Juno is a fantastic movie. When people look back on what happened in late twentieth- and early twenty-first century American art, it will be clear that movies were the medium of choice for the really talented artists of our time. If Salinger came back he would do so as an independent filmmaker. Ditto Dickens or Tolstoy, or even (perhaps especially) Jane Austin and Sylvia Plath. (Can you imagine how Plath would light a scene?)

I was thinking all of that when watching Metropolitan (a very different kind of movie from Juno), but this Sandbox has set me off. Yes, you can analyze the works of all these people according to how they fit into the cultural politics of their day. Indeed, you should. But if you wrote as reductive an essay as this one, you'd run the risk of being confused with a sophomore.

Juno is a great movie because it has believable characters making difficult choices according to their own logic, because it makes us care about their story, because it is moving without being manipulative, because if it were a poem it's language would pursue you like a doppelganger.

Given all that, this essay seems much more a product of the culture wars than Juno.

I agree with one thing you said, that movies are art, and this point is often forgotten. As a student of film and art history, I feel this a lot about movie reviews. And while no work of art can be completely reduced to the politics it portrays (or is ASSUMED to portray, as is with this article- this is NOT a pro-choice movie, I wrote another post on that), the trend as a WHOLE this season has been anti-abortion. For people who are pro-choice, this is truly scary.

Totally agree with the thesis of this article - all the political angles are covered in Juno.

Totally agree with the posters above who say that independent film is the canvas of some of our finest artists.

But I could not disagree more vehemently that Juno is a great film. Or a good one. It's tripe. Reitman's direction and Cody's clear intent with the script both point to an attempt at realism. But the dialogue is amateurish, cloying, and tries so hard it is absurd. The characters all sound like Cody - not actual people. If you can get over the wall-to-wall faux hipness, and a story that sets of the B.S. detector at every turn, have fun with this carefully a-political movie. Maybe it is for you.

areed1:

... the trend as a WHOLE this season has been anti-abortion. For people who are pro-choice, this is truly scary.

Why is an anti-abortion movie scary to pro-choice people? As long as the anti-abortion message involves choice, what's the problem? Supposedly no one is "pro-abortion," and those who are pro-freedom or pro-choice should be honest and respect the freely made choice.

Because "pro-choice," like

Fitzpatrick:

Why is an anti-abortion movie scary to pro-choice people? As long as the anti-abortion message involves choice, what's the problem?

Because "pro-choice," like "pro-life," is a self-chosen label that conceals as much as it reveals. The pro-contraception position (of which protecting the availability of abortion is part) rests on two premises: i) that sex should be separated from its reproductive consequences so that it can be pursued for other reasons, and ii) that individuals should not bear children that they are not willing and able to rear. That's been true since Margaret Sanger.

To the extent that Juno presents the decision of a fictional preganant, unmarried working class 16 year old to bear the child as i) admirable and ii) working out all right in the end, it might encourage her non-fictional counterparts to do likewise. Since Juno is, as I wrote in an earlier post, a romance, the results are apt to be a good deal less pleasant in real life than in this piece of fiction.