THE movie “Juno” is a fairy tale about a pregnant teenager who decides to have her baby, place it for adoption and then get on with her life. For the most part, the tone of the movie is comedic and jolly, but there is a moment when Juno tells her father about her condition, and he shakes his head in disappointment and says, “I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when.”
Female viewers flinch when he says it, because his words lay bare the bitterly unfair truth of sexuality: female desire can bring with it a form of punishment no man can begin to imagine, and so it is one appetite women and girls must always regard with caution. Because Juno let her guard down and had a single sexual experience with a sweet, well-intentioned boy, she alone is left with this ordeal of sorrow and public shame.
In the movie, the moment passes. Juno finds a yuppie couple eager for a baby, and when the woman tries to entice her with the promise of an open adoption, the girl shakes her head adamantly: “Can’t we just kick it old school? I could just put the baby in a basket and send it your way. You know, like Moses in the reeds.”
It’s a hilarious moment, and the sentiment turns out to be genuine. The final scene of the movie shows Juno and her boyfriend returned to their carefree adolescence, the baby ”” safely in the hands of his rapturous and responsible new mother ”” all but forgotten. Because I’m old enough now that teenage movie characters evoke a primarily maternal response in me (my question during the film wasn’t “What would I do in that situation?” but “What would I do if my daughter were in that situation?”), the last scene brought tears to my eyes. To see a young daughter, faced with the terrible fact of a pregnancy, unscathed by it and completely her old self again was magical.
So using the author’s logic, we can argue that God punished the Blessed Virgin Mary with Jesus. She was a teenage mother, after all, and her child was illegitimate by human standards. The Bible doesn’t say- but shame and scandal probably followed her pregnancy and his birth, at least within her and Joseph’s family.
I think the author’s got everything backwards- beginning with what it means to be free and continuing on through what sexuality was created to do.
She does have some good points- some important points- about the emotional significance of birth, and how mothers who have abortions never forget their babies and how some never heal.
“To see a young daughter, faced with the terrible fact of a pregnancy, unscathed by it and completely her old self again was magical.” Magical, maybe, but a lie.
Br. Michael, if you read the entire article, the author agrees with you immediately after that sentence. Though she obviously does not approach the situation from a Christian ethic, she writes as one who is forced to grapple with undeniable realities of our human biology and sociology that leave her examining if not questioning her liberal biases. Perhaps there is hope yet.
Milton, I did not read the full article, but I should have. Good article, lousy movie.
Another take on it by [url=http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/juno/]Amy Welborn[/url]
I found this a refreshingly calm and sober minded reflection. Amy Welborn’s piece, linked above by Words Matter (#5) is also worth a look – but the piece here is more cogent.
Pregancy is “bitterly unfair” and a “terrible fact”.
Gosh, how it must suck to be a female….
sigh.