Hey, have you heard that this is the year of the unwed mother? It's true! 2008's official dead horse is the trend towards movies featuring women who are unmarried, pregnancy, and strangely diffident about it. If you don't believe us, read, oh, every other film blog in the last twelve months or so.
In addition to daily blog-fodder, the Year of the Knocked Up and Wisecracking has inspired lots of back-and-forth opinionating among women, mothers, pro-choicers, anti-abortionists, and everyone else who has, or thinks they have, a stake in whether or not women should be having kids out of wedlock. Juno, understandably, has been at the center of the debate, with some unusual results: no less august a personage than right-wing cultural critic/humorless Walter Peck look-alike Brent Bozell, a man with a history of despising anything that might suggest the enjoyment of life, has come out in favor of the film because of its alleged pro-life message.
Until recently, though, nobody seems to have bothered to ask actual teenagers what they think of Juno, which is what makes this article in the Guardian so intriguing. The paper took a group of genuine teenage girls and boys to watch the film, and then asked them how realistic they found it, with some surprising results:
- One sixteen-year-old focuses on the somewhat lackluster portrayal of the child's father: "The film didn't really focus on Bleeker's reaction to the pregnancy, but then boys are quite inarticulate and don't talk to their friends much."
- Another wonders at the reaction of Juno's classmates: "At Juno's school, the other students were almost scared of her. At the school I go to, people are much more used to pregnancy. Quite a few people have got pregnant. At first, it's a big drama and you're shocked that someone's pregnant, but then you get used to it."
- One boy finds the rather blase view of teenage sex in the film hard to relate to: "It's not about our lifestyle. You got the feeling the two teenagers had sex because they were bored, but in London, you don't just get bored. . . school provides a lot of sex education — a bit too much, you think sometimes — and your parents are saying it as well."
- Most tellingly of all, almost every teenager interviewed says that they'd prefer to have an abortion than take the (suspiciously simple) route chosen by Juno. "Raising a child now would just be unfathomable," says a fifteen-year-old girl. "My friends and I talk about what we would do if we got pregnant and almost everyone I know says: 'I would have an abortion,' no questions asked."