More on Juno with Spoilers Galore: Read at Your Own Risk

Cole saw something which claimed that Juno was a big anti-abortion ad. She disagreed and thought that rather than abortion, it was really all about adoption politics (reactionary ones). I read a review from an online friend on a message board claiming the same. And said "friend" knows women's reproductive politics and history like the back of her hand.

I could see their points. I'd argue that while Juno isn't necessarily directly anti-abortion propaganda, it certainly serves (purposefully or not) an anti-abortion agenda.

And yet, I have to agree with Cole that it is more overtly about adoption politics.

Let's think about what the creators of this fictive piece had to and didn't have to do to make narrative sense. Well, to tell a story about a teenager having a baby and placing it for adoption, they sort of had to address why she didn't get an abortion. Not addressing it would have definitely seemed anti-abortion--as if there were a working-middle-class white community in the Midwest in which the pregnant teenagers don't even vet the possibility of abortion. That would be fairly unrealistic. Nothing about the way Juno, as a character was set up would lead a viewer to assume abortion would be automatically off the table for her. So why doesn't she get one? Needs explanation.

Fingernails? A pretty anti-abortion argument, to be sure (in that sentimentality takes the place of a logical discussion of what is really philosophically meaningful or ethically important or medically, socially or psychologically healthy for Juno). But whatever. It gets the "why" out of the way.

The simplistic dismissal of the question of abortion versus carrying a pregnancy to term was indeed annoying. But of course, what really bugged me the most was the rhetoric around adoption.

A) The Penny Saver? Those prospective adoptive parent profiles are bad enough, if you ask me. "Dear Birthmother we are exactly like every other couple in this pile of profiles because we were told exactly what to write and how to write it in order to persuade you to give us your baby." Yuck. But the Penny Saver represented as the go-to place to find an adoptive family was pretty appalling.

B) Private adoption complete with attorney to represent the adoptive couple and a blind-sided dad to represent Juno? Juno gets no notice of her options or rights, so that, learning for the very first time about open adoption hastily dismisses it out of hand, all but begging for an "old school adoption" like in the "good old days when it was quick and dirty." Hey baby boomer birth moms! You remember those crazy good old days? I know you wish you could get those back again!

C) And it wasn't closed anyway, because she was hanging out at their house all the time.

D) Happy bike-riding, guitar-playing, love-song ending? It seems that in spite of what folks who've been there say, Juno happily returns to life before the baby. At least as far as we know.

Now I have heard it argued around the Internets, and I suppose I can grudgingly agree, that this was not necessarily an unrealistic portrayal of a teenaged birth mother in the midst of and soon after the pregnancy, birth and placement. She might well think that closed adoption is best (she might have even chosen this if she had given it further thought--some folks do and that's their right). She might well feel relieved to have it all over with and hey, maybe she didn't need an episiotemy and got right back up on that bike the week after the birth!

But what online friend and Cole and I all said was "I'd like to see the sequel of Juno in ten years."

And yet, as with the first movie, the second would be a fictional work of someone's imagination and just as subject to wish-fulfillment rather than realism in its storytelling tactics.

Now of course we ask "whose wish is being fulfilled?"

I thought the portrayal of the adoptive mother was both realistic and satisfying. As for the would-be father, I should have seen the foreshadowing like a ton of Hollywood bricks, but missed it because his attitude at the first meeting and in the nursery painting scene were so in sync with what I've read around the blogosphere about women's experiences of their husbands while waiting for adoption. I know not all men are so distant and disinterested, but enough are (and turn out to be enthusiastic dads in the end) that I just took Mark's attitude in stride and was actually surprised when he left Vanessa.

But back to Vanessa (whose wishes--and the wishes of those who might identify with her--are being fulfilled in this film). She is "born to be a mother." She's nervous about coming across as perfect, but in a charming way that is further set aside when we see her playing in the mall with the children of her friends and when she's on her knees, pretty much praying to Juno's uterus. Any danger that her "born to be a mother" status might be sullied by multiple claims to the motherhood of this baby are dismissed easily by Juno's disinterest, refusal to see him after birth and her benediction-like, voiced-over pronouncement that the baby was "really [Vanessa's] all along." ("Born in my heart" anybody?")

Isn't this the sort of thing many adoptive mothers want to hear? Want to believe about their children, about their children's first mothers?

And as charming as Juno, the character, was, and as artfully made as the movie was, and as hip as its soundtrack is (might even buy it), this movie might have quite easily served a more powerful, progressive agenda. In the beginning, I was rooting for Juno to have an abortion. (I wanted to save her the pain and trouble of the pregnancy and placement, even as I knew the premise of the film.) The more pregnant she got and the nicer her family was revealed to be, the more I started rooting for her to keep the baby (I was convinced it could have worked swimmingly, even as I knew the premise of the film), then, when she had the baby and Vanessa came in to pick him up, I rooted for Juno and Vanessa to have a mountaintop moment, a mutual change of heart and arrange for Juno to be the live-in childcare for Vanessa--a new single mom--and parent the baby as a mom-team.

Those were my wishes. As a result, I left the theatre bitterly disappointed and not feeling good at all in spite of the movie's obvious attempt to place itself firmly in the "feel-good" genre niche.

Though one might say the movie was not "unrealistic" (Juno's lack of legal or other representation, her isolation from others who share her experience, her detachment from grief after placement), neither did the film problematize any of this or suggest any alternate versions of the story.

In the end, the film heartily endorsed the agenda of a return to the bad-old "baby-scoop" days and thus yes, a return the days (if they are indeed over) of women's sexuality being shameful and not within women's own control. And thus yes, a return to the days (if they are indeed over) when abortion was not readily or safely available.

If you knew nothing about adoption going into the film, you'd learn that adoption is sweet and birth mothers have no issues. If you had fairly mainstream knowledge of adoption, you'd leave with nothing new. But if you know about adoption from any part of its the insides, you might well judge, like me, that it does a terrible disservice to the field.

P.S. I'll leave it to the Killer Ladybugs to discuss the "In China they load babies into tee-shirt guns and shoot them into crowds of waiting parents" comment, not to mention the racist Asian caricature Su Chin with her anti-abortion sign and bad English grammar.

P.P.S. For more about what Juno didn't tell you about adoption, see this post.

Comments

[Lisa V]

Yes,yes,and yes. Thank you. I have spent an awful lot of time explaining what is wrong with this film to people in real life. I always get the response "but it's just a movie."

I even got a little of that when I posted about it. Twenty years ago I would have thought this was a great film. But once you've lived parts of the story, it's just not the same.

I honestly think it will set a lot of what everyone would like to see in adoption reform back. As someone pointed out "Immediate Family" 20 years ago did a better job of reflecting open adoption and the pain for a first family than this one did.

I know it's a comedy, not a documentary, but tons of people will think this is how adoption is supposed to look. Happy endings all around. Just small changes here and there (acknowledge that the father has a real say so, show some grief on the first family's part, have Vanessa tell Juno she is open to a relationship).

Now I'm ranting again.

[Jess]

Your review hits the nail on the head. I would also be curious to see what Juno might be like in ten years and whether she'd rethink never seeing her kid or Vanessa again. I was definetly rooting for Juno and her babydaddy to be seranding their kid, something...

Annother issue I had with the film is that they continue the wonderful myth that Mark and Vanessa were more entitled to Juno's kid becuase they were rich and together. When Mark wants to leave Juno nearly backs out becuase they're not that perfect package deal from the Pennysaver add any more.

[Lisa]

I have not seen it but have read with much interest around the 'nets about it. And I did notice that people who are somehow intimately attached to adoption have had a quite negative or disappointing view of it whereas everyone else is loving it.
This reminds me of the backlash that the disabled community got for knocking "million dollar baby". We actually got in more trouble for spoiling the ending than for any point we had to make. "Its just a movie."

Well, the problem with controversial movies like this, by controversial--I mean movies that the mainstream love but those who are misrepresented in the movie really have a problem with--is that it is just a mirror of how society really views the misrepresented population. And when you are in or involved in that minority population, having those views come at you so blatantly is just a slap in the face. It hurts. And especially if your community has worked its ass off to change attitudes/policy and a mainstream movie like that can instantly slam back all the hard work and dialogue that you've done to promote your cause.

"Its just a movie" in that Juno is not real so we really don't HAVE to worry about her reactions to adoption. But its not just a movie in that movies reflect (and accept) some of the major and most shameful problems in society. At the very least, people can keep blogging and talking about them and create discussion, even if we are blown off with the 'just a movie' cop-out.

[Susan]

Yes yes yes yes. The longer I am out of this movie, the more it upsets me. Especially since every teen I know, including my own two teen daughters, now pegs it as the BEST movie they've EVER SEEN. Agh.

[Round is Funny]

I think your point about wanting to see where Juno is in 10 years is the piece that's been haunting me since I saw it. It's not taht it felt unrealistic as much as it felt incomplete - and I know it was only 90 minutes, and they can only do so much, but I felt like they took the easy way out to make it work for most of the people who would see this movie.

[Round is Funny]

Also - I forgot to say - I really wanted her to parent. After Mark leaves and Juno pulls over on the side of the road in the van, I really thought that's where she was going. And for all the support she got from her parents, they never told her they would help her parent. Argh.

[whimsy]

I have no personal connection to adoption, so it's really interesting to me to hear your critique of the movie. I really enjoyed it uncritically, because it was fun and the dialogue was entertaining and I loved the music. At the same time, I knew that a lot of it was really stylized/unrealistic - the Penny Saver?? Really?

That said, I was also really disappointed that the film spent so much time developing a relationship between Juno & Mark and Juno & Vanessa and showing her despair when their relationship breaks down -- and then there was no continuing relationship after the birth. I think this film could have done a lot of good PR for open adoption and it was an opportunity wasted.

[PhoenixRising]

I saw it somewhat differently.

All your corrections--in what universe does the lawyer for PAPs who advertise in the Penny Saver give their home address to someone claiming to be a pregnant teen?--are well taken. I felt that Juno's crisis of the dark night of the minivan was more than anything about the realization that the perfect rich white couple she had picked to solve her problem had problems of their own. That was the critical scene in what was really a movie about a smart, sassy working-class kid coming of age.

After that, it was gravy that her choice about whether to parent didn't change when Vanessa didn't have a husband. My take-away was that having seen how fallible adults can be, Juno still didn't want to raise that kid. Hey, way to stick a fork in the eye of the 'mommy-daddy-adopted-baby-makes-three' vision of what families are worthy! Yay! The false equivalence that drives so much of the slut-shaming adoption-industry crap, suggesting to perfectly competent young, broke women that without a man they're not worthy to raise their perfect healthy white baby, didn't get any play.

While that may not be everything, it's something.

I also thought, While in most states the placing parents might have been encouraged to sign an agreement about an open adoption which was meaningless in terms of the law, the fact that Juno and Paul aren't going to stay 16 and scared does lead one to wonder, How closed could this adoption possibly be?

[Nan]

Ok, so my takeaway from your critique is that you wanted the movie to present a realistic picture of such a situation, complete with realistic after-effects for both birth mother and adoptive mother. I think that's what you tell yourself you want to see, but it's not actually at all what you want to see.

Realistic is relative, and I think you wanted the movie to portray your own definition of realistic, based on your personal and social experiences. The fact is, the "realism" that you imply isn't applicable to many people. For example, you rooted for an abortion at the beginning because you thought that was the "realistic" route, that Juno would be haunted by her adoption and not by an abortion. The truth is that many women who've had abortions are deeply haunted and regretful. Many are perfectly fine and comfortable with they choice, of course. But you present abortion as if it's a sure thing, when actually neither adoption nor abortion will necessarily rid the pregnant women of discomfort and angst. Different stroke for different folks.

My point is that, prima facie, you appear to advocate for women's choice. But actually, you are mad at Juno's choice. Adoption is just as viable an option as abortion, and those who choose adoption aren't necessarily relegated to a life of angst and regret. Just like abortion doesn't necessarily guarantee a life of angst and regret.

Let's say the movie had gone the way you'd hoped - Juno had an abortion early into the movie. You would have been fine with this, as long as they showed Juno hopping right back on that bike, no worse for the wear, ever the resilient woman. But, let's say that she wasn't fine with her choice, and the movie explored her lifelong guilt and dismay. You wouldn't have liked that does of realism, I'm guessing.

[S]

Thank you for writing this. I've heard lots of people say how wonderful this movie is, but it kept sounding dangerously rosy to me. After reading your review, I'm even more glad that my partner and I didn't squander our recent, very rare chance at a date night on seeing this one. (And no, you don't know who I am, but a friend tipped me off to your blog, figuring we've got the lesbian mom thing in common.)

[Tricia]

I enjoyed the movie. Could they have done more? sure...

See, I did not walk away thinking

"...Juno happily returns to life before the baby. At least as far as we know."

I thought the ending was poignant. That she was sad, but trying determinedly, to move on, to let go.

Maybe more mature- as PhoenixRising said "a movie about a smart, sassy working-class kid coming of age."

[Lula]

Nan - I would find your comment more useful if "pro-life" resources (esp. those "crisis pregnancy centers", fixated as they appear to be on encouraging adoption) took care to mention the long-term emotional repercussions suffered by many women after relinquishing a child for adoption. If "Post-Abortion Sydrome"/PAS is to be used as an incentive for women to avoid abortion, individuals who label themselves as concerned about pregnant women's long-term emotional wellbeing should be willing to openly discuss the equally-possible damage inherent in the "loving option" of adoption.

Sadly, I do not see this happening in the general "pro-life" discourse that likes to frame adoption as the preferred alternative to abortion. And that really pisses me off.

[Susie]

I didn't care for Juno, and I do agree Juno is similar to the late 80s film, "An Immeddiate Family," minus the constant, smart alecky one liners.

Juno was sort of entertaining to keep me in my seat but not at the edge of it, and it's not Oscar worthy in my opinion. A lot of flaws in the script writing for it to be Oscar material. It would take too much time for me to give my own personal analysis, but hey, good for Ms.Diablo. I'm glad she's a success. She seems like a humble gal. She's made a huge accomplishment many writers would give up their left nut for.

As for the film. the dialogue was over the top, the conflicts were weak, not enough to keep me interested, it was predictable, and besides the physical changes in Juno, I didn't see the inner changes a main character is supposed to go through in this movie with the exception of her having stronger feelings towards what's his face? The Canadian actor from Superbad?

But Juno is a lot better than most of the garbage out there now.

[Becca]

Funny, I didn't think they were representing Vanessa as positively as you seem to. Especially since our central character is squarely working-class, I was reading Vanessa as uptight, perfectionist, and overanxious to a fault. I actually expected her to be the loose canon in the "perfect" family, not Mark.

I also really agree with PhoenixRising:
"I felt that Juno's crisis of the dark night of the minivan was more than anything about the realization that the perfect rich white couple she had picked to solve her problem had problems of their own. That was the critical scene in what was really a movie about a smart, sassy working-class kid coming of age.
After that, it was gravy that her choice about whether to parent didn't change when Vanessa didn't have a husband. My take-away was that having seen how fallible adults can be, Juno still didn't want to raise that kid. Hey, way to stick a fork in the eye of the 'mommy-daddy-adopted-baby-makes-three' vision of what families are worthy!"

I agree with some of your other critiques, but I think the positives and the negatives in this film are both significant. It may be a great place to START conversations with teenagers, even if it's not a good place to end them.

[Ellybee]

Thanks so much for this post. As somebody in the "knowledge of adoption is very mainstream" camp, I was pretty smitten with the movie, so your perspective is giving me a lot to chew on.

Some of my own reactions, for whatever they're worth:

I'm a very committed advocate of abortion rights, but I actually liked some of what the movie did with the abortion issue. I thought the "fingernails" thing was a very elegant way of expressing the sense that some women do have that "Hey, this thing kind of is a baby, and I don't want to be a mother, but I don't want to kill it, either" -- which can lead to becoming a sort of reluctant volunteer, playing a good-samaritan role that one doesn't really want, but is willing to take on. That's a real choice people make, and it's nice to see it constructed with abortion as the baseline and carrying-to-term as an act of exceptional kindness toward the baby-to-be, rather than carrying-to-term as a duty and abortion as an immoral abnegation of duty.

In that regard, I actually also appreciated at the time that the movie showed that taking on the good-samaritan role toward the baby-to-be *didn't* cause Juno to see herself a "mother." Many, many women do become mothers in the course of pregnancy, even when they're not looking to do so -- but there are also women who go through pregnancy (sometimes even intentionally) and never develop that sense of connection to the baby. They're stuck with responsibility for this person, and maybe they try to do well by that, and maybe they even come to care on some deep level about its well-being -- but they never really connect with the "mother" role. Mainstream culture tends to render that possibility invisible, or pathologize it; either it's assumed that women will respond to motherhood by bonding with their children, or women who are seen not to do so are depicted as monsters. So I really appreciated that I was seeing a positive portrayal of a woman who gets pregnant and cares for the child until it's born, and never has "maternal instincts" kick in.

However, your comments have me realizing that this is perhaps less a meaningful breakthrough in cultural portrayals of maternity, than just an agenda-serving exception: The usual maternal-or-pathological rules still apply, *except* where the woman's lack of maternal inclinations serves the interests of somebody more powerful. So maybe that's no improvement.

Returning to the abortion aspect, though, I also appreciated that the movie showed some of the stigma that the character got as a result of choosing not to abort. For all that this society is so intolerant of abortion, and tries to wield its inaccessibility as a weapon for controlling women's sexuality, it doesn't exactly venerate teenagers' carrying pregnancies to term. Instead, teenage girls are simply not supposed to be sexual. If they are, and they get pregnant, the ones privileged enough to get past all the barriers to abortion are permitted to maintain their respectability by getting rid of the pregnancy and pretending it never happened -- but in communities where lots of girls do in fact have that level of privilege, those who can't or don't abort then get to be the scapegoats who stand in for the entirety of teenage female sexuality. I thought the movie brought this out really clearly, making it clear on the one hand that sexuality and accidental pregnancy were fairly commonplace in the characters' world, but on the other hand depicting Juno being treated like the whore of Babylon *because she dared to show it*.

In that regard, I'm not so sure it serves an anti-abortion agenda, because it does show up a lot of the hypocrisy that accompanies repressive attitudes toward teenage sexuality. I think understanding those dynamics is a key step toward recognizing what's at stake in the fight for reproductive choice. It's most fundamentally not just about abortion access; it's about recognizing girls and women as people, not just as instruments for implementing and enforcing one's preferred ideology of sexuality and reproduction.

But as you make clear, part of that recognition vis-a-vis a pregnant teenage girl (or impoverished pregnant woman) is refraining from constructing her as just a baby-making machine for upper-class older couples. To the extent that the movie did that, it's not much better than one that constructs her as a cautionary tale of a fallen woman.

I will, however, join other commenters in appreciating the movie's counterpoint to the conventional ideology that tries to claim that what babies need is parents who are older and wealthier and married. The movie seemed to me to be suggesting instead that babies are better off with families who want and love them -- which I think is critical. Now we just need the part where sometimes those families *are* teenage girls who get pregnant accidentally but love their babies and can care for them wonderfully in environments where they can get the respect and support they deserve. Maybe the follow-up I want to see is not Juno in ten years struggling with the after-effects of that adoption -- I can allow that this one character, in this one situation, really is going to be fine -- but Juno's little sister in thirteen years, also pregnant and all set to be as committed a mother as Vanessa, and fighting to get *that* allowed for and appreciated. Even if the movie is an entirely genuine depiction of one kind of experience with teenage pregnancy, I think you've hit the nail on the head in observing that it's dangerous to put that story front-and-center while other kinds of experiences aren't being attended to.

[Lori]

Chiming in very late. I just saw Juno. I did not read this thread earlier to avoid spoilers.

My first thought is what about the birth father. Unless I missed something at no point did he sign away his rights.

I think a progressive adoption theme would have been to show Juno actually making an adoption plan. Not simply sighing the pre made paper work that was shoved in front of her. I would have liked to see someone reminding her that it is HER baby until she relinquishes it after birth.

I would have liked to have seen the term "open" adoption used as more than lip service. Open adoption is so broad, with so many possibilities. They (as does most of the lay community) gave it such a narrow definition.