviews with Diablo Cody.
December 29, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Thank you for this review. As a birth mother, I have been avoiding this movie like the plague, unsure of whether or not they would actually have her place or, if by some cinematic and writing miracle, they would realize at the last minute that adoption is a permanent solution to an often temporary problem. Alas, it doesn’t sound as if that’s the case here. If it’s really portrayed as how you’ve written it, well, I’m glad I didn’t waste my money on it.
December 29, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I saw this last week and had the SAME reaction as you. I’m planning to write about it too. From the interviews I read with Diablo Cody, who is from my hometown, she seems to have picked adoption as a theme out of the sky, having no personal experience with adoption (teen or otherwise) and no real understanding about it and picked it because “I was kinda sitting in my kitchen in Robbinsdale, and thinking about the image of a teenage girl sitting across from these uptight yuppies in their living room. They’re basically auditioning to be the parents of her unborn child. And I was like, that’s possibly the most awkward thing I could imagine, and it is therefore hilarious. And I wound up building the film around that image. And then I just based the character of Juno on myself as a teenager, although I was never that cool.”
http://www.mspmag.com/features/features/79839_2.asp
More to come, I’m sure . . .
December 29, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Interesting. I just saw this today and I didn’t see the hidden messages at all, nor did I see it as “easy” but quite the opposite in fact. I saw it as extremely painful. I also thought the whole duet on the patio was much later- the boy wasn’t on the cross country team any longer so I had assumed they were graduated from high school by that time.
I guess the beauty of movies is that our life experiences and current context contribute to extremely differing opinions.
December 29, 2007 at 7:45 pm
I saw it today and had a lot of the same feelings you did. Also my teenager thought it was okay. Hrmph. I have to say it’s really bothering me.
December 29, 2007 at 8:37 pm
It was the hipness that tricked me into seeing Juno too. I didn’t know it was about adoption at all. Given the conversation on my blog last week when a bunch of people basically said that my successful and happy teenage parents are a total anomaly and the strong undertone that teens who have the nerve to get knoced up should be ashamed of themselves, teen pregnancy was on my mind. I had to walk away from the blog conversation because I felt like I was going to have to start kicking someone’s ass for implying my mom (and all the rest of us who have had unplanned pregnancies) was slutty.
Seeing Juno with that timing was not a wise choice. I spent most of the movie projecting thoughts about my mom’s teenage pregnancy onto Juno, crying, and mentally willing her to not place her baby.
And seriously, the conclusion? Get rid of the baby and you can get the romance back with the sorta-boyfriend? WTF?? What kind of message is THAT?
I thought the acting was extremely good, but I wouldn’t recommend Juno to anyone. And calling it a comedy? I didn’t find it amusing at all. Just heartbreaking.
December 29, 2007 at 10:54 pm
I don’t know how you could have watched the hospital scene and come away with the idea that Juno found the adoption “easy, sweet or nice”. The movie is about her facing her true feelings, about the child and her “boyfriend”. Yes, she ends up placing, but to act as if she does so without sadness is missing a big part of the film. Adoption was in no way portrayed as an easy thing (and certainly not as something she had to do to get the guy – the pregnancy wasn’t the real issue with that; again, it was Juno’s attempts to act as if she didn’t care deeply about something).
December 30, 2007 at 4:48 am
Thanks for the review, Susan. I haven’t seen the movie but am curious to do so.
Apparently the connection that Diablo Cody has to adoption is that her husband is an adoptee and she helped him search for his birth mother. I believe I found that via VietK’s blog.
December 30, 2007 at 1:09 pm
I’m fascinated to see JUNO after reading this. I don’t know how I will feel.
And I was sad about the Jamie Lynn news because of the way it was done – it was such a PR event. I hope for every young woman that she gets a chance to come into her own, to explore her sexuality and her independence for a nice, long time before she mothers. I look at photos of Jamie Lynn and she’s just so young – too young to have to shoulder the public’s need to judge her and her mother’s need to get a cover story.
December 31, 2007 at 3:45 am
I heard an interview with the screenwriter and director on NPR here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16968724
I think Reitman said he felt like his family was like Juno’s family and Cody’s family was like the adopting family in the film, or the other way around. He sounded very heartfelt and sincere, as if he thought it was a realistic portrayal of real life teenage issues or whatever.
From reading your review (I haven’t seen the movie and don’t plan to) it gives me a chill. Sounds like more adoption-as-solution-to-infertility-of-the-good-people mythology. That makes me pretty angry.
I’m putting Meredith Hall’s book on my wishlist right now.
January 2, 2008 at 7:58 am
[...] it with. I tell her that maybe she’ll feel triggered. I mention some other people “touched by adoption” who have seen it and that it was hard for them. Then — because I’m predatory [...]
January 10, 2008 at 7:52 pm
good commentary on the film, some of the best I’ve read even tho it doesn’t talk about the anti-abortion part which is the heart of the film.
January 21, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I finally got around to seeing this movie (with my 12-year-old son). He found it funny and sad; he thought Juno made the right choice to give her baby to Vanessa even though she and Mark were no longer a couple. I was glad that it was a movie that appealed to him and that he was willing to go with me and thus provided the opportunity to talk/reflect upon some of these issues. I could enjoy the comedy of it although several issues did disturb me: mockery of the abortion clinic, presentation of adoption as a morally more acceptable alternative to abortion, assumption that a closed adoption would be preferable to adoptive parents. Also I did feel sad for the baby starting life with a double whammy: adoptee and no daddy. I have trouble with the idea of single mothers adopting. I guess I feel conflicted about the movie as a whole.
May 14, 2008 at 9:02 am
I’d be very interested to know your view on the movie Then She Found Me, Helen Hunt’s directorial debut about motherhood and adoption…Juno: 39 Years later. I’ve just written a review on it and I think it’s still screening in the U.S. on limited engagement. I’ve enjoyed reading and valued your opinion on movies, books, and writing.
July 9, 2008 at 10:54 am
I couldn’t agree more. Finally, someone who also knows the reality, struggle and detrimental side of teenage pregnancy. As a teen mom (19) nothing and i mean nothing is funny or as easy as Juno portrays. I believe it is an injustice to our future generations not to tell them the truth. Ignorance is not bliss. Young unprepared mothers tend to raise unstable children who grow up to commit insane and horrible acts,then the public wonders what went wrong? Also, adoption takes great thought and strength, to let go a piece of you is no easy task and should not be left up to a child to make that decision.