Diablo Cody has her Academy Award for original screenplay, and the media has moved on to obsess over Ellen Page’s personal life. Juno is out on video; as a matter of fact, it is now available on pay-per-view. With the dust settled, it seems like a good time to look again at the politics of the film, the most interesting of its many interesting topics of discussion.
In the weeks leading up to the Oscar ceremony, much was made of the film’s treatment of teen pregnancy. What did progressives make of Juno eschewing abortion? Was Ms Cody demonstrating the “choice” in “pro-choice,” or was she simply ridiculing the nonchalance of the receptionist in the women’s health clinic? Was she lampooning the tone of Su-Chin’s public, “pro-life” demonstration to contrast the personal, yet ultimately similar, conclusion Juno draws about her abortion? Some people to the further right of center were ultimately uncomfortable with what they saw as a normalization of teenaged pregnancy. While it might be common, it is fraught with problems only suggested in a ninety-six minute romantic comedy. I can say that these issues were discussed on the Charles Adler radio program weeks before they hit the print media, and the conclusion was that Juno was a surprisingly complex film, politically.
But it now occurs to me that Mark Loring, the would-be adoptive father played with skill by Jason Bateman, might be in fact the film’s most “political” character, his experience providing the most interesting point of discussion. Loring’s utter boredom with a life that is little more than an extended adolescence, his fear of adult responsibility, is entirely consistent with a central critique pursued by Mark Steyn in his America Alone. Steyn is concerned with demography, primarily, with the ways in which we have chosen to live our lives that imperil our way of life, entirely. But the point is that a delayed coming of age is a negative thing, not something to celebrate and pursue, and this is something that young Juno recognizes herself, in a scene in which she tells her father that she has been out dealing with things “beyond her maturity level.”
Initially, I had a lot of sympathy for Bateman’s character: I believe you are supposed to have it. His wife, played by Jennifer Garner, relegates his hobbies to the basement. But, through the course of the film, you discover that Mark Loring does not see music and films and comic books as hobbies, they are his main passions, and when he reveals himself as being less emotionally mature than Juno, herself, the audience has its bombshell. Well, it is not like the pregnancy could be so: it is revealed in the first five minutes!
I am not sure that Mr. Steyn would see Juno as a conservative classic, but I am certain that Ms Cody did not set out to write one. What she obviously did set out to do was write a deceptively simple story with hidden complexities. And, as its meaning continues to evolve over time, it becomes clearer and clearer that this is her profound achievement.
