To tell you’re the
truth, Juno has become one of my
favorite films and I have watched it more than three times, but I never feel
bored. Compared with other same type films about puberties, Juno get great success and a roaring reputation,
this film told that junior student Juno found that she is pregnant after an
intercourse without appropriate contraceptive, she doesn’t want baby but she
doesn’t do abortion so Juno decided to send the baby to Loring’s who want baby,
but she found it is not easy…….The films shows a very different girl Juno and
she give me very deep expression: a tomboy with her funny talking and actions.
Willis writes in her article “Sexual Subjectivity: A Semiotic Analysis of
Girlhood, Sex, and Sexuality in the Film Juno”: “In a visual era lacking
widespread representations of strong female characters not sexually objectified
or singularly defined by their interest in romance, Juno offers a refreshing
reconstitution of the young female subject”(24). And it masterly transfer their
opinions of teen pregnancy problem to audience: There is another way to treat
teen pregnancy. In this film, Juno challenges traditional femininity, she
beyond people’s expectation about traditional femininity and how to treat teen
pregnancy, also it reflect a big stereotypes about women’s bodies and
psychology being linked.
The first thing is
that to analyze Juno. In fact, I was amazed by this unusual girl when the film
begin. At the first scene, Juno stood in front of a red, old chair with a
bottle of juice on her hand at dusk, wearing a red jacket and blue jeans, she
watched the chair and recalled the intercourse with Bleeker, then a dog barked
to her and stopped her reminiscence. After that Juno throw some works to the
dog with rudely and angry mood: “Geez, Banana, shut your frigging gob, okay?!”(Juno)
I burst into laugh when Juno said these words and I realized she is very
different, and yes she is. In the film you will see that Juno always wears
jacket and jeans in some colors that was considered belong to boy’s, talking in
vulgar and funny ways, and the swagger actions. I saw Juno in a Chinese video app, most of the commands says that Juno is
so cool and so funny, anyway, they have the same words: Juno is not a girl what
we have known. “The 2007 film release of Juno offers certain challenges to past
conceptualization of girlhood, yet the representation of female sexuality as
tied to traditional notions of ‘femininity’ remains substantially
unchanged”(Willis, 241). It means that most of people think that girlhood
should be ‘femininity’: delicate, emotional, being keen on dressing up and
shopping, felling love with a boy……but Juno breaks it! She is such a freak
compare with traditional girlhood, she love punk and horror movies, wears like
boy, she has boyfriend but she isn’t obsessed with love, especially she is
funny. If we draw a comparison between Juno and other film’s female characters,
you would see than most of female characters are the same: sexy, killjoy and
emotional. Especially killjoy, you will find that in a lot of film, whatever the
main character is man or woman, male characters always make fun but not women.
Hubbard claims: “But if we dismiss the early descriptions as ideological, so
are the descriptions scientists have offered that characterize women as weak,
overemotional, and at the mercy of our raging hormones, and that construct our
entire being around the function of our reproductive organ” (46), combining
with her words, traditional stereotype think that killjoy, weak, emotional is
the basic characteristics of women, and it reflect in the films then transfer
to audience. So the stereotype becomes very stable even it is received by a lot
of women.
In Juno, Paulie Bleeker is a very
interested male character. In the film, Bleeker is a shy, irresolute boy, also
he is out of traditional masculinity. At the scene that Juno seated on the
chair in front of Bleeker’s house, the conversation between Juno and Bleeker
really make me amazed:
Juno: So guess
what?
Bleeker: What? I
don’t know.
Juno: I’m pregnant.
Bleeker: (Shocked,
long silence) W-What should we do……about.
Juno: Well, you
know, I was just…..I was thinking I’d just nip it in the bud, before it gets
worse. Cause they were talking about, in health class how pregnancy, it can
often lead to an infant.
Bleeker: Typically,
yeah, yeah. That what happens when our moms and teachers get pregnant.
Juno: So you’re
cool with that then?
Bleeker: Yeah,
yeah, wizard, I mean, you know, just, I guess do whatever you think you should
do, you know?
Juno: Well, I’m
sorry I had sex with you. I know it wasn’t, like, your idea.
Bleeker: Whose idea
was it?
Juno: I’ll see you
at school, all right? (Rode on bike and left)
Bleeker: (After
Juno leaving) Whose idea was it?
From this
conversation you would find that Juno is more aggressive but Bleeker is kind of
weak. Having sex is Juno’s idea and the solution that treat her pregnancy is
also Juno’s idea. Then think of Bleeker, when he first heard that Juno is
pregnant, he was shocked and got afraid of it, look back to Juno, she is so
calm. In fact, I think that Juno should be shocked by her pregnancy but she
isn’t. So someone thinks that their characteristics is shifted, if they
exchange the characteristics, audience might consider that it is much more suitable.
Willis comments that although Bleeker does not challenge dominant cultural
depictions of males as sexually desiring subjects, his bodily positioning in
the sex scene suggests the potential of a non-aggressive masculinity (251).
Yes, in this film, Bleeker also desire to intercourse with Juno, after having
sex, he held Juno’s underpants. But in traditional masculinity, Bleeker doesn’t
conform to it even make people think he is a pussy. But at the second half of
the fil, although Juno get pregnant and was avoided and teased by her
schoolmates , Bleeker still love her and at the end of the film when he
realized Juno got parturition, he went to the hospital and saw Juno. I was
moved by this and think Bleeker is a good man. So Bleeker challenge traditional
masculinity that man should be aggressive.
About the film,
teen pregnancy, intercourse and abortion are the key points. On Chinese
Internet, there are a lot of netizens is arguing about these problems after
watching Juno. Some of the netizens think that Juno encourage teenagers don’t
do abortion if they’re pregnant, then someone disagreed that they just show a
solution about teen pregnancy; others start to argue that whether teenagers
should have intercourse. Well, these problems are very important in society,
the pregnancy and abortions always make a lot of arguments. In the film, when
the Juno first meet Vanessa to talk about Juno’s pregnancy, Vanessa was worried
that Juno would regret her decision what she had promised and want to keep her
baby, but Juno took away her thoughts, after that there is a conversation
between Juno, Vanessa and Juno’s father:
Vanessa: Have you
ever felt like you were just born to do something?
Juno’s father: Yes.
Heating and air-conditioning.
Vanessa: There you
go. I was born to be a mother. Some of we are.
In this
conversation then combining with the things that Vanessa was worried about that
Juno would regret, you would find that Vanessa think that pregnancy and having
baby is the duty of women. In Lorber’s article “‘Night to his day’: The Social
Construction of Gender”, she claims: “Western society’s values legitimate
gendering by claiming that it all comes from physiology-----female and male
procreative differences” (20). Of cause, men and women’s differences is the
different genitals, and because of that, just women can be pregnant. But about
the pregnancy, some people think whether women would like or not, they have to
get baby. Because they think that if a woman get pregnant, she must have a duty
and desire to take care of baby, because this is women’s natural instincts,
baby is born by her, so she need to take care of it. I have read a lot of
novels and stories that a woman got pregnant because she had sex with a strange
man, at the beginning she want to take over her baby but she give up, then she
had the baby and fed it, in the end the woman found that man and they fell in
love with each other! What’s the heck with it? I can’t understand that why she
won’t do abortion, and the answer is always that baby is guiltless, but is it
the good reason that women should feed it when she have big pressure to take
care of it or can’t do it? Some Medias and groups require women not to do
abortion, but the teen pregnancy still have to be blamed by society, it is a
big contradiction. Then I find another point: Where is the men? Where is the
fathers? When society blame these teen pregnancy cases, public always ignore
the “father”. In the film, Juno’s tummy becoming huge, and her schoolmates gave
her strange look and started to tease her, but Bleeker------the father didn’t
get any blame from others, is this fair? And it reminded me some commands about
rape cases, it is obviously that women is the victim sufferer, but some people
blame that why women go out so late? Why they dressed so hot? They deserved it.
Even someone attacks the sufferers that they must be lewd, flighty because of
their body and clothes. Is it normal to link women’s mind and their body/ Does
it conform to the equal what we have said a lot? I don’t understand.
Juno is a wonderful movie and it shows
the different girlhood, I really like it. But I realize that there still have
big stereotypes about gender especially in intercourse, pregnancy and abortion
problems. But unfortunately, there still have some people don’t realize them,
it is serious and if we won’t come over this stereotype, that means it is quiet
hard to achieve gender equal.
Work cited
Hubbard, Ruth. “Rethinking Women’s Biology.”
Composing Gender. Ed. Rachel Groner and
John O’Hara. Boston: Bedford, 2009. 46-52. Print.
Lorber, Judith.
“‘Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender.” Composing Gender.
Ed.
Rachel Groner and O’Hara. Boston: Bedford, 2009. 46-52. Print.
Willis, Jessica L. “Sexual Subjectivity: A
Semiotic Analysis of Girlhood, Sex, and Sexuality in
the Film Juno.” Sexuality
& Culture (2008) 12: 240-256. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 18 April. 2016.
