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Let’s return in time to late 2007, when a fictional precocious pregnant teen named Juno gained over the hearts of moviegoers in all places. I used to be the precise goal demographic for the Oscar-winning indie hit, as I’d simply completed up my first semester of freshman yr at a liberal arts college full of Juno MacGuff-like hipsters when it hit the massive display.
Although I by no means fairly had her signature tongue-in-cheek vocabulary or an unplanned teen being pregnant to deal with, I used to be curious to see how Juno holds up now that it is as previous as the teenager characters within the movie, notably close to the way it dealt with abortion — particularly in a post-Roe world, when secure and equitable abortion entry is turning into more and more unavailable to sufferers throughout the nation.
A Fast Recap
Juno stars Elliot Web page because the titular character who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at 16 after one awkward sexual encounter together with her crush, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). She opts to have an abortion at first, altering her thoughts when she crosses a fellow classmate protesting on the abortion clinic proclaiming that “All infants need to get borned!” The classmate additionally tells Juno that her child has each a heartbeat and fingernails — regardless of figuring out nothing about how far alongside Juno is in her being pregnant — prompting her to expire of the clinic earlier than having the process finished.
With the help of her finest buddy, Juno tells her dad and stepmom (J.Okay. Simmons and Allison Janney) that she’s planning to offer the newborn up for adoption and has discovered the right couple, Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner — facet be aware: I might forgotten how stacked with expertise this film is).
Vanessa clearly longs for a child, however Mark’s apprehension turns into obvious fairly shortly. With out spoiling a film 16 years after its launch, the ending is sudden, heartfelt, and extra sugary than the huge jug of Sunny Delight Juno downs at the beginning of the film to make herself pee for a number of being pregnant checks.
Cultural Touchpoints
Although teen being pregnant has been a subject in motion pictures and TV exhibits for many years, it is price mentioning the purpose in tradition at which Juno was launched with a purpose to perceive the framework set by the story. Juno got here out six months after Knocked Up — which famously did not even provide abortion as an choice for the pregnant lead character — and on the heels of exhibits like The Secret Lifetime of the American Teenager and 16 and Pregnant, which ranged from thinly veiled pro-life messaging (the previous) and exploitative voyeurism (the latter).
Coincidentally, the ethical panic of minor being pregnant hit a fever pitch the week of Juno’s theatrical launch. Days earlier than the film’s premiere, Jamie Lynn Spears, then 16, introduced she was pregnant together with her first baby, ushering a tabloid frenzy that dominated headlines for months. On the time, the teenager being pregnant charge within the U.S. was additionally on the rise, making the movie culturally related in additional methods than one.
The Take a look at of Time
If you will get previous the truth that Juno is aggressively 2007 in its styling, quirky-by-design dialogue, and painfully twee soundtrack, what stays is a hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age story price revisiting in present-day instances.
That stated, there’s loads of cringe, together with a xenophobic comment: Juno telling her potential adoptive dad and mom they “ought to’ve gone to China” as a result of “they provide away infants like free iPods.” There’s additionally some informal slut-shaming, corresponding to when Juno’s (largely) well-meaning dad tells her he did not assume she was “that form of lady.” Her ultrasound technician additionally slut-shames her, however Juno’s stepmom and finest buddy swiftly come to her protection.
The movie additionally does not adequately tackle the predatory vibes given off by Mark, the potential adoptive father, who hits on 16-year-old Juno fairly closely each time he is not beneath the watchful eye of his spouse. Mark is handled because the villain within the story, however not for hitting on a baby — as a substitute for being an unsupportive husband.
The Abortion Query
As for the way the movie handles abortion, it appears up for interpretation. One might argue that Juno exercised autonomy over her physique by selecting to hold out her being pregnant and fulfill the desires of somebody longing for a kid. You could possibly additionally argue that she determined to go forward together with her being pregnant not of her personal free will however out of worry after what her protesting classmate stated to her on the clinic. In fact, Juno can be a wholly totally different movie if she had gone via with an abortion.
All in all, it is an extremely real looking portrayal of how a young person would possibly really feel within the face of an sudden being pregnant: overwhelmed and simply swayed by the messages they’re receiving from these round them. The scene on the abortion clinic can be painfully correct — the M.O. of pro-life protesters is to be coercive and manipulative in the direction of pregnant sufferers who is perhaps in an extremely weak state.
Elliot Web page and Diablo Cody’s Ideas
In 2022, Juno marked its 15-year anniversary. In separate interviews, Web page and Diablo Cody, the movie’s screenwriter, mirrored on their experiences and the way they really feel about it now. Web page informed Esquire that he felt uncomfortable across the movie’s launch attributable to his gender dysphoria, and that being compelled to put on attire at promotional occasions “actually did nearly kill” him.
Web page acknowledged that “individuals, particularly teenage ladies, actually responded to” the character of Juno, including, “I want I might return and expertise it now. As me.”
Cody is much less forgiving in her reflection, telling The Hollywood Reporter she “by no means supposed the film as any form of political assertion in any respect.” On the time, it merely had by no means occurred to her that her “reproductive rights could possibly be at risk.”
“I’m emphatically pro-choice and have been my whole life. And it is very important me to make that clear,” she added. “I can perceive why individuals would misunderstand the film. Wanting again at it, I can see the way it could possibly be perceived as anti-choice. And that horrifies me.”
She continued, “Again in 2008, I acquired a letter from some administrator at my Catholic highschool thanking me for writing a film that was consistent with the varsity’s values. And I used to be like: ‘What have I finished?’ My goal as an artist is to be a traitor to that tradition, to not uplift it.”
In actual fact, it was Cody’s Catholic upbringing that impressed her to jot down the abortion clinic scene, however she stated “the very last thing I’d ever need is for somebody to interpret the film as anti-choice. That could be a enormous paranoia of mine.”
Although Cody herself may not revisit the movie, it actually has re-watch worth if you happen to want a hearty dose of saccharine nostalgia. Here is hoping the complexities of abortion and unplanned being pregnant can proceed to be tackled in a approach that’s delicate to the matters and understanding of the nuances, with out disgrace or judgment, irrespective of somebody’s alternative. (And sure, each pregnant particular person ought to have the liberty to decide on what they do with their very own physique, it doesn’t matter what sure lawmakers assume.)
I additionally nonetheless form of need a hamburger cellphone, so there’s that, too.
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