It’s been 15 years since Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman graced our eyes and ears with the story of a 16-year-old Juno MacGuff (Elliot/Ellen Page) who gets accidentally pregnant and gives her baby up for adoption. During these years we’ve discussed the soundtrack, the performances, and the dialogue that seems to have come from a mushroom trip. The film is even used in the Irish secondary school curriculum. However, an element of the film that hasn't been as easy to discuss but is now more relevant than ever is its portrayal of abortion. Within the first ten minutes of the film, we’ve established that Juno, much to her dismay, is pregnant and it's "one doodle that can’t be undid." She rings her best friend, Leah (Olivia Thirlby), to tell her she’s pregnant and Leah doesn't ask Juno if she’s going to get an abortion but rather which clinic she is going to go to. They discuss it as if Juno is simply going to get her nails done and the discussion of the issue seems to be pretty painless. In 2007, abortion had been around a long time and the future of its legality wasn’t in doubt like it is now in USA. Juno seems to be feeling pretty good about her decision until she meets classmate Su-Chin (Valerie Tian) who is protesting alone outside the clinic shouting “All babies want to get borned!” Diablo Cody seems to be purposely making anti-abortion protesters out to be somewhat stupid, not using the correct grammar in their preaching statements.
"Juno" (2007), directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, starts with Juno MacGuff, played by Ellen (Elliot) Page walking to a drugstore in a small suburb of Minnesota while drinking a gallon of Sunny Delight. She is a 16-year-old burn-out who was named Juno after Zeus’s wife: "She was supposed to be really beautiful but really mean. Like Diana Ross." Michael Cera's character Bleeker will appear intermittently throughout the film as a loyal
—if at times paralyzed
—lovable nerd who supports Juno unconditionally, despite of her defiant attitude. Juno decides not to interrupt her pregnancy and instead she begins to look for a suitable couple to raise her future child, reading the classified ads in the Penny Saver. Juno chooses a well-off couple, ex-rocker musician Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) and his straight-laced wife Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), who live in upper suburban St. Cloud.
Beyond their yuppie image and clean-cut marriage façade, Juno will discover the reverse side of conjugal happiness between Mark and Vanessa, differences that only intensify with Juno's arrival in their lives. Juno alternates her chats with Vanessa about maternity issues and jam sessions with Mark (while they make snobby references to horror cinema or discuss the peak of punk genre, indie music, commercial jingles, and Sonic Youth's noise). The film's soundtrack is mostly an off-beat collection of The Moldy Peaches (
Anyone Else but You), The Velvet Underground (
I'm Sticking with You), Sonic Youth (
Superstar), and oldies from Buddy Holly (
Dearest), The Kinks (
A Well Respected Man), and Mott the Hoople (
All the Young Dudes).
Obviously impressed by Mark's knowledge about rock culture, Juno pushes Bleeker away from her adventures, encouraging him to go with another girl ("Soupy Sales") to prom dance. After her disappointment with Mark's immature behaviour, Juno remembers how much Bleeker likes orange tic-tacs and she'll come back to him because she realizes Bleeker is 'the coolest person ever'. Professor Nicholas Emler, author of "The Costs and Causes of Low Self-worth" (2001), quantifies in his essay the cost of low self-esteem: "relatively low self-esteem is a risk factor for suicide attempts, depression, teenage pregnancy and victimisation by bullies." Nicholas Emler (Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics) also notes: "Cultural stereotypes, cinema and advertising all play their part in shaping our opinion on beauty. While in one group the majority can agree on what they find attractive, it's difficult to say why one person stands out."
Juno approaches Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) clumsily, not in a seductress way, but the intimacy shared during their simulated prom dance is designed to leave the viewers uncomfortable, disoriented, and even feeling a bit dirty. It's also the scene that turns the seduction game upside down and Mark Loring suddenly becomes an entirely different man, embodying an adult temptation for Juno. Although the director Jason Reitman explains that Mark develops romantic feelings for Juno, actually Mark represents a darker, threatening part of the male universe unknown to her. Given that their aborted relationship turns into a testing of the most basic principles of her personality, Juno is left deeply confused, crying inside her van, her nonchalant façade collapsing after confrontating Mark. Juno recognizes at that moment Mark's self-alienation as her own. She realizes Mark is exactly the person Juno imagined herself growing up to be like.
There is a peculiar discussion between Mark and Juno. Mark suggests the best year of rock and roll was 1993, but Juno says it was 1977. In the essay "Funky days are back again: Reading seventies nostalgia in the late nineties rock music" (2004) by David Sigler, this issue is addressed: "Nostalgia for the Seventies in the late Nineties was especially the preoccupation of male artists. Janice Doane and Devon Hodges have argued that nostalgia is a predominantly male construct representing the pull of conservatism, an intrinsically 'antifeminist impulse'. Nineties nostalgia resists the logic of late capitalism and compensates for it: if American popular culture has become a common coin for the new globalization, then nostalgia counteracts this in that it 'demands a different currency'. It would be easy to attribute the phenomenon to the acceleration of economic and cultural globalization, the pressures of a music industry enduring major-label mergers, the NASDAQ boom, the ahistorical pastiche demanded by postmodernity, or the vacuum left by the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain. Gordon Downie describes the Seventies as a golden age of innocence, discovery and naïvete that, although it has since crumbled, left a message that reminds us of 'a timeless goal upon the world'." Source: english.ucalgary.ca
Juno's father, Mac MacGuff (J.K. Simmons) philosophically rebukes Juno's attraction for the mysterious and shady Mark Loring, and she'll forget her idealization of him, since Mark isn't "the kind of person that's worth sticking with." In some instances both (Juno and Mark) spoke similarly: "So that’s cool with you, then?" (Juno asks Bleeker about her first idea of nipping the baby.) "But I thought you’d be cool with this." (Mark tries to justify a separation from his wife Vanessa.) The depiction of Juno and Mark's attraction strips away the illusion of moral conventions, ignoring the trend of overstylized romances or cautionary lusty tales. It seemed very clear that the renewed prom-dance scene between Juno and Mark was not only affirming their mutual desire for each other, it set them apart from the conventions of "reel": the deteriorated innocence of two slackers is here shown bluntly, yet briefly romanticized. Quoting poet Robert Graves: "Love is a universal migraine / A bright stain on the vision / Blotting out reason.” After struggling with her demons and choosing love above herself, Juno still must sacrifice her son to the replicant mom, the woman who symbolizes the politically correct caregiver, the the grand-scale morality, Vanessa. —"Juno and The Female Memes" (Weirdland)
Months before
Juno was shot in Vancouver, Canada, Jason Bateman and his wife had just welcomed their first child, Francesca Nora. Jason Bateman reflecting on his character Mark Loring: "Well, the idea of making sure that you are an adult before adult stuff comes into your life, that is optimum. And I did. I was pretty good about getting a lot of crap out of my life before I got married and had a kid. Things work out better that way. This guy, Mark, the character I play, did not get that memo so he’s still sort of stuck in arrested development and his life is not going so great as a result. He finds somebody that somewhat enables that in Juno and maybe that’s what that last scene is about. That he wants to continue being a much closer friend with her outside of the relationship with Vanessa. I don’t know if because he wants to date her or just simply hang out with her. I don’t know. I begged Jason Reitman to tell me which side is it. I’ll play it ambiguous if you want me to, but let me know and he never did."
Source: collider.com
Jason Bateman hesitates to declare if the Byrdes are the real winners in Ozark. Rather, he claims that the show gives them a happy ending—one that comes with a caveat or curse. “In true Ozark fashion, there’s a scarlet letter attached to it,” Bateman says. “It wasn’t mapped out at all. One of the advantages of doing something without a predetermined ending is you can react to the actors and the characters and see what storylines and what characters are getting attention and which ones aren’t working. Then you adjust accordingly. In terms of how it all ended, Chris and I talked about whether we should have the Byrdes pay a bill or not? Do they get away with it or don’t they?
We kicked around a bunch of different endings. Laura Linney chimed in with one, as well. Ultimately, we wanted Chris to make the decision and he was really excited about coming up with a happy ending, but adding some sort of smudge on it. There’s something sticky about it. Because once we fade to black, we see that they got away with it but at what cost? Mel Sattem, the investigator who has been tracking the Byrdes for most of the final season, has a great line at the end: “You don’t get to win.” Maybe Wendy’s plan to gather enough political capital so she can turn their money into something helpful, something altruistic, will work. Who knows? But that is a big question. The truth is that the Byrdes are arrogant enough to think they can maintain all of this a little bit longer than they actually can. So it’s good for them that the camera shut off right now.” Source: variety.com
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